Unravelling desistance : an explorative study into the correlation between prosocial bonds and disengagement in crimes of Chinese male offenders in their mid-adulthood

Abstract

Desistance is a relatively new area of study in criminology. Taking a life-course perspective, Sampson and Laub (1993) connected bonds to conventional social institutions with the cessation of criminal behaviour in their notable age-graded theory of informal social control. Based on the assumption that most offending behaviour was the result of weak social bonds, they posited that desistance would likely occur when an individual’s bonds to conventional society were strengthened. They attributed the redirection of offenders’ criminal trajectories to the occurrence of certain “turning points” in their life courses, such as marriages and parenthood. The theory has received strong empirical support predominantly in the west.

This study tests the applicability of the age-graded theory of informal social control in Hong Kong, where the cultural contexts and social values are radically different from Western societies. Based on in-depth interviews with repeated male offenders who have substantially withdrawn from criminal activities in their mid-adulthood, the roles of different prosocial familial relationships, romantic relationships and peer relationships in their desistance experiences are examined. The research finds empirical support for the fundamental assumption of the theory that criminal desistance is positively correlated with the development of different prosocial bonds. It also supports the proposition that changes in social bonds consequential to some “turning point” events often trigger desistance. Nonetheless, the distinctive cultural context of Hong Kong has led to different findings on the identification of “turning points” and the ways that prosocial relationships encourage offenders to withdraw from crimes. The results also suggest that further development of Sampson and Laub’s theory may be needed. A discussion of these findings is presented.