This book explores the complex journey from incarceration to lasting desistance through in-depth interviews with seven men who collectively served between 8 and 31 years in prison and have remained crime-free for 4–31 years.

The author begins by establishing a comprehensive theoretical foundation, reviewing desistance theory from maturational reform and rational choice to social control and interactionism, and introduces an innovative social-cognitive-developmental framework that integrates these diverse perspectives. This book then systematically examines the social factors (family relations, peer associations, employment, and leisure activities), cognitive shifts (changes in criminal thinking patterns and the realization of crime’s futility), and developmental stages (early, middle, and late phases of desistance) that characterize the path away from crime. Through compelling individual case studies, this book reveals the transformations that underpin successful reintegration. Each participant’s story offers unique insights into how individuals who were once deeply embedded in criminal lifestyles managed to break free and build law-abiding lives.

Essential reading for criminology students, researchers, correctional practitioners, and policymakers, Life After Crime provides insight into one of criminal justice’s most pressing questions: how do we support genuine, lasting behavioral change in individuals with serious criminal histories?

Glenn D. Walters is Professor of Criminal Justice at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania. As a forensic psychologist, he worked for three decades in federal government as a clinical psychologist and drug program coordinator for military and federal prison inmates. He has published widely in criminology, including on addiction, and is responsible for developing the Psychological Inventory of Criminal Thinking Styles (PICTS). He argues that criminality is best understood and prevented by examining how it develops within the context of a person’s life and has critiqued genetic studies via meta-analytic research.