Theory and Research on Desistance from Antisocial Activity among Serious Adolescent Offenders

Abstract

Improving juvenile court decision making requires information about how serious adolescent offenders desist from antisocial activity. A systematic research agenda on this topic requires consideration of several processes, including normative development in late adolescence, what constitutes desistance, and the factors likely to promote the end of involvement in antisocial behavior and successful adjustment in early adulthood. This article presents an overview of the major points to consider in pursuing this research agenda. Keywordsdesistance from crime; juvenile delinquency careers; stopping antisocial behaviorWe have always expected a great deal from the juvenile justice system. On one hand, the system is charged with keeping communities safe, using theories and approaches-such as deterrence or incapacitation-that are common to the criminal justice system. In recent years, juvenile courts have the added responsibility to ensure that its responses are proportional, making sure NIH Public Access

Invited Address: James Joyce, Alice in Wonderland, the Rolling Stones, and Criminal Careers

“…For example, many longitudinal data sets do not have offending information from both official and selfreport sources, thus critical questions remain about the concordance of these measures of offending across the various criminal career dimensions (Blumstein et al 2010;Thornberry and Krohn 2003;Lynam et al 2004). Additionally, because serious and violent offending is not common in general population surveys, efforts to collect data on serious offenders and track them for long periods of time will be especially relevant, as they are the sample for whom issues related to persistence/desistance is most critical (Mulvey et al 2004;Laub and Sampson 2001). Another important issue concerns street time, or the amount of time offenders are free and able to offend.…”

The Adolescence–Adulthood Transition and Desistance from Crime: Examining the Underlying Structure of Desistance

“…The adult roles, in contrast, involve structured and prosocial expectations that work, intimate relationships, family, and community roles may bring. Once these new adult roles are established, they become valued and are, therefore, protected and guarded [61]. As with the above hypotheses, there is research that challenges any simple correspondence between the young adulthood stage and the access to prosocial turning points.…”

“…This replication is significant in another way given that the Bushway et al [9] study did not include one of the most commonly referred conceptualization of desistance used in the juvenile/adult justice system, that is, desistance in probabilistic terms. Further, research on desistance has been focused on community-based samples of youth and too rarely on youth in the deep end of the juvenile justice system [61]. Given that findings from communitybased samples may not be generalizable to this subgroup of youth (e.g., [10,11]), the current study focuses on incarcerated youth perceived by the juvenile justice system to be on a life-course persistent offending trajectory.…”

“…The simplicity of the operationalization of desistance is counterbalanced by significant issues related to the subjective nature of the length of the non-offending state. Of course, the solution is to follow individuals until death, but this is seldom feasible (Mulvey et al 2004). Still, Kazemian [37] argued that desistance from crime unlikely occurs abruptly and that the sole emphasis on termination of offending may overlook important and valuable information on the criminal careers of offenders, particularly chronic offenders.…”

“…Every time an offender comes into contact with the criminal justice system, their level of service in terms of risk factors and intervention needs increase. Mulvey et al [61] very early identified this fundamental limitation when they asserted that previous longitudinal studies have provided little theoretical understanding and policy concerning offenders in the "deep end" of the juvenile criminal justice system. While research on more serious subgroups of juvenile offenders, especially for chronic offenders (e.g., [49]), has dramatically increased in the past two decades with regard to desistance, other subgroups such as violent youth (e.g., [12,81]) and juvenile sex offenders (e.g., [58,55,53,56]) remain under-researched.…”