Signaling Desistance: Using Short-Term Signals to Identify Long-Term Desisters

• In Event: Factors Affecting the Desistance Process

Abstract

Understanding the individual aspects of the desistance signaling process will allow employers and practitioners to better identify intentioned desisters earlier in the process. Bushway and Apel (2012) recently introduced economic signaling theory (Spence, 1973) to criminology, arguing that individuals desisting from crime may send observable "signals" that they are truly a desister. While the work of Bushway and Apel (2012) holds a bird's eye view of the signaling process, the current work instead examines the microeconomic aspects of the signaling process, namely the extent to which observable costly signals actually correlate to a number of personal orientations (orientations toward work, family, etc...) conducive to desistance. In this, the current analysis moves away from examining whether these signals are actually used by those receiving them, and instead interrogates the particular qualities of these signals and signalers that influence whether the receivers of signals should use them.

Author

• Samuel E. DeWitt, University of North Carolina at Charlotte