UMD Theses and Dissertations

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3

New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.

More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.

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Author: search.filters.author.Scott, Thomas LindSubject: search.filters.subject.Desistance

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    A Longitudinal, Mixed-Method Study of the Identity Theory of Desistance
    (2015) Scott, Thomas Lind; Paternoster, Raymond; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Recently, Paternoster and Bushway (2009) developed the Identity Theory of Desistance to explain how once criminal offenders transform their identities and reform. In an effort to test important components of this theory, the current study analyzed retrospective narratives from 144 substance-involved, male offenders from Delaware. After coding the narratives for mention of concepts from the identity theory and other theories of desistance, the author conducted time-based and age-based group-based trajectory models and multinomial logistic regression analyses to test whether the identity theory could explain criminal desistance. Results suggest that many offenders undergo these processes, and there may be experiences that distinguish those who desist from those who persist in crime and drug use. These include the formation of hoped-for selves, a change in preferences, social networks, and routine activities, motivation to change, and treatment.