ABSTRACT
The previous chapters have compared elements of narratives and provided insight into English and French desistance processes. This final analysis chapter is different, as it is concerned with English and French desisters’ use of time and space. It aims to shape an image of what their lives typically ‘looked’ like and how their environment, in turn, shaped processes of desistance. This analysis provides insight into the interactions between the desisters’ social lives and their surroundings. This chapter is based on the idea that desistance is not merely the absence of offending but the changes in lifestyle and the routines associated with it. The first part of this chapter compares the daily lives of desisters, first for those who worked and then those who did not. Then, desisters’ ‘down time’ is analysed, with particular attention to their social networks, the places they inhabited, and the activities they carried out. The last part of this chapter focuses on a common theme in the English data whereby the men reported moving away as impacting their journeys of change.
