This talk has two primary aims. First, it highlights the use of life-story narratives as a methodological approach. Dr. Appleton will discuss what narrative methods reveal about human behavior, along with key lessons learned from collecting, analyzing, and interpreting life-story data with justice-involved populations. Second, the talk draws on findings from Dr. Appleton’s own narrative research to examine how childhood trauma is embedded within desistance stories. Dr. Appleton will show that successful desistance narratives often hinge not simply on external turning points, but on whether individuals are able to make sense of, reinterpret, or find resolution around early traumatic experiences.
CJ Appleton is an Assistant Professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. He is a mixed-methods criminologist whose research centers on desistance, behavior change, and the institutional contexts that shape justice outcomes.
Dr. Appleton’s scholarship examines both individuals impacted by the criminal legal system and the practitioners who operate within it. His person-centered research focuses on justice-involved populations, using life-story and narrative methods to understand the criminal career across the life course. His scholarship on the topic of childhood adversity and criminal careers looks to expand the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) framework beyond the household to include neighborhood, school, and institutional contexts. This research maps how adversity accumulates across settings and examines its lasting effects on identity development, behavior, and desistance.
A central contribution of Dr. Appleton’s work is developing the fields understanding of the role race plays in the desistance process. His ongoing projects examine how race shapes narrative identity and desistance processes, including a replication and extension of Shadd Maruna’s seminal life-story study to explore racial variation in desistance narratives.
His systems-focused research examines community supervision (probation and parole) as a key site of reentry and rehabilitation. Drawing on implementation science, Dr. Appleton works with justice agencies nationwide to support organizational change, improve officer–client relationships, and translate evidence-based practices into routine supervision. He also uses life-story methods with supervision officers to study occupational identity and discretionary decision-making.