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Positive Expected Selves and Desistance among Serious Adolescent Offenders

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Abstract

Purpose

Despite a recent surge of interest in the role that self-identity plays in the process of desistance from crime, prior research has been mostly qualitative and conducted with small samples of adult offenders. In addition, while what people expect to become in the future can also function as motivational and sustaining forces toward prosocial behavioral outcomes, empirical tests of identity-based theories of criminal desistance have focused on the measures of current self-identity. We intend to address both gaps to expand the scope of desistance literature.

Methods

Drawing on 11-wave panel data of serious adolescent offenders, a modified version of negative binomial random-effects models is applied to estimate the within-individual effects of expectation of positive future selves on self-reported offending and official record of arrest.

Results

We found that a shift in a youth’s expectation of positive self-identity in the future is significantly related to a downward trend in both offending and arrest outcomes. This finding holds even after controlling for unobserved time-stable sources of heterogeneity and other important time-varying sources of potential confounders.

Conclusions

This study not only explores one of the understudied topics in the desistance literature but also provides evidence-based knowledge on which characteristics need to be addressed to initiate and maintain prosocial life styles among serious adolescent offenders.

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Notes

  1. Although self and identity have often been conceptualized differently across disciplines (see [11, 17, 52]; Owen, Robinson, and Smith-Lovin, 2010; [84]; Swann and Besson, 2010 for reviews), we use both concepts interchangeably hereafter because our primary goal is not to (re)define these concepts more systematically but to investigate the roles of self-identity change—as an important aspect of internal/subjective process—in the criminal desistance among juvenile offenders.

  2. These models are equivalent to hierarchical linear models (HLM) when within-unit effect and between-unit effect are viewed as level 1 and level 2 effects, respectively.

  3. An anonymous reviewer suggested to interpret the results in Tables 2 and 3 in terms of a plausible level of within-individual change in the expectation of positive future selves based on the results from the unconditional growth curve model for positive future selves (which was estimated to increase by approximately 0.1 unit every year). However, the generalizability of the estimated overall growth rate becomes questionable when we cannot assume the existence of a unified and distinct functional form of individual trajectories [79]. Figure 1 clearly shows no commonality across individual trajectories, and thus the estimated fixed and random effects of growth parameters (e.g., intercept and slope) fail to properly summarize more complex nature of within-individual variations. Indeed, a more typical and realistic level of change appears to be a one-unit (or even more than one unit) change whenever it occurs.

  4. Considering that these developmental changes within multiple domains of life occur simultaneously, which makes it hard to determine the temporal sequence of their complex interrelationships over time, these variables can also be conceived and tested as intervening variables that mediate the observed relationship between expected future selves and offending outcomes. We leave it up to future research.

  5. Both mean and median of the between-individual level of expected selves were 3.62 and its standard deviation was 0.65. It ranged from 1.53 to 5 with middle 90% range of 2.57–4.68 and interquartile (middle 50%) range of 3.15–4.07.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Criminal Justice, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, The City University of New York, Haaren Hall, Rm. 63614, 524 West 59th Street, New York, NY, 10019, USA

    Chongmin Na

  2. Program on Prosocial Behavior, Institute for Studies of Religion, Baylor University, One Bear Place #97236, Waco, TX, 76798-7236, USA

    Sung Joon Jang

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Na, C., Jang, S.J. Positive Expected Selves and Desistance among Serious Adolescent Offenders. J Dev Life Course Criminology 5, 310–334 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40865-019-00109-4

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