The Experience of Relapse

Abstract

This chapter captures the experience of recidivism and presents the stories of the 34 individuals who reoffended with a sexual offense after being incarcerated previously for a similar crime. Here, I consider the messy and somewhat opaque distinction between recidivism and desistance. The implications of understanding relapse and reoffending are clearly vast and important. In this chapter, I discuss what worked (and what did not) in the period immediately following release from custody. Much is gleaned from the men’s explanations of what benefits or difficulties they experienced upon their community re-entry and what went wrong and why. My findings indicate that the single factor that best distinguished the men was the way they were treated, administered, and managed by the criminal justice system.