The growing research literature on desistance processes – broadly defined as the process where repeat offenders stop offending and turn their attention to leading a law-abiding life – has not yet given much attention to the question of trust.
In this paper, I will argue that it is high time this concept is included in the desistance studies conceptual toolkit. One reason is that ‘trust’ is linked to a number of related phenomena that have already been described as important parts of a desistance processes, including ‘self’ or ‘self-identity’, ‘hopefulness’ or ‘future-orientation’, ‘stigma’, ‘legitimacy’ or ‘penal consciousness’ and finally the concept of ‘risk’, which is a perpetual interested of prison systems everywhere. I will also argue that the phenomenon of ‘trust’ can be used to address the important empirical question of how and under what conditions imprisonment can be a turning point in people's lives.
Prisons are often described as places of pain, despair and hopelessness. Studies show however that some prisoners under some conditions report positive changes in their lives.
My aim is, in short, to explore the role ‘trust’ may have in prisons that manage to be 'reinventive institutions’.