Women's desistance from crime: A review of theory and the role higher education can play

Abstract

The emergent field of desistance research originated among scholars who were interested in the persistence or termination of crime among young men. From a focus on the structured effects of age-graded events such as employment and

The Role of Personal Resilience and Interpersonal Support in Building Fulfilling and Prosocial Lives: Examining the Good Lives Model among Young Women Four Years after Youth Detention

“…Finally, contrary to Hypothesis 3, the relationship between young women’s personal resilience and QoL/offending after discharge did not depend upon the level of interpersonal support (and vice versa). These findings do not confirm the idea of an interplay between both internal and external resources in building fulfilling and prosocial lives, as suggested in prior work (Bradshaw & Hazan, 2006; Brown & Bloom, 2018; Rodermond et al, 2016; Viljoen et al, 2011). However, the lack of significant moderator effects does not exclude the existence of possible mediator effects between personal resilience, interpersonal support, QoL, and offending.…”

“…Feminist theories add insights into gendered risk factors as well as the gendered interaction or cumulative effects which contribute to the development of antisocial behavior. Overall, female pathways are characterized by two key gendered themes of relational issues and victimization (e.g., Brown & Bloom, 2018; Chesney-Lind & Pasko, 2004; Nuytiens & Christiaens, 2016). For example, research has found females often grow up in abusive households and experience early trauma exposure, ran away from home, engage in drugs, prostitution, or theft to survive and experience internalizing problems (e.g., stress, depression), substance abuse, and retaliative violence (Brennan et al, 2010; Brown & Bloom, 2018; Daly, 1992; Schwartz & Steffensmeier, 2017).…”

“…Although these theories allow us to gain some insight into traditional and gendered developmental experiences, as well as internal/external obstacles/resources that are relevant in explaining the development of antisocial behavior among females, they provide very limited insight into the function of the behaviors. The female pathways literature tends to focus on the role of traditional (e.g., poor upbringing) as well as gendered (e.g., trauma exposure and relational issues) risk and protective factors in explaining the development of female (re)offending over time (Brown & Bloom, 2018; Gehring, 2018; Schwartz & Steffensmeier, 2017). These studies do include references to underlying functions of females’ (re)offending, however, without using a holistic, theoretical framework that explicitly starts from a functional perspective.…”

“…Specifically, we aimed to examine whether the relationship between young women’s personal resilience and QoL/offending after discharge depended upon the level of interpersonal support (and vice versa; Hypothesis 3). This hypothesis was based on prior female pathways literature indicating that women’s desistance and successful reintegration was promoted by a complex interplay of both individual (e.g., agency, personal resilience) and social factors (e.g., employment, interpersonal support; Bernard, 2015; Brown & Bloom, 2018; Rodermond et al, 2016; Viljoen et al, 2011). Overall, these studies propose the existence of moderator effects between individual and social factors, while the existence of mediator effects is less frequently/explicitly suggested (Rumgay, 2004).…”

Understanding wildlife crime in China: Socio-demographic profiling and motivation of offenders

“…Nevertheless, we clearly detected that age, sex, education and occupation were robust predictors of the propensity to offend against wildlife in China. This corroborates studies profiling crime in general, both in Eastern and Western societies [ 24 , 48 , 49 ], although while wildlife offenders, especially those committing serious crimes, followed a typical socio-demographic criminal profile [ 22 , 50 ], we identified significant biases relating to taxa involved, type of illegal activity, and offender motivation.…”