The role of historically-embedded structures in processes of criminal reform

Abstract

The body of literature on why people stop offending has advanced tremendously in the past decade. Previously, when the topic was mentioned (if at all), it was an aside to the main focus of study. This situation has now changed dramatically; there are now a number of studies which have treated desistance either as a major part of the investigation or as a core or chief focal point, and debates about how best to understand the processes of desistance and to foster these are now in full swing. This essay will attempt to move the debate on yet further. Most studies of desistance have been undertaken using data derived from or about subjects who lived all or most of their lives in the latter half of the 20th century. The study of desistance is therefore largely the study of desistance in the contemporary age. This temporal bias is due, in part, to the growth of social scientific research in North America and Europe after the 1950s. In this essay we contend that studying previous societal forms and processes can tell us something about how those processes associated with desistance operate, and that studying society over the long durée can tell us something about how and why present-day social formations produce the outcomes they do with regards to desistance from crime.