Book Reviews

Families Shamed: The Consequences of Crime for Relatives of Serious Offenders R. Condry.Cullompton: Willan (2007) 219pp. d40.00hb ISBN 978-1-84392-207-0

This book weaves together the stories told in 32 interviews with mothers, sisters, wives, adaughter, a grandmother, an aunt, and a father, which explore experiences of loss,stigma, shame, and recovery following the revelation that a serious offence had beencommitted by their family member. The interviews reveal that for this group of relatives,who were largely recruited through a self-help organisation and whose relatives hadcommitted offences such as rape and homicide, these experiences are profound. Whilethe focus of the analysis is on understanding the way in which individuals are affected bysuch events, a particular strength of the book is also its very human account of thedevastation that can be caused, not just by an offence but also by the way in which societyresponds. For example, one of the more touching stories comes from Jane, whose 11-month-old grandson was removed and adopted out by social services after Jane’sdaughter and her partner had been convicted and jailed for abusing their son. Jane says:‘Losing my grandson. That hurts, he’s out there somewhere and I can’t get to him . . .I’ve got a room in the house, I know it sounds morbid [crying] but it’s the only way I cancope with it, it’s dedicated to Gareth. He’s got clothes hanging in the wardrobe, he’s got acot, highchair, potty and toys on the floor and curtains up’ (pp.27–8).

While the economic and social consequences for families of offenders have beenrecognised to some extent, this book focuses attention on the psychological impact ofstigma, shame, and the loss of identity that is suffered by relatives. In the face ofambivalence, and sometimes outright hostility from friends and society in general,relatives battle with ways of finding how to explain why the offence occurred, facequestions about their own level of responsibility and their relationship with the offender,and have to address implications of all of this for who they are. Of central importance forCondry’s participants is the need to develop their own explanations, or stories, to makesense of what has occurred, and to deal with the ‘web of shame’ that often surroundsthem. Indeed, analysis of the ‘strategies’ individuals use to explain why their offendingrelatives should not be understood as ‘all bad’, as well as those which seek to make senseof their own ‘contamination’, represents the key contribution of the research. Itcomplements and extends research such as that by Howard Zehr (2002) in which hedescribes the ‘journey to belonging’, or journey to a new identity, that both victims andoffenders often have to make by reordering their world. There are also obvious parallelswith Shadd Maruna’s (2001) book Making Good, which illustrates how certain accounts, orself-narratives, might aid serious offenders to desist from crime. By exploring theimplications of crime for close relatives, this book adds to a growing literature whichsuggests that making sense of what has occurred and its implications for identity aresignificant issues for all parties who are affected by serious crime.

Although the book does not seek to address policy issues in any depth, a number ofthemes resonate with the kinds of concerns that have led to increased interest inrestorative justice. If the issue of ‘making sense’ for relatives of serious offenders is animportant theme, then its corollary is that traditional criminal justice institutions arepoor at providing key participants with the kinds of opportunities that promote the

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reordering of their worlds in positive ways. Police, courts, and prisons do little to assistbecause they systematically ignore or exclude close relatives. As Nils Christie (1977)observed in relation to victims and offenders, the structures and processes at the heartof criminal justice are ill-suited to addressing the emotional and social harms that thisbook suggests present the most significant hurdles for relatives.

The role that shaming and stigma play in response to serious offenders and theirfamilies is a central topic of this book, and the experience that is painted by the participantsin this research is bleak. Their ability to recover and move forward in their lives occursbecause of their own capacities, and through the help provided by self-help groups, againsta backdrop of exclusion and indifference. Indeed, Condry suggests that the interviewsraise questions for the validity of Braithwaite’s (1989) theory of reintegrative shaming,because the shaming of relatives by broader society is overwhelmingly stigmatising (seealso Braithwaite and Braithwaite 2001). Indeed she questions whether shaming isappropriate at all if families have to suffer shame and stigma caused by their relatives.

Yet the book also leaves room to question this conclusion, because the accounts ofparticipants suggest that Aftermath itself, the self-help group through which most ofthe participants were contacted, might be understood as an organisation thatepitomises Braithwaite’s notion of reintegrative shaming. Not only was it obviouslyreintegrative, as a group that was focused on the support and recovery of theserelatives, but it was also ‘shaming’ in the broader sense intended by Braithwaite. Thestories shared by Condry’s subjects depict an institutional culture in which thewrongness of offences are clearly recognised and communicated. As one participant isquoted as saying: ‘If a parent turned up not bitterly ashamed but almost braggingabout it, we would find that very difficult’ (p.170).

Discussions of Braithwaite’s (1989) theory have often assumed that reintegrativeshaming is something that must be imposed on offenders by State-controlled ‘criminaljustice institutions’, defined narrowly as police, courts and corrections. However,Condry’s description raises the question of whether institutions like Aftermathrepresent a more novel way of fostering cultures in which crime is not tolerated, butwhere this social norm is communicated in ways that help and include individualsrather than excluding them. It might be argued that the implication of this study is notthat reintegrative shaming is unachievable, but that institutions beyond the criminaljustice system may have greater capacity to foster environments in which shaming isreintegrative (Wood and Shearing 2007).

Given the central place that shame occupies in the analysis, some readers will bedisappointed that the book does not consider some of the psychological questions aboutthis emotion in greater depth. Many of the significant studies of shame in the last 50 years(for example, Ahmed 2001; Lewis 1971; Nathanson 1997; Scheff and Retzinger 1991)suggest that a critical issue concerning shame is how individuals experience or managethe emotion. This study presented an opportunity to explore this issue, and thediscussion of how relatives sought to form new self-narratives cried out for such ananalysis. Conceiving of shame as more than negative self-evaluation, but as intimatelyconnected to one’s sense of identity as connected to the process of making sense of one’smoral beliefs, and connected to the opinions of respected others, would havecomplemented the self-narratives that are so nicely captured in this book.

References

Ahmed, E. (2001) ‘Part III. Shame management: regulating bullying’, in: E, Ahmed,N. Harris, J. Braithwaite and V. Braithwaite, Shame Management Through Reintegration,Melbourne: Cambridge University Press.

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Braithwaite, J. (1989) Crime, Shame and Reintegration, Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.Braithwaite, J. and Braithwaite, V. (2001) ‘Part I. Shame, shame management andregulation’, in: E. Ahmed, N. Harris, J. Braithwaite and V. Braithwaite, ShameManagement Through Reintegration, Melbourne: University of Cambridge Press.Christie, N. (1977) ‘Conflicts and properties’, British Journal of Criminology, 17, 1–15.Lewis, H.B. (1971) Shame and Guilt in Neurosis, New York, NY.: InternationalUniversities Press.Maruna, S. (2001) Making Good: How Ex-Convicts Reform and Rebuild Their Lives,Washington: American Psychological Association.Nathanson, D.L. (1997) ‘Affect theory and the compass of shame’, in: M.R. Lansky(Ed.), The Widening Scope of Shame, Hillsdale, NJ.: The Analytic Press.Scheff, T.J. and Retzinger, S.M. (1991) Emotions and Violence: Shame and Rage inDestructive Conflicts, Lexington, MA.: Lexington Books/D.C. Heath.Wood, J. and Shearing, C. (2007) Imagining Security, Cullompton: Willan.Zehr, H. (2002) ‘Journey to belonging’, in: E.G.M. Weitekamp and H.–J. Kerner(Eds.), Restorative Justice: Theoretical Foundations, Cullompton: Willan.

NATHAN HARRISFellow,Regulatory Institutions Network,Australian National University,Canberra, Australia.

Handbook of Probation L. Gelsthorpe and R. Morgan (Eds.). Cullompton: Willan (2007)626pp. d67.50hb ISBN 978-1-80 4392-190-5 d31.50pb ISBN 978-1-84392-189-9

This comprehensive and authoritative Handbook of Probation, timed to coincide with100 years of probation history in the UK in 2007 and the merger of prison andprobation services under the National Offender Management Service (NOMS)umbrella is a timely publication. If you couple this volume with Willan’s sisterpublication, also released in 2007, The Dictionary of Probation and Offender Management(Canton and Hancock 2007), the reader, be they studying criminal justice or probationcan draw on a rich vein of scholarship, both historical and contemporary, that recordsthe development of probation in the UK, with its peaks and troughs of influence,leading to the seismic eruptions of the past seven years with the introduction of theNational Probation Service, the impact of 21st-Century legislation and the ascendancyof a centralist model of governance with the creation of NOMS, regional managementstructures and latterly, Probation Trusts.

The Handbook, skilfully edited by two leading experts on probation andcriminology, draws much of its strength and rigour from its contributors, who aremainly academics with a track record of practice experience or as commissionedexperts in the field of effectiveness studies in working with offenders. I can think of norelated publication over the past 50 years that gives such a magisterial overview of thestate of probation, poised as it is by the threat of contestability from the private andvoluntary sector and the promise, somewhat ironically, at a time of unprecedentedgovernmental interference of making significant gains in managing high-riskoffenders in the community.

The Handbook is divided into three distinct parts. The first covers the history ofprobation in England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The early chaptersfocus on the development, structure, staffing and operation of probation in Englandand Wales. Morgan has a telling chapter on the issues of governance and

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The Howard Journal Vol 47 No 5. December 2008ISSN 0265-5527, pp. 557–565