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British Journal of Criminology Advance Access originally published online on October 13, 2006
British Journal of Criminology 2007 47(3):390-404; doi:10.1093/bjc/azl083
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The British Journal of Criminology 47:390-404 (2007)
© The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies (ISTD). All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

The Internal Narrative of Desistance

Barry Vaughan*

* Dr Barry Vaughan, Institute of Public Administration, 57–61 Lansdowne Road, Dublin 4, Ireland; bvaughan{at}ipa.ie.


  Abstract

Recent desistance research has emphasized the importance of shifts in offenders' identities to explain cessation from crime. Explanatory weight is given to how the agent reflects and acts upon relevant social circumstances rather than seeing desistance as the product of greater control exerted by the obligations of new roles. This kind of self-reflexivity is achieved through an internal moral conversation that is often couched in terms of agents' ultimate concerns and their relationship with others. In so doing, desisters fashion a narrative identity, which acknowledges yet disclaims past actions and commits them to an ideal future self.


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