The convert, the remorseful and the rescued: Three different processes of desistance from crime

Abstract

One of the key issues in research on criminal desistance is the impossibility of stating with any degree of certainty that an offender's criminal career is in fact over. When no clear demarcation line can be established for the precise moment when criminal activity has ended, researchers instead distinguish between the cessation of criminal behaviour and the process of desistance. A second issue lies in the contradictions inherent in explanatory theories on desistance that focus either on agents or, conversely, on the structures that provoke and support the process of change. An integrative theoretical framework on criminal desistance, influenced by the work of Margaret Archer (1995, 2000, 2002) and showing the interplay between structures and agents, can be found elsewhere (F.-Dufour, Brassard, and Martel, forthcoming). The application of this framework to empirical data collected from 29 Canadian offenders serving conditional sentences reveals the existence of three distinct processes leading to desistance among those we metaphorically call the transformed, the remorseful and the rescued.

Turning points or dead ends? Identity, desistance and the experience of imprisonment

“…There were distinct 'processes' of desistance for those who saw their index offence as the result of wider criminality, and those who did not (cf. F. -Dufour and Brassard 2014).…”

“…While studies of imprisonment have not tended to be designed within the desistance paradigm, some desistance scholars have written on aspects of imprisonment (Burnett 2006;Burnett and Maruna 2004;Maruna, LeBel, and Lanier 2004;McNeill and Schinkel 2016;Schinkel 2014Schinkel , 2015, and others have examined how offenders reckon with imposed stigma (e.g. Digard 2010; F. -Dufour and Brassard 2014;Hulley 2016;Waldram 2007). It follows that a focus on secondary desistance might help to understand the development of identity during imprisonment.…”

Only One Way To Swim? The Offence And The Life Course In Accounts Of Adaptation To Life Imprisonment

“…Here again, the sentence is a life-changing injury: it inflicts a socially-determined disability whose affective and practical burden must nevertheless be borne by individuals possessing different resources and capabilities. Existing research offers some evidence that different kinds of shame arising from different kinds of offence can result in different management strategies: such issues structure the prison experience of men convicted of sexual offences (Ievins 2017), and mark out different 'desistance pathways' for those convicted of differently-stigmatised offences (F. -Dufour and Brassard 2014).…”

Le désistement assisté ? Les interventions des agents de probation telles que perçues par des sursitaires qui se sont désistés du crime1

“…En résumé, les théories « intégratives » qui mettent de 6. Pour plus de détails sur ces explications théoriques rivales, voir F. -Dufour et Brassard (2014) ; F. -Dufour, Brassard et Martel (2015). l'avant le rôle précurseur de l'acteur dans son processus de désistement ont de la difficulté à expliquer ce qui motive ce dernier à s'ouvrir soudainement au changement.…”

“…Lorsque l'on tient compte de divers facteurs structurels (position sociale involontaire, coûts des opportunités, accès aux ressources, nature du réseau social) et de divers facteurs agentiels (identité personnelle, identités sociales, projets de vie, valeurs constitutives), on observe plutôt trois processus pouvant conduire au désistement du crime. Comme ils ont été expliqués ailleurs (voir F.-Dufour, 2013 ;F.-Dufour et Brassard, 2014 ;F.-Dufour et al, 2015), seules les principales caractéristiques sont reprises ici afin de permettre au lecteur d'apprécier les perceptions respectives des trois types de désisteurs exprimées dans cet article.…”