Desistance from Offending: Experiences of Probation

This article seeks to make connections between two different research fields: the ‘What Works?’ literature on the effectiveness of community programmes in bringing about a reduction in reoffending; and, from the criminal careers literature, the discussion of the wider social processes by which people themselves come to stop offending. It does this by examining desistance from the point of view of a group of probationers and their supervisors. Reporting the extent to which probationers who were interviewed linked their experiences of supervision to a reduction in their offending, the article discusses the contribution which they saw those experiences as making to changes in their behaviour. Relating these accounts to what is known about the factors which cause people to desist from crime, the article considers the implications for how probation officers might be able to motivate and assist moves towards law‐abiding conduct.