Offender rehabilitation from a maturation/biosocial perspective

Abstract

This chapter presents the elements of a biosocial maturation perspective of desistance, and demonstrates how it can inform offender rehabilitation. It discusses the brain areas by discussing a perspective on crime over the life-course from a biosocial view, focusing on the reduction of offending in emerging and full adulthood. Research in criminology and criminal justice has increasingly begun to focus on the “brute fact” that nearly all offenders eventually stop committing crimes. Civic maturation is the idea that part of reaching adulthood is the attendant feeling that it is important to “give back” and to be a fully contributing member of society. Cognitive transformation or identity maturation draws from the work of R. Paternoster and S. Bush-way, P. C. Giordano and colleagues, and S. Maruna. The state of knowledge on changes in the brain structure through adolescence and childhood is somewhat nascent, and research has uncovered many possibilities, making it difficult to know which makes greater contribution to behavioral reform.