The Adolescence–Adulthood Transition and Desistance from Crime: Examining the Underlying Structure of Desistance

Describing and explaining desistance in special categories of juvenile offenders, such as chronic, serious, violent, and sexual offenders, represents a challenge for researchers and practitioners alike. In fact, there is little agreement as to how to best define and measure desistance from crime. In the current study, four conceptualizations of desistance are examined with a sample of 349 incarcerated juvenile offenders. Based on longitudinal data measured from age 12 to 23, desistance was examined through four modeling strategies. 

Results highlighted inconsistencies in classifying offenders as desisters/persisters across the modeling strategies used. Of importance, following the transition into adulthood, evidence suggests that most of these individuals were not on a life-course pattern of serious, violent, and sexual offending but rather at different stages of desistance. Based on the study findings, a unified model of desistance is proposed to describe and explain desistance from crime among juvenile offenders.

Below:  Offending trajectories of adjudicated youth from 12 to 23 years old

Full article at:  http://goo.gl/57fVHa

By:  

Patrick Lussier 

, Evan McCuish

, Raymond R. Corrado

 

More at:  https://twitter.com/hiv_insight

And: http://twitter.com/Prison_Health