Book review: Desistance from Crime: New Advances in Theory and Research
| Author | Jake Philips |
| Published date | 01 March 2018 |
| Date | 01 March 2018 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0264550517752750b |
| Subject Matter | Book reviews |
Desistance from Crime: New Advances in Theory
and Research
Michael Rocque
Palgrave Macmillan; 2017; pp. 288; £67.99; hbk
ISBN: 978-1137572332
Reviewed by: Jake Philips, Senior Lecturer in Criminology, Sheffield
Hallam University
When I was conducting probation research in 2009, ‘desistance’ was something of
a buzzword amongst practitioners and policymakers. Alongside enthusiasm,
however, there was scepticism that emerging theories of desistance were little more
than criminologists attempting to reinvent the wheel and that many of the ideas were
little more than common sense, at least for seasoned practitioners. As a former
practitioner, I had some sympathy with this view. However, it also seemed that
whilst the people with whom I spoke were au fait with the ‘desistance is a process
not an event’ message that is key to desistance theories, evidence-based under-
standings of the mechanisms by which people desist were fairly superficial. The
enthusiasm noted above was partly down to the introduction of the Offender
Engagement Programme, which was an attempt to introduce desistance focused
practice in probation. The OEP was, as readers of Probation Journal will know,
superseded by Transforming Rehabilitation, and desistance appeared, from an
outsider’s perspective at least, to, understandably, drop down the agenda.
Desistance from Crime by Michael Rocque has the potential to reinvigorate and
deepen practitioners’ focus on the evidence that explains how people desist. As a
means with which to bring knowledge up-to-date and justify why we need to think
about desistance as a complex and multifaceted experience, the book has great
potential. The book reviews, critiques and integrates what we know about desis-
tance and culminates in an attempt to draw together the most empirically sub-
stantiated points from each into one coherent, holistic and measurable integrative
theory of desistance.
Chapter 1 is introductory and outlines the aims of the book, partly by drawing on
classic criminological texts, such as Shaw’s The Jack Roller (1930), to highlight
some of the difficulties in identifying the point at which someone desists from crime.
Chapter 2 reminds us that desistance is not simply the inverse of the onset of
offending, and the practice implications immediately become clear: that identifying
an individual’s needs using past behaviours is inadequate. Chapter 3, which
focuses on definitional and measurement issues, is particularly instructive because it
discusses and highlights the way in which definitions guide research design. This is
important for those of us who are attempting to make sense of desistance research
for the purposes of developing probation practice.
An overview of 11 studies into desistance forms the beginning of Chapter 4 and
goes on to summarize what we know from those studies. For readers who want or
need to get a good understanding of the key factors that explain people’s likelihood
Book reviews 109
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