From What Have They Desisted?

Abstract

This chapter details the overall demographics of the sample as well as the specific characteristics of each participant’s criminal history. Chapters 4 and 5 are arranged in an offense-focused way to emphasize the influence of the criminal justice system on the men’s lives. Here, the men appear to be categorized into mutually exclusive groups. This is temporary and performed purely for describing what the men (say they) have done. Positioning the cases in this way first allows for an organized response to the important question of “from what did they desist?” Four offending scenarios are described as follows:

• Isolated offenses: 14 men who committed a single offense or a spree of events over a short time.

• Single victim over time: 14 men who victimized a single child on multiple occasions.

• Multiple victims, one sentence: 10 men who abused multiple victims, but were convicted on a single occasion.