Collecting and Analyzing the Stories of Offenders

Abstract

The stories of offenders are invaluable for detailing the meanings that people give to their own violations. One would expect a broad knowledge base of methods for collecting and analyzing such stories, but no such thing currently exists. This article attempts to fill that gap, drawing on my own and others’ research experiences. Research practice depends on the way that a researcher conceptualizes both narrative and offender, so I pay careful attention to these conceptualizations. I then offer practical advice on best practices of narrative research in criminology.

Notes

1. I use the term “offender” to refer to a person who did and/or does harm. The more conventional meaning of “offender” is a person who has been formally designated as such, especially by formal authorities. Presently, I dissect the use of this term.

2. For historian White (1987), who has written extensively on narrative within his discipline, a narrative has a plot, whereas a story need not (see p. 172). I consider both narrative and story as having plots.

3. Actually, the larger life story in which this story is “nested” (Gergen and Gergen 1988) is about moral redemption following a fall. Hence, the importance of getting a person’s whole life story, recognizing, however, that one’s life story changes with time and place of telling.

4. Maruna and Copes (2005) have located neutralizations (i.e., discourses that legitimize criminal actions) within self‐stories and have theorized that self‐stories shape action through neutralizations. Both labeling theory and neutralization theory (Sykes and Matza 1957) may be revisited from the perspective of the story–action relationship.

5. The author goes by the name “Lo.”