60 Narratives of Sex Offender Reentry: Overcoming Obstacles and Pathways to desistance

• In Event: Advances in Sex Offender Policy Research: Re-entry and Reintegration I

Abstract

This presentation combines three waves of interview data with 60 men convicted of serious sexual offenses, referred for civil commitment, incarcerated, and released. All of the participants have been living offense-free lives in the community for varying lengths of time (from 6 months to 30 years). Using extant criminological theories of desistance and psychological models of behavioral change, the correlates and characteristics of successful desistance from sexual offending are described in detail. The common components of desistance theory include the informal social controls and altered routine activities provided by stable relationships, fulfilling employment, military service, and parenthood, as well as the cognitive transformation that occurs through a general openness and intentional motivation to change. Although the men in the sample have indeed stopped engaging in sexual crime, they have done so in the absence of these components. A new theoretical model of desistance is introduced to account for this interesting empirical observation.

Author

• Danielle Arlanda Harris, San Jose State University