DOI: 10.3886/icpsr34142
title: Roads Diverge: Long-Term Patterns of Relapse, Recidivism, and Desistance for a Re-entry Cohort, Delaware, 1956-2008
title: Archival Version

description: The primary goal of this project was to increase understanding about the mechanisms and processes of desistance from crime and drug use among current urban, largely racial minority, and increasingly women criminal offenders. This research follows former drug-involved offenders for over 20 years post-release from prison in Delaware. The project was guided by Paternoster and Bushway's identity theory of desistance (2009), which relies on the concept of identity that is theorized to provide direction for an individual's behavior. The identity theory of desistance emphasizes the individual identity as reflexive, interpretive, and as such, premised on human agency. The project featured a multi-method design and unfolded in two phases. The sample for this study originated from a previous sample used to evaluate the efficacy of therapeutic communities in reducing recidivism and relapse for drug involved offenders released from Delaware prisons in the early 1990s. In Phase I of the present study, official arrest records were obtained for the previous sample of 1,250 offenders from 1956 to 2008 from both official Delaware Statistical Analysis Center (SAC) and National Crime Information Center (NCIC) data sources. From these data, race- and gender-specific offending trajectory models were estimated. In Phase II, in-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with 304 respondents selected from within the different offending trajectory groups. The goal of the interviews was to examine the processes and mechanisms that led to persistence or desistance from crime and drugs. DS1 contains NCIC and Delaware SAC arrest records for the full sample in Phase I. DS2 contains demographic information and trajectory group assignment for the Phase II interview sample participants. <strong>Qualitative data are not available for this collection.</strong>
description: The purpose of this study was to follow former drug-involved offenders from initial prison release to 20 years post-release to understand life course trajectories of recidivism, drug use, and desistance from crime.
description: The current study was built upon earlier work funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) awarded to James A. Inciardi, in collaboration with Steven S. Martin and Daniel O'Connell, which implemented and evaluated the effectiveness of therapeutic communities with work release as compared to intensive outpatient and conventional community supervision. Participants in the original study were followed for 5 years post-release. Phase I of the current study used a group trajectory analysis for the entire original cohort to investigate longer-term offending outcomes. The research team obtained arrest and incarceration data from the Delaware Statistical Analysis Center through 2008, which was the most recent data available at the time of analysis. Records from the National Crime Information Center were also obtained as a validity check and to capture arrests outside of Delaware. Next, the research team estimated trajectories based on offending and desistance patterns over time using PROC TRAJ, a group-based semi-parametric trajectory modeling procedure (GBTM) developed by Nagin and colleagues (Nagin 2005; Jones et al., 2001; Jones and Nagin 2007). Trajectory modeling was conducted for the entire sample in addition to gender and race specific groups. In Phase II, researchers identified a sub-sample of participants to further explore processes underlying desistance or persistence of offending in in-depth interviews. Selected respondents were initially contacted by letter, with additional letters, phone calls, and personal visits to follow up as necessary. Most interviews were audio-recorded and conducted in person either at a study field office or at the participant's home. 7 interviews were conducted with "high persisters" (trajectory group 5) who were still in prison or in a work release program to increase the sample size for this group; these interviews were not audio-recorded. Interviews used an event history calendar format that was open-ended and conversation-based, lasting from 1 to 3 hours with an average of 90 minutes per interview. Participants were paid $100 for their time and travel expenses. All interviews were transcribed verbatim and imported into NVivo for team-based coding.
description: <strong>Administrative records.</strong> Arrest records data are structured as number of arrests for each year by data source (National Crime Information Center, Delaware Statistical Analysis Center, arrests made outside of Delaware) and days not incarcerated for each year. Race, gender, age as of January 1, 2020, and year of known death (if applicable) are included. For the interview subsample data, birth month and year, assigned trajectory analysis group, and interview transcript ID (variable <strong>ID</strong>) are available. <strong>In-depth interviews.</strong> Participants were asked to provide information across the following domains beginning with the year of their release for each year until the present day: residence, employment/educational training, intimate relationships, children, spirituality/religion, drug and alcohol use, drug treatment, criminal justice events (arrests, incarcerations, probation/parole, work release), other illegal activities, and reflections on important decisions made during each year. For each criminal and drug relapse event self-reported or obtained from official records, interview participants recreated the event perceptually and structurally, including information about life conditions at the time, how the event transpired, and perceptions of the circumstances. To view the full event history calendar used for the interviews, please refer to Appendix B in the final project report submitted to NIJ under Data-related Publications.
description: Not applicable.
description: Response Rates: Not applicable.
description: Presence of Common Scales: Not applicable.
description: The original study's population used in Phase I of the current study was serious drug-involved offenders released from the Delaware correctional system in the early 1990s (n=1,250 offenders). The sample's gender and race distributions closely matched that of the Delaware prison population. In Phase II, the researchers used the five distinct trajectory groups identified in Phase I as the sampling frame from which to select participants for in-depth interviews. Quota sampling based on race and gender was used, and participants were selected via random numbers table. Because of sample mortality, transience, and some still under correctional supervision, it took three sample selection draws to fulfill the race and gender quotas within all five trajectory groups. A total of 632 individuals from the original cohort were contacted for interviews. Of these, 141 were deceased, 161 were still incarcerated, 42 were out of state, and 83 were unreachable by any means. Of those successfully contacted and not incarcerated, 304 agreed to be interviewed and only 5 declined. The final transcript sample was 295, as 7 interviews took place in facilities that did not allow audio recording, and 2 audio recordings were corrupted.
description: Datasets: DS0: Study-Level Files DS1: Arrest Records Data DS2: Interview Subsample Demographics and Trajectory Modeling Groups Data
description: Drug-involved offenders originally released from the Delaware prison system in the early 1990s. Smallest Geographic Unit: None
description: record abstracts; face-to-face interview; mixed mode