Carrière criminelle lucrative et désistement assisté
Research on assisted desistance focuses on how formal or informal interventions support the cessation of criminal activity. As interest in this subject is relatively recent, knowledge in the area is still in the early stages and there is little empirical work on how the characteristics of criminal involvement influence receptiveness to intervention. For example, although the majority of crimes are motivated by monetary gain, there is little information about the desistance of persons involved in lucrative crimes. This study, which is based on the narratives of 27 people who had committed such crimes, examines perceptions of assistance received. We looked first at the nature of the assistance in the desistance process and then determined when and how this assistance was related to the life course of respondents. Our findings show the importance of understanding the process that leads to the end of the criminal career, as assisted desistance facilitated the abandonment of criminal behavior in the majority of the individual trajectories studied. Results also show that assistance can take different forms, that it acts in two distinct ways, and that it can take place at different times in the desistance process.
Criminal career Assisted desistance Lucrative crime Desistance Narrative life stories