The music of recovery and desistance: Prison-based musical tuition as a strengths-based intervention

The role of self-narrative in the process of desistance from crime has been widely acknowledged and accepted in recent research. In order to change entrenched patterns of criminal behaviour, it is argued, an individual needs to change the story of who he or she is and possibly rewrite their past to explain the present transformation. In this chapter, we develop this thesis further by suggesting the possible inclusion of music in this process of biographical reconstruction. Drawing on evidence from the prison-based charity Changing Tunes, we argue that songs provide a unique psychosocial mechanism for making emotional sense of complicated and difficult life experiences, and therefore can play a substantial role in the rehabilitative process.