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.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:SSU.etd-01122011-143345 |
| Date | 18 January 2011 |
| Creators | Parhar, Karen |
| Contributors | Wong, Stephen C.P., Wormith, J. Stephen, Chirkov, Valery, Peternej-Taylor, Cindy, Kroner, Darryl |
| Publisher | University of Saskatchewan |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://library2.usask.ca/theses/available/etd-01122011-143345/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Saskatchewan or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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