An Exploratory Study of Exiting From Criminal Careers

This paper explores the process of exiting from criminal careers through unstructured interviews with twenty nonprofessional property offenders. he findings suggest that (I) exiting is motivated by the deterrent force of imprisonment and the offender's desire to “settle down”; (2) success in exiting revolves around the establishment of a social bond to the conventional world. In general, these findings support social control as a theory of criminal behavior.