Description

Narrating a crime: Contexts and accounts of deviant actions

EUGENIO DE GREGORIO

Department of Developmental and Social Psychology, University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’, Rome, Italy

ABSTRACT

This article summarises the main findings of a study on the narrative construction of deviant actions which focused both on the contents and the structures of the narrative accounts provided by criminals. The qualitative research was conducted by collecting narrative interviews. These involved 34 individuals detained in the penal institutions of Regina Coeli and Rebibbia (Rome) and were aimed at revealing how accounts are typically constructed in a non-investigative context. More specifically, the aim of the project was to show whether there are any differences in the narrative accounts provided by different offenders, classified according to the type of crime they committed and their experience in the area of deviance. All interviews were analysed using the software for qualitative analysis Atlas.ti 5.0 and taking the ‘Evaluation model’ of W. Labov as a reference. Participants were divided into three groups according to their criminal experience (i.e. professionals, intermediates and amateurs) and into four groups according to the crime they committed (i.e. homicide, robbery and theft, and crimes related to drugs and fencing). The results show that there are important differences in the way a crime is reconstructed by offenders with different criminal history. The paper also proposes solutions and innovative strategies to deal with quantification and qualitative data.

Keywords: narratives, crimes; narrative interviews, Atlas.ti, evaluation model, contexts, blended and mixed approaches