Att göra en livsstilsförändring
Från kriminell till icke kriminell
The aim of this study was to investigate factors that ex-criminals believe have been of importance to them when they decided to leave a lifestyle of criminality behind. The study was based on eight semi-structured interviews with informants who had committed various forms of crime. Common to all informants is that they are now members in the Swedish association KRIS (In English: CRIS, Criminals Return Into Society), living a life without crime. The stories of the informants have been analyzed on the theoretical basis of social ties, the exit process, role loss, motivation and the life course perspective. Our study showed that the informants have been affected and motivated by various life events that could be identified and pin-pointed during the interviews. Specifically, it could be events directly related to their destructive lifestyle, such as serious threats, violence or the risk of getting kicked out from home and repelled from family. Furthermore, it could also be the opposite, such as a positive event in having a baby and becoming a parent. When analyzing the collected material, the road from being criminal to non-criminal showed to be long and difficult. The old lifestyle is often strongly entrenched in the mind and it takes a lot of effort (i.e motivation), both in leaving the old habits but also in finding a new way of living. Previous research suggests that people making a lifestyle change, of any kind, generally go through similar patterns. This is supported by our study, through the interviews we saw that informants followed a common pattern in how the lifestyle change progressed, regardless of their history and reasons of making a change towards a better life.