Desistance and persistence operationalization: capturing the process of moving away

In the previous chapter, I have discussed how some current definitions of desistance in the field of criminology have been limited by three main issues: firstly, the belief that desistance is an overnight change; secondly, the idea that desistance necessarily implies a clean cut with criminal activity; and thirdly, the notion that a radical internal transformation towards conformity is a sine qua non condition for desisting from crime.

Through discussion of these issues, I have prepared the way to formulate a more nuanced operationalisation of desistance that includes both a behavioural dimension (changes in criminal behaviour) and an internal dimension (changes in identity and values). Accordingly, during the transition from crime to conformity, individuals can decrease their criminal behaviour by reducing the frequency of their crimes, by committing less serious offences, and by narrowing the repertoires of the offence types that they commit.

Nevertheless, the above implied a significant challenge when operationalizing desistance for the present research and unfortunately it was not possible to use a consistent and single measure of desistance throughout the different analyses conducted in the present study. Firstly, regarding the behavioural and internal dimensions of desistance, I constructed different operationalizations, which results are presented in Chapter 3 (see table 4).

Table 4

Categories Operationalisation

Behavioural desistance Reports no crime in the last year, checked against official records Intentional desistance Positive response to “I have abandoned crime completely in the last year”

Identity desistance Negative response to “I see myself as a delinquent”

Behavioural, intentional and identity desistance

Positive response to “I have abandoned crime completely in the last year”, no crime reported in the last year, and negative answer to “I see myself as a delinquent”

Although these operationalizations are informative and -as it will be seen in the next chapter- show differences in the desistance and persistence rates, some of them were problematic when conducting inferential statistical analysis. This is the case of “identity desistance”, which is constructed with a positive response to the statement “I see myself as a delinquent”. Given that a non-delinquent identity is a relevant factor associated with desistance, it was preferred to use this measure as an independent variable (than using it as an dependent variable) when conducting logistic regression to explore the factors associated with desistance in Chapter 4. Therefore,

“identity desistance” and “behavioural, intentional and identity desistance” where only used descriptively throughout Chapter 3.

Secondly, the operationalization of desistance as a process (including changes in seriousness, frequency and versatility of criminal behaviour), was also a challenge. The data set did not contained information to construct a measure of changes in versatility and the observation period (one year only) was too short to properly assessed those changes, which are generally seen within longer observation’s periods. Seriousness and frequency were not assessed as continuous variables, they were assessed in the questionnaire in a way that only allowed to construct categorical variables (maintain, increase or decrease), presenting problems when conducting inferential analysis due to the sample size. Therefore, it was decided in Chapter 3, to present some descriptive statistics regarding the changes in seriousness and frequency and to combine them with qualitative data to explore the process of moving away from crime beyond the operationalization of desistance as a crime free gap only.

Considering the above limitations, in Chapter 4, which quantitively (using inferential statistics) and qualitatively explores the factors that increase the probability of desistance, it was decided to operationalize desistance as a crime free gap. As mentioned before, in strict terms, the study of desistance would need to follow individuals until their death in order to establish whether or not they had truly stopped committing crimes. Since this is not feasible, most studies have operationalised desistance as the presence of a certain period of time without any criminal offence. The data collected in the present study did allow to consider a one-year crime free gap only. Although this measure has several limitations, such as the short observation period and the fact that it captures absence or presence of crime only, it allowed me to conduct several useful analyses that were crucial to properly explore the process of moving away from crime. It is important to mention, that in order to avoid possible bias due to desirability in self reports, self-reported crime was complemented with official data obtained from the National Defence Attorney Office. To complement the aforementioned operationalization of desistance, inferential statistics were also conducted with the “intentional desistance” measure and interesting differences were found.

In the case of Chapter 5, which explores how gender shapes, limits and structures women’s pathways out of crime, desistance was explored qualitatively and it was operationalized as one- year crime free gap in order to be consistent with the previous chapters. Nevertheless, changes in seriousness and frequency were also explored to properly account for the process of staying away from crime.

Therefore, considering all the above limitations and methodological decisions, when using the terms desistance and persistence across this thesis, I am most precisely referring to a period in which interviewees stayed away from crime or continue committing crimes respectively. If desistance would stop, would last for another period or for a lifetime is a question that remains unanswered. Moreover, if we consider the age of the participants (16-21), it is very likely that the period in which they stayed away from the crime, is reflecting temporary desistance, early states of desistance or simple zig zag periods within their criminal career, and therefore the concept of liminality (the space between crime and conformity) becomes of primary importance in the present study.