Once convicted? The long‐term pathways to desistance
| Published date | 01 September 2022 |
| Author | Joanna Shapland |
| Date | 01 September 2022 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/hojo.12473 |
Received: 16 August 2021 Accepted: 29 September 2021
DOI: 10.1111/ho jo.12473
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Once convicted? The long-term pathways to
desistance
Joanna Shapland
Edward Bramley Professor of Criminal
Justice, Centre for Criminological
Research, University of Sheffield
Correspondence
Joanna Shapland, Edward Bramley
Professor of Criminal Justice, Centre for
Criminological Research, University of
Sheffield.
Email: j.m.shapland@sheffield.ac.uk
Abstract
There are few long-term studies of the convictionsof per-
sistent offenders and the extent to which they may desist
from offending. The Sheffield Desistance Study inter-
viewed 113 men aged 19–22 years over four or so years.
Their subsequent convictions over the next ten years
generally show a continuing pattern of convictions, but
with major crime-free gaps. Initial hopes for desistance,
if seen as continuing cessation from crime, havenot been
fulfilled, linked to both substance abuse and, it is argued,
recent penal policy in England and Wales. The question
is then how we should see recidivism and desistance.
KEYWORDS
desistance, long-term criminal convictions, penal policy
1 INTRODUCTION
Desistance, or stopping committing criminal offences, is considered to be a process of moving
from offending behaviour through reducing offending to the cessation of offending (Bottoms &
Shapland, 2016; Bottoms et al., 2004; Farrall et al., 2014;Laub&Sampson,2003). It can be, how-
ever, an uneven progression,with the need both to wish to change one’s lifestyle (agency) and the
need for appropriate structural conditions of having means to obtain legitimate money, accom-
modation, etc. to maintain progress towards desistance (Farrall,Bottoms & Shapland, 2010). Indi-
viduals’ perceived obstacles to desistance (Bottoms & Shapland (2016), see also the idea of pains
of desistance – Patton & Farrall (2021)) include substance misuse, lack of money, lack of work,
psychological strain, where one lives and pressure from offending friends, but they also include
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons AttributionLicense, which permits use, distribution and reproduc-
tion in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
© 2022 The Authors. The HowardJournal of Crime and Justice published by Howard League and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Howard J. Crim. Justice. 2022;61:271–288. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/hojo 271
272 THE HOWARDJOURNAL OF CRIME AND JUSTICE
aspects of criminal justice, such as having a criminal record and perceived police harassment.
Overall, most offenders desist over time, producing the shape of the typical age-crime curve, with
its sharp rise in criminality in adolescence and slower decline over subsequent decades (Bottoms
& Shapland, 2011). However, this is the shape shown for the general population, while studies of
more persistent offenders, with significant criminal records from their teens onwards, have sug-
gested that there are groups of ‘chronic’ offenders with much slower rates of desistance, if any
desistance at all (Blokland, Nagin & Nieuwbeerta, 2005; Farrington et al., 2006; Moffitt, 1993).
The question then arises as to what the path to desistance, or continued offending, is for more
persistent offenders and what kinds of elements shape it. Is it about having an early age of onset,
as the Dunedin study has argued (Moffitt, 1993), or ‘hooks for change’ (Giordano, Cernkovich &
Rudolph, 2002), or being able to move off drugs, or do more general societal or criminal justice
elements also play a role?
Given that persistent offenders form only a very small part of the general population, though
commit a significant proportion of criminal offences, as known since the early 1990s (Farrington&
Wes t, 1993), general population studies have to be very large in order to consider these questions
for the persistent. Some longitudinal studies of offending have been of the general population
(e.g., the Cambridge Study of Delinquent Development: Farrington et al. (2006)) though others
have taken those incarcerated as juveniles (e.g., Laub & Sampson, 2003) or subject to probation
(e.g., Farrall et al., 2014), but not necessarily persistent offenders. The Sheffield Desistance Study
(SDS), the subject of this article, was unusual in having a sample of mostly persistent offenders
aged 19–22 years at the start, who were followed for around four years and interviewed each year
at this key period for potential desistance according to the age-crime curve (the cusp of the curve
at the time being at 18–19 years). It has now been possible to follow up this group in terms of crim-
inal convictions over 14 years, between 2003 and 2017, so that it is possible to see whether they
did desist, what patterns of criminality were, and whether agency and overall structural criminal
justice conditions were influential. This was a period of increasing severity of reactions to offend-
ing in England and Wales, with the Prison Reform Trust(2019) characterising it as: ‘We choose to
send people to prison for a long time .. . and it’s growing’ (p.11). Given these societal changes, did
desistance remain possible? Or did penal changes produce the reverse of what they were intended
to do, with persistent offenders continuing to reoffend on release?
2 THE SHEFFIELD DESISTANCE STUDY
The Sheffield Desistance Study followed a sample of 113 male, mainly persistent offenders, who
were born in 1982–1984 and aged 19–22 years at first interview, with at least two convictions on
different occasions within the previous two years and known to the prison or probation authori-
ties. Up to four interviews were carried out at intervals of nine months to a year,with participants
talking about their lives at that time, their self-reported offending and their hopes for the future
(including attitudes to desistance) (Bottoms & Shapland, 2011). Given that participants had been
recently convicted and said that they had recently offended, if participants said they were taking
steps towards desistance, this was early desistance.
The initial phase of the study was able to look at convictions and self-reportedoffending up to 31
August 2007 (the first four years, during which interviews took place) (Shapland & Bottoms,2017).
It was clear that participants were mostly persistent offenders, with a substantial criminal record
when first interviewed (at 19–22 years of age), with a mean of 8.05 conviction occasions (stan-
dard deviation 4.51) for standard list offences,1which included a mean of 17.61 offences (standard
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