ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the ways in which male offenders in professional-status occupations prior to conviction construct and justify money-related crime. It reports a detailed analysis, based in grounded theory and critical social-psychological discourse analysis, of a loosely-structured group interview with offenders. The chapter explores the ways in which the linguistic strategies that offenders adopt are both constrained and facilitated by existing discursive patterns. The professional class men used an extended version of the breadwinner discourse to account for their crimes by constructing themselves as the primary financial support for their wives and children, but they expanded this to include employees and their families. The chapter examines the patterns of discourse recurrently drawn on by the professional class participants to construct their modus operandi. We have chosen to organize the results loosely around an analogy with the board game Snakes&Ladders, given that all of the men came up with several variations on the "life is like a game/gamble" metaphor.
