Conception of Criminals and the Desisting as Structured Contingency in Deviant Career

Abstract

　It has been noted that the study of desistance incorporates traditional criminological theories inadequately into its theoretical framework. But not a few findings and explanatory concepts that has been proposed in these theories have high affinity rather than incompatible nature with it by logical necessity. In this paper, paying attention to the perspective of ‘contingency’ made a point of in H. S. Becker’s sequential model of deviance, I discussed the above-mentioned incorporation through considering effects of the conception of criminals and the desisting as structured contingency in deviant career to deviation/desistance. Especially focusing on the characteristics of the conception of the desisting that tend to be enforceable and severe, I pointed out the conception of the desisting of those characteristics made the desisting process unstable and then it could be an explanatory factor of the differentiation of the desisting process.