Abstract
There is abundant evidence that desistance from crime is a process rather than an event and that it is often linked to specific life events (e.g., marriage, employment) and shifts in cognition and identity (Giordano et al., 2002; Loughran et al., 2017; Maruna, 2001; Sampson & Laub, 1993). The processual nature of desistance acknowledges that fact that individuals don’t immediately quit committing crimes but rather they can slow down, and even have relatively long periods abstaining from crime, before offending again (Laub & Sampson, 2003, p. 54; Bushway et al., 2001). Given this heterogeneity in offending patterns, we seek to determine what processes are responsible for an upturn in offending when an individual seems to be committed to long-term desistance? What are the immediate life circumstances and subjective appraisals that underpin a resurgence in offending? Using a sample of persistent offenders, we aim to shed new light on desistance research by considering how offenders depicted their own cognitive shifts that suggested they were on the road to recovery and the factors that caused them to fail to achieve it.
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27 June 2022
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40865-022-00206-x
Notes
While we make no claim that three prior prison terms is a perfect operationalization (or that a perfect operationalization exists), we think it has face validity and conforms nicely to our theoretical conceptualization of persistent offending as being currently incarcerated ten years beyond the typical age when offending peaks with a criminal record long enough to demonstrate at the very least that our sample is not adolescent-limited in offending and suggests a more chronic, life-course persistent trajectory (Nagin, Farrington, & Moffitt, 1995).
Ethical approval for this study was granted by the Office of Research Ethics in the Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation at the University of Toronto. Approval was granted on August 22, 2014 (protocol reference # 30,338).
We assume that this information is valid and concur with LeBel and his colleagues (2008, p. 143, footnote #3) that “individuals are arguably the best authority on whether they have a stable relationship, a good job, and so forth.”.
Research has also shown that the deterring effects of marriage are strongest when men marry at a relatively younger age, potentially because older individuals with histories of criminal offending can get “set in their criminal ways” and may be less amenable to the influences of partners (Theobald & Farrington, 2011, p. 151).
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Kang, T., Kruttschnitt, C. Can Persistent Offenders Help Us Understand Desistance from Crime?. J Dev Life Course Criminology 8, 365–392 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40865-022-00205-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40865-022-00205-y