Understanding Desistance From Crime: Emerging Theoretical Directions in Resettlement and Rehabilitation (Crime and Justice) - Softcover

• Why do people stop offending?
• What are the processes they undergo in stopping?
• What can be done to help more people who have offended put their pasts behind them?

The growth of interest in why people stop offending and how they are resettled following punishment has been remarkable. Once a marginal topic in criminology, it is now a central topic of research and theorising amongst those studying criminal careers.

This book is both an introduction to research on desistance, and the report on a follow-up of two hundred probationers sentenced to supervision in the late 1990s. The reader is introduced to some of the wider issues and debates surrounding desistance via a consideration of the criminal careers of a group of ex-offenders. This lively engagement with both data and theoretical matters makes the book a useful tool for both academics and students.

The book will appeal to undergraduates, postgraduates and academics studying criminology, criminal justice, sociology, social work, social policy and psychology, as well as trainee probation officers.

Dr. Stephen Farrall is a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Criminology, Education, Sociology and Social Work, Keele University. He previously worked at Centre for Criminological Research, University of Oxford and the Department of Law, University of Sheffield. He is the author of Rethinking What Works With Offenders (2002)and has held grants from the Leverhulme Trust and the ESRC. Adam Calverley is presently a PhD Candiate in the School of Criminology, Education, Sociology and Social Work, Keele University. He has previously been employed at the Universities of Glamorgan and Keele. He is the co-author of Black and Asian Offenders on Probation, Home Office Research Study 277, HMSO (2004).