Desistance for a Long-Term Drug-Involved Sample of Adult Offenders

Abstract

Using a mixed-race sample of male and female drug-involved offenders who were released from prison in the early 1990s and re-interviewed in 2009 through 2011, this article represents perhaps the first attempt to determine the utility of the identity theory of desistance (ITD) in explaining desistance in a contemporary cohort of adult drug-involved offenders. Supporting the ITD, interview narratives revealed that the vast majority of offenders who successfully desisted from crime and substance misuse had first transformed their offender identity into a non-offender identity. Although partnership and employment did not appear to be significant turning points per se for the majority of our respondents, rekindling relationships with extended family and finding living-wage employment did serve to solidify new prosocial identities once the transformation had occurred.

The Effects of Age at Prison Release on Women’s Desistance Trajectories: a Mixed-Method Analysis

“…Some researchers have made inroads into the phenomenon of women's desistance as well as shed some light on the risk factors that begin to explain persistent offending patterns among female samples [9,10,21,32,51,52,118]. For example, Cauffman et al [28] compared self-reported offending trajectories for nearly 200 serious female offenders to a matched sample of male offenders and found that among persisters represented in the dataset, women were more likely to have been exposed to violence, trauma, and unhealthy interpersonal relationships.…”

“…Contemporary studies that do measure the effects of employment on women's self-reported offending and official recidivism are mixed and do not offer much insight into the moderating role of age. While some studies have found that employment status reduces women's offending [22,32,119], other research suggests that having a job in and of itself does not necessarily lead to offending cessation, largely because a host of other criminogenic social and psychological factors has not yet been addressed [9,10,15,99].…”

“…Given that, it is clearly not the structural role of motherhood that inhibits offending behavior, at least not for the crimes for which many mothers are serving sentences. However, as many crimeinvolved adult women were also teenage mothers [29,113], it may be the case that with age and maturity comes a readiness to adopt a prosocial identity, and reclaiming their role as mother may indeed serve to solidify their desired change [9,10,90]. Simultaneously, there are other studies that suggest that for women who acknowledge their motherhood status and wish to elevate its priority in their prosocial lives, being younger and less criminally enmeshed serves to increase the likelihood that motherhood will catalyze these desistance efforts [45,66].…”

“…Few studies highlight the ways in which women's substance abuse desistance efforts are moderated by age. For example, research has previously shown that desistance from substance abuse appears to follow a desire to transform into someone who no longer seeks to maintain the longstanding patterns of poor choices and harmful outcomes [9,10], but those findings were derived from a mixed-gender sample. White et al [124] suggest that for a mixed-race sample of men from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, heavy drinking during emerging adulthood (18-25 years old) is normative and does not lead to a violent offending trajectory, but heavy drinking after early adulthood could signal prolonged violent offending patterns.…”

“…As study findings illustrate offenders' desire to rewrite what was thought to be fate, and instead create a new nonoffender identity [9,10,73], this study explores the applicability of the ITD for a cohort of aging drug-involved female offenders.…”