By Peggy C. Giordano; Monica A. Longmore; Wendy D. Manning; Jennifer E. Copp

The research described in this report sought to address social and individual-level mechanisms that drive successful and sustained criminal desistance through a mixed-method project that included analyses based on the existing six waves of the Toledo Adolescent Relationships Study (TARS) over an 18-year time span. The researchers’ goal was to more fully inform criminal justice policy priorities and help design more effective criminal recidivism intervention efforts. The researchers proposed conducting desistance narratives with a subset of male and female respondents who had evidenced a pattern of sustained criminal desistance, and contrasting those respondents with individuals who have persisted in criminal activity as well as others with patterns of intermittent criminal activity. The report details the researchers’ methodology, and notes that their goal was to incorporate insights from the narratives as well as contemporary theorizing to systematically distinguish individuals who persisted, desisted, and were intermittently involved in criminal activity. The three guiding research aims were: to identify individual-level factors linked to sustained desistance; to examine social network influences on desistance processes; and to determine gender similarities and differences in desistance processes. The report provides a discussion of outcomes and findings, and a listing of artifacts that resulted from the project.

Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University, 2023. 27p.

By Christopher Wildeman and Robert J. Sampson

Nearly 35 years ago, Sampson and Laub popularized the concept of desistance from crime and isolated core factors that promote and inhibit this process. In this article, we introduce the concept of intergenerational desistance and provide guidance on measuring and explaining this process, encouraging researchers to think of the life-course of crime in terms of both individuals and generations. We first review research on the intergenerational transmission of family criminality and criminal justice contact, relying also on research outside of criminology to highlight how using broader conceptions of the family, including social parents, entire generations, and three (or more) generations could enliven this area. Bridging these literatures allows us to then introduce the concept of intergenerational desistance and elaborate on the concept of intergenerational escalation and demonstrate how they can be measured using data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN). We close by developing a research agenda for considering intergenerational desistance and escalation in ways that enhance our understanding of how the life-course of crime, criminal justice contact, and other troubles in life (e.g., with alcohol, drugs, and mental health) progress through families.

Annual Review of Criminology, Volume 7, Page 85 - 104