DESISTANCE FROM CRIME: FACTORS AND TRAJECTORIES Chair: José Cid Chair: José Cid

0143 - LEGAL SOCIALISATION’S INFLUENCE ON PATTERNS OF CRIMINAL BEHAVIOUR OVER 34 YEARS IN THE BRITISH COHORT STUDY (1970) - FURTHERING THE DESISTANCE TRAJECTORIES DEBATE.

Annabel Mullin (United Kingdom)¹ 1 - UCL Institute of Education

Desistance to crime, the idea that people cease committing crime, is a field in relative infancy, particularly female desistance. Current debates address critical conceptual components, temporal and methodological considerations. Desistance is increasingly discussed as a process, comprising emergence, development and cessation rather than a specific event. This is aided by the move towards life course approaches and the use of trajectory methodology (Bushway, Piquero et al. 2001). Focus is often divisive either on structure, biopsychosocial factors, versus agency in criminal action. Both are concerned with understanding and predicting criminality, the former describes “longitudinal socialization processes” (Maruna 1999) leading to criminal disposition whilst the latter is more concerned with action around the criminal event. The interaction between the two approaches is increasingly of interest. In this paper a dual approach is taken, designed at pinpointing the current debate whilst detecting different conceptualisations based on data from the British Cohort study 1970 (BCS70). This paper identifies patterns of criminal behaviour and key determinants of the different criminal trajectories, based on adolescent legal attitudes (legal socialisation) - cynicism and views of a person towards the law and it's agents. For 12,891 cohort members, complete self-reported (at 16, 30 and 34) criminal justice convictions are examined under the umbrella categories of

‘Never’ (n.9,717), ‘Early Onset Limited’ (427), ‘Desist - Early Onset and Late Onset’ (n.2,307),

‘Late Bloomer’ (n.239) and ‘Persistent’ (n.201). Elucidation provides more understanding of socialisation’s influence on criminal behaviour, particularly in regard to the gendered nature of desistance, and reconsiders the dominance of the dual taxonomy, Moffitt's (2006)

‘hypothetical prototypes’ of antisocial individuals.

121 0144 - LONG-TERM PREDICTORS OF CRIME DESISTANCE IN JUVENILE DELINQUENTS: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW OF LONGITUDINAL STUDIES

Miguel Basto-Pereira (Portugal)¹; Rita Começanha (Portugal)¹; Sofia Ribeiro (Portugal)¹; Ângela Maia (Portugal)¹

1 - CIPsi, School of Psychology, University of Minho - Portugal

Background: Criminal and anti-social behaviours are mainly perpetrated by adults with a history of juvenile delinquency. In order to prevent recidivism, it is urgent to understand the factors that contribute to young offenders leaving their criminals careers. Objectives: The aim of this study was to conduct a systematic review of predictors during childhood and adolescence related to crime desistance in males or females with a history of juvenile delinquency. Methods: The systematic review were conducted following the PRISMA guidelines. Web of Science, Pubmed, Scopus and PsycArticles were searched by three independent reviewers from their start until December 2014. Longitudinal studies, with independent analysis for males and females, written in Portuguese, English, Spanish or French, evaluating the predictors of desistance from crime during childhood and/or youth with follow-up during the adulthood, were included. Studies that only followed participants until 17 years old or less, with less of five years of follow-up, with specific criminal or psychiatric characteristics or without an evaluation of psychological or social factors were excluded.

Results: Of 1930 articles screened, 367 studies were retained and 67 articles were selected for full-text reading, of which 15 were considered eligible for inclusion. Twenty three predictors were evaluated in more than one study in men and/or women, but consistent significant predictors of desistance from crime between studies were not found. Inconsistencies between studies were detected in all 14 predictors, and 12 predictors were consistently not predictive.

Conclusions: Strong differences between studies were found in the predictors of desistance from crime. The lack of consistency between studies could be related to the absence of controlling for social marginalization predictors in adulthood and the use of different methodologies. Future research should focus on consensus using gold standard measures and research designs.

0145 - LEAVING CRIME AND THE MAINSTREAM NOTIONS OF DESISTANCE-PERSISTENCE BEHIND

Catalina Droppelmann (Chile)¹

1 - Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge

The study of the transition from crime to conformity in the field of criminology has been limited by three main issues: firstly, the belief that desistance from crime is only about stop committing crimes; secondly, the idea that desistance is an overnight change that implies a clean cut with criminal activity; and thirdly, the notion that persisters and desisters are completely opposed, the formers being anti-social in all spheres of life.

Using mixed methods and a new and rich dataset from the first longitudinal study ever done in Chile, which includes a panel of 341 young offenders, this article challenges the traditional ways to study desistance from crime, opening the way to new perspectives based on cultural and gender particularities.

The data evidences that focusing only on crime free gaps, without considering changes in seriousness and frequency of crime, hides core aspects of the process of crime abandonment.

Indeed, 40% of the individuals who persisted on crime at the second wave decreased the seriousness of their offenses and 50% of them committed crimes less frequently than in the first wave. Although these downwards trends sometimes do not occur as a consequence of a definite decision to stop, they are not just a mere indication of desistance. For several individuals, these types of changes are the furthest they can go in terms of crime abandonment. Some individuals will never be capable of completely leaving all sorts of anti-social behaviour behind. Occasional thefts for need, fights for self-defence, recreational drug use and vandalism, as an expression of social discontent, will most probably be part of a way of life that is almost impossible to surrender, specially considering the structural restrictions from a society that has not much to offer in terms of welfare, employment, opportunities and social mobility.

Moreover, it is argued, that desistance and persistence categories are far from absolute. 37%

of the interviewees changed categories from the first to the second wave, following a zig-zag pattern rather than a linear path. This is explained by the fact the interviewees showed important inconsistencies between their behaviour and their internal dispositions towards conformity. Indeed, a quarter of the desisters were ambivalent regarding their decision to stop committing crimes; half of the persisters wanted to abandon crime and were sure of their capacity to do it, but they didn’t; and half of the persisters had conformist identities, values and aspirations that did not prevent them from continuing offending.

These different matters are discussed through an analysis of consumerism and masculinities as key transversal issues on the desistance process, both as factors that pull them away from crime and push them back towards it.

0146 - DESISTANCE IN THE TRANSITION TO ADULTHOOD: A TYPOLOGY OF YOUNG OFFENDERS IN THE WAY TOWARDS DESISTANCE.

José Cid (Spain)¹; Eugenia Albani (Spain)¹; Aina Ibàñez (Spain)¹; Joel Martí (Spain)¹ 1 - Universitat Autònoma Barcelona

The presentation will be based on a longitudinal prospective study of a sample of 108 young offenders that at the moment of the selection of the sample, were under the jurisdiction of the Catalan juvenile system, serving a sentence of probation or detention in a young offender

123 network and narrative interview). Apart demographic data is obtained from the Catalan Juvenile Criminal System and data on arrest is obtained from the police department. The hypothesis of the research is that the process of desistance should be couple with a transformation of the personal network of the young person, in two main aspects: its conventionality -the relevance of law-abiding persons in the network- and the degree in which the network provides emotional and instrumental support to the person. The research wants also to know what the reasons for the change are, considering four main theories: natural desistance (increasing maturity in the transition to adult life); learning theory (new skills and cognitions learned during the supervision by the juvenile criminal system); social support and social control theories (new conventional bonds and support acquired in the transition to adulthood) and cumulative disadvantage theory (structural disadvantage and stigmatization from the criminal justice system as a factor that makes change more difficult).

The main aim of this presentation is to show that there are different profiles in our sample that may be useful for understanding the desistance and persistence of these young offenders.

Four profiles have been identified: the first, more coherent with the theory of natural desistance, includes young persons with the less structural disadvantage, a more conventional network and low bond with parents. The second one, more coherent with the cumulative disadvantage theory, contains young persons with high structural disadvantage and a network of low conventionality, both in peers and in family. In this profile we observe less desistance.

The third profile integrates young offenders with a peer network of low conventionality but parents with high conventionality. Finally, the fourth profile shows a personal network of a very low density and low level of bonds and support. This final profile with low rate of desistance seems also in agreement with social control and social support theories.

Apart from introducing the typology, the presentation will be completed with a qualitative analysis of cases of desistance and persistence in the fourth profiles. This analysis will be based on the semi-structured interviews done to (N=73) of the young offender in the sample in the second wave. The aim of this analysis is to explore the factors and mechanisms of desistance and persistence within the same profile.

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