Edinburgh Napier University

  The presentation will explore the analytical utility of contemporary theories of desistance for making sense of narratives of cyber-dependent offending careers. Until recently, cybercrime research has been preoccupied with situational theorisations of cyber-dependent crimes, while desistance research has eschewed focus on this type of offending. A more substantial bridge is needed between both areas of criminology. While research into desistance from traditional forms of offending suggests an interaction between subjective changes in the person and changes in their social context, mediated by processes of meaning making and identity formation (Anderson and McNeill, 2019), only very limited attention has been paid to understanding the process of ‘desistance’ from cyber-dependent crime beyond ‘rational choice’ perspectives (See Hutchings, 2011). Here we will consider the ambiguities and interesting questions that emerge when we draw together key concepts and ideas from the desistance literature on the one hand, and conceptualisations of hacking and hacker culture(s) on the other. These questions will then be considered in the light of emerging findings from a project to gather the autobiographical narratives of hackers, which seeks to understand how engagement in practices understood as hacking changes over the life course.