Compare methods

	Desistance Analysis	Recidivism Survival Analysis
Field	Criminology	Criminology
Family	Regression model	Survival analysis
Year of origin	2001	1988
Originator	John H. Laub & Robert J. Sampson; Shawn D. Bushway et al.	David R. Cox (method); Peter Schmidt & Ann Dryden Witte (criminological application)
Type	Time-to-event and trajectory modeling of ceasing offending	Time-to-event regression for reoffending
Seminal source	Laub, J. H., & Sampson, R. J. (2001). Understanding desistance from crime. Crime and Justice, 28, 1–69.	Cox, D. R. (1972). Regression models and life-tables. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series B, 34(2), 187–202.
Aliases	Desistance Modeling, Time-to-Desistance Analysis, Cessation-of-Offending Analysis, Criminal Career Termination Analysis	Time-to-Recidivism Modeling, Recidivism Hazard Modeling, Failure-Time Analysis of Reoffending, Survival Analysis of Reoffending
Related	4	4
Summary	Desistance analysis models the process by which offenders cease offending — estimating the timing of the last offense, the hazard of termination, and the decline of offending toward zero. Sharpened by Laub and Sampson and by Bushway and colleagues around 2001, it treats desistance not as a single event but as a process, and confronts the deep measurement problem of telling true termination apart from a long gap or a gradual slowing of crime.	Recidivism survival analysis models the time from a release or index event until an individual reoffends, treating reoffending as a time-to-event ('failure') outcome with censoring for those not observed to fail. It applies survival methods — Kaplan-Meier curves, Cox proportional-hazards regression, and split-population models — to answer not just whether someone recidivates but how quickly and what raises or lowers that risk over time.