Curtis, CateCurtis, BruceStevens, Shannon2026-09-172026-09-172026https://hdl.handle.net/10289/18665Desistance from crime is increasingly understood as a developmental and relational process embedded within social environments. Efforts to establish a life beyond crime are frequently complicated by cumulative disadvantages, including unresolved trauma, fractured or harmful relationships, economic precarity, and enduring experiences of systemic exclusion. Despite growing scholarly interest in desistance, women’s lived experiences of navigating change remain marginal within the literature, with limited empirical attention given to the specific social, cultural, and structural contexts shaping desistance in Aotearoa New Zealand. Across the narratives of twelve women once caught in cycles of recidivism, this study offers new insight into the factors which support and obstruct lives beyond crime. Desistance is revealed as a process of self-discovery, healing and relational connection. The study maps the psychological and relational terrain of change, exposing an uneven landscape produced by minimal access to therapeutic intervention and limited cultural integration. Under these conditions, efforts to reconstruct identity were further complicated by the persistent digital trace of conviction, amplifying both private and public forms of stigma. Women leaving prison are often unprepared and underdeveloped, desisting within hazardous reintegration environments. Desistance advanced when agency was restored, highlighting the need for coordinated systemic reform to strengthen human, social, and recovery capital, modernise correctional provisions, and formalise post-release advocacy.enAll items in Research Commons are provided for private study and research purposes and are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated.Thesis