This invaluable book makes a vital contribution both to decolonising and to gendering desistance research. Through painstaking analysis of the trajectories through crime of young women and men in Chile, Droppelman reveals the ambivalences, inconsistencies and liminality of their transitions to maturity and social integration. Social and psychological factors interact in these transitions and to understand them, we must also situate them in their cultural and structural contexts. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding and supporting desistance not just in Chile and Latin America, but everywhere.
Fergus McNeill, Professor of Criminology and Social Work at the University of Glasgow, Centre for Crime and Justice Research and in Sociology
The study of desistance from crime, like most areas of criminology, has lacked a strong engagement with the Global South, and this neglect has been to the detriment of theory development. So, Droppelmanns ground-breaking new study of desistance in Chile is a hugely welcomed contribution to the field that will hopefully be a catalyst for new work across Latin America and beyond.
Shadd Maruna, Professor of Criminology, Queens University Belfast
This book represents major analysis of late adolescence and crime in Latin America. Drawing on precepts of Southern Criminology, and the cultural nuances that this entails, the author delves deeply into the lives of young people to offer insights into both pathways into crime but particularly pathways out of crime, motivations, challenges and transformational processes. This is hugely insightful and invaluable reading for all involved in supporting young people, and in correctional practice and penal reform.
Professor Loraine Gelsthorpe, Director, Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge
In this fine book, Catalina Droppelmann offers an excellent review of the research literature as well as a pioneering research study of late adolescent offenders in Chile. Her research highlights the uncertainties and difficulties often experienced by would-be desisters from crime, and therefore cautions against drawing neat distinctions between desisters and persisters. Her analysis raises important issues for both researchers and practitioners.
Sir Anthony Bottoms, Emeritus Wolfson Professor of Criminology, University of Cambridge
Transitions Out of Crime
This book contributes to our knowledge of desistance in a developing country. Offering an intercultural dialogue with mainstream explanations, Transitions Out of Crime analyses the transition from crime to conformity among a group of Chilean juvenile offenders.
Desistance from crime is not just the cessation of criminal activity itself, but a process of acquiring roles, identities, and virtues; of developing new social ties; and of inhabiting new spaces. This book offers new evidence that shows that the traditional binary between the reformed desister and the anti-social persister is inaccurate and that the road to desistance contains various oscillations between crime and conformity. Furthermore, this study shows the role that gender plays in shaping, limiting, and structuring pathways away from crime.
Written in a clear and direct style, this book will appeal to those engaged in criminology, sociology, penology, desistance, rehabilitation, gender studies, and all those interested in the transition from crime to conformity outside the Anglo-American orthodoxy.
Catalina Droppelmann is lecturer at the Social Science Faculty and leads the Centre for Studies on Justice and Society at the Pontificia Universidad Catlica de Chile. She has worked for more than 20 years researching and teaching on justice, crime, and social exclusion. She holds a BA in Psychology from the University of Valparaso and an MPhil and a PhD in Criminology at the University of Cambridge. Her interests are on criminal desistance from crime, re-entry policies, and youth justice.
International Series on Desistance and Rehabilitation
The International Series on Desistance and Rehabilitation aims to provide a forum for critical debate and discussion surrounding the topics of why people stop offending and how they can be more effectively reintegrated into the communities and societies from which they came. The books published in the series will be international in outlook, but tightly focused on the unique, specific contexts and processes associated with desistance, rehabilitation and reform. Each book in the series will stand as an attempt to advance knowledge or theorising about the topics at hand, rather than being merely an extended report of specific a research project. As such, it is anticipated that some of the books included in the series will be primarily theoretical, whilst others will be more tightly focused on the sorts of initiatives which could be employed to encourage desistance. It is not our intention that books published in the series be limited to the contemporary period, as good studies of desistance, rehabilitation and reform undertaken by historians of crime are also welcome. In terms of authorship, we would welcome excellent PhD work, as well as contributions from more established academics and research teams. Most books are expected to be monographs, but edited collections are also encouraged.
- General Editor
- Stephen Farrall, University of Derby
- Editorial Board
- Ros Burnett, University of Oxford
- Thomas LeBel, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, USA
- Mark Halsey, Flinders University, Australia
- Fergus McNeill, Glasgow University
- Shadd Maruna, Queens University, Belfast
- Gwen Robinson, Sheffield University
- Barry Godfrey, University of Liverpool
- Governing delinquency through freedom
- Control, rehabilitation and desistance
- Graldine Bugnon
- Prison education and desistance
- Changing perspectives
- Geraldine Cleere
- Rethinking what works with offenders
- Probation, social context and desistance from crime
- Stephen Farrall
- Transitions out of crime
- New approaches on desistance in late adolescence
- Catalina Droppelmann
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ criminology/series/ISODR
Transitions Out of Crime
New Approaches on Desistance in Late Adolescence
Catalina Droppelmann
First published 2022
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
2022 Catalina Droppelmann
The right of Catalina Droppelmann to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
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