Building Resilience of Returning Citizens: Creative Ways to Survive Prison and Thrive Outside Without Crime

Ideas about law and criminality are made and read in history, often linked to contestation, ethics, status and power. A ‘criminal’ is not just a simple description of those who commit crime, but also a toxic label. As the philosopher Foucault (1982) describes, such definitions are part of a powerful ‘discourse’ that informs subjectivity, cultural norms and values. Consequently, ‘criminal’ is not an easy label to ignore, yet ‘criminality’ or ‘offending’ does not define a person. To be a ‘criminal’ or an ‘offender’ (someone who breaks the law) is only one expression of a person who commits crime. Nevertheless, connotations of the label ‘criminal’ overshadow virtually every other identity definition.

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