Turning points to crime in Latin America: A qualitative study

• In Event: European Developmental and Life-course Criminology Working Group, Panel 2: Qualitative research on criminal careers

Abstract

In very different societal contexts, legal employment, marriage, parenthood, and military service has been identified as turning points in desistance from crime. Most studies, however, are conducted in Europe, USA/Canada, and Australia/New Zealand. The predominance of quantitative methods to identify turning points has also resulted in an implicit understanding of desistance as a specific event more than a continuous, complex, and ongoing process. This qualitative study (CRIMLA) explores the role of legal employment, marriage, parenthood, and military service in desistance from crime for more than 420 men and women in 29 prisons across Latin America. The role of work, for example, is fundamentally different when a huge percentage of the work force is employed in the unregulated and informal economy. While there was access to work for many participants, they were usually in the black economy, poorly paid, and unstable, and did not provide the stability that made them the turning points away from crime usually described in life course criminological studies. Marriage and children also offered less protection from crime when they happened during teenage years and introduced new financial burdens for people in a volatile economic situation. For women it could also bind them to abusive relationships. Doing military service could imply being involved in corruption and in some instances it prepared participants for a role in drug cartels and insurgency organizations. The aim of this presentation is to describe the role of ‘traditional’ turning points away from crime in a Latin American context and to highlight the importance of socio-economic circumstances for understanding these transitions. Additional turning points towards desistance that might be more relevant in this region are also introduced. The study pave the way for contributing both empirically and theoretically to a new and more global life course criminology.

Author

• Sveinung Sandberg, Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law, University of Oslo