The Dynamics of Desistance Charting Pathays Through Change [Hardcover]

It is well-established that the majority of youth offenders cease to commit crime in early adulthood, but the mechanisms behind the shift from a criminal to a conventional lifestyle are not fully understood. The Dynamics of Desistanceaims to contribute to this nascent area of inquiry by providing a phenomenological account of the psychosocial processes involved in desistance from crime.

Drawing on a variety of methods, including in-depth interviews with repeat offenders and their probation officers, police records and psychometric scores, this book charts the early stages of a journey taken by individuals who exist in the liminal space betwixt and between crime and convention. A combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis is used to explore the shifts that occur in desisters minds and lives as they make the often turbulent transition to a crime-free life, and the dynamic processes that occur at this psychosocial boundary are described.

The theoretical and practical implications of the findings in this book are explored in relation to key issues in desistance literature, and as such this book provides a key resource for academics and students working with the area of probation, as well as practitioners in involved in probation, social work and parole supervision.

1. Desistance and Reintegration  2. Issues and Challenges  3. Person and Place  4. Thinking, Attitudes and Social Circumstances  5. Multiple Roads to Desistance  6. Into the Crucible  7. A Catalyst for Change?  8. Looking Forward  9. Betwixt and Between

'A de-escalation of offending behaviour illustrates perfectly how desistance is often located between offending and non-offending. But to comprehend how offenders arrive at this ambiguous state may require more than a retrospective study; it may, as Healy herself recognises, be necessary to 'document tls[