Identity and Desistance from Crime

Abstract

There is a contentious debate within criminology about the causes of desistance from crime. Some theories, such as Sampson and Laub’s age-graded informal social control theory assert that desistance is due to the influences of structural factors such as placement in good jobs or finding good marriage partners. In large measure, those who find these kinds of conventional turning points are simply the victims of good luck since many desist by “default.” Other theories of desistance, such as Giordano et al.’s (American Journal of Sociology 107:990–164, 2002) and Maruna’s (Making good: how ex-convicts reform and build their lives, American Psychological Association Books, 2001) appeal to the role of cognitive processes in quitting crime and the importance of human agency in the deliberate decision of former offenders to stop. Among this latter type of theory is Paternoster and Bushway’s (2009) rational choice-based identity theory of desistance. This theory asserts that most offenders reach a point where the utility of offending is perceived to be offset by the costs, both immediate and those projected into the future. Part of this process is that the offender begins to think that his current, working identity of a criminal offender is no longer desired and begins to think of a future self that is free from crime. This future self consists of both a feared self that the offender does not want to become and a possible self that they now aspire to and are motivated to become. In the Paternoster–Bushway identity theory, then, desistance from crime is anchored in intentional self-change. This chapter describes the identity theory of desistance and how it differs from both structural and other cognitive theories of criminal desistance. It also makes an argument as to why identity and cognitive changes within the current criminal offender must precede the arrival of structural supports for change, like marriages and jobs.