The purpose of this study has been to describe the process that women go through before they choose to end their criminal careers in order to hightlight main factors that play an important role for women´s destistance. The study also intends to investigate what causes the woman to maintain the abandonment and not fall back into crime. In order to answer the study's purpose, semistructured interviews with nine former criminal woman have been carried out. The paper starts with some earlier research in the field of women´s criminality. After that we show our results and analyze them by applying Ebuaghs (1988) Role exit theory and with help from Hirschis (2002) theory about social bonds. 

The results show that childrelated events and the time spent in treatment-centers has had a major impact on most of the women.  Age-related events have also been significant for women's decisions to end their criminality. A fundamental factor for maintaining the abandonment has been the women's conviction and belief in wanting to succeed. Other events that turned out to be significant were thematized to: the importance of social support, employment and a community outside of crime.