Desistance and the “Feared Self”: Toward an Identity Theory of Criminal Desistance

This Article develops both a framework for a theory of desistance from crime and an analytical strategy with which to examine desistance. With respect to the former, an identity theory of the desistance from crime that is more cognitive and individualistic than some and more forward-looking than others is sketched out. This framework contributes to and complements existing theoretical arguments by building upon the work of others through integrating several diverse bodies of work that range from social psychology to collective movements in sociology. In this framework, offenders have “working selves” as criminal offenders with a set of preferences and social networks consistent with that self. In addition to the working self, or the self in the present, there is a future, or possible, self that consists both of desires as to what the person wishes or hopes to become (the positive possible self) and anxiety over what they fear they may become (the feared self). Persons are committed to their working self until they determine that the cost of this commitment is greater than the benefits. A perception that one may in fact turn out to become the feared self, a perception assisted by the linking of life failures, or what has been called the “crystallization of discontent,” provides the initial motivation to change the self. This initial motivation brings with it a change in preferences and social networks that stabilize the newly emerging self. This identity theory of desistance can be empirically developed by thinking about it in terms of a structural break in an individual-level time series of offending. This theory