When to Tell, When to Keep Silent: A Challenge for Female Desisters

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to explore female desisters’ experiences and considerations about when to share information about one’s criminal background. The study is based on life story interviews with 20 female ex-offenders in Norway. The interviews have been subject to a thematic narrative analysis. The results identified three main categories of strategies or considerations employed by the sample: Lay your cards on the table, Do not play cards with everyone, and Do not show all your cards. Most of the participants alternate between these strategies in different social settings. The challenge concerning when to tell and when to keep silent, gets more well-founded and sophisticated after some trial and error.

Keywords:

• Stigma-management
• tertiary desistance
• women

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank two anonymous reviewers for very useful comments and suggestions to earlier versions of the manuscript.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The Norwegian Center for Research Data (NSD) (discontinued in 2021) provided advice and processed research applications concerning data privacy. Project number: 60899/3/MSS.