Women's Desistance in a Colonial Context

Grace Low is a researcher and lecturer at Oxford Brookes University. Her research interests concern women’s desistance from crime, with a focus on their experiences of motherhood, social relationships, and housing or ‘home’. She completed her PhD at the University of Auckland in 2023.

• 1. Introduction, 2. Gendered Desistance in a Colonial Context, 3. The Study, 4, Families of Origin, Intimate Partners, Friends/Associates, 5. Children and the Salience of Motherhood, 6. Employment, 7. Recovery Programmes, 8. Housing and ‘Home’, 9. Conclusions: Theoretical and Practical Implications for Women’s Desistance

This book makes a significant contribution to the internationalisation of the desistance literature in general, and to the field of women’s desistance in particular. Low offers a nuanced and rigorous analysis of the intertwined areas of housing, gender and minority positions that – through a historically-aware discussion of the broader socio-political context, including colonial legacies – also sheds new and thought-provoking light on the role of macro-levelled aspects of desistance. A strongly recommended read!Linnéa Österman, Senior Lecturer in Criminology and Social Work, Gothenburg University, Sweden.Through powerful narrative interviews, Low offers a compelling and empathetic exploration into gendered experiences of desistance. Her ground-breaking analysis highlights the essential, but often neglected role of housing and home in supporting desistance, making this an essential read for academics, students, and practitioners interested in the gendered complexities of desistance within a colonial context.Alice Mills, Associate Professor of Criminology, University of Auckland, New Zealand.Dr. Low's beautifully written book tells a clear and compelling story that contributes to the small but important literature on women's desistance. Even more importantly, this book forefronts the experiences of indigenous Maori women of New Zealand, whose experiences of the impact of colonization are so very important, and which have traditionally been neglected in the literature about desistance.Dr Venezia Michalsen, Associate Professor of Sociology, Southern Connecticut State University, U.S.A.Women’s Desistance in a Colonial Context is a careful, ethically grounded, and theoretically engaged piece of scholarship. By bringing the experiences of women in Aotearoa New Zealand into wider criminological debate, Low extends the geographical reach of desistance research and demonstrates what is at stake, analytically and politically, when structural conditions, colonial histories, and the textures of everyday life are treated as central rather than supplementary to the study of crime and desistance.Kanupriya Sharma, University of Nottingham, UK, Theoretical Criminology