A Self-Determination Theory Perspective on Human Agency, Desistance from Crime, and Correctional Rehabilitation
- PDF / 543,935 Bytes
- 27 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 53 Downloads / 200 Views
A Self-Determination Theory Perspective on Human Agency, Desistance from Crime, and Correctional Rehabilitation Damon M. Petrich 1 Received: 15 September 2019 / Revised: 2 April 2020 / Accepted: 9 April 2020 # Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
Abstract Purpose Despite the attention paid to the role of human agency in the desistance process, there is a lack of consensus on how agency should be defined, what motivates or thwarts its exercise, and how it can be applied meaningfully in criminological research. The goal of the current article is to highlight how self-determination theory (SDT) can be used to those ends. Methods Qualitative interviews were conducted with a sample of former offenders to assess how they conceptualized their own processes of desistance and the factors that helped and hindered those processes. Data were analyzed using an inductive framework. Results Participants’ initial moves away from crime resulted from the realization of psychological need frustration. Subsequent efforts made to help in the desistance process reflected either volitional behavior or the acceptance of assistance from others that would fulfill those needs. Participants also recounted their experiences with correctional rehabilitation as being need thwarting. Conclusion SDT’s conceptualization of agentic behavior and the factors that motivate/ thwart its exercise can be used to integrate existing findings on desistance from crime. Moreover, measures used in prior SDT-based psychological research have implications for the quantitative measurement of agency in our own field. Implications for correctional theory and policy are also discussed. Keywords Human agency . Desistance . Self-determination theory . Corrections .
Rehabilitation
* Damon M. Petrich [email protected]
1
School of Criminal Justice, University of Cincinnati, P.O. Box 210389, Cincinnati, OH 45221-0389, USA
D. M. Petrich
The idea that individuals are active agents in their own processes of desistance has been a mainstay in theorization about the cessation of crime (e.g., [1–4]). Despite the recognition that human agency “looms large” ([2], p. 280) in this process, there is a lack of consensus among criminologists regarding the precise definition of agency and its relation to criminal persistence/desistance [5] and, consequently, a lack of clarity on how agency can be validly and reliably measured [1, 6]. These issues have been taken up in recent issues of the Journal of Developmental and Life-Course Criminology by Paternoster [7], Cullen [6], and Brezina [8]. Paternoster [7] argues that human agency should be a central organizing concept in studying offending and that we should concern ourselves with the goals and intentions underlying the initiation and maintenance of desistance (i.e., its teleological explanations) rather than the potential causal forces leading to the exercise of agency. Cullen [6] has several important concerns with Paternoster’s [7] arguments, chief among them that such a teleological emphasis would move us away from decades of
Data Loading...
