Intimate Relationships, Legal Socialization, and Desistance from Crime

• In Event: Transitions to Adulthood: How Institutional Support, Education, Intimate Relationships, and Marriage Impact the Life Course

Abstract

Intimate relationships are often cited as turning points in the lives of criminally-involved individuals, primarily because they provide sources of social control, alter patterns of peer association, and encourage the adoption of more conventional identities. In this study, we advance and evaluate an alternative, complementary explanation for the effects of intimate relationships on crime, in which such relationships help foster desistance by promoting positive legal socialization. We hypothesize that the development of high-quality relationships with pro-social partners reduces cynicism about the legal order and enhances the perceived legitimacy of the criminal justice system and its agents. In turn, these attitudinal changes promote greater legal obedience. We test these hypotheses using data from the Pathways to Desistance Study, a longitudinal survey of serious young justice system-involved individuals. Results indicate the impact of intimate relationships on criminal offending are mediated, in part, by within-individual changes in legitimacy and legal cynicism. While relationships influence legal attitudes by providing individuals with vicarious experiences of procedural justice, their influence also operates through a more diffused process of legal socialization in which legal and non-legal actors compete for influence. We discuss the implications of these findings for theories of desistance and for developmental and life-course research.

Authors

• Walter Forrest, University of Limerick

• Michael D. Reisig, Arizona State University