Desistance is a growing field and is fast becoming a clearly demarcated area of research with its own paradigms of inquiry. The Dynamics of Desistance provides a key resource for: academics working in the field of desistance research; post-graduate and other students completing studies in the areas of probation, resettlement, desistance, criminal careers, or decision making in the criminal justice system; policymakers and other personnel working in the field of criminal justice; practitioners involved in probation, social work and parole supervision.




Contents

Preface
1 Desistance and reintegration
Crime across the life course
Different shades of grey
Understanding desistance
Rehabilitation and reintegration
2 Issues and challenges
Agency, cognition and identity: the psychology of desistance
Social bonds, society and culture: the contexts of change
Opening the 'black box'
Liminality and change: offenders on the threshold
3 Person and place
Setting the scene
Exploring psychosicial pathways
Profiling offenders in transition
4 Thinking, attitudes and social circumstances
Defining desistance
Secondary desistance: a psychometric analysis
Primary desistance: a psychometric analysis
A psychosocial model
5 Multiple roads to desistance
Becoming 'normal'
Curved pathways
Going round in circles
6 Into the crucible
Shame, redemption and the past
Creating a new self
Barriers, coping and social support
7 A catalyst for change?
Advising, assisting and befriending
Support or surveillance?
Experiences of probation
Facilitators and constraints
8 Looking forward
Desistance: a long-term perspective
Nature and extent of re-offending
Who desists?
9 Betwixt and between
Turning points, transitions and transformations
Ever-decreasing circles
Re-constructing reality: the role of personal myths
Desistance in practice: a new agenda?
Appendix 1
References
Index