ABSTRACT
The extent to which orders were considered to have been ‘successful’ or ‘unsuccessful’ was assessed by a variety of criteria. Initial operationalisations of desistance were based on assumptions which are now felt to have been rather crude approaches to the topic at hand. An important feature of this schema was that it allowed for changes in offending trajectories which indicated a shift in patterns of offendingtowards desistance to be charted. Those probationers who were seen only once formed the entirety of those cases deemed ‘impossible to code’. Those probationers who ‘showed signs of desisting’ reported a decline in the frequency or offending which became distinctly less serious over time. Those cases classified as non-trivial offenders reported frequent, serious offending, such as ‘hard’ drug use, violence or burglary. Amongst the escalators were those probationers who reported increases in both the severity of their offending and the frequency with which they offended.
