Informed by a comprehensive review of theories and research into desistance (Weaver, 2015), this article advances a critical and contemporary overview of the main theories of desistance, drawing on illustrative empirical research. It begins by addressing definitional issues, prior to showing how various theories of desistance differently explain the phenomena of giving up crime. The article concludes by engaging with its limitations and its relatively muted impact on policy and practice. It is argued that desistance research, and its interpretation in both policy and practice, remains very individualistic in focus, and often disconnected from specific analyses of the cultural and structural contexts in which both offending and desistance take place. In considering how this review might inform future research, the article suggests that the desistance paradigm might be enhanced by attending to contemporary critiques of its limitations. In particular, this would suggest the application of intersectional methods and analyses, analyses of divergences in desistance pathways by crime type, enhanced critical and contextualizing analyses of cultural and structural influences on desistance, and, beyond individual desistance, a focus on the challenges of social integration for people with convictions, to better inform and shape penal policy and practice.

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Desistance from offending is generally conceptualized as a process involving an interplay between ‘objective’, or external factors, and ‘subjective’, or internal factors, with different theoretical and empirical accounts of desistance prioritizing either the role of social contexts or agency in the process. Drawing on both the life stories of a naturally forming group of men, now in their 40s, who once offended together, but whose lives have since diverged and Pierpaolo Donati's relational theory of reflexivity, this study foregrounds a re‐conceptualization of the desistance process as inescapably relational. Emphasizing the importance of the relational context of desistance necessarily has implications for social and penal policy and practice responses, and this article thus proceeds to explore the extent to which extant policies variously facilitate or hinder processes of change and make relevant social supports. In so doing, this article considers how social and penal policy might become more orientated to generating, developing and sustaining the kinds of social capital and reflexive, relational networks relevant to desistance.

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