ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the life-stories told by Dan and Anthony who appeared to be desisting from crime. At the time of their respective interviews, both men had reduced the frequency and intensity of their offending behaviours, although neither man had completely stopped offending. Criminology has witnessed a growth of interest in the later stages of criminal careers, especially those stages associated with desistance from crime. To date, criminologists engaged with critical debates about gender and sexuality have struggled to incorporate the phenomenon of desistance into their analyses. Part of the problem is that criminal careers scholars' preoccupation with behaviour that transgresses the law obscures as much as it clarifies when it comes to making sense of changes in the lives of career criminals. As feminist research with victims of domestic violence has repeatedly shown perpetrators often deploy a continuum of controlling and frightening behaviours, only a small minority of which can be easily defined as criminal.
