Narrative Criminology: Understanding Stories of Crime. Edited by L. Presser and S. Sandberg (New York: New York University Press, 2015, 318 pp. £29.99 UK)

Extract

This collection stands as a programmatic statement of what narrative criminology is, and is not. It is simultaneously an invitation to researchers to foreground narratives in their research, and an opportunity to interrogate the novelty and viability of this approach.

Narrative criminology turns our attention, yet again, to stories. That we need to pay attention to stories is not a new idea—indeed, it has been a tradition in philosophy, psychology, early childhood education, sociology and other disciplines for decades. The editors of this volume, however, posit that criminologists to date have not fully embraced this narrative focus, and consequently urge us to foreground the functions and implications of individuals’ stories about crime, criminal justice and victimization, both for the storytellers themselves and the wider society. In doing so, narrative criminologists remind us that stories have a significant impact on people’s lives and future decisions.

To some extent, qualitative criminologists have always used people’s stories as data. What is distinctive about narrative criminology, then, is the focus on narratives qua narratives. That is, the researcher brackets off the question of whether these stories are true or accurate, and instead focuses on them exclusively as stories. As Presser notes, ‘narrative criminologists are largely uninterested in what the world and agents in it are really like’ (Presser 2016: 139). Instead, narrative criminologists see stories as a means to gather insights into people’s understandings of social structure, human interaction, culture, subjectivities and self-identity. These could be narratives about ‘doing crime’, or, in turn, could also be narratives about desisting from crime.