Theoretical framework uncovers dual protective and harmful impacts of community integration on desistance, highlighting social complexities in rehabilitation.
This article reconsiders recent developments in desistance theory by focusing on entry into community. Desistance research has expanded from primary and secondary desistance to tertiary desistance, concerning recognition and belonging, and quaternary desistance, concerning ordinariness. While these concepts shift attention from individual change to relational and social conditions, community entry should not be treated as unconditionally desirable. Communities may provide recognition, trust, belonging, and stability, but also impose norms, restrict narratives, produce exclusion, and obscure responsibility. The article distinguishes the protective and harm-generating dimensions of community and uses this distinction to reconsider tertiary and quaternary desistance and guide future research.
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Sho Sagara (2026) studied this question.
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