From Motivation to Offend, to Motivation to Desist: the Multiple Motivational Pathways to Desistance

• In Event: European Developmental and Life-course Criminology Working Group, Panel 3. Prison, re-entry, and desistance

Abstract

Although insufficient on its own, openness or motivation to change is considered a critical component of desistance from crime. However, there are debates on the specific role that motivation plays in this process. For example, some suggest that the motivation to desist is at the forefront of the process and constitutes its triggering element. For others, the motivation is more usefully understood as a fuel necessary to maintain the change that has already occurred with the encounter of a turning point. The purpose of this study is to understand how and when offenders transition from the motivation(s) to offend, to the motivation(s) to desist. To do so, retrospective data were collected through semi-directed interviews with individuals recruited outside from correctional settings who had desisted from crime in adulthood (n=26). The analysis of the timing of openness to change in the criminal path allows for the identification of three motivational paths to desistance. In the first case, participants present a story where a motivation to stop offending arrived early in the trajectory, but several setbacks were encountered. In the second case, individuals acknowledged that they stop offending due to external factors, and that they developed their motivation to maintain desistance a certain time after their last crime. Finally, in the last case, participants shared a story where a clear motivation to desist was absent or scarcely present. In these interesting cases, desistance looked more related to the absence of motivations to offend than related to a motivation to go straight. The theoretical implications of these results will be discussed. Moreover, greater knowledge about the development of motivation to desist from crime is useful for the articulation of interventions in this regard.

Authors

• Marie-Ève Dubois, School of criminology, Université de Montréal

• Frédéric Ouellet, School of criminology, Université de Montréal