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Constrained Agency: The Role of Self-Control in the Process of Desistance

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New Perspectives on Desistance

Abstract

This chapter presents the argument that structural factors influence agency in a more fundamental way than through merely providing opportunities or creating pathways for change. It is argued that self-control is an important component of agency and that it can help us understand how situational challenges influence a person’s decisions in the process of desistance. Traditionally, self-control has not received much attention in the field of desistance research. The General Theory of Crime (Gottfredson & Hirschi, 1990) maintains that self-control is a stable trait, unaffected by experiences in adulthood. Consequently, it is unsuitable for explaining discontinuity in criminal behaviour, or desistance. However, there is convincing evidence that self-control varies over time and is a situational construct, as opposed to a stable trait. As such, it is much more compatible with theories of desistance, including life-course and agency perspectives. The chapter discusses relevant recent developments in the fields of psychology and behavioural economics and presents a new theoretical view on the relationship between agency, self-control, crime, and desistance. This situational conceptualisation of agency and self-control incorporates the possibility that exposure to criminogenic settings can constrain agency. The implications of a new understanding of agency for empirical studies and theories of desistance are discussed.

I thank Tara McGee for her helpful comments on a draft of this chapter.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    As is noted in the discussion section, trait executive function is influenced by environmental factors, including childhood poverty.

  2. 2.

    A dynamic understanding of self-control is not necessarily incompatible with SAT. If we accept that the underlying construct, executive function, ‘allocates’ scarce cognitive resources including self-control, it follows that levels of self-control will vary over time. The problem in relation to SAT, then, is only its measurement of self-control (in the PADS+ study) as a trait.

  3. 3.

    For debate on the study’s design, see (Dang et al. 2015; Wicherts and Scholten 2013; Mani et al. 2013b).

  4. 4.

    For offenders with plenty financial or social capital, desistance may indeed be less effortful (Schinkel 2015; Giordano et al. 2002).

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  1. Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology, Leiden University, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Esther F. J. C. van Ginneken

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    Emily Luise Hart

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    Esther F.J.C. van Ginneken

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van Ginneken, E.F.J.C. (2017). Constrained Agency: The Role of Self-Control in the Process of Desistance. In: Hart, E., van Ginneken, E. (eds) New Perspectives on Desistance. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95185-7_11

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