| Description |
Desistance scholars argue that identity transformation is a central component of the processes through which offenders terminate a criminal career. Offenders' ability to craft a credible self-narrative that is incompatible with offending is essential to maintaining desistance in the stressed social context within which many offenders reside after release from prison. In recent decades, community correctional programs have been largely oriented around risk assessment, which may serve to reify the criminal identity and thereby interrupt the development of a nonoffending self-narrative. However, desistance research has largely focused on the impact of normative life events, rather than formal justice interventions, on desistance. The current study uses a narrative criminological approach to explore identity formation in a sample of 50 recently paroled male offenders. Using data from semistructured interviews, this study explored the ways parole practice served to enhance or disrupt the development of credible desistance narratives. Results identified three types of desistance narrative typologies: committed, ambivalent, and nondesistance. Participants' experience of parole differed across some domains according to typology, but tended to be similar when looking at the impact of parole on the maintenance of a credible desistance narrative. This study advanced the knowledge of the impact of formal justice interventions on normative desistance processes, with implications for criminal justice policy and practice. |
