To what extent is desistance from crime ultimately an individual rather than a social act?

Abstract

The Criminal Justice System historically has focused on the causation of offending, however, in recent years there has been a shift in research from this focus on why people commit crimes to how and why individuals stop committing crime. Promoting desistance has now become a foundational principle of the Criminal Justice System. This article will focus on the three theories of desistance – individual and agentic; social and structural; and integrated to answer the question of to what extent is desistance a social or individual act. Firstly, this article shall explore what desistance is and highlight the varying nature of definitions surrounding the concept. Following this will be an overview of why and how desistance is hard to measure and the issues that come along with this. This article will then move on to the fundamental explanations of why individuals desist (agency and socio-structural) and the contradicting processes of doing so, comparing and contrasting their strengths and limitations throughout. Finally, the integrated/interactionist approach will be utilised to argue that desistance may not be solely an individual or social act but a mix of both.