ABSTRACT
The decision to give up crime is generally triggered by a shock of some sort, by a delayed deterrence process, or both. Offenders give up crime almost as often as they get into it. The impetus to think seriously about retirement from crime altogether seemed to come in many cases from a gradual disenchantment with the criminal life in its totality: the inability to trust people; the frequent harassment by the police; the effects on wives and children when the offender is in prison. Sometimes a new crime is committed when the ex-prisoner is idle, bored, and despondent. Travis Hirschi and Michael Gottfredson convincingly made the point that there is a direct connection between age and crime. In the case of those individuals who stop committing crimes at the end of adolescence, one can speak of normal maturation. The study of the abandonment of crime calls for recapitulation of the genesis of criminal habits in reverse.
