Rehabilitation and Reintegration in Europe (RaRiE)

Now the dust has settled on this year’s European Society of Criminology’s annual conference (EuroCrim) and the RaRiE team are back at our respective desks across Europe after a fascinating week of panels and discussions at the University of Warsaw, I thought I’d share a few reflections from RaRiE’s time in Poland.

Dina, Thomas, and I really enjoyed our panel on Friday morning where we offered three different perspectives on a range of historical and cultural influences on rehabilitation. It was great to see so many colleagues in the room, even though we’d managed to misplace Fergus in a haze of travel disruption on the way! 

My paper reached back to the medieval era, tracing representations of ‘redemption stories’ in early European performance cultures and asking what these early stories might teach us today. Dina brought us right up to the present, sharing her own research into the use (and misuse) of Stoic philosophy in prison-based rehabilitation in England. Finally, Thomas closed the session with his paper which examined stories of rehabilitation and reintegration in three Norwegian prison novels.

Our discussions with the audience after focused on how and why cultural representations of rehabilitation so rarely feature women’s experiences and on what we think better (or more radical) visions of rehabilitation might look like. Our audience was fantastic – thank you to everyone who came along and to those who shared their thoughts and questions. Thank you also to the University of Warsaw and to the European Society of Criminology for providing such an interesting (and fun) space to meet, share our work, and collaborate.

As always, it felt like there was more to ask, more to say, more to know but, though the panel is over, we want these conversations to continue. Keep an eye out for upcoming team blogs and follow us on LinkedIn to keep the conversation going…

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First published: 30 September 2026