Identity and Criminal Behavior - Criminal Justice

Identity and criminal behavior examines how self-concept — the organized set of beliefs, evaluations, and narratives through which individuals understand who they are — shapes criminal conduct, criminal career trajectories, and the processes of desistance through which criminal careers end. Identity is not merely a correlate of criminal behavior but a causal mechanism: the criminal identity, constructed through the labeling processes that social reactions to initial deviance produce, the socialization into criminal subcultures that peer associations facilitate, and the narrative self-understanding through which criminal involvement is made meaningful and consistent, actively maintains criminal careers by making law-abiding behavior inconsistent with who the individual understands themselves to be. Conversely, the prosocial identity reconstruction that desistance research documents as central to sustained behavioral change works through the same mechanism in reverse — making criminal behavior inconsistent with who the individual is becoming.

Psychology and Criminology approaches identity through the convergence of social identity theory, narrative psychology, symbolic interactionism, and the applied clinical psychology of identity transformation — traditions that each illuminate different dimensions of how self-concept shapes criminal conduct without any single one capturing its full complexity. The identity account of criminal behavior is distinctive from purely behavioral accounts in its insistence that sustainable behavioral change requires self-concept change — that individuals who modify their behavior without reconstructing their identity will relapse when situational pressures remove the external controls that behavioral change required, while those who genuinely reconstruct their identity around prosocial values and commitments maintain behavioral change even when external controls are absent.

Introduction

The psychology of identity encompasses multiple levels of self-understanding that each connect differently to criminal behavior. Personal identity — the specific traits, abilities, values, and life history that constitute the individual’s unique self-concept — shapes criminal behavior through the specific values, moral commitments, and self-efficacy beliefs that determine how individuals respond to criminal opportunities and criminal temptations. Social identity — the self-understanding that derives from membership in social groups including racial, ethnic, occupational, and community groups — shapes criminal behavior through the group norms, status hierarchies, and collective honor codes that define appropriate behavior for members of specific groups. Narrative identity — the life story through which individuals organize their experiences into a coherent self-understanding that explains who they are and how they came to be — shapes criminal behavior through the story structures that make criminal involvement meaningful, justified, or inevitable and that either enable or impede the identity reconstruction that desistance requires.

Research on the relationship between identity and criminal behavior has been organized around three primary questions. First, how does criminal identity form — through what social processes does an individual come to understand themselves as a criminal? Second, how does criminal identity maintain criminal behavior — through what psychological mechanisms does the criminal self-concept sustain criminal involvement that external circumstances might otherwise interrupt? Third, how is criminal identity transformed in the desistance process — through what psychological processes do individuals reconstruct their self-understanding in ways that make sustained behavioral change possible?

Social Identity and Criminal Subcultures

Labeling, Social Reaction, and Criminal Identity Formation

Labeling theory’s account of criminal identity formation — developed by Lemert, Becker, and Tannenbaum — proposes that the official labeling of individuals as criminal through arrest, prosecution, and conviction activates a social reaction that reorganizes their social world around the criminal label, affecting their social relationships, institutional opportunities, and self-concept in ways that make continued criminal involvement more likely. Frank Tannenbaum’s “dramatization of evil” — the process through which the community’s response to initial deviance transforms the deviant act into a deviant identity — remains among the most evocative accounts of how social reaction produces the criminal self-concept that subsequent criminal behavior serves.

Research testing the labeling hypothesis has found consistent evidence that formal criminal justice contact elevates subsequent offending for individuals at the margin of criminal involvement — those whose initial behavior was minor and who would likely have desisted without formal processing — while producing more mixed results for individuals with extensive prior criminal histories whose criminal identity is already established. Research by Bernburg and Krohn on the labeling effects of official intervention in adolescence found that arrest and official processing significantly elevated subsequent criminal behavior through the specific mechanisms of school dropout (institutional exclusion), delinquent peer association (social network reorganization around criminal associates), and weakened conventional bond formation — establishing the identity-adjacent pathways through which official labeling produces secondary deviance.

Research on the specific effects of criminal record stigma on self-concept — beyond the behavioral consequences of reduced legitimate opportunity — has documented that individuals with criminal records internalize the stigmatized identity in ways that shape their self-assessments, social relationships, and expectations of how they will be treated by legitimate institutions. Research by Winnick and Bodkin on the criminal record identity documented that the internalization of criminal record stigma is most severe for individuals who had relatively prosocial self-concepts before criminal justice contact — for whom the criminal label represents the greatest departure from prior identity — consistent with the labeling theory prediction that identity disruption rather than identity confirmation drives secondary deviance.

Gang Identity and Group Membership

Research on gang identity — the specific sense of self that derives from membership in a delinquent gang — has documented how gang membership provides the group-based identity functions that mainstream institutions fail to provide for marginalized youth: status, respect, belonging, protection, and a sense of collective identity that compensates for the individualized stigma of racial, economic, and educational marginalization. Research by Decker and Van Winkle on the identity functions of gang membership found that for many gang-involved youth, the gang provides the primary source of positive social identity at a developmental stage where identity formation is the central psychological task — making gang exit subjectively equivalent to identity loss rather than merely behavioral change.

Research on the relationship between gang identity centrality — the degree to which gang membership is central to one’s overall self-concept — and criminal behavior has found that higher identity centrality predicts more serious and more frequent gang-related offending, through the identity-consistency motivation that makes gang-defining behaviors (including violence) more likely when gang identity is central to self-concept. Research by Sweeten, Pyrooz, and Piquero on the gang exit process found that the identity work of gang disengagement — constructing a self-concept that can survive gang exit while maintaining coherence and positive self-regard — was among the most psychologically demanding aspects of leaving gang involvement, with successful exits typically requiring either a replacement identity (religion, fatherhood, legitimate employment) or a gradual identity fade in which gang identity becomes less central without being dramatically rejected.

Table 1. Identity Mechanisms in Criminal Behavior

Identity Mechanism	Theoretical Account	Criminological Relevance	Intervention Implication	Evidence Quality
Criminal label internalization	Labeling theory; symbolic interactionism	Official processing reorganizes self-concept around criminal identity	Minimize unnecessary formal labeling; diversion; stigma reduction	Moderate — longitudinal studies
Gang identity centrality	Social identity theory; role theory	Gang membership provides identity functions that mainstream institutions fail to supply	Alternative identity provision; gang exit support	Moderate — cross-sectional and some longitudinal
Criminal thinking self-concept	Cognitive-behavioral criminology	Criminal worldview becomes self-definitional, maintaining criminal motivation	Criminal thinking programs; identity-focused CBT	Moderate — clinical studies
Moral identity	Aquino & Reed; desistance research	Central moral self-concept inhibits crime; peripheral moral identity fails to constrain	Identity-focused programming; moral identity cultivation	Moderate — longitudinal research
Redemption narrative	Narrative criminology; desistance research	Prosocial life story reconstruction sustains behavioral change	Narrative therapy; storytelling programs; mentoring	Moderate — qualitative longitudinal
Role identity	Stryker; structural symbolic interactionism	Conventional role commitments (parent, worker, community member) inhibit crime	Role investment support; turning point facilitation	Strong — life-course longitudinal

Narrative Identity and Criminal Careers

The Life Story and Criminal Self-Understanding

Dan McAdams’s narrative identity theory — which proposes that the self is fundamentally a life story that individuals construct to give their experience coherence, meaning, and purpose — has been applied to criminal behavior research to understand how the self-narratives of active offenders maintain criminal involvement and how the narrative reconstruction of successful desisters sustains behavioral change. Research on the autobiographical memory of criminal offenders has documented that active offenders typically construct criminal-consistent life stories that emphasize themes of injustice, victimization, external constraint, and inevitable criminal involvement — narrative structures that make criminal behavior seem coherent and justified as a response to circumstances rather than as a free choice for which the narrator bears full moral responsibility.

Research by Maruna on the narrative identity differences between active offenders and successful desisters found that the most important distinguishing feature was not the life events that narratives contained but the story structures through which those events were organized. Active offenders’ “condemnation scripts” emphasized themes of constrained agency (being controlled by circumstances, substances, or necessity), negative character attribution (essential badness or deficiency), and anticipated future that mirrored the criminal past. Successful desisters’ “redemption scripts” emphasized themes of agency (exercising control and making meaningful choices), character transformation (genuine positive change), and generativity (contribution to others and to the future). Research testing whether these narrative differences predict behavioral differences in the same individuals over time — rather than merely distinguishing active from desisted individuals at a single point — has found that redemption script measures do predict subsequent behavioral change, establishing the narrative identity account as genuinely causal rather than merely descriptive.

Narrative Therapy and Identity-Based Intervention

The clinical translation of narrative identity theory into intervention practice — narrative therapy — provides techniques for helping individuals reconstruct their self-narratives through practices that challenge problem-saturated stories about criminality and necessity, externalize the “criminal” label as a social construct rather than an essential identity, and develop alternative stories about the individual’s relationship to crime and their capacity for a different future. Research on narrative therapy with criminal justice populations is at an early stage relative to the more extensively evaluated cognitive-behavioral approaches, but preliminary evidence from programs implementing narrative techniques alongside conventional CBT — including the Scottish Desistance Project and narrative-informed reentry programs in several American states — has found positive preliminary outcomes on both narrative measures and behavioral outcomes.

Research on Circles of Support and Accountability (CoSA) — the restorative community support model that surrounds high-risk sex offenders returning to communities with circles of volunteer community members who provide both accountability and genuine social support — has documented substantial reductions in sexual reoffending alongside significant identity changes in participants, who report developing prosocial identities through the sustained positive relationships with community members that the CoSA process provides. Research by Wilson, Picheca, and Prinzo evaluating Canadian CoSA programs found recidivism rates substantially lower than matched comparison groups, with the specific mechanism of identity change through relationship documented in qualitative research alongside the behavioral outcome evidence.

Racial and Ethnic Identity

Research on the role of racial and ethnic identity — the degree to which membership in racial and ethnic groups is central to self-concept and positively valued — in criminal behavior has found complex associations that depend on both the specific ethnic identity content and the social structural context in which identity is expressed. Research on African American racial identity has found that strong, positively valenced racial identity functions protectively against criminal behavior for some youth while predicting more complex patterns for others — consistent with the theoretical account that positive racial identity can both motivate prosocial achievement (through ethnic pride and race-group aspiration) and resist the legal cynicism and alienation that racial inequality produces.

Research on the ethnic identity of immigrant youth has documented the specific identity challenges of biculturalism — navigating the competing expectations of heritage culture and American mainstream culture — and its relationship to both protective and risk processes. Research by Phinney and colleagues found that bicultural youth with strong, secure ethnic identities show better psychological adjustment and lower risk behavior than those with fragmented or confused ethnic identities — consistent with the identity coherence account that a stable, positively valued self-concept provides resilience against the behavioral risks that identity confusion creates. Research on the “immigrant paradox” — the finding that first-generation immigrant youth show lower crime rates than comparable second-generation youth — has been partly explained through the identity dimension: first-generation immigrants maintain a clear ethnic identity from their origin culture that is associated with strong family values and conventional behavior expectations, while second-generation youth navigate a more complex bicultural identity without the clear anchor that either pure heritage or pure assimilation identity would provide.

Self-Efficacy, Agency, and Criminal Behavior

Research on self-efficacy — Albert Bandura’s concept of the belief in one’s capacity to execute the behaviors required to produce specific outcomes — has documented that self-efficacy beliefs are important moderators of the identity-behavior relationship in criminal contexts. Research on criminal self-efficacy — the specific belief in one’s capacity to successfully execute criminal acts — has found that higher criminal self-efficacy predicts criminal behavior above and beyond criminal attitudes and opportunity, establishing the motivational dimension of crime-specific self-efficacy as a genuine behavioral predictor. Conversely, research on prosocial self-efficacy — the belief in one’s capacity to succeed in legitimate educational, occupational, and social endeavors — has found inverse associations with criminal behavior, consistent with the theoretical account that low prosocial self-efficacy reduces the expected value of legitimate alternatives to crime.

Research on the development of self-efficacy beliefs in criminal justice-involved populations has documented that chronic criminal justice contact — through the stigmatization, educational disruption, and social network disruption it produces — systematically erodes prosocial self-efficacy beliefs by repeatedly confirming a self-narrative of legitimate failure and social rejection. Research on intervention approaches that specifically target prosocial self-efficacy through success experiences, skills mastery, and positive role modeling — including vocational training programs, education completion programs, and mentoring programs that provide access to models of legitimate success — has found positive effects on self-efficacy beliefs alongside the practical skills and credentials that these programs deliver, establishing self-efficacy enhancement as a mechanism through which these programs produce behavioral outcomes rather than merely a correlate of their success.

Gender Identity and Crime

Research on gender identity and criminal behavior has examined how normative expectations about gender-appropriate behavior shape both the types of crime that men and women commit and the identity-based mechanisms through which gender translates into differential criminal propensity. Research connecting hegemonic masculinity — the culturally dominant configuration of masculine identity organized around dominance, toughness, risk-taking, and emotional suppression — to criminal behavior has documented how the performance of hegemonic masculinity in contexts where legitimate achievement is blocked provides the motivational basis for the specific crime types most prevalent in young men: violent status assertion, gang involvement, drug market participation, and the thrill-seeking offenses that risk tolerance and sensation-seeking produce.

Research by Messerschmidt on doing masculinity through crime has found that criminal behavior is often interpreted by perpetrators not as deviant activity but as legitimate masculinity performance — as accomplishing gender in the specific way that situational resources and cultural scripts make available when legitimate masculinity demonstration through economic success, educational achievement, or institutional recognition is unavailable. The identity account of masculine crime thus provides a more complete motivational story than economic strain alone: it is not merely the material unavailability of legitimate success that drives crime but the specific identity need for masculine status recognition that criminal behavior serves in contexts where legitimate alternatives are blocked.

Identity in the Digital Age

Research on how digital environments shape criminal identity formation, maintenance, and transformation is an increasingly important frontier in the psychology of criminal identity, as the digital social world has become a primary context for the identity work that criminological research has documented in offline contexts. Research on social media and criminal identity has found that online criminal communities — through forums, social media groups, and messaging applications — provide the social identity functions (status, belonging, respect) that offline criminal subcultures have traditionally provided, in forms that are geographically unrestricted and that enable the maintenance of criminal social identities across the geographic and institutional disruptions — incarceration, release, residential mobility — that might otherwise interrupt their offline maintenance.

Research on online radicalization and extremist identity has documented how digital communities facilitate the construction of extremist identities through the same social identity mechanisms that gang research documents in offline contexts: in-group solidarity and positive distinctiveness, out-group dehumanization, escalating identity commitment through progressive behavioral demands, and the social network restructuring that reduces exposure to moderating influences. Research by Moonshot CVE and others on counter-radicalization through digital identity intervention — providing alternative identity resources and prosocial community connections to individuals in the early stages of online radicalization — represents the digital identity intervention frontier that connects to the broader identity-based desistance and rehabilitation research reviewed in this article.

Research on digital desistance — the specific challenges of maintaining a prosocial identity reconstruction in digital environments where one’s criminal past is permanently accessible and where connections to criminal networks can be maintained despite physical separation — has documented that the identity work of desistance is complicated by digital permanence in ways that offline desistance research did not anticipate. The specific psychological burden of managing digital criminal identity — the permanent public record, the maintained criminal network connections, and the identity threat of digital visibility — represents a new dimension of criminal identity psychology that the field is only beginning to adequately theorize and empirically investigate.

Identity Change Interventions

Research on identity-based interventions — programs specifically designed to support the identity reconstruction that sustained behavioral change requires — has found promising preliminary evidence across several program models. The Resolve to Stop the Crime Problem (RSVP) program in San Francisco — which provides intensive case management alongside explicit identity development work through peer mentorship from individuals with lived criminal justice experience — has documented reductions in violence and criminal behavior in the target population alongside documented changes in self-concept and social identity. Research on correctional programs that incorporate narrative components alongside behavioral skills training has found that the combination produces better outcomes than behavioral skills alone, consistent with the theoretical prediction that identity change is necessary for sustained behavioral change.

Research on peer mentoring programs — which specifically provide models of successful desistance that give participants both an alternative identity to aspire to and a relationship through which identity reconstruction can be supported — has found consistent positive effects on desistance-relevant outcomes including attitudes toward criminal behavior, prosocial goal commitment, and criminal justice contacts. The specific mechanism through which mentoring produces desistance — the identity-affirming relationship with a prosocial other who has navigated a similar pathway — has been documented in qualitative research alongside the behavioral outcome evidence, connecting the identity theory to the program experience in ways that both confirm the theory and inform program design.

Religion, Spirituality, and Identity Transformation

Research on the role of religious conversion and spiritual transformation in desistance from crime has documented that genuine religious experiences — which reorganize individual self-understanding around spiritual identity and moral commitment — are among the most powerful naturally occurring identity transformation mechanisms available, producing desistance through the identity-change pathway that Maruna’s redemption script and Giordano’s cognitive transformation theory specify. Research by Johnson on the role of religious programs in correctional settings has documented positive associations between participation in prison-based religious programs and subsequent desistance, with the mechanism operating through the identity investment, social support, and moral framework that religious community provides.

Research on the specific identity functions of religious conversion for formerly incarcerated individuals has found that conversion provides a specific narrative framework — one in which the criminal past is reinterpreted as the pre-conversion period that the converted individual has genuinely left behind — that addresses the identity challenges of desistance directly. The religious convert’s self-concept as a transformed person who has been genuinely changed by spiritual experience provides both a compelling alternative to the criminal identity and a social community of fellow converts who reinforce and maintain that alternative identity through ongoing communal participation. Research by Clear and colleagues on the role of faith-based reentry programs has found positive outcomes on both identity and behavioral measures, with the quality of the social community the program provides predicting outcomes more strongly than the specific religious content — consistent with the social identity account of religious transformation’s mechanism.

Stigma Resistance and Identity Resilience

Research on stigma resistance — the psychological strategies through which individuals with stigmatized identities (including criminal records, mental illness, racial minority status) resist the internalization of stigmatizing messages and maintain positive self-regard despite social devaluation — has documented the specific psychological processes through which some individuals maintain prosocial self-concepts in the face of criminal justice stigma that would otherwise cement criminal identity. Research by Sellers and colleagues on racial identity as a buffer against the internalization of criminal labels found that strong, positive African American racial identity moderated the relationship between police contact and criminal self-labeling — reducing the probability that police encounters produced the criminal identity internalization that increases subsequent offending.

Research on the specific stigma resistance strategies most effective for criminal justice-involved individuals — including selective disclosure of criminal record information, community affiliation with prosocial groups that affirm non-criminal identity, and deliberate narrative reframing that contextualizes criminal history within a broader story of growth and change — provides practical guidance for the identity work that reentry practitioners can support. Research on peer support programs — which connect returning individuals with mentors who have successfully navigated the stigma of criminal records while constructing prosocial identities — has found that the modeling of stigma resistance strategies by successful mentors is one of the most valued and most effective components of the mentoring relationship, establishing stigma resistance as a teachable and learnable skill rather than a purely individual psychological achievement.

Conclusion

Identity and criminal behavior are connected through the specific psychological mechanisms through which self-concept shapes criminal conduct — the labeling processes through which criminal identity is socially constructed, the group membership processes through which gang and subculture identity sustains criminal involvement, the narrative processes through which self-understanding makes criminal behavior coherent and desistance psychologically demanding, and the role identity investments through which conventional social participation makes criminal behavior self-inconsistent. Understanding these mechanisms is essential for the design of interventions that aim not only to change criminal behavior in the moment but to produce the enduring identity reconstruction that makes behavioral change sustainable when external controls are absent.

Research on the effectiveness of diversion programs — which specifically avoid the formal labeling that labeling theory identifies as a primary mechanism of criminal identity construction — has found consistent evidence that diversion from formal criminal justice processing produces better long-term outcomes than formal prosecution for individuals at the margin of criminal involvement. Research comparing diverted and formally processed individuals with comparable offense and risk profiles has found that diversion programs — particularly those that connect diverted individuals with prosocial services and community relationships rather than simply dismissing charges — produce lower recidivism through the specific mechanism of avoiding the identity reorganization and social network disruption that formal processing produces. This evidence establishes diversion not only as a procedural reform but as an identity-protective intervention whose crime prevention benefits operate through the specific mechanism that labeling theory specifies.

The criminal justice system that takes identity seriously will avoid the unnecessary stigmatization that cements criminal identity through gratuitous formal labeling, will invest in the turning point support that conventional role identity construction requires, and will provide the narrative and peer support through which identity reconstruction becomes possible rather than leaving it entirely to the individual’s unaided psychological resources. The gap between what identity psychology establishes about the requirements of sustained behavioral change and what the American criminal justice system actually provides — in terms of identity support, prosocial role opportunities, and the reduction of identity-cementing stigma — is among the largest in the evidence-to-practice translation challenges that criminological research faces. Closing that gap requires not only the program development and evaluation research that the field continues to produce, but the organizational and political commitment to implementing what the research already supports at the scale that the problem demands. Identity change is demanding work; the evidence consistently shows that it is also necessary work for the sustained behavioral change that the criminal justice system’s ultimate goal of reduced recidivism requires.

References

Bernburg, J. G., & Krohn, M. D. (2003). Labeling, life chances, and adult crime: The direct and indirect effects of official intervention in adolescence on crime in early adulthood. Criminology, 41(4), 1287–1318. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-9125.2003.tb01020.x
Bersani, B. E., & Doherty, E. E. (2018). Desistance from offending in the twenty-first century. Annual Review of Criminology, 1, 311–334. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-criminol-032317-091741
Decker, S. H., & Van Winkle, B. (1996). Life in the gang: Family, friends, and violence. Cambridge University Press.
Gecas, V. (1982). The self-concept. Annual Review of Sociology, 8, 1–33. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.so.08.080182.000245
Giordano, P. C., Cernkovich, S. A., & Rudolph, J. L. (2002). Gender, crime, and desistance: Toward a theory of cognitive transformation. American Journal of Sociology, 107(4), 990–1064. https://doi.org/10.1086/343191
Goffman, E. (1963). Stigma: Notes on the management of spoiled identity. Prentice-Hall.
Haney, C. (2003). The psychological impact of incarceration: Implications for post-prison adjustment. In J. Travis & M. Waul (Eds.), Prisoners once removed (pp. 33–78). Urban Institute Press.
LeBel, T. P. (2012). Invisible stripes? Formerly incarcerated persons’ perceptions of stigma. Deviant Behavior, 33(2), 89–107. https://doi.org/10.1080/01639625.2010.538365
Lemert, E. M. (1951). Social pathology. McGraw-Hill.
Maruna, S. (2001). Making good: How ex-convicts reform and rebuild their lives. American Psychological Association.
Maruna, S., LeBel, T. P., Naples, M., & Mitchell, N. (2009). Looking-glass identity transformation: Pygmalion and Golem in the rehabilitation process. In B. Veysey, J. Christian, & D. Martinez (Eds.), How offenders transform their lives (pp. 30–55). Willan.
McAdams, D. P. (2001). The psychology of life stories. Review of General Psychology, 5(2), 100–122. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.5.2.100
Messerschmidt, J. W. (1993). Masculinities and crime: Critique and reconceptualization of theory. Rowman & Littlefield.
Oyserman, D., & Markus, H. R. (1990). Possible selves and delinquency. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59(1), 112–125. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.59.1.112
Paternoster, R., & Pogarsky, G. (2009). Rational choice, agency, and thoughtfully reflective decision making. Journal of Quantitative Criminology, 25(2), 103–127. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10940-009-9065-3
Phinney, J. S. (1992). The multigroup ethnic identity measure: A new scale for use with diverse groups. Journal of Adolescent Research, 7(2), 156–176. https://doi.org/10.1177/074355489272003
Pyrooz, D. C., & Decker, S. H. (2011). Motives and methods for leaving the gang. Journal of Criminal Justice, 39(5), 417–425. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2011.07.001
Sampson, R. J., & Laub, J. H. (1993). Crime in the making: Pathways and turning points through life. Harvard University Press.
Stryker, S. (1980). Symbolic interactionism: A social structural version. Benjamin Cummings.
Sweeten, G., Pyrooz, D. C., & Piquero, A. R. (2013). Disengaging from gangs and desistance from crime. Justice Quarterly, 30(3), 469–500. https://doi.org/10.1080/07418825.2012.723033
Tajfel, H., & Turner, J. C. (1979). An integrative theory of intergroup conflict. In W. G. Austin & S. Worchel (Eds.), The social psychology of intergroup relations (pp. 33–47). Brooks/Cole.
Tannenbaum, F. (1938). Crime and the community. Ginn.
Wilson, R. J., Picheca, J. E., & Prinzo, M. (2007). Evaluating the effectiveness of professionally-facilitated volunteerism in the community-based management of high-risk sexual offenders. Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, 46(1), 27–37. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2311.2007.00453.x
Winnick, T. A., & Bodkin, M. (2008). Anticipated stigma and stigma management among those to be labeled “ex-con.” Deviant Behavior, 29(4), 295–333. https://doi.org/10.1080/01639620701588081