Max Dennehy

Working title of PhD: How do prison leavers experience ‘resettlement’ in a mixed market economy of rehabilitation

Institution: University of Strathclyde

Year Commenced: 2024

Full or Part-time: Full time

Supervisors: Beth Weaver and Louise Brangan

Funding: Strathclyde Student Excellence Award

Synopsis:

My research examines how prison leavers experience and navigate an increasingly marketised and managerial landscape of rehabilitation and resettlement in England and Wales. Over the past three decades, the state has progressively outsourced core criminal justice functions to the private and voluntary sectors, producing a fragmented and competitive system governed by contractualism, performance metrics, and short-term funding cycles.

This has given rise to a mixed market economy of penal-welfare in which third, private, and public sector actors are central to the delivery of post-custody support. Yet while provision increasingly expands, it remains unclear whether the material conditions of the post-custody trajectory have shifted in step – or how this landscape of penal-provision is experienced by those subject to it. From my own observations, both lived and professional, there is a discernible dissonance between policy rhetoric, delivery, and lived reality. Similarly, there is a seeming tension in how the function of resettlement and rehabilitation is imagined, from policy makers, to practitioners, and how it is experienced on the ground.

The study adopts a qualitative, micro-longitudinal design, combining repeat narrative interviews with 20 prison leavers over a nine-month post-release period, alongside interviews with frontline practitioners across probation and third-sector services. It seeks to explore how prison leavers interact with, interpret, and make sense of the systems and services they encounter — and to what effect.

Recent Publications: 

Brierley, A. & Dennehy, M. (2025). The Good Prison Officer and Rehabilitation: An Inside Perspective. Prison Service Journal, 276, pp.22–27. Read here

Brierley, A., & Dennehy, M. (2024). The rehabilitation industry: Lived experience and performance. Probation Journal, 0(0). Read here

Dennehy, M. (2023). “It takes a village…”: the social fabric of recovery and desistance. Probation Quarterly, 29, pp.15–19. Read here

Dennehy, M. (2023). Flexibility: Negotiation and Discretion. In The Good Prison Officer (pp. 52–62). Routledge. Read here

Keywords: resettlement, rehabilitation, marketisaiton, prison-leavers