‘A Safe Place to be Happy and Content’: Housing and ‘Home’ in Women’s Desistance

Abstract

Through narrative interviews with 15 women with histories of imprisonment in Aotearoa New Zealand, this article explores the role of housing and ‘home’ in women’s desistance. The article argues that safety and control are key psycho-social benefits of ‘home’ that support women’s ontological security. The women’s ‘homes’ – as sites of safety and control – could provide a space for them to construct drug and crime free identities and ultimately ‘do’ desistance. Moreover, their ‘homes’ became a physical manifestation or ‘expression’ of their changing identities which served to motivate and further reinforce their desistance.

This research follows a recent paper in which we explored the role of housing and ‘home’ in men’s desistance in Aotearoa New Zealand (Low et al., 2023). We argued that in order to support desistance, housing needs to provide more than physical shelter and instead be considered a ‘home’ with important psycho-social benefits that enhance a sense of ontological security. These psycho-social benefits include a sense of control over the living situation; a place to carry out routine activities and connect with family/whānau ¹ ; a stake in conformity; and a secure base to construct crime free identities. With these psycho-social benefits, a ‘home’ can provide a site for men leaving prison to ‘do’ desistance.

This article seeks to further theoretical development of the role of housing and ‘home’ in desistance with an exclusive focus on women’s desistance. Women in the criminal justice system have unique life histories often involving substantial socioeconomic disadvantage, violence, and trauma, which can act as barriers to their desistance from crime (Barr, 2019; Gålnander, 2019; Österman, 2018). It is therefore important to consider whether these gendered experiences affect the potential role that housing, and the more subjective notion of ‘home’, can play in women’s desistance.

Through narrative interviews with 15 women with histories of imprisonment in Aotearoa New Zealand, this research traces the women’s earlier and later experiences of housing and ‘home’ to explore how their living environments influenced their desistance journeys. It seeks, in particular, to identify key psycho-social benefits of ‘home’ that are particularly important for women, and which support them to obtain ontological security and motivate and maintain their desisting identities.

Literature Review

Housing and Women’s Desistance

Contemporary desistance theory recognises that desistance involves a complex interplay between internal and external (interrelated) factors that help to shape an individual’s change (LeBel et al., 2008). Internal factors include identity or cognitive shifts (Giordano et al., 2002), whereby individuals with histories of offending begin to construct a more positive sense of self as someone who is law abiding (i.e., secondary desistance) ² (Maruna et al., 2004). External factors consist of environmental elements or ‘hooks for change’ (Giordano et al., 2002) which may catalyse or reinforce desisting identities, such as social bonds with family or friends, and access to employment or other forms of socio-structural support (LeBel et al., 2008).

Housing may function as an important ‘hook for change’ to catalyse or reinforce women’s identity changes, particularly if it provides a subjective sense of ‘home’ to enhance their ontological security. Indeed, criminological literature has consistently found that access to stable housing upon release from prison can play a critical role in reducing reoffending (Baldry et al., 2006; Lutze et al., 2014; Makarios et al., 2010), while unstable housing has been associated with an increased risk of criminality (Baldry et al., 2006).

However, until recently there has been little theoretical development concerning the specific mechanisms of how and why housing might support desistance from crime (Low et al., 2023), and particularly women’s desistance. The few desistance studies which do discuss women’s housing often do so briefly as incidental findings of a larger study examining other aspects of the desistance process. Österman (2018), for example, identified unstable housing as a key barrier for women desisting from crime in England and Sweden. An inability to access housing could result in ‘entrenchment in the scene’ where the women remained in geographical areas in which they had previously offended, which could result in those women struggling to construct an identity that was not entrenched in offending and/or drug use. Österman (2018) notes that the provision of safe and stable housing, as well as opportunities for relocation can provide an important ‘structural ladder’ to enable positive change. Similarly, in Barr’s (2019) research with desisting women in the UK, inadequate housing was a key factor contributing to the women’s offending, leading Barr (2019, p. 101) to argue that “housing must be central to a female-focused desistance agenda”. However, neither study develops these findings to consider how a sense of ‘home’ may motivate or maintain women’s desisting identities.

Beyond these studies, much research points to the substantial barriers that women face to obtaining suitable post-prison housing, rather than examining how housing specifically supports desistance. It is well established that many people leaving prison face considerable obstacles to accessing suitable housing, including limited financial support, the stigma associated with their criminal records, and opposition from local communities in housing an ‘ex-offender’ in their neighbourhood (LeBel, 2017; Maguire & Nolan, 2007; Mills et al., 2021). However, women often face unique and gendered barriers in finding a home (Lutze & Lau, 2018). Women’s prisons are often geographically dispersed and women may be incarcerated a long distance from their home communities and are at an increased risk of losing touch with their families and losing their existing accommodation (Maguire & Nolan, 2007). Women are also more likely to be the primary caregivers of their children and therefore must often find accommodation which is suitable for both themselves and their children (Lutze & Lau, 2018). However, housing programmes directed at those leaving prison are often unsuitable for women who want to live with their children (Leverentz, 2010). Moreover, compared to men, women are at greater risk of losing custody of their children to the state during their imprisonment (Baldry et al., 2003; Prison Reform Trust, 2018), and struggle to regain custody without family-appropriate accommodation.

Women in the criminal justice system also have unique life histories often involving socioeconomic disadvantage, trauma, gender-based violence and co-existing mental health and substance abuse issues, which pose considerable barriers to their desistance, including their potential to access safe and suitable housing (Lutze & Lau, 2018). In Aotearoa New Zealand, 68% of women in prison have been a victim of family violence; 72% have been diagnosed with a mental health condition in the last 12 months; and 44% have experienced drug dependence disorders in their lifetime (Department of Corrections, 2021b). Women are also particularly vulnerable to experiencing intimate partner violence (IPV), which is a leading cause of housing instability (including homelessness) for women and children (Adams et al., 2021). Women who have faced IPV often experience long-term physical and mental health consequences which can limit their potential to obtain and maintain suitable employment, affecting their ability to afford a place to live (Adams et al., 2021). The long-term mental effects of domestic violence – including post-traumatic stress disorder – can also work as a barrier to desistance generally (Gålnander, 2019).

Māori Women and Housing

In Aotearoa New Zealand, the Indigenous Māori population face significant barriers to desistance and accessing appropriate post-prison housing, especially Māori women. Māori represent over half of those in prison, despite representing just 17% of the general population (Department of Corrections, 2021a; Statistics New Zealand, 2021). This overrepresentation is even more pronounced for Māori women, who make up 66% of the women’s prison population (Department of Corrections, 2021b). Māori are overrepresented in all areas of housing deprivation, including the homeless population (Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, 2020). They are significantly overrepresented on the social housing waiting list and are especially vulnerable to discrimination and racism in housing markets (Houkamau & Sibley, 2015; Ministry of Housing and Urban Development, 2020). In a recent study of housing experiences among 200 people leaving prison, Māori were more likely to live in unstable housing and, have high rates of residential mobility post-release, and were more likely to find it very difficult to find housing (Mills et al., 2022).

The overrepresentation of Māori in prisons and the poor housing outcomes they face must be understood in relation to wider historical and political processes, especially New Zealand’s colonial history. Colonial policies in the 19th century disenfranchised Māori of their land, culture, and language (Jackson, 1988), leading to ongoing intergenerational effects, including trauma and socioeconomic disadvantage (George & Ngamu, 2020). Māori socioeconomic disadvantage has disproportionately worsened due to neoliberal political reforms in the 1980s and 1990s, which involved substantial cuts to social welfare, including a reduction of state funded housing (Dodson, 2006; Poata-Smith, 2013).

The intergenerational effects of colonisation have also led Māori women (and children) to be at heightened risk of violence in the home (Wilson, 2016). Māori women are at more than double the risk of being victims of violent offences ³ committed by family members (including current or former intimate partners) than women in the general population (6.9% compared with 3.2%) (Ministry of Justice, 2021). Māori children are also particularly vulnerable to violence at home and are six times more likely than non-Māori to die from child abuse or neglect (Te Puni Kōkiri, 2017). They are overrepresented in state ‘care’, where they are vulnerable to further state and system violence (Stanley, 2016). Māori women therefore face particular obstacles in accessing safe housing for both themselves and for their children.

Home, Safety, and Ontological Security

Due to the domestic violence experienced by many women in the criminal justice system, particularly Indigenous women, basic housing in the form of a physical shelter is unlikely to be sufficient to promote desistance without the psycho-social benefits of ‘home’. ‘Home’, in this sense, extends beyond the physical structure of a house to encompass a subjective sense of being ‘at home’ (Padgett, 2007). Research on the psycho-social benefits of housing recognises the ‘home’ as a source of identity, and ontological security, which can be defined as a feeling of wellbeing that arises from having a sense of trust and control over a person’s social and material environment (Dupuis & Thorns, 1998; Kearns et al., 2000; Padgett, 2007).

Research exploring the experiences of ‘home’ and ontological security among women with histories of imprisonment is limited. However, housing experiences and meanings of ‘home’ as understood by other groups of women experiencing housing instability, such as homeless women (Tomas & Dittmar, 1995; Wardhaugh, 1999), and women with experience of IPV (Woodhall-Melnik et al., 2017) have been explored. Such research has recognized that for these women ‘home’ can be a central site of brutality, where domestic and sexual violence occur, and in which perpetrators are free from outside surveillance (Tomas & Dittmar, 1995; Wardhaugh, 1999). In Tomas and Dittmar’s (1995) research with homeless women, participants’ experiences of home were not safe or secure, but were instead characterized by abuse and relocation. Woodhall-Melnik et al. (2017) found that amongst women who had experienced IPV, safety and comfort were key elements of their conceptualisations of home. Being able to live without fear of victimisation supported a sense of safety. These studies suggest that safety may be particularly crucial in women’s conceptions of home and may determine whether their housing situation contributes to their ontological security and potential for desistance.

However, the experiences of ‘home’ among women with histories of imprisonment specifically and how those experiences may connect to their desistance from, or persistence in, offending remains relatively unexplored. The key ambition of the current article is to consider how women with histories of imprisonment in Aotearoa New Zealand experience housing and ‘home’ at different stages throughout their life journeys, as well as how those experiences may support or hinder their desistance.

Methodology

This research is based on unstructured narrative interviews with 15 women with histories of imprisonment in Aotearoa New Zealand, conducted for a doctoral research project which sought to explore key factors which support women’s desistance, including housing, relationships, and motherhood. The interviews were carried out as part of a wider project examining the role of stable housing in reducing reoffending and desistance, funded by the Royal Society of New Zealand Marsden Fund. To recruit participants who had least entered the ‘primary’ phases of desistance (i.e., a period of non-offending) (Maruna et al., 2004), potential participants were required to have remained out of prison without reoffending for at least one year. They were recruited through personal contacts and non-government organisations, with two additional participants recruited through an earlier stage of the wider study.

The women were aged between 22 and 49, with an average age of 37.6. The majority of the women identified as Māori (n = 10), with three of those women also identifying as Pacific Islander, and one as Scottish, Irish and French. Of the remaining five women, one identified as Samoan, and the remaining four women identified as New Zealand European/Pākehā, with one of those women also identifying as Polish. The majority of the women had histories of sustained offending across different offence types, including fraud, armed robbery, drug dealing, possession of class A drugs, kidnapping, and theft. Most of the women in the sample (N = 12) referenced previous issues with or addictions to drugs or alcohol. One additional participant referred to a gambling addiction. Relatedly, 11 women in the sample had participated in either drug/alcohol treatment programmes or other rehabilitative support programmes or counselling, mostly in the community, although some women referred to participating in treatment programmes in prison.

At the time of the interviews, most of the women were living in rental properties owned by either private landlords or New Zealand’s state funded housing agency, Kāinga Ora. One woman had recently purchased a house, and another was living in a rental property but owned a home in another city. One woman was living in emergency housing (short term motel accommodation).

Interviews tended to last between one to two and a half hours. Participants were invited to share their life stories, from childhood through to adulthood, with a focus on their experiences of housing, motherhood, and other key relationships. The interviewer also asked specific questions relating to housing, motherhood, and relationships, including ‘What does a ‘home’ mean to you?’ and ‘Has your housing situation (and/or the people that you live with) helped you to move away from crime?’ Three of the interviews took place by way of (separate) videoconferences (at the participants’ request), while the remaining interviews were carried out in a location that was intended to be comfortable for participants and convenient for them to travel to. Locations included cafes, workplaces, and the offices of the NGOs from which some of the women were recruited.

Narrative interviews have a temporal thread that enable current events to be “understood as arising out of past happenings and pointing to future outcomes” (Bell, 2002, p. 207). They had two main benefits for this research. First, they allowed the women to share their personal efforts towards desistance in the context of their entire life histories, including the socio-structural constraints to their desistance and potential to obtain a sense of ‘home’ (Riessman, 1993). Secondly, they gave participants control over the interview. Participants were invited to share their story in a way that they wished to tell it. This was particularly important in the context of Aotearoa New Zealand, whereby Indigenous Māori populations have been exploited and misrepresented in research (Smith, 2012).

This approach meant that, at times, participants discussed aspects of their life stories that were not directly tied to the research focus. In such cases, it was important to listen to the story that the women wanted to tell or enable them to “vent”, as one participant described. Even where aspects of the narrative deviated from the research focus directly, the women’s detailed narratives provided important context to understand their subjective experiences and their desistance within the context of their whole life histories.

With the participants’ consent, the interviews were recorded, transcribed, and then analysed according to a thematic approach (Braun & Clarke, 2006). The first author carried out multiple readings of each transcript and identified key codes concerning the women’s pathways in and out of crime. Codes were then organized into wider themes relating to motherhood, housing, and relationships. Concerning housing, the themes were organized into a temporal divide of earlier housing situations (i.e., before any real progress towards desistance had been achieved), and later housing situations (once the women embarked on their desistance journeys).

Findings

The following section traces the women’s housing experiences from childhood through to the time of the interviews. Firstly, the women’s earlier housing experiences, during their childhoods and offending are explored. These living environments were typically characterized by the absence of ontological security and were conducive to the women’s continued offending or drug/alcohol abuse. Secondly, these living environments are juxtaposed against the women’s later housing situations, which many of the women considered ‘home’ and which supported a sense of ontological security and, consequently, desistance.

Early Experiences of Housing and ‘Home’

Most of the women’s housing experiences during childhood were marked by frequent relocation, and/or physical or emotional abuse, and/or exposure to criminal activity and/or drug abuse. Sarah, ⁴ for instance, said that during her childhood she never had “one stable family home”. Instead, she and her mother moved “here, there and everywhere”. Some of the women moved between the houses of family/whānau (including uncles, aunties, and grandparents). As Sam explained: “Growing up I got moved around a lot from family member to family member. So, I’ve been to thirteen schools”. Three women mentioned spending time in state care, with one of those women (Rose) referring to abuse she experienced while living there.

For many women and children, the home is frequently a site where they experience abuse, violence, and the suppression of self (Wardhaugh, 1999; Woodhall-Melnik et al., 2017). Several women experienced abuse during their childhoods, often in their family ‘home’. Mandy was sexually abused by her father while living with him until the age of 13. Ally experienced ongoing sexual abuse from her adopted brother and described how this abuse became a “normality”. Mary spent five years of her childhood living with her grandparents, and, like Ally, described her experiences of ongoing sexual and physical abuse from her grandfather as a normal part of life: “That was quite sad going through that childhood life thinking that abuse was normal”.

The majority of the women went on to live in unstable housing environments once they entered adulthood and during their offending. They often mentioned moving from one house to another, and some mentioned periods of street homelessness. Rose described living “from place to place, no fixed abode, no secure stable healthy home”. Sarah lived “everywhere, just from home to home to home to home”.

Many women experienced ongoing violence and coercive control, often from a domestic partner, in their living environments and emphasized that they did not feel safe. For example, Helen described the severe violence and abuse that she experienced from her partner during her pregnancy: “Whilst I was pregnant, he hammered, nailed the windows together and put a lock on the door and a bucket in the bedroom and that’s how you know he would feed me.” Consistent with feminist pathways literature (Daly, 1992), many of the women’s experiences of emotional, physical, or sexual abuse in the home contributed to issues concerning their mental health, substance abuse and eventual offending. Mandy had a history of mental health issues which appeared to be exacerbated by her unstable living environments. She described “bouncing around between places ‘cause I didn’t really feel safe anywhere”. At one stage, she described living with a violent partner, which appeared to contribute to her self-harm:

‘Cause I was cutting really, really badly, like all down my legs all the time and I would sleep in the car outside his house ‘cause I didn’t feel safe inside and like sometimes I would try to escape from him because he would just be like ‘you’re a fucking whore’ ‘you’re this, you’re that’ and like abusing me so I would wait until he went toilet and I would jump out the window. And he would come and tackle me through the wall or something and so it was just hideous. (Mandy)

Women’s untreated mental health issues and substance abuse can make them vulnerable to housing insecurity and homelessness (Duke & Searby, 2019). This was apparent in the current research, where mental health issues and substance abuse could prevent the women from accessing safe and secure housing. Harley, for example, explained that her drug addiction, and consequent lack of money and inhibitions, made it difficult for her “to have a house or a home”:

When I was on that [drugs] I would have no inhibitions and I would spend all my money so I would like, I dunno, I would shoplift and pokies and you know all that stuff, I would just do whatever, so it was hard to have a house or a home. (Harley)

Stable housing is recognised as being important for enabling engagement with mental health issues and addiction treatment (Padgett et al., 2006; Lutze & Lau, 2018). In line with this, it was difficult for the women to begin to recover from mental health issues and drug abuse without a stable living environment. Rose, for example, commented on the difficulties in healing from mental health issues and addiction without the material benefits of housing, such as warmth, and a place to wash and sleep:

If you don’t have the basics, where it’s warm and there’s a shower and you have a place to get changed and you have a place to sleep and the basics, it’s really hard to heal the other stuff that’s going on. (Rose)

Harley pointed to the challenges she faced in trying to stay off drugs without a stable place to stay. She also emphasized psychosocial benefits of ‘home’ which are important for ontological security, such as a place to “relax” or feel comfortable:

I was just moving around the whole time, and none of these places were stable environments, and I guess like when you’re not in a stable environment and you’re using drugs like … it’s really hard to stay sober and clean, to relax ‘cause you’re never really … able to do that. (Harley)

To summarize, most of the women’s housing during their childhoods and offending contributed to their initial and continued offending and/or drug abuse and was not conducive to their desistance. The majority of their housing experiences were typified by severe instability, including frequent relocation, and exposure to violence, drugs/alcohol and criminality. The women lacked control over their living environments, including their co-habitants, and several of them experienced physical, sexual and/or emotional abuse inside the home. These experiences led to adverse consequences for the women’s emotional wellbeing; they lacked a sense of safety, and most of them were dealing with ongoing mental health challenges and addiction issues. Thus, most of the women’s early housing situations failed to provide psycho-social benefits of ‘home’, including safety, control, and security, all of which are associated with ontological security (Dupuis & Thorns, 1998; Padgett, 2007).

Later Experiences of Housing and ‘Home’

At the time of the interviews, the majority of the women were living in what appeared to be stable environments, which were free from drugs and violence, and were at minimal risk of immediate eviction. Although some women aspired to ultimately own their own home, they generally considered their current living situations as suitable for the time being and referred to them as their ‘homes’. These ‘homes’ provided a key site for the women to develop and maintain crime and drug free identities and ultimately ‘do’ desistance.

Home as a Site of Control and Safety

Consistent with the literature on housing and ontological security (Dupuis & Thorns, 1998; Kearns et al., 2000), key features of ‘home’ included the women having a sense of control over their living environment and a concomitant sense of safety. For example, Sarah had been living in a three-bedroom Kāinga Ora property with her mother, partner, and baby for around two years. She accessed the property after enrolling on the social housing register while completing a live-in drug and alcohol treatment programme. After leaving the treatment programme, Sarah stayed temporarily in emergency housing (short-term accommodation in motels or hotels) while she waited to be allocated a property. Sarah discussed the benefits of her ‘home’ for her security in contrast to the instability of her previous living situations:

‘Cause you’ve always got a home base to go back to, you know if you’ve got nowhere, you’re just not settled. Yeah, security as well too, I don’t let anyone know where I live so I feel really safe, every house that I had I always used to have people just coming in and out of my house and now I don’t have anybody. (Sarah)

Sarah’s house appeared to offer her a stable “home base” to ‘do’ her desistance. In her previous housing environments, Sarah had people who were using drugs or criminally involved regularly visiting. However, she now has control over her living environment and sets clear boundaries regarding who can and importantly who cannot enter her home. Later, Sarah explained that her house is ‘home’ because it is an expression of herself and because she obtained it through legitimate means: “Cause it’s mine and I’ve made it the way I want it, so it’s all me, and I’ve got everything in it and I’ve got it without selling drugs”. In this sense, Sarah’s home could be considered as a physical representation of her changing identity and progress along her desistance trajectory.

Tuchey also took part in a recovery programme that helped her to address her addictions and heal from trauma. She said: “it took [programme] to wake me up, to show me the light and ever since then I’ve been on the right track”. Tuchey accessed her house (a private rental) not long after attending the recovery programme. When asked whether the programme helped Tuchey to access the property she said: “I think it was just in God’s journey aye, I met them and then after I met them everything slowly prevailed me”. Tuchey also explained that she was fortunate to find a landlord who “didn’t ask for any credentials […] or references”. When asked whether her housing has helped her desistance, Tuchey explained that it has given her a sense of confidence and personal achievement. She also emphasized that her home is peaceful and quiet, qualities that may be especially important to Tuchey given her history of domestic abuse:

If it wasn’t for my house I wouldn’t be who I am today […] It’s given me so much confidence, you know ‘yay I can do it, yaaay’ , it’s given me inspiration and the most abundance in life, it’s given me life, it’s given me that opportunity to show myself as well as others than I can do it, and my home is … is home, it’s peaceful, it’s quiet, it’s warm, it’s cosy, it has a nice aura about it. (Tuchey)

It appears that Tuchey’s home has helped her to develop a positive sense of self. Like Sarah’s ‘home’ has become the physical manifestation or expression of her new identity and progress along the desistance continuum. Tuchey explained that she has made her house her ‘home’ by “putting myself in there” and like Sarah, by exercising control over her home and who enters it:

My family and friends will come and they’re just like ‘oh wow’ and they’re all addicts and I’m just like ‘yeah, nah, mate you’re not even going inside, you see that door , use it, see you later’ [Laughs] ‘oh why have you changed?’ they says, I says ‘I’ve changed for the better, I didn’t change to make your life happier, I changed to make myself happier in my life’. (Tuchey)

Rose also considered her current living environment as ‘home’. After Rose’s “16^th lag” in prison, she completed her home detention while staying in supported accommodation. ⁵ Rose then moved to a different region with her partner, to stay in a cabin on his whānau land. At the time of the interview, Rose had been living with her partner (who is now her husband) in the cabin for around three years. Like Tuchey, Rose also emphasized her control over the environment, alluding to their ability to keep drugs and violence out of their space:

Our house is amazing, we own our little cabin, or rent-to-own, but we have made it our home …we do not have bullshit in our house, it’s beautiful […] my little cabin and our little section in [region] is my favourite place to be. (Rose)

Mandy also emphasised the psycho-social benefits of ‘home’, particularly a sense of safety and control. After leaving prison, Mandy attended a live-in drug and alcohol treatment recovery programme which she described as “pivotal” in her recovery. After leaving the treatment accommodation, Mandy temporarily stayed with a partner who ended up being abusive. Mandy said: “I knew it would just lead to relapse if I didn’t get out of there”. She moved out and stayed with her sister temporarily, before moving into a sleep out in a shared property. After being rejected from many properties due to her criminal record, Mandy eventually found a single bedroom rental property, where she was living at the time of the interview. Mandy had been living in this property for a year, and her children stay with her every second weekend. Having her own place has helped Mandy to attain a sense of independence, and to break away from her violent ex-partner on whom she no longer relies for a place to stay:

I pay for it all myself so I’m not dependent on anybody else, ‘cause I built… everything that’s in there, it’s mine, I don’t owe money for it or anything like that […] and I’ve maintained it, it’s been stable for the whole last year so it’s helped me pull away from [former partner], ‘cause I didn’t need to rely on him for anything. And so, it started helping me see that I can be independent and it was a safe place for me to come back to. I trespassed him when he got violent and he just kept coming over. So that helped me feel safe […] it’s home. (Mandy)

Like several other women, Mandy now appears to have a sense of control over her home space, helping her to attain a sense of safety which is crucial to her overall wellbeing and ontological security. When asked what a ‘home’ means or feels like she emphasized safety and emotional comfort in her response: “Where you feel safe, where you feel you can be yourself […] And it’s the place where I wanna be when I am sad when I wanna cry or whatever … and that will be that way because I feel safe there”.

Overall, the women’s narratives disclosed a common theme of a stable ‘home’ as a safe space. Part of attaining a sense of safety involved the women having control over their living environments. Consistent with literature on the psycho-social benefits of ‘home’ (Saunders, 1989; Dupuis & Thorns, 1998), this sense of control and safety was key to the women’s ontological security. A safe ‘home’ provided the women with a space to construct drug- and crime-free identities and ‘do’ their desistance. Not only this, but their ‘homes’ became an enabler and physical manifestation or ‘expression’ of their changing identities and progress along the desistance continuum.

Challenges to Finding ‘Home’

Although most of the women in the sample appeared to now be living in stable environments, their pathways to finding a ‘home’ were rarely straightforward. Most of them had faced significant barriers to accessing suitable accommodation, including the stigma of criminal records and long waits on the social housing register. Tuchey, for example, described waiting on the social housing list for two years. She discussed the difficulties in finding housing with a criminal record: “The real estate [agents] ain’t going to look at you, not if you say … you just got out of jail, yeah no way”.

Two Māori women in the sample, Annie and Ashleigh, were still struggling to find a ‘home’ for themselves and for their children. At the time of the interview, Ashleigh and her children had been living in a Kāinga Ora property for four years. Although Ashleigh’s house provided her with stability in terms of permanence, it did not provide her with psycho-social benefits of ‘home’. When asked whether the house feels like a home, Ashleigh responded: “No, it just feels cold, we always get sick, nah, it doesn’t feel like a home”. Unlike the women discussed above, Ashleigh lacked control over who was coming onto her property; she referred to her house as unsafe and has a dog to protect herself and her children. When asked what ‘home’ means or feels like to Ashleigh, like many other women, she emphasized the importance of safety in her response: “Like a safe haven where you can always go back to and where you’re always welcome […] a home is supposed to feel safe”.

Annie was also having difficulty finding ‘home’ for herself and her four children. Up until six months prior to the interview, she had been living in a Kāinga Ora property for five years with two of her children ⁶ and, on some nights of the week, her partner. However, Annie’s partner had become increasingly violent, leading her to flee from him with her children. Since then, Annie had moved into five different emergency housing environments. She described these as highly inadequate living environments for her and for children, including having blocked toilets and insufficient room for a cot for her baby. At the time of the interview Annie remained “stuck in limbo now trying to find somewhere to go to” and had applied for over 30 houses. When asked whether her housing circumstances have affected her likelihood of offending, Annie commented on the importance of having a stable living environment to remain crime and drug free. She explained that, because she had been experiencing so much housing instability (and associated stress), she had been tempted to return to crime and drug use:

The more stable I’ve been, the less likely of going to jail I’ve been. So, like when I have a stable home, I’m happy and content within myself, so I don’t need to go out doing crime but at the moment that’s all I want to do […] I haven’t had any P⁷ for about coming up a year now, and at the moment that’s all I wanna do. (Annie)

Annie referred to a number of barriers affecting her potential to obtain suitable housing for both her and her children, and expressed frustration at not being given a chance by prospective landlords:

It’s just hectic and so I’m starting to wonder, is it my criminal record, or my tenancy history that’s holding me up from getting the house? […] who’s ever going to give you a chance if nobody’s willing to even look past that? Do an interview with me and see if I’m suitable to take your house rather than just reading black and white paper. (Annie)

Both Annie and Ashleigh faced substantial difficulties in accessing a ‘home’ with key psycho-social benefits for their ontological security. For Annie it was clear that her experiences of stress and strain - caused by her inability to find ‘home’ - were tempting her to revert to drugs and crime. The absence of ‘home’ and lack of ontological security meant that she was unable to feel content within herself, and to develop or maintain a more positive drug- and crime-free identity (i.e., to journey towards secondary desistance). The absence of a safe place to call home can therefore make desisting lifestyles and identities difficult to maintain.

Discussion

The findings in this article support existing literature which documents the relationship between access to stable housing and reduced rates of reoffending (Baldry et al., 2006; Lutze et al., 2014). However, the findings emphasize that those leaving prison require more than a roof over their head; they also require the psycho-social dimensions of ‘home’ which enhance their ontological security and enable them to ‘do’ desistance. The current research therefore makes two key theoretical contributions concerning the role of housing and ‘home’ in women’s desistance, specifically. First, it highlights the key psycho-social benefits of ‘home’ which are particularly pertinent in supporting women’s desistance – safety and control. Women in the criminal justice system have unique and gendered life histories, often characterized by significant socio-economic deprivation and violence (Daly, 1992). During the women’s childhoods and into adulthood, many of them lacked control over their living environments, including the people they lived with. The nature of these living environments, and the abuse many of them experienced there, contributed to their mental health problems and substance use and subsequent offending.

These early living environments often contrasted markedly to the women’s later housing situations, which many of them considered as ‘homes’. A central psycho-social dimension of ‘home’ involved the women having a sense of control over their surroundings and a corresponding sense of safety. The women exercised control over their ‘homes’ in two important, overlapping ways. First, they attained a sense of control over who entered their homes so that former negative social influences, and/or violent and emotionally abusive romantic partners or former partners could not enter their space. In this sense, their ‘homes’ provided them with a space to ‘knife off’ social influences who were unsupportive of their change (Maruna & Roy, 2007). Second, the women had control over what occurred within their homes. In particular, they no longer had drugs or violence in their homes. This sense of control over the women’s home environments was essential to them attaining a sense of safety. Consistent with prior research involving women with histories of victimisation (e.g., Woodhall-Melnik et al., 2017), nearly all of the women emphasized the importance of safety when discussing what a ‘home’ meant to them. Although a sense of control and concomitant safety are important components of ontological security for both men and women (Dupuis & Thorns, 1998), they assume heightened significance for women in the criminal justice system, who have experienced traumatic life events, including violence and abuse that have taken place in the home.

Our second theoretical contribution is to identify some of the specific mechanisms by which ‘home’ can support women’s identity change. The women’s ‘homes’ can be conceptualized as both an expression of their changing identities and as an enabler of their further desistance and identity change. The women were proud of their homes, which provided them with a deep sense of personal satisfaction, achievement, and self-efficacy. Their homes provided tangible self-encouragement, signifying that they could make positive changes in their lives. This contributed to the women’s wellbeing, positive sense of self, and ontological security. Their homes became a constant reminder and affirmation of their progress to date and served as further motivation for them to continue their change journeys. In this sense, a stable ‘home’ can form part of a positive feedback loop contributing to and motivating the women’s further positive identity changes and desistance. Whereas desistance literature to date has typically explored women’s identity change as being catalysed, motivated, or reinforced by key relationships in their lives (e.g., with parole officers, family, or children) (Low, 2022; Stone et al., 2018), or life events, such as obtaining employment (Opsal, 2012), the findings in this paper suggest that ‘home’ can also play a key role in women’s identity change by expressing and enabling their identity changes.

Conversely, just as the presence of a stable home can generate a positive feedback loop, the women’s narratives illustrate how the absence of a stable home can generate a negative feedback loop of criminality, mental health challenges, and addiction. In Annie’s case, the absence of ‘home’ meant that she was unable to obtain ontological security and wellbeing, which were necessary for her to construct a more positive drug and crime free identity. The absence of a ‘home’ – with key benefits for ontological security - can therefore make desisting lifestyles and identities difficult to construct and maintain.

These findings suggest two key implications for policy and practice to support women with histories of imprisonment to access a ‘home’, both in Aotearoa New Zealand and internationally. First, housing support should be readily available to all women in the criminal justice system. The New Zealand Department of Corrections funds several supported accommodation schemes for those leaving prison, which usually consist of short-term housing with various ‘wraparound’ support services, such as assistance to access benefits and basic living skills. However, these initiatives tend to be focussed predominantly on providing short-term accommodation for those who have served long-term sentences of two years or more (Mills et al., 2021). Many women in prison are either on remand or serving short-term sentences (Bentley, 2014; Department of Corrections, 2021b), and are consequently excluded from these types of accommodation.

Housing support should instead be available to all women who have experienced incarceration, including those serving short-term sentences or those on remand. Crucially, this housing support should provide a safe space for women to heal from trauma and address any issues concerning mental health or addiction. For Māori women and Indigenous women in other settler states, this space must include support to heal from the intergenerational impacts of colonial trauma (Pihama et al., 2017). Baldry (2010) has similarly recognized that women leaving prison (particularly Indigenous women) require a safe space to enable them to begin to address entrenched matters of intergenerational trauma and other mental health and/or addiction problems. Any supported accommodation or residential treatment programmes should support women into more long-term stable accommodation and into finding a ‘home’ for themselves and for their children. This would assist women to advance beyond the primary phases of their desistance and provide them with a necessary space to construct and maintain drug and crime free identities. Indeed, although some transitional housing environments may provide a space for women to begin to heal, they are unlikely to provide a total sense of ‘home’, as they do not confer a sense of control or freedom from surveillance (Rosenberg et al., 2021).

Second, although most of the women in this research had been fortunate enough to find stable ‘homes’, their success should not distract us from the significant barriers that many of them had to overcome to obtain their homes. Many other similarly situated women, particularly Māori and Pacific women, continue to face considerable challenges in accessing stable housing, including the stigma of their criminal records, racism and discrimination from landlords and housing agencies, the long waiting list for social housing, and financial difficulties (Mills et al., 2021). In the current research, two women had, despite prolonged efforts, not managed to obtain a ‘home’ at the time of the interviews. For Annie, in particular, it was clear that without a ‘home’ to launch her desistance efforts, she was at risk of relapse and/or reoffending. She also lacked a safe living environment to parent her children, which may adversely affect their wellbeing, as well as her potential to embrace a positive maternal identity (Low, 2022).

The findings in this article therefore emphasize the importance of wider support from neighbourhoods, housing agencies and landlords in promoting women’s change. The stigma of the women’s criminal records could lead to discrimination from prospective landlords and housing agencies. These discriminatory attitudes towards people leaving prison often extend to the public at large in that people are generally opposed to housing ‘ex-prisoners’ in their neighbourhoods (LeBel, 2017). This is evidenced by a recent public housing project in Aotearoa New Zealand, aiming to provide housing and wraparound support services to women leaving prison, which has received opposition from the local community on the grounds of public safety (Leaman, 2021).

Nugent and Schinkel (2016) coined the term ‘relational desistance’ to emphasize the importance of recognition of change by others in supporting desistance. They note the importance of relational desistance not just at the micro level (relating to an individual’s immediate social setting), but also at the meso-level (relating to the wider community), and the macro-level (to society as a whole). Adding to the meso and macro level of relational desistance, the current research highlights the important role that landlords, housing agencies and local neighbourhoods can play in supporting relational desistance. Prospective housing agencies and landlords, as well as wider communities and neighbourhoods, must at least be open to the possibility that women with histories of imprisonment intend to make positive changes in their lives. The Department of Corrections could play a key role in supporting this openness from wider communities and neighbourhoods by highlighting to the community the importance of stable housing and ‘home’ in assisting with desistance from crime (Mills & Lindsay Latimer, 2021). Indeed, without this openness from the wider community, particularly landlords and housing agencies, women leaving prison may struggle to find a ‘home’ necessary to launch their desistance and remain vulnerable to unstable living environments which perpetuate trauma, harm, victimisation, and continued offending.

Finally, it is important to recognize that while a ‘home’ is necessary for desistance, it is unlikely to be sufficient, especially for women with complex life histories. Like many other women leaving prison in Aotearoa New Zealand and internationally (Barr, 2019; Department of Corrections, 2021b; Österman, 2018), many of the women in this research had life-histories involving trauma, mental health issues, domestic violence, and drug/alcohol addiction issues. Healing from these issues, and developing a sense of emotional wellbeing, played an essential role in their desistance and recovery. Many of the women took part in drug/alcohol recovery programmes, or received other forms of rehabilitative support, that helped them to heal from, or at least begin to heal from, issues concerning addiction, mental health, and trauma. The women also spoke of other key factors that were instrumental in their change, including their children (Low, 2022), support from their family or whānau (Low, 2024), their participation in employment and their relationships with their employers (Low, 2023). Thus, women leaving prison require holistic support for their desistance, which includes not only access to a ‘home’ but also to supportive social networks, social welfare, childcare support, mental health and addiction services, counselling, and paid employment. Nevertheless, stable housing is widely recognized as being essential in accessing such support services (Lutze et al., 2014). A ‘home’ where people feel a sense of ontological security can provide a space to establish daily routines including participation in paid employment and treatment programmes (Low et al., 2023; Rosenberg et al., 2021).

Given the importance of healing from trauma in the women’s desistance journeys, it could be asked whether the women needed to begin the healing process in order to settle into a ‘home’, or whether the provision of a ‘home’ itself facilitated being settled. Desistance literature more generally has attempted to disentangle the differential impacts of subjective changes and external support in desistance, or “which comes first?” (LeBel et al., 2008). However, as LeBel et al. (2008, p. 153) observe, it could be argued “that a quest to identify the sequencing of cognitive and external influences is both impossible and pointless because these operate through a dynamic, interactive process”.

Consistent with this view, in the current research, the women’s subjective changes and the stability of their living environments appeared to operate through an interactive process. On the one hand, all the women appeared to have experienced at least some internal changes before finding the housing that would become their ‘home’. They had all experienced a desire never to return to prison, and many of them had taken part in treatment programmes that helped them to heal from – or at least begin to heal from – trauma and addiction. On the other hand, the stability of a ‘home’ could actuate further wellbeing, identity changes and desistance. In this way, a positive subjective mindset and a stable physical environment could interact with each other to further motivate and reinforce the women’s change.

Regardless of the precise sequencing, one thing seems clear enough: a ‘home’ can lead to a deeper and more sustained internal changes than a mere desire to change, or an initial sense of wellbeing. A ‘home’ offers a sense of ontological security which would be difficult – if not impossible – to obtain without it. Thus, without a ‘home’ – and the accompanying sense of control and safety - it is unlikely that any initial positive mindset changes will be able to materialize into sustained wellbeing and ontological security necessary for long lasting change.

Limitations and Suggestions for Further Research

We conclude by noting two limitations of the current research, which imply suggestions for future research. First, this research involved a sample of women who had been out of prison without reoffending for at least one year. Given the importance of stable accommodation in reducing reoffending (Baldry et al., 2006; Lutze et al., 2014; Makarios et al., 2010), the research sample was biased in favour of women who were able to find stable accommodation that could support their desistance. Future research could involve a sample of women who left prison and continued to offend to explore whether the absence of a ‘home’ influenced their continued offending. Such research could explore in detail the key barriers to ‘home’ and ontological security for women leaving prison and thereby contribute to an ongoing scholarly conversation concerning the role of ‘home’, ontological insecurity, and desistance from or persistence in, offending.

A second key limitation of this research is that it did not involve follow-up interviews. Desistance is a long-term process, rife with setbacks and obstacles (Nugent & Schinkel, 2016; Halsey et al., 2017; Fredriksson & Gålnander, 2020). By not including follow up interviews, we remain ignorant of any subsequent challenges faced by the women in their desistance journeys, including how any future changes in their housing situations may influence their ontological security and desistance. Future research could gain a deeper understanding of the role of housing and ‘home’ in desistance from, or persistence in, crime by interviewing women attempting to desist from crime over several years, beginning from the very early phases of their desistance. Increasingly, longitudinal studies are exploring women’s desistance (Fredriksson & Gålnander, 2020; Österman, 2022); a longitudinal study that explores women’s experiences of housing and ‘home’ could add a valuable dimension to such research.