This paper draws on a literature review which questioned whether meditationinterventions in prison populations encourage desistance from crime. The purposeof this paper was to discover possible connections between criminologicaltheories of desistance and the research findings of meditation courses in prison. Abrief analysis of the evaluation findings on the presented meditation courses isimplemented. This paper concludes that meditation projects in prison populationsmay not reasonably address desistance; however, there is evidence that the effectsof such adjunct interventions can encourage prisoners to progress on the pathtoward desistance through mindfulness and other pro-social orientation.

The current study extended earlier findings about the RealVictory program by using a larger sample and by examining Victory Seeker phone use in more detail. Using a sample of 144 juveniles, it was found that as the number of calls answered increased, the likelihood of a rearrest and the number of rearrests decreased slightly but the differences were not statistically significant. However, as the number of calls increased, the likelihood of a felony rearrest decreased significantly and the total number of felony arrests decreased significantly. These findings suggest that Victory Seeker may be a useful tool to reinforce and provide follow-up after treatment.

The utility of crime desistance research for community management and rehabilitation of offenders is evident; however this field of research is relatively recent. Theoretical research on crime desistance has varied over the years, although generally the field has been divided between perspectives focusing on either social or psychological causes. In addition, much of the research is plagued with methodological problems, such as an abundance of retrospective studies and unrepresentative offender samples. The present study proposes a framework of crime desistance that integrates the social and psychological perspectives and is compatible with current views on offender rehabilitation. This framework entitled, the Positive Self Change (PSC) framework, generally states that crime occurs and is maintained when basic psychological needs are not being satisfied. When deprived needs causing crime are satisfied in an optimal manner, autonomous motivation to desist and reductions in crime-related factors will follow, resulting in crime desistance. The goal of the study is to develop and provide some support for this framework of crime desistance and compare it to the currently dominating theory of crime desistance, the revised age-graded informal social control (AGISC) theory. Two studies were conducted utilizing a multimethod approach. The first quantitative study prospectively tested whether aspects of the PSC framework are supported by determining whether the framework can predict crime desistance in 60 released offenders after a 7-year follow-up and compare it to the currently dominating explanation of crime desistance. The second study is a prospective case study of 3 federal offenders during their first few months of release from federal incarceration. Results provide support for the development of the PSC framework. Protective strategies, motivation and criminogenic risk factors significantly predicted crime desistance after 7 years. In addition, the PSC framework significantly added to the prediction of the AGISC theory for 2 of the 4 crime desistance outcome measures. Study 2 also provided some support and explanation to the findings of study 1. The final section presents a discussion of the overall conclusions, implications of the results, limitations and future directions.