Transforming Justice, Transforming Lives: Women's Pathways to Desistance from Crime

by April Bernard

Overview

This ethnographic account explores the ways formerly gang-affiliated women reconstructed their lives through stewardship and community engagement. It focuses on their lives before and after committing to desist from crime while emphasizing the factors that facilitated their commitment including the mutual support gained from their communities.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781498519823
Publisher:	Lexington Books
Publication date:	05/23/2019
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	158
Product dimensions:	6.05(w) x 8.71(h) x 0.51(d)

About the Author

April Bernard is assistant professor of criminal justice at Chicago State University.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: The Lens Chapter 2: Methodology Chapter 3: Pathways to Desistance Chapter 4: Reconstruction and Redemptive Opportunities Chapter 5: Cultivating Community Case: A Safe Haven Case: Ambassadors for Christ, We are all in Need of Redemption Case: Liberation Christian Center, An Empowerment Agenda Case: Vida Abundante, A Community of Care Chapter 6: The Female “Offender” as Peacemaker Chapter 7: Transformative Justice: Changing Patterns

Editorial Reviews

In this timely volume, April Bernard, an assistant professor of criminal justice at Chicago State University, examines the process of women’s commitment to crime desistance. The research conducted for this report is based on the author’s interviews with 10 women with criminal justice histories who were working for a Chicago-based crime prevention and conflict resolution organization. In particular, the study asks: ‘What factors facilitate the women’s commitment to desist from crime?’ Bernard locates these factors while attending to both external and internal aspects of these women’s stories. In addition to her interviews, Bernard also integrates her experiences working with women at CeaseFire Illinois, an anti-violence program featured in the widely circulated documentary The Interrupters. According to Bernard, these women’s experiences ‘challenge deep-rooted assumptions that are aligned with views on crime that support the current retributive (punitive) criminal justice system.’

Journal of Community Corrections

April Bernard provides an insightful investigation into how ten women with deep criminal histories from Chicago, through their commitment to desistance from crime and their active engagement in community crime prevention, were able to turn their lives around. Representative of a viably emerging paradigm to the failed wars on crime, dependent as they are on counterproductive approaches of deterrence and punishment, Transforming Justice, Transforming Lives, captures the essence of the alternative pathways to reducing crime and violence. Through oral histories, organizational and community analysis, and structural examination, Bernard makes the case for why mutual stewardships and universal social concern are more humane and cost effective means of reducing landscapes of crime, conflict, and violence than are the traditional get tough approaches to street crime.

Gregg Barak

This important book recounts a tale of community-based peace-making and the lives of women determined to transform their slice of the streets of Chicago. Putting their own lives at risk, they mobilized their friends, neighbors and the faith community to directly confront the peace breakers, challenging them to also reconstruct their lives. Their victories were hard-won and the ground they gained will be hard to hold, but they were based on individual and collective commitment to change rather than fear of doing hard time. They promise to be robust and self-reinforcing, rooted in “community” in the deepest sense.

Wesley G. Skogan

In this timely volume, April Bernard, an assistant professor of criminal justice at Chicago State University, examines the process of women’s commitment to crime desistance. The research conducted for this report is based on the author’s interviews with 10 women with criminal justice histories who were working for a Chicago-based crime prevention and conflict resolution organization. In particular, the study asks: ‘What factors facilitate the women’s commitment to desist from crime?’ Bernard locates these factors while attending to both external and internal aspects of these women’s stories. In addition to her interviews, Bernard also integrates her experiences working with women at CeaseFire Illinois, an anti-violence program featured in the widely circulated documentary The Interrupters. According to Bernard, these women’s experiences ‘challenge deep-rooted assumptions that are aligned with views on crime that support the current retributive (punitive) criminal justice system.’

Journal Of Community Corrections