The Effects of Neighborhood Context and Residential Mobility on Criminal Persistence and Desistance

This chapter describes the relevance of the neighborhood context in the explanation of persistence in and desistance from criminal offending, with a particular focus on the behavior of former prisoners. It first presents facts about the geographic distribution of returning prisoners. Next, the chapter draws upon extant research to examine in what ways the conditions of residential neighborhoods influence persistence and desistance among formerly incarcerated individuals. Similarly, this chapter draws upon theoretical perspectives and corresponding empirical evidence to examine how residential mobility might exert an impact on persistence and desistance. The distinction between these two subjects is that the former focuses on neighborhood effects whereas the latter focuses on individual-level mobility effects. Lastly, the chapter focuses on criminal justice policy and practice, including a discussion of the implications of the lessons learned from research on neighborhood effects and residential mobility for the re-entry and re-integration of formerly incarcerated individuals.