Compare methods

	Desistance Analysis	Turning Point Analysis
Field	Criminology	Criminology
Family	Regression model	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	2001	1998
Originator	John H. Laub & Robert J. Sampson; Shawn D. Bushway et al.	John H. Laub, Daniel S. Nagin & Robert J. Sampson
Type	Time-to-event and trajectory modeling of ceasing offending	Within-individual analysis of life events that redirect offending trajectories
Seminal source	Laub, J. H., & Sampson, R. J. (2001). Understanding desistance from crime. Crime and Justice, 28, 1–69.	Laub, J. H., & Sampson, R. J. (2003). Shared Beginnings, Divergent Lives: Delinquent Boys to Age 70. Harvard University Press. ISBN: 9780674011946
Aliases	Desistance Modeling, Time-to-Desistance Analysis, Cessation-of-Offending Analysis, Criminal Career Termination Analysis	Life-Event Turning Point Analysis, Turning Points in Offending, Life-Transition Analysis of Crime, Redirection-of-Trajectory Analysis
Related	4	3
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.	Turning point analysis examines how specific life events — marriage, stable employment, military service, parenthood — redirect an individual's offending trajectory. Developed within Sampson and Laub's life-course program, it uses within-individual and counterfactual designs to ask whether the same person offends less after a transition than before, isolating the causal imprint of life events from the stable traits that select people into them.