The Intersection of Developmental and Life-Course (DLC) Perspectives and Corrections: Viewing the Prison Experience as a Turning Point

• In Event: Turning Points and Typologies: Understanding Trajectories of Change in Criminal Behavior

Abstract

The prison experience provides a unique context where the notion of offender change takes on a different role compared to conventional “turning points,” such as marriage and employment. Given that inmates face the deprivation of basic human needs and constrained human agency, this setting may impact desistance differently than more conventional sources of change. DLC research has extensively examined traditional turning points, but relatively few studies have assessed the impact of the prison experience on an offender’s life-course. Both the correctional and DLC perspectives highlight key criminogenic needs, such as antisocial personality, education and employment, and family. Given the parallels between correctional and DLC perspectives, integrating these paradigms may better inform treatment and responsivity barriers faced in prison. Using both DLC and correctional perspectives, and a large sample of adult inmate record data, this study will examine how imprisonment can foster desistance, and in some cases, persistence. The analyses will disentangle the prison experience by investigating the impact of risk and protective factors, prison program participation, and criminogenic needs on institutional misconduct and recidivism. The discussion of these results will focus on how the prison experience influences desistance and the implications for supplementing the correctional literature with DLC perspectives.

Authors

• Melissa Lugo, University of Cincinnati

• Christopher Sullivan, University of Cincinnati