Dr Ingeborg Jenssen Sandbukt1
1Oslo University Hospital, Norway
Biography:
Ingeborg Jenssen Sandbukt is a criminologist and employed at the Centre for Research and Education in Forensic Psychiatry, Oslo University Hospital. She has extensive experience from the Norwegian probation service and from developing holistic treatment services for high-risk/high-needs individuals convicted of sexual offending. Her research interests include sexual offending, stigma, desistance, reentry and recidivism prevention, and she recently defended her PhD dissertation where she interviewed men incarcerated for sexual recidivism in Norwegian prisons.
Abstract:
Most people convicted of sexual offences are not later reconvicted for such crimes. Yet sexual recidivism does occur, and its grave consequences make recidivism prevention a key research priority. Whereas desistance research is largely qualitative, our understanding of recidivism remains heavily quantitative and is most often informed by narrow outcome data, meaning that individual stories receive limited attention. This innovative four-year study addressed that knowledge gap by focusing on the individual lived experience of sexual recidivism.
Double interviews were conducted with 23 men incarcerated for sexual recidivism in Norwegian prisons. A narrative criminology approach was adopted to examine the recidivism process of the men, as well as how they make sense of this part of their lives. As one of three Scandinavian countries, Norway is often referred to as “exceptional” in terms of penal policy and practice. An important finding was that despite Norway’s absence of structural stigma, social stigma and stereotypical assumptions of a high and enduring risk of reoffending still obstructed processes related to identity reconstruction. Thus, by demonstrating how lived experience of sexual recidivism affects the self, the results from this study shed new light on the relationship between recidivism and desistance, conceptualizing these two processes as aspects of a shared narrative process rather than as fundamentally separate. The discussion explores the importance of supporting identity reconstruction processes on which desistance is often understood to depend, and concludes that providing such support is a responsibility that must be shared by both the criminal justice system and society.