Vägen ur kriminalitet - En kvalitativ intervjustudie om hur före detta kriminella kvinnor upplever brytandet av en kriminell livsstil

Sammanfattning: The aim of this study has been to examine what former criminal women have experienced as contributing and challenging in desistance from crime. The study and its results are based on six qualitative semi-structured interviews with former criminal women. We have used a thematic analysis in order to analyze the empiricism and the result of this study. The result of this study shows six themes that have been recurring in the women's stories as both challenging and contributing to the desistance of the criminal lifestyle. These six categories are substance abuse, parenting, stigma, support from society, social relations and employment. The results show that former criminal women have experienced stigma based on society’s expectations about how a woman and a mother should be and act, which has been a challenge during the desistance from crime. In order to leave criminality behind it has been important to have support from friends, family, partner and society. It has also been important to have an employment. Voluntary organizations support has had a big positive influence on the formal criminal women, they gave them an opportunity to get an employment and a chance to building a sense of community with non-criminal friends. Lack of support and unemployment has been challenging and often led to falling back to criminal behavior. It has also been important to recover from their addiction to substance abuse in order to leave criminality. Parenting has also had a positive influence on the former criminal women because they didn’t want to lose custody or ruin the relationship to their child.