ABSTRACT
This chapter offers fresh quantitative findings from the Sheffield Desistance Study (SDS). Three conceptual issues were of special importance in the design of the SDS: age, persistent offending, and 'asymmetric causation' – that is, the view that the causes of desistance are not simply the obverse of the causes of initial involvement in crime. The SDS focuses on the beginnings of journeys towards desistance among a sample of young adult recidivists with notably persistent criminal histories. The chapter considers the types of offence committed at the beginning and the end of the SDS, using both official and self-reported data. Here, the main results can be summarised as an increase in offence specialisation as the study progressed; and at the end of the study period, some significant differences in self-reported offence patterns between those who had decreased their offending and those who had maintained or increased it, with the differences centring on relatively specialised factors.
