Unpacking the black box of criminality and desistance: self-control and goal-directed decision-making.

• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2047/D20213648

My dissertation is designed to explore the precise causal mechanisms underlying desistance from crime. Despite considerable evidence that most offenders eventually mature out of delinquent behavior, several fundamental issues remain unresolved. One major issue involves the idea that criminality can be a subject of changeability in producing the process underlying desistance. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent health (Add Health), I address this issue by accomplishing the following goals. First, I describe why it is that desistance research generally has ignored the individual changeability of criminality, emphasizing the debate over the role of self-control. Second, I discuss some theoretical rationales for raising the possibility of the self-control change in a process of desistance. Third, I provide a more complete theoretical model by adding the important role of agency (choice) as a key to the explanation of the self-control development and associated changes in criminal behavior. I provide in here a series of ideal concepts (e.g., goal-directedness) with which human agency to be examined. Finally, I examine the ultimate theoretical mechanisms through which change in criminality over time is most likely to promote behavioral change.