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This paper aims to explore the intricate relationship between social capital, faith and prison-leaver resettlement, emphasising how penal voluntary sector organisations (PVSOs) aid prison-leavers in their resettlement and desistance journeys, following incarceration.

Employing a combination of narrative and thematic analysis, data was collected from 20 prison-leavers in England through semi-structured interviews. Purposive and snowball sampling was used to recruit participants from various community-based resettlement settings.

Thematic analysis revealed the emergence of faith in various iterations in facilitating desistance, Transforming Rehabilitation failure, identity transformation of the prison-leaver, the role of social capital in effective resettlement and the importance of PVSOs. In particular, the findings demonstrate the vital role of a “Faith Anchor”, defined in this paper as a trust-based relationship with an individual or spiritual entity, in facilitating desistance. This paper argues the need to recognise and fully integrate social capital building, faith and specialised support from PVSOs, as essential components of successful offender resettlement and desistance journeys.

The study considers the connection between faith, social capital and offender resettlement. Although demonstrating the role of faith in positive change and community engagement, there are limitations. Primarily, by exclusively recruiting participants through PVSOs, it might overlook varied resettlement experiences. Additionally, measuring desistance is complex and is limited by some academic views that it centres around abstinence. Although small-scale saturation was reached; generalisation should be approached with caution. Notably, post-Transforming Rehabilitation, the human cost of resettlement gaps became evident. Future research could benefit from a longitudinal lens, tracing desistance beyond initial PVSO interactions and offering richer, longitudinal insights.

Significance of “faith anchors”: A “faith anchor” aids the desistance process. Integrating faith in resettlement offers emotional support for prison leavers. Value of social capital: It is pivotal for offender resettlement. Positive social networks are key for successful reintegration. Role of PVSOs: They provide vital resettlement support. Enhanced collaboration can optimise assistance for prison leavers. Addressing current system shortcomings: Rectifying the effects of Transforming Rehabilitation ensures holistic support, catering to prison leavers’ needs. Concept of “faith exchange”: Merging faith and support offers tailored resettlement approaches, fostering effective reintegration.

The study underscores the social implications of effective offender resettlement strategies. The integration of “faith anchors” and social capital aids in the personal rehabilitation of prison leavers and also supports community cohesion. By acknowledging faith as indictive to building trust-based relationships, communities can reduce the stigma associated with former offenders, promoting inclusivity and understanding. Additionally, the essential role of PVSOs highlights the value of community-driven initiatives in supporting reintegration. A combined approach that combines faith, social capital and community support can reshape societal perspectives on desistance, encouraging a more inclusive and empathetic approach to offender reintegration.

The insights gained contribute to the evolving discourse on prison-leaver resettlement and desistance and uniquely highlight the potential of a combined approach between social capital, faith and voluntary sector support, in achieving desistance goals. The term “faith exchange” emerges from this study as an original conceptual contribution, accentuating the relationship between faith and support in resettlement and desistance.

Refugees and asylum seekers represent one of the most vulnerable social categories in Western societies. Their condition presumes facing social, economic and political factors, which often lead to their marginalisation within host society. Indeed, discrimination, lack of professional skills or employment, as well as the frustration related to the slow bureaucratic process of assessing their status, are all key elements in building a vulnerable profile. This chapter examines non-governmental organisations and community-based organisations policies in the resettlement processes of refugees and asylum seekers, highlighting their role in creating effective connections between humanitarian immigrants and host societies. This topic is explored from an intercultural perspective, considered by scholars as an appropriate approach to create and maintain constructive correlations between different levels of the framework. The concept of interculturality is observed within the context of support services provided by the humanitarian organisations, and so the effectiveness of intercultural practices as part of these activities.

Drawing on a comparison between issues concerning the resettlement of refugees in Australia and Italy, the role of intercultural communication is explored through an in-depth examination of intercultural practices and their application in this specific context. Humanitarian organisations, six from Australia and nine from Italy, provide the basis for a total of fifteen case studies. Analysing the practices relating to intercultural communication, this chapter explores their contribution to the resettlement process of humanitarian immigrants, with accent on providing valid instruments for enhancing their skills in dealing with vulnerability.

This paper explores some gendered impacts of resettlement in the Lesotho Highlands Water Project (LHWP). Based on 13 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Lesotho, Southern Africa, I use a feminist political ecology framework to analyze the ways host and settler communities negotiate development-induced resettlement and how resettlement conditions (re)produce gendered social interests in the context of the LHWP. While material losses are typically compensated during resettlement, the non-material, psycho-social aspects of loss do not get compensated. After resettlement, however, it is the unpaid, uncompensated community work of women that offers opportunities for adjustment into the new communities.

The Offender Rehabilitation Act 2014 extended post-release supervision to individuals serving short prison sentences while introducing an extended array of actors into the resettlement field. This paper aims to explore the barriers that prison practitioners and community probation workers faced in their attempts to provide resettlement support, and how in response to these barriers, these practitioners enacted particular responsibilisation strategies.

This empirical research features the perspectives of 19 prison, probation and third-sector actors within a case-study area in England. Qualitative interviews were carried out, alongside observations and field notes of daily practice.

Findings indicate that despite the promise of additional support, practitioners face significant barriers inhibiting their ability to provide effective resettlement assistance. The three specific barriers identified are institutional, temporal and political-economic. In response, practitioners enacted particular responsibilisation strategies, shifting blame vertically down to service users and horizontally towards the other actors involved in managing these individuals.

This article concludes with a brief overview of the latest iteration of resettlement practice, before exploring how a desistance-focused approach by practitioners may improve resettlement outcomes.

These findings help to expand our understanding of the responsibilisation literature, particularly how responsibilisation operates at a practitioner level, and how barriers become refracted and reframed into responsibilisation strategies. This article also draws on the “mass supervision” literature to demonstrate how the introduction of multiple agencies obfuscates individual responsibility for resettlement and large caseloads erode supervisory practice.

Resettlement programmes provide support for young offenders during their custodial sentence and for approximately nine months after release. This article describes how the costs and benefits of providing an effective service of this kind were estimated based on the ‘RESET’ programme, published evidence on the costs of crime and the likely reduction in offending due to an intensive support programme. The cost of crime has been estimated at £46,459 per year (after allowing for a reduction due to the time spent in custody), plus prison custody at an average of £30,475 and emergency accommodation at an average of £1,106, making a total of £78,040 for each offender. Using a fairly modest assumption that good support in resettlement could lead to approximately a 35% reduction in frequency and a 10% reduction in seriousness of offending, a saving of £20,407 per offender per year could be achieved. These savings would more than offset the average cost of a good quality resettlement service of £8,074. The scheme would break even if the frequency of offending were reduced by only 20%.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a practical framework for community participation in post-disaster resettlement.

The proposed framework has been tested in two model villages (MVs) of Punjab, Pakistan. Primary data were collected through household surveys, focus group discussions and expert interviews. A survey with 67 households was conducted for obtaining qualitative data regarding community participation in post-disaster resettlement.

The first MV (Ittehad MV) was resettled by the local NGO, and the second (Basti Meera Mullan) by the provincial government. Results indicate that community participation significantly varied in selected MVs. NGOs have achieved positive realizations due to effective community involvement in resettlement efforts, whereas the governmental approach lacked in proactive community participation.

This framework can be used for other disasters, by refining and incorporating disaster relevant components. This research will be highly useful for disaster managers, private developers and NGOs engaged in resettling disaster-affected population.

The proposed framework can help disaster-affected communities to resettle according to their terms. This can only be attained if affected communities will proactively participate in resettlement planning process.

This original framework is exclusively designed to attain sustainability for post-disaster settlement through community participation.

This paper aims to contribute to the scientific and societal debates about the role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and particularly on the resettlements’ processes as part of extractive multinational companies (MNCs)’s commitments where the host country is an emerging extractive economy.

It is an exploratory study based on the analysis of secondary data, few interviews and on-site observation and deals with the description of the assessment of VALE, SA resettlement processes and assumed CSR practices of VALE, SA, an MNC operating in the Moatize district, Tete province in Mozambique.

The MNC assumes resettlement processes to be part of the CSR arena and reveals that VALE, SA follows a reactive poor approach as to CSR. The weak institutional context in Mozambique is like others described in the literature. The empirical data together with the sense of an ethical responsibility approach associated with resettlement processes and the paradigm shift in aid for trade as to development supported by the MNC’s CSR leads to the conclusion that resettlement can be considered part of the CSR of a mining MNC.

The difficult access to key informants of the resettled communities, local government and little interest in interview participation by VALE, SA, showed a current lack of confidence and communication limitations by the company as to this issue.

The failure of VALE, SA and other mining companies to meet their resettlement responsibilities and the inability of government supervision, requires local and national, as well as social and scientific communication processes and debate on this issue to be maintained on an ongoing basis during the mining life cycle to guaranty accomplishments of CSR.

The controversy over whether mining MNCs will benefit Africa’s emerging economies as to their socio-economic development will continue until MNCs commit themselves and act to be economically, legally and ethically responsible for contributing to the sustainable development of the countries where they operate.

This paper contributes to the debate on whether CSR frames the resettlement process based on literature review and key stakeholder views.

This paper aims to conduct a qualitative needs assessment to explore the effectiveness of Houston’s refugee resettlement efforts in the areas of employment, health care and education.

Using referral sampling, the authors identified refugee community leaders and staff members at the five refugee resettlement agencies in Houston. The authors conducted 29 qualitative interviews with these contacts from February–August 2017.

Recently resettled refugees may struggle to find and maintain employment in Houston due to difficulty accessing public transportation. Refugees seeking medical care in Houston often have difficulty navigating the complexities of the health-care system and communicating with their physicians due to language barriers. Finally, refugee children may have trouble adapting to Houston public schools, sometimes because they have limited experience with formal education. This study provided insights into the challenges Houston refugees face during resettlement and these barriers can be mitigated with policies designed specifically to address them.

The authors recommend decreasing public transportation fees for refugees, supporting programs that donate used vehicles to refugees, expanding access to English as a Second Language classes for refugee children and adults and giving refugees designated time to learn English upon arrival.

Houston welcomes more resettled refugees than any other American city. However, few studies have explored the barriers refugees face during the resettlement process.

The land resettlement programme in Zimbabwe was undertaken not just as a land redistribution exercise but as a carefully planned and managed development programme. Despite the problems of adjusting government institutions to independence, an organisational framework was successfully established to plan and implement resettlement. This owed much to the fact that implementing resettlement was consistent with each institution′s objectives. On the other hand, the early economic success of the programme has become increasingly jeopardised as the institutions′ requirement for programme operation has not been matched by that for planning and implementation. An understanding of the organisational objectives of individual institutions can go some way to explain this. The experience of resettlement in Zimbabwe may not be unique and the experience will add to the increased emphasis being given in agricultural development to the establishment of appropriate farmer‐oriented institutions at the local level.

While the top-down approach to design and implement post-disaster resettlement programmes are often influenced by spatial factors such as land availability and access to infrastructure facilities, failure to recognise socio-economic and cultural sensitivities of resettling communities have been noted as a common reason for unsuccessful resettlement programmes. Since these socio-economic and political issues are not mutually exclusive from spatial factors, the aim of this research is to develop a framework to assist the design and implementation of better post-disaster resettlement programmes through better coordination between spatial and socio-economic/cultural factors.

An initial theoretical framework was developed through a comprehensive literature review followed by a validation through a case study approach.

During the theoretical framework development, the differentiating priorities of policy maker's viewpoint and resettling community's viewpoints have been established as key theoretical constructs, within the emergency, transitional, and potential development phases of post-disaster resettlement programmes. Further, spatial analysis has been identified as an effective technique that can be used to investigate the interdependencies between the spatial, socio-economic and cultural factors within the post-disaster resettlement programmes. The case study findings confirmed that spatial analysis indeed can be used effectively to evaluate the above mentioned interdependencies within the context of post-debris flow event disaster resettlement programmes.

It is expected that the developed framework can be used by authorities and policy makers who are designing and implementing resettlement programmes to evaluate how the spatial design of the programme can be used to minimise socio-economic and cultural issues of settling communities.