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The unmaking of crime putting research on desistance in Paris in perspective
Fri, September 5, 3:30 to 4:45pm, Communications Building (CN), CN 2103Session Submission Type: Author meets critics
Abstract
The book here presented is a monograph about desistance in Paris, i.e. how do people move beyond after a criminal lifestyle. This research was supported by the Parisian local authorities and probation services. It is then deeply rooted into the French capital specific environment, like multiculturalism, urban like interactions, service-oriented job offers and unequal opportunities between the center and its suburbs.
The goal of this session of author meets critics is to use this specific context framing the work detailed in this book in order to fuel the debate over what are the cross-national elements about desistance. If building a relationship, finding a job and becoming a parent seem to reach beyond borders and have an effect on desistance processes in many contexts, in what ways can we describe specific elements playing a more important role than others into shaping divergent pathways.
In the case of this sample, largely populated by individuals formerly involved in street crimes, the participants were marked by racialized and difficult living conditions in deprived neighborhoods. Religion has been a possible but narrow bridge. Why? because in the very secular institutions of France and with a fieldwork sequenced by different terrorist attacks, the involvement into more overt religious practice was looked with suspicion. A subtle balance was to be stricken in order to grasp that lever of change.
Likewise, if many chose to reconsider their friends’ network it was maybe not with the same perception as other participants in a similar group of street crime desisters in the UK. Because some were mainly seeing the root of their involvement in their deprived surrounding while others could see their “bad relations” as the primary influence over their entry into a criminal lifestyle.