ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 explored how desisters told their stories and framed their identities. The analyses were based on the retrospective accounts of the participants’ pasts generally and past offending more specifically. Perceptions of themselves and of their social worlds were explored and compared. A pattern was found in the English data of understandings of desisters’ offending behaviour as resulting from childhood mistakes and being negatively influenced by others. This meant that, for them, desistance entailed realisations about morality, growing up, becoming more mature, and exhibiting more conventional adult behaviours, as well as becoming less influenceable and more in control of themselves. French desisters, in comparison, tended to express more consistency in their relationship with morals, leading to more weight given to social and structural factors in their explanations of their offending. In continuation from the previous discussion, this chapter analyses the emotional aspects of their past and future selves. Reflections on offending and desistance provide insights into processes of change as emotional journeys that are impacted upon by external circumstances. Emotional considerations of the self in the course of a life allow us to uncover existential aspects of desistance processes.
