Introduction

The purpose of this chapter is to introduce the concepts and principles of social identity theory to a criminology audience and to apply it to the model of desistance from offending concurrent with recovery from substance use problems. The empirical examples used to illustrate this come from a study of alcohol and drug workers who are in recovery from their own addiction, with the sub-sample used for the current analysis restricted to those who also have a history of criminal involvement. The chapter starts with an overview of the relationship between recovery, desistance and the role that identity change is understood to have played in each of these processes.

Recovery, desistance and identity

While definitions have been highly contentious around subjective versus objective criteria, there have been two consensus groups convened that have attempted to create shared definitions. The Betty Ford Institute Consensus Panel defines recovery from substance dependence as a ‘voluntarily maintained lifestyle characterised by sobriety, personal health and citizenship’ (2007, 222). This position is consistent with the UK Drug Policy Commission statement on recovery as ‘voluntarily sustained control over substance use which maximises health and wellbeing and participation in the rights, roles and responsibilities of society’ (2008, 6). The contrasting view is outlined in Valentine's (2011) statement ‘you are in recovery if you say you are’ (p 264), which emphasises the importance of the subjective experience of change.

One of the core concepts in recovery has been the idea of recovery capital (Granfield and Cloud, 2001), with Best and Laudet (2010) developing this concept to suggest that it consists of three components – personal, social and community capital. The possibility that recovery capital may have a negative as well as a positive side was explored by Cloud and Granfield (2009). Stigma and exclusion may well be key aspects of negative recovery capital that block sustained recovery from addiction and/or desistance from offending. Cloud and Granfield argued that one of the primary negative recovery capital factors was a history of criminal justice involvement (along with a history of mental health problems) and, further, that those addicts with significant criminal justice histories had a much more demanding and complex pathway to recovery.