Desistance for a Long-Term Drug-Involved Sample of Adult Offenders: The Importance of Identity Transformation

• NCJ Number: 249634
• Date Published: February 2016
• Length: 23 pages
• Author(s): R. Bachman, E. Kerrison, R. Paternoster, D. O'Connell, L. Smith
• Agencies: NIJ-Sponsored
• Award: ROADS DIVERGE: LONG-TERM PATTERNS OF RELAPSE, RECIDIVISM AND DESISTANCE FOR A RE-ENTRY COHORT

Annotation

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 study 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.

Abstract

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 respondents, rekindling relationships with extended family and finding living-wage employment did serve to solidify new prosocial identities once the transformation had occurred. (Publisher abstract modified)