ABSTRACT
Narrative criminology (NC) highlights the ways that stories influence crime and other harm. NC is a theory (rooted in social constructionism) that implicates a method (narrative analysis). NC joins psychology, sociology, history, literature and cultural studies in its view of experience as constituted discursively. The most important forerunner of NC within criminology was Shadd Maruna, who, in Making Good (2001), set out the influence of narrative on persistence in offending, for the stories of desisting and persisting property-offenders had different plotlines. Narrative criminology also has empirical forebears beyond criminology, in case studies of mass violence. Narrative criminology follows critical criminology in the latter's probing take on power as constituted ideologically – that is, through discourse. However, NC is particular about the nature of (hegemonic) discourse. Given that specificity, NC also builds upon but goes beyond criminological concepts such as neutralizations and situational interpretations, which attend only to the offence and not to a lifetime of action.
