Change begins with a crisis: Desistance among drug-involved offenders

摘要: In order to best explain criminality, researchers need to be able to explain the full criminal career. This entails explaining onset, duration and patterning, and termination. The latter, termination, is the study of the process of desistance, which has received less attention than other aspects of the criminal career. However, because most individuals start on the side of conformity, and will eventually return, the study of desistance is much-warranted. The purpose of this study was to examine desistance among a specific sub-set of the offending population, drug-involved offenders. Drug-involved offenders have a high likelihood of developing long criminal careers and the prevalence of drugs and alcohol in the criminal justice system is one of the most pressing criminal justice issues.