The kindness of strangers: Trust,recognition,and the co-production of desistance

Abstract

This article explores the significance of new relationships between former offenders who have made changes to their lives and the people they meet as part of their desistance journeys. Many studies of individual desistance processes have focused on the experience of stigma and exclusion, but the related concept of trust rarely appears in the literature. What does it mean for ongoing desistance and identity reconstruction processes when strangers are willing to take a chance and place trust in former offenders? Through a close look at the connections between desistance processes and the experience of mutual interpersonal trust, this article examines the role trust may play in the co-production of desistance.

Introduction

Repeat offenders have often lived lives characterised by crime, drug and/or alcohol use, and weak ties to the legal economy (Revold, 2015). At least to some degree, they have often experienced various kinds of social exclusion, marginalisation and stigma (Goffman, 1963). They often find themselves trapped in a cycle of crime and incarceration; studies have found that serving multiple short- or medium-length sentences is associated with an increased risk of re-incarceration (Jolliffe and Hedderman, 2015). Successful desistance requires this cycle to be broken. In most cases, simply deciding to change is not enough. Potential desisters’ choices are embedded in social and structural contexts. This article focuses on an aspect of the re-entry process that has been relatively understudied in the literature. Building on interviews with 14 desisters and combining insights from existential sociology and dramatic identity theory, I examine how desistance journeys may be impacted by informal mutual trust relationships between former offenders who aim to make significant life changes and the new people they encounter along the way.

As a matter of necessity, prisoners interact mainly with other prisoners. Release from prison most often results in a radical widening of their social horizon, including interaction with larger numbers and different kinds of people. In practice, however, many aspiring desisters from the outset feel estranged and disconnected from ‘regular people’ leading ‘normal lives’ – the kind of lives to which they may now aspire. ¹ The article seeks to develop a deeper understanding of the relationship between trust, identity change and desistance, and how the desisting identity is socially shaped by desisters in collaboration with others. Specifically, I look at the significance of being trusted, and the experience of someone acting towards us in a trusting way, even when we have shown ourselves to be untrustworthy in the past. Following Farrall et al. (2014: 35), one might then say that this study is part of the strand of research that aims to develop an understanding of ‘the precise mechanisms through which the individual experiences those things that motivate and promote change’. The study can also be seen as an example of what Maruna (2001) has called the ‘phenomenology of desistance’, which focuses on the experiential aspects that connect desistance processes to the development of a ‘desister identity’.

Desistance and identity change

According to Laub and Sampson (2003), the establishment or strengthening of social bonds is an important part of sustained individual change. The existence of law-abiding networks may not be necessary for successful desistance processes to occur, but research has shown that they certainly help (Weaver, 2015). Halsey and Deegan (2015) found that people leaving custodial facilities need their families and their local communities on their side to break free from the offender identity. This journey into the unknown may feel less daunting with the help of a local guide, but prisoners and their families are often characterised by high levels of social marginality (Revold, 2015), and many repeat offenders have few dependable ‘normal life’ local guides to choose from. Some former offenders (including some of the participants in this study) take advantage of third-sector organisations specialising in providing desisters with new networks post release, where volunteers (often with lived experience themselves) help novice desisters make their first steps towards a new life. At some point, however, would-be desisters who hope to make significant life changes have to find constructive ways to meet, engage with and, hopefully, create lasting relationships with ‘regular people’. Yet those first meetings between a newly released former offender hoping to go straight and members of the civil society outside the prison walls may be as fateful as they are precarious. In practice, these first faltering steps towards establishing new networks are likely to happen within certain arenas. The employment market is an obvious arena for such meetings, given that newly released former prisoners are often actively looking for work and thus have to meet new potential employers and co-workers. Educational, voluntary sector and other local community settings are other possible sites.

Previous desistance research (Farrall, 2005; Farrall et al., 2014; Hunter, 2011; Hunter and Farrall, 2018; Maruna, 2001; Patton and Farrall, 2021) has also shown how the ongoing creation of a new identity in line with desistance is a vital part of the process. As a theoretical concept, ‘identity’ is notoriously complex and hard to pin down (Bauman, 1996; Stryker and Burke, 2000). Its relationship to related concepts such as ‘self’, ‘self-image’ and ‘self-concept’ is also frequently opaque. This article is informed by two partly overlapping theoretical positions. First, I am inspired by key insights taken from existential sociology, where the goal is to understand:

[…] how we define ourselves, how we change our definitions, what makes us change these definitions, how much we can do or can change, how much we are ‘anchored down’ by our bodies and by our sense of social position – all of the questions that pertain to the total sense of that elusive thing we call the self. (Fontana, 1984: 11)

The aim is to contribute to the growing desistance research literature inspired by existentialist thought (Farrall, 2005; Farrall et al., 2014; Hunter, 2011; Hunter and Farrall, 2018). From an existentialist perspective, the self can be described as becoming, situational, reflexive and free (Aho, 2020; Craib, 1976; Douglas, 1977; Fontana, 1984; Hayim, 1996; Lester, 1984). Becoming, because it is never final but always unfolding, changing and developing in response to various stimuli. Situational, because this process of becoming is dependent on and tied into the specific historical, sociocultural, biological and material contexts people find themselves in (what is sometimes referred to as facticity). Reflexive, because human beings are self-aware and may actively relate and respond to these contexts. And finally, free, because human beings are never fully determined by the circumstances shaping their lives; rather than seeing the self as dependent on or a passive result of facticity, existential sociology reconceptualises the self as ‘an active, if not independent, agent’ (Fontana, 1984: 12) that is constantly engaged in reinvention processes (with a term that is conceptually closely linked to facticity, transcendence). Put differently, we are self-making beings who become what and who we are based on the situated and reflexive choices we make at the intersection between facticity and transcendence (Aho, 2020). In the following, I use the term identity change as a shorthand reference to this continuous negotiation process.

Second, and dovetailing nicely with insights from existential sociology (Lester, 1984), dramatic identity theory (Rivero-Obra, 2021) highlights, along the lines of Goffman's (1971) influential analysis of the presentation of self in everyday life, the idea that we continuously re-create ourselves vis-à-vis and with the help of different audiences. From this perspective, the social judgement of others is essential to the formation of our identities, a topic Goffman (1963) also explored in his ground-breaking work on stigma. As social animals, we seek to represent ourselves on various social ‘stages’, according to the values and norms that are relevant on that stage. From this perspective, whenever human beings interact, we act as each other's supporting cast members and thus constantly mutually contribute to each other's identity change processes.

Interpersonal trust, desistance and reintegration

Studies show that levels of trust are among the highest in the world in the Nordic region. According to European Social Survey (ESS) data (ESS, 2018), Norway ranks at or near the top when it comes to several trust in government indicators, including the police (third, after Finland and Denmark), the legal system (second, after Denmark), the country's parliament (first) and political parties (second, after the Netherlands). Levels of social or interpersonal trust have also been found to be high. In 2022 (OWD, 2022), 72% of Norwegians responded that ‘most people can be trusted’ when asked ‘generally speaking, would you say that people can be trusted or that you need to be very careful in dealing with people?’, compared with 37% in the United States and 43% in the United Kingdom. This situation has been stable over time, seemingly unmoved by changes that have impacted trust levels elsewhere (immigration; the Covid-19 pandemic). In fact, Norway has for a long time scored high on all social capital indicators (Wollebæk and Segaard, 2011). This might not come as a surprise; according to Putnam (2000), strong and ambitious welfare states (such as Norway) often exhibit high levels of social capital and interpersonal trust.

Maruna and Farrall (2003) have described two distinguishable phases of desistance: primary desistance refers to any crime-free period in the course of a criminal career, whereas secondary desistance happens when this behaviour change is accompanied by the adoption of a related non-offending identity. More recently, McNeill (2015) has added a third phase to the model: tertiary desistance refers to shifts in desisters’ sense of belonging to a moral and political community. This sense of belonging may have different facets and come about in different ways for different people, but research has shown that recognition by others of one's willingness and ability to change can strengthen desistance processes (Gadd, 2006; Ugelvik, 2021). From a dramatic identity theory perspective, to play a relevant role in this process, audiences must be willing – explicitly or tacitly – to acknowledge and recognise the changes desisters have made. Such recognition can be demonstrated in different ways, whether in the form of verbal acknowledgement or the bestowal of second chances, and different kinds of recognition will probably be meaningful to different people. It seems likely, however, that actions speak louder than words. When people are willing to take a risk, when they show in practice that they acknowledge and believe in the changes desisters claim to have made to their lives, it can send a strong tertiary desistance message of inclusion and hope.

Research design and methods

This article is based on data from the ORES project, an ongoing study of prison release, the re-entry process and desistance from crime in Norway. ORES is a longitudinal qualitative research project (Farrall et al., 2014) that follows 14 male participants over time. They are all repeat offenders, in the sense that they have two or more criminal convictions in their past. A few participants were still quite young (the youngest was in his early 20s), but most were in their 40s or 50s at the time of the first interview. Several are school dropouts, although some have later completed their secondary education in prison. A few have completed higher education, and have significant work experience, but the majority have weak links to the regular labour market. Most have spent years in prison on several convictions. Some have committed mainly drug use-related offences. Others have committed a wider range of criminal acts, including violent and property crimes, as well as drug trafficking. They represent different ethnic backgrounds, but they were at the time of the interviews all permanent residents of Norway.

Participants were first interviewed in-depth (in most cases over several sessions) by the author between one year before release and one year post release. The interviews typically lasted between 60 and 120 minutes and were conducted either in a borrowed prison or probation service office, a suitable public space (e.g. a quiet daytime café or a public library) or in my university office. The semi-structured interviews focused on how participants were coming to terms with the release process, how they planned to deploy their various resources, what challenges to sustained desistance they foresaw and how they planned to overcome those challenges. Participants were then subsequently re-interviewed about a year after their first interviews. Additional follow-up interviews are planned at various intervals.

In addition to the interviews with participants, I have interviewed one prison and probation system professional per case, nominated by the participants (in most cases prison personal-contact officers or probation service caseworkers), to discuss the participants’ cases in detail and to gain a professional perspective on the complex release and reintegration process. In some cases, I have also interviewed a member of a participant's network: a friend, colleague or family member, again nominated by the participant. At the time of writing, the project has yielded a total of 45 interviews with 14 participants, 6 professionals and 3 network members. The number will increase as I continue to conduct follow-up interviews in the years to come.

Interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim using the f4 transcription software. The analysis combined deductive/theoretical coding (typically focusing on core concepts from the desistance literature) and inductive/in vivo coding. The topic of interpersonal trust and the importance of ‘regular people’ strangers is an example of a topic that was introduced by several of the participants independently, and then later grew in importance as the number of interviews grew.

Because the aim is to study which resources may strengthen desistance processes, promising cases have been purposefully recruited with the help of the Norwegian correctional services. With one exception, participants were recommended by probation and prison officers as people they believed to be in the process of making significant life changes. In the case of the one exception, the participant self-nominated after hearing about the study through his network. The rationale behind this sample strategy is that a study of the importance of various resources for desistance processes requires participants with access to such resources to work. In a case-based project such as ORES, the goal is not to create a representative sample in the statistical sense (Becker, 2014; Small, 2009). Instead, I have tried to recruit what Flyvbjerg (2006) has called ‘critical cases’, meaning cases that have strategic importance concerning the specific problem under investigation.

Unlike the average Norwegian prisoner, then, the ORES participants are all repeat offenders who have expressed a clear and believable motivation to change their lives, and who enjoy the benefit of a substantial reservoir of individual, network and structural resources. The idea is that what we learn from analysing these cases can be used to help both the minority of prisoners – who, like the ORES participants, have a wide range of different resources available – and the majority, who are released from prison into situations characterised by a larger degree of deprivation and increased marginality (Revold, 2015).

Findings: The kindness of strangers

Bård was in his late 20s at the time of the first interview. Although he had been sentenced for relatively minor (mainly cannabis-related) drug offences several times in the past, he had just been released after serving about a year in prison for a violent offence at the time of our first interview. Prior to this conviction, he had worked for several non-governmental organisations (NGOs) as a volunteer but also as a paid employee. He was also an active member of a political party and had been pursuing a promising career in politics. During his sentence, he had expected to be able to return to this work in the future, but after release, he soon realised that the violent offence conviction had changed everything:

Bård: My case went all the way to the bloody top – suddenly the people at the top of the [international NGO] Nordic office, the bosses, sat there discussing my case. And it was like, ‘No, we can’t use him; we know that he probably didn’t do anything, we do trust him, but he’s just too big of a liability’. ²

Disillusioned, Bård felt that his days as an employee in large international NGOs as well as his political career were over. Because he had now been labelled as a ‘violent offender’, a stigma that was unacceptable in a way his previous minor drug convictions were not, he represented a reputation risk these organisations were not willing to accept. According to Bård, they did still trust him, but not enough to outweigh the stigma and reputation risks involved. This was a heavy blow to Bård, because it meant that his preferred career path was closed to him. Although he did not have to worry about money as he had recently received several job offers, it seemed like he would have to make do with a job that might challenge both his political values and his self-image. His identity as a young promising politician/activist engaged in actively creating a better world for everyone needed serious revision.

Bård's case shows that distrust, frustrated plans and closed career paths do exist among the ORES participants. It is clear, however, that Bård's story is an exception, in the sense that the remaining 13 participants, in different ways and to various degrees, mainly told stories about trust and second chances. The following five cases have been chosen to highlight different aspects of the impact mutual trust relationships may have on identity change processes.

Arne was in his late 50s at the time of our first interview. By his own account, he had been seen as the black sheep of his family ever since he was a young man, and he had experienced first-hand how repeated breaches of trust could lead to the breakdown of relationships. After having promised to his family – on multiple occasions – that he would never again go back to prison, at the time of our first conversation, he was undergoing post-sentence probation supervision after having served a 13-year prison sentence for a drug offence. Considering his past, and his experience with being seen by others as untrustworthy, he understood why several members of his family now felt the need to keep their distance, and that they wanted to wait and see whether he would actually make significant life changes this time.

Given the fragile relationships with his family, his relationship with his employer was all the more important to him. He had served the last leg of his 13-year sentence in a low-security prison. After getting a job as a middle manager in a company that provides cleaning services, he was allowed to leave the prison during the day to go to work. After spending years in a high-security prison, he enjoyed the work and the freedom of moving around the city between clients of his own accord. After some time, however, he failed a routine drug test and was promptly recalled to a high-security prison. In the interview, he insisted that he had not been taking any drugs at the time and that the positive test happened because someone he used to be close to had spiked his coffee with drugs on purpose to sabotage his progress. Being recalled to a high-security prison was a massive blow to Arne. At the time, he saw everything he had worked for over the past few years just crumble to dust, including the mutual trust relationships with his manager at the job he liked so much. Instead, to Arne's surprise, the manager told him that his job would be waiting for him when he got out:

She [his manager at the cleaning service] was more or less the only one I talked to on the phone that entire time [after being recalled], and she backed me all the way. ‘You’ll be back at work soon’, she said; ‘you’ll be back in your office. The job will still be there waiting for you when you get out’. […] If she hadn’t been there for me, to be honest I would’ve relapsed, gone back to my old life, even though this new life is much better – it’s amazing – but how would I have managed without a job to go to when I got out? I wouldn’t have had anything. I would’ve had to find a studio somewhere, would’ve just sat there by myself, nothing to do, and would’ve had to start making new friends, a new network from scratch, all by myself.

To Arne, the fact that failing a drug test and being recalled to high security had not led to a breakdown of trust felt particularly meaningful. At the time of the incident, he had felt certain that he would have to start anew yet again. When the manager decided to give him the benefit of the doubt, Arne saw it as confirmation that at least one person had acknowledged the changes he had made to his life.

David was in his late 30s at the time of the first interview. He had recently been released from prison early after serving six of the nine years of his sentence for multiple violent offences. He was undergoing regular probation supervision. He worked full-time on a permanent contract at a municipal waste management facility. He described being offered this job as a life-changing moment:

It’s pure gold. It’s like I say, the way they’ve welcomed me, no judgement, ‘You’re one of the guys’, right away. […] It’s almost like they’ve become my family, and it’s like if you want, you can even go have a chat with the boss. She’ll take the time and talk and show that she cares; you don’t get the feeling that she doesn’t have the time, you know? So they know me, my entire background, and they still include me, they still want me there. And they do care. One of the managers told me before the Christmas holiday, he said, ‘Okay, just call me whenever if you have any negative thoughts; just let me know, and we’ll meet up and do something’. […] I hope I never lose this job – that’s what I mean when I say that I have too much to lose now. If I screw this up, I won’t get something like this ever again.

The social control element is clear in David's description of his relationship with the co-workers and managers at the waste management facility as he desperately did not want to lose this job. Yet there is another important aspect to his statement: one can sense a newfound sense of pride and belonging to a community. His co-workers saw his past as the past; their trust and inclusion of him into their community indicated their acknowledgement of the changes he had made to his life as real.

Endre was in his 30s when I first interviewed him in a low-security prison. Ten months later, we met up again for a second interview after he had been transferred to a transition prison. ³ In the meantime, Endre had started working as a carpenter at a building company. He really enjoyed the fact that he now lived a ‘normal life’ and that he had a clear purpose. He felt that honesty had been key; his current situation rested on the fact that he had chosen to be honest about his past:

Endre: I’ve been more or less pretty open and honest about the fact that I’m in prison and that I have a long sentence and that kind of thing. But I’m also clear about being super motivated and that I want to start a new and better life. And they think it's great, and they’ve wished me luck and supported me, all of them.

TU: Your colleagues, you mean?

Endre: Yes.

TU: I guess they knew all along about …

Endre: Yes, the bosses knew. But not the guys. So they welcomed me with open arms the first few days, and this one boss said to me that they hadn’t told the other employees anything and that it was up to me what I wanted them to know. […] I think that was very good, so I started quietly and one by one to tell people, not how long I’ve been inside, but that I’m close to the end of a prison sentence, that I have 18 months to go. A bit of violence and a bit of drugs, that's what I’ve told people. […]

TU: So what's their reaction?

Endre: No, you know, they laugh a bit, and then they talk about family members or friends who’ve spent time in prison. Several of them have said that it's just luck that they haven’t spent time in prison themselves. […] They don’t know anything about prison; opinions are divided, I guess. Some of them are very curious and ask me a bunch of questions; others just smile and shake their heads, almost as if it's a bit funny. So no, not a problem at all. And it feels good to be honest.

At the beginning, Endre was unsure of how his co-workers would react to hearing the truth about his past. Because the managers had left it up to him to decide who and what to tell, he was able to carefully choose the time and place for these conversations. Revealing details about his past still felt like a precarious moment, because Endre was not certain how things would play out. When co-workers highlighted the similarities between them instead of the differences, Endre felt that honesty had paid off and that he was now fully included in the workplace community despite his previous offences. He had taken a chance and trusted his co-workers with information about his past, and they in turn had shown him that they now trusted him despite his past, thus strengthening their relationship.

Jens was in his early forties at the time of our first interview. He had previously served multiple shorter sentences for violent offences. When we first met, he was approaching the end of a very long sentence for murder. Jens was understandably anxious about what the future might have in store for him. At the time, he had serious doubts about whether he would ever be able to secure a job after release:

When I go out the prison gates for the last time, in a way I’ll be re-sentenced, again and again, no matter what people say – there will always be people out there who will judge me for what I’ve done. … So it might be difficult for me to find a job, just a regular job with a living wage.

Jens’ case was a very high-profile one, as murder cases in Norway often are. He knew that details about what he had done would never be more than a Google search away, and he felt sure that his past would go on to haunt him for the rest of his life. The way he saw it, his past had hardened into a solid fact, part of the facticity (although he did not use that term) he would just have to accept and live with. When we met up again almost 18 months later, things had changed for the better. He was still in prison, but he was allowed leave during the day to go to work as a landscaper.

Jens: This guy who works in the prison came up to me and said he’d introduce me to his mate who runs a landscaping company who might want to hire me […]. So we went over and he introduced me, and 15 minutes later, I had a job. They knew each other, but he didn’t know about my past at all. So I told him, ‘Before you hire me, I think you should google my name, and see what you find’. I think it's much better that way; then I won’t have to sit there and tell the whole story. So he went on Google right then and there, and he just sat there all quiet for like 10 minutes. I just sipped my coffee and waited for him to finish. Then he lit a cigarette and looked at me and said, ‘Okay, we better draw up a contract for you’, and that was that. […] It was a bit strange to meet new people and all that; I was a bit withdrawn in the beginning, but I am who I am. I tell people who I am and what I’ve done. I have no problem with that; I’ve been honest since the beginning.

TU: You mean co-workers, people you meet at work?

Jens: Yes, it's better to tell it straight, you know; I don’t want them to find out from someone else. I learned that years ago. […] You connect with people, create friendships with people who haven’t been part of that kind of criminal scene, just regular people, collecting their wages; they don’t have that mentality. […] I’ve missed being around regular people.

It should be noted that this level of help and support from a member of staff is rare even in Norwegian prisons, which have been described as more change and rehabilitation-oriented than most. However, it is not unique. At least one other participant told a similar story where a staff member went out of his way to help, including involving his networks outside the prison.

For Jens, as for David above, the workplace had become a place to connect with ‘regular people’ to the extent that his new network now felt like friends as much as co-workers. Jens’ case shows that, again, people may be willing to show someone trust despite even very serious offences if they are open about past transgressions. What had looked to be a solid and unchanging fact 18 months earlier – that he would never be able to escape his past – turned out to be much more pliable.

Klevis was 35 at the time of our first interview. He was on the last leg of a nine-year drug conviction. He was serving time at a low-security prison at the time, where he was given furlough to attend courses at a nearby university. He took sociology courses, and at one discussion group meeting early in the semester, the students were asked to talk about the role of the prison in contemporary society:

I had to bite my tongue a bit, because you know that's when it started with the prejudice. Ignorant people don’t know what's actually going on in this country, how little the prison system actually does to rehabilitate people; they either say, ‘They have it too good in prison’, or they say, ‘Only shit people are in prison – good riddance’. So I thought, Okay, this is definitely not the right time to tell everybody. So it took a little while before I told people, but then I started to worry that I’d hurt people when they finally did find out; the relationships we’d forged in that group were very good. So I thought, Wait a minute, if I build these relationships on false premises, I might actually end up hurting someone. And at that time, I just said right then and there, ‘Before we go on, there's something I have to tell you, and that is that I’m currently serving time at [name withheld] prison; I’m out on furlough. If you want to break contact with me, you have to tell me; if this changes anything, please tell me’. A few of them had to think about it, but many just immediately, spontaneously said that this wouldn’t change a thing, and after a while, they all agreed that nothing would change; our relationships were strengthened after I came clean. It was important for me, though, that they first got to know Klevis the student before they got to know Klevis the prisoner.

Like Endre, Klevis was himself able to choose the time and place for disclosing his past. Presumably, like Endre, he was able to carefully curate a specific version of his desistance story to tell his fellow students. These may be success factors for would-be desisters approaching potential members of their new ‘regular people’ networks. Telling only half a truth is not the same as telling a lie. Between total disclosure and outright deception exists a field of authentic, yet strategic, self-presentation. The story has to ring true, though, for the sake of both parties. For potential employers, a believable display of honesty may be seen as a signal of a successful desistance process (Reich, 2023). For desisters, ‘coming clean’ may feel like taking a big risk (Gålnander, 2020b). When it pays off, however, the rewards may go beyond simple goal attainment. Several ORES project participants highlighted the identity aspects of ‘coming clean’ and how ‘being open’ had ended up strengthening, not damaging, their relationships with ‘regular people’.

Discussion: Trust, tertiary desistance and transcendence

In general, high trust is beneficial to societies because it lowers transaction costs. Things just go more smoothly when people trust each other. This is why the comparably high levels of trust observed in the Scandinavian countries have been called ‘the Nordic gold’ (Holmberg and Rothstein, 2020). However, studies show that even in high-trust societies there are specific subgroups that, often for very good reasons, exhibit lower levels of trust, including social welfare recipients and the unemployed. Studying a representative sample of the Norwegian prison population, Revold (2015) found that prisoners are significantly less likely to agree with the statements ‘most people can be trusted’ and ‘most people will treat me reasonably and fairly’ than the general population. People with multiple convictions were even less likely to put trust in strangers than first-time prisoners. Justice-involved individuals may have had personal experiences that make interpersonal trust less likely. If it is true that trust and trustworthiness may be seen as connected (Hardin, 2002; Ugelvik, 2021), aspiring desisters have to find a way to break the cycle of mistrust and untrustworthiness they often find themselves in.

Dramatic identity theory highlights how identity is constructed in relationships between actors and various audiences. The difference between the theatre and the real world, of course, is that in real-world situations, there are no scripts, and no prompter to help out when people get stuck. We cannot ever fully know how other people might react to our performance. For individual desisters, stigma management, and the dilemma of choosing what to tell, when and to whom, is an important part of any attempt at approaching conventional society (Gålnander, 2020b). According to Baier (1985: 61), trusting someone with sensitive information is always a risk, given the ‘partial opaqueness to us of the reasoning and motivation of those we trust and with whom we cooperate’.

When a person chooses to put trust in someone, they can never be certain of the outcome. At the same time, when someone solicits the trust of others, they also risk disappointment. When former offenders such as Arne, Bård, David, Endre, Jens and Klevis decide to reveal their past crimes to new acquaintances, they can never know how their honesty will play out. Trusting someone with information about one's chequered past implies a degree of dependency and a redistribution of control (Carey, 2017). In situations when ex-offenders try to make their way among ‘regular people’, the risk element goes both ways. Except for Bård, in these cases the gamble seems to have paid off, at least at the time of the interviews.

International and Norwegian research alike suggests that employment, for several reasons, should be seen as a key factor for people who try to move away from a life of crime (Laub and Sampson, 2003; Skardhamar and Telle, 2012). The importance of a steady income should not be underestimated. Any resume has to start somewhere, and just getting a foot in the door might help former prisoners move on to bigger and better things. Research has also shown that co-workers at a workplace may have an important social control influence on each other (Hollinger and Clark, 1983). But in addition to these vital aspects, I think the interview excerpts quoted in this article also point to other, perhaps equally important, mechanisms. They show how employers, co-workers, fellow students and clients/customers may work together with former offenders, co-producing new, law-abiding identities. A job, then, is not just a source of income and an arena for social control (Laub and Sampson, 2003); it is also an important arena for identity change, or, put differently, an arena for collective narrative identity repair (Stone, 2015). This serves an important psychological function for desistance processes (Maruna, 2001). A firmly held self-image as a former offender – as someone who has successfully transcended their offender past – might help desisters resist temptations and withstand hardships associated with taking the first difficult steps towards sustained life changes.

Hunter and Farrall (2018) ask how desistance ‘feels’ and what role those feelings play in strengthening desistance processes. Being seen by other people as changed and as someone worth trusting and investing in may add layers of positive feelings on top of the experience of oneself as changed. Several of the participants pointed to the emotional impact of being trusted when in the past they had shown themselves to be less than trustworthy. When people are willing to take a chance, even when they are aware of the risk and that they may end up regretting it, trust can be said to compel the recipient towards trustworthiness. Trust and trustworthiness may engage in virtuous spirals, which may have important consequences for desistance journeys in the long run.

Prior to release, it is probably common for former offenders to have a slightly pessimistic view of how they might fit into the world of ‘regular people’ (Gålnander, 2020a, 2020b). Jens simply took for granted that he would be unemployable on account of his convictions and criminal background. Assuming the negative effects of future stigma, he imagined being seen by everybody as ‘the eternal murderer’, a pariah who would have to live on the outskirts of ‘normal society’. When someone later was willing to take a chance on him even after he had asked them to Google his name, it meant that much more to him because he had expected things to turn out differently. This demonstration of willingness to put trust in him meant that the imagined future pariah existence was not, perhaps, the only option open to him moving forward. The future is continuously being reimagined in terms of our past and present experiences. In a sense, the existence of trust today bridges the gap between the present and the future; it signals that change has indeed happened and that other people are willing to acknowledge the change and that they will continue to act accordingly in the future.

Successful desistance then involves developing a new sense of what the future might hold for the individual and an idea of how that future might be realised (Hunter, 2011; Hunter and Farrall, 2018; Maruna, 2001). According to Hunter and Farrall (2018), ‘future selves’ inform the desistance process and highlight possible new lives. When desisters can imagine a believable law-abiding future life for themselves despite various obstacles, desistance processes enter a new stage, according to Giordano et al. (2002). Imagining a non-offending future is therefore an important part of the transcendence process in which former offenders re-construct their identity as ex-offenders. People cannot undo or remove their past offences (which are in this sense part of their facticity), but they can, often with the help of other people, reinterpret and reshape their past in a way that will reconcile it with a changed self in the future. The phenomena of recognition and interpersonal trust may play an important part of this reimagination process.

Conclusion: Linking macro- and micro-perspectives

This article has focused on individual experiences of interpersonal trust and on the role such experiences may play in individual desistance and identity change processes. Current and former prisoners are often very much aware of the fact that many people see them as untrustworthy. Being seen as trustworthy may give desisters cause to believe not only that they are seen as changed in the eyes of other people (which may strengthen tertiary desistance), but also that trustworthiness may continue and develop into the future, possibly unlocking new future selves and new paths towards transcendence and continued identity change. These changes are part of what Farrall (2005) has called internal (individual, psychological) rather than external (including social and cultural) aspects of desistance.

For a more comprehensive understanding of the role that recognition, trust and identity change may play in desistance processes, these findings need to be situated within a broader view of structural preconditions and socio-historical context. Several researchers have attempted to bridge the gap between micro- and macro-perspectives in desistance research (Farrall et al., 2010). Farrall et al. (2014), for instance, developed an ambitious theoretical model in which individual agency, the individual desister's social world, specific criminal justice inputs, and wider social and economic structures are all seen as interconnected parts of the desistance processes. Returning to the interview excerpts quoted in this article, one important structural precondition seems to be the fact that, unlike the situation in many other countries (Reich, 2023), Norwegian employers do not as a rule have access to the criminal records of potential employers. This information is not publicly available, and only a few specific kinds of employers (schools, kindergartens, etc.) may request access. And even in these cases, employers will be given information about a few select offence categories only (e.g. violent and sex offences); they will not get a full transcript of the criminal records. Of course, some of the employers who chose to take a chance on the ORES participants might have done so anyway, even if they had been given full access to criminal records early on in the recruitment process, but I believe the data suggest that the fact that the study participants in most of these cases were able to decide whether and how to disclose this information themselves could be seen as a success factor.

From a societal perspective, it makes sense to create re-inclusion mechanisms where at least some of the people labelled as untrustworthy can be allowed back into the fold. A society's capacity for forgiveness and absolution may therefore fruitfully be seen as part of its social capital. Conversely, a society that permanently excludes the untrustworthy might be said to be lower in social capital than one in which sanctions are more focused on reintegration. Advanced welfare state societies also frequently appear to be high-trust societies (Putnam, 2000). Untangling the causal factors underlying this simple observation is anything but straightforward, but one possible explanation that connects well with the issues discussed in this article is that strong and wide-ranging welfare state safety nets make people more inclined to be willing to take a risk on a stranger. The risk might, objectively speaking, be less serious when available welfare provisions can help both individuals and businesses cut their potential losses.

A society's capacity to reintegrate former offenders and welcome them back into the fold may therefore be seen as closely connected to interpersonal trust and people's willingness to disregard previous transgressions and to acknowledge and believe in an ongoing change process. If trust always, at least in part, is the result of a ‘leap of trust’ into the unknown (Möllering, 2001), then there are probably cultural differences in the likelihood of people taking such a leap. I would hypothesise that cultures may be more or less desistance-conducive (Ugelvik, 2022) in that sense, either validating or questioning the willingness to take a chance on former offenders. In a context in which the bestowal of second chances is culturally validated, a chequered past may be turned into a resource if one can only come across as believably changed in the present. A comprehensive exploration of the impact that interpersonal trust may have on desistance processes would therefore have to include an analysis of the cultural conditions that underpin recognition and trusting relationships. It is my view that social capital and interpersonal trust are phenomena shaped by what Durkheim (1995/1912; K Smith, 2014) called ‘collective representations’: the images, symbols, myths and stories through which society comes to understand itself. I think it makes sense to say that a society's ‘penal imaginary’ (P Smith, 2008) includes cultural ideas and values surrounding guilt, redemption, forgiveness and the importance of second chances, which, again, can conceivably be conducive to desistance processes (Ugelvik, 2022).

The data suggest that Norway seems to have a latent reservoir of trust that current and former prisoners can draw from. The cultural importance of the welfare state and its institutions when it comes to fostering a sense of community and a shared destiny should not be underestimated. The result is a strong sense of ‘we’ that may make employers more likely to feel interested in or even obliged to help community members who might benefit from an outstretched hand. Sakslind and Skarpenes (2014) examined the moral values of the highly educated Norwegian middle class and found two recurring figures when people were asked whom they were fascinated by, looked up to or admired: the Good Samaritan and the socially responsible citizen. The former is a cultural trope typified by the altruistic person who cares about the neighbours and is willing to help those who are less fortunate. The latter is epitomised by the person who gives time and resources towards the goal of creating stronger and more well-connected communities. Granted, there may always be a certain distance between lofty ideals and actual actions and life choices, but Sakslind and Skarpenes's study shows how important what they call Christian humanistic values still are for the Norwegian middle class: a segment that, in highly egalitarian Norway, in many ways could be said to encompass the majority of the population. The extent to which these values are shared by members of Norwegian society more broadly is a question for future research, but at the very least, this study indicates the existence of what we may call a cultural–moral repertoire, whereby people are seen as changeable and where even the worst among us have potential (Ugelvik, 2022). These collective values can be seen as potentially desistance-conducive, in the sense that they can support people who want to take a risk and trust someone who is trying to turn over a new leaf. At the same time, in this cultural context, giving someone a second chance will allow the giver the opportunity to see themselves as a provider of second chances: in other words, a Good Samaritan.

It is, however, important to acknowledge the likely limits to the inclusionary values described in this article. In Bård's case, his employers had previously seen his minor drug offences as tolerable, but such was not the case with his violent offence. He experienced how the stigma of a criminal conviction might limit his choices. Society clearly sees some former offenders as more employable than others. Differences also exist in terms of the individual and organisational risks involved in offering trust. Norwegian research suggests that there are important limits to the willingness to include some specific subgroups of (former) offenders (Gundhus and Egge, 2013). Gjeruldsen et al. (2024), for instance, ask whether coming clean about past criminal justice involvement is more difficult for women, because female offenders are seen as doubly deviant. Other groups may also experience strangers as less willing to forgive and forget. Importantly, the ORES project data has no convicted sex offenders. I therefore have no data to back it up, but other studies (Sandbukt, 2023) suggest that the results may have been very different, had the participants all been convicted sex offenders.

In conclusion, from the perspective of the individual desister, being seen by another as someone who has successfully turned over a new leaf may feel like a strong invitation – in some cases almost an obligation – to continue in the direction strengthened integration into a ‘normal’ lifestyle. From an existentialist point of view, this kind of acknowledgement is likely to strengthen individual identity change processes and move desisters in the direction of transcendence, hope and new future selves. From the perspective of society, this situation is perhaps better conceived of as the result of a form of social capital. According to Farrall (2005), ‘internal’ and ‘external’ influences often become conjoined, mutually strengthening each other in desistance processes. I believe that the notion of interpersonal trust is particularly interesting from this perspective, because it can be seen as a cultural, social and relational phenomenon that may have important consequences at the level of the individual. As a theoretical concept describing the contextually mediated relationship between a truster and a trustee, trust can therefore be said to bridge the gap between micro- and macro-perspectives, and between past actions and future possibilities. The recognition and interpersonal trust described in this article is, I believe, a prime example of this interplay in which social and individual factors come together to mutually strengthen desistance processes, turning strangers into friends, assumed or self-ascribed stigma into inclusion, and repeat offenders into ex-offenders.