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The idea for this book originated from a workshop on "Desistance Processes among Young Offenders following Judicial Interventions" held at the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law (MPICC) in Freiburg. Over the past three decades, there has been growing scientific interest in the discussion of why and how offenders desist from crime. Despite various approaches regarding the understanding of what is important for cessation of criminal careers, there is little consensus among professionals working in this area. However, there is basic consensus on the assumption that external and internal factors are equally important for rehabilitation. Hence, interdisciplinary empirical approaches to desistance stress the importance of an integrated analytical framework.

This book provides insight into how young offenders experience judicial interventions and elucidates pathways towards desistance. The papers, written by twelve European experts in the field, represent different theoretical and methodological approaches. Empirical research findings as well as fieldwork experiences of practitioners working with young delinquents are presented. They reflect the diversity of the current European research on the phenomenon of desistance from crime.

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Foreword

Stephen Farrall
Exploring the Role of ´Structures´ in Processes of Desistance

Joanna Shapland & Anthony Bottoms
Disengaging from Peers in the Process of Desistance

Diana Willems & Jana Meier
Closed Windows for Desistance: Young Multiple Offenders between Youth Services and the Justice System

Mechthild Bereswill
Between Authoritarian Provocations and Promises of Development: Imprisonment as a Profound Biographical Experience of Conflict

Elke Wienhausen-Knezevic
Life-Course Dynamics among Young Prison Releasees. An Empirical Interaction Model: The ZARIA Scheme

Anke Neuber
Fragile Transitions: Methodological Reflections on Young Women´s Processes of Desistance

Franz Zahradnik
Generative Experiences and the Desire to Become Generative: A Biographical Approach to the Self-Conceptualizations of a Young Former Delinquent in Switzerland

Maria Walsh
The Influence of Possible Turning Points on Desistance from Crime of Young Multiple Offenders: Results of a Qualitative Analysis

Jasmina Arnez
Institutional Responses to Youth Deviance and Parenting: Exploring Professional Perceptions on the Role of Social Class at the Beginnings of Offending Pathways and Desistance from Crime

Astrid Hirschelmann
Focus on New French Schemes and Methods to Support Prison Release and the Desistance Process

Epilogue

Annex
Index of Authors - Programme of the Workshop

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Elke Wienhausen-Knezevic (Dipl.-Soz./LL.M. Crim.) is sociologist and criminologist. Within her perennial work at the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law she examined ¯Life-Course Dynamics of Young Prison Releasees®. From 2017-2019 she was researcher at the Institute for Penal Law and Criminology at the University of Bern. Moreover her research areas concern the field of the enforcement of prison sentences, transition management, desistance-research, empirical social research as well as white-collar crime.

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