Crime

How and Why People Stop Committing Crime

“The Road from Crime” is a documentary that looks at how and why people stop or desist from offending:

Discover More The Road from Crime

and features both ex-offenders and the people that have worked with them. The blog that accompanies the documentary can be found here:

Discover More Discovering Desistance

Useful discussion questions for students to focus on as they are watching the 50-minute film include:

  1. In what ways might the criminal justice system promote reoffending?

  2. According to the filmmakers, desistance is both an ‘internal’ and an ‘external’ process. Where do you see internal and external processes in the film?

  3. What punishment policies might be changed, added or abandoned to better promote desistance?

  4. Most people who work in the criminal justice system have never been convicted of serious crimes. How might the system be different if it incorporated more input from people who had been punished under it?

After watching the documentary, students could then imagine that they are social workers working in a community to which many ex-offenders return. What resources do you think would be needed to meet the needs of the community as a whole as well as resources to help the ex-offenders desist from reoffending? What organisations would be needed to help provide support? Students could work in groups to identify the stakeholders that would need to be involved and what help they would need to give.


 

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