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Sz-yu Lai, Central Police University, TaiwanAbstract
Considering inconsistent findings in existing research on crime desistence, this study aims to explore the process of individual desistance from crime. It seeks to identify key factors, their interrelationships, and their sequence of occurrence, as well as to explain the reasons for differing research outcomes. Adopting a qualitative research method, the study involved four participants, all of whom had past criminal records but had not committed any crimes in the five years prior to the interviews. Two participants were drawn from the longitudinal study by Shue et al. (1999) on early prediction of juvenile delinquency, while the other two were cohorts of the longitudinal study group. Through in-depth interviews, the following findings were made: (1) When individuals experience negative life events and associate them with their criminal behavior, these adverse outcomes are perceived as the cost of crime, leading to the development of an intention of desistence from crime. (2) The intention of desistence is a critical factor in successfully stopping criminal behavior, and individuals with varying levels of intentions exhibit different desisting processes. (3) Individuals with strong cessation intentions, often triggered by significant negative life events, display powerful agency and actively take concrete actions to sever criminal behavior. Those with weaker intentions undergo gradual changes in their circumstances, identity, and behavior through the interplay of external and internal factors, progressively reducing the frequency and severity of crimes until cessation is achieved.
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Conference: ACSS2025Stream: Politics
This paper is part of the ACSS2025 Conference Proceedings (View)
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To cite this article:
Lai S. (2025) The Ladder of Will: How Desistance Intention Shapes the Course of Crime ISSN: 2186-2303 – The Asian Conference on the Social Sciences 2025: Official Conference Proceedings (pp. 401-412) https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2186-2303.2025.33
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.22492/issn.2186-2303.2025.33
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