Over 23 chapters this Handbook reflects the diversity of methodological approaches employed in the emerging field of narrative criminology.

Over 23 chapters this Handbook reflects the diversity of methodological approaches employed in the emerging field of narrative criminology.

Explores the role of stories in criminal culture and justice systems around the world Stories are much more than a means of communication—stories help us shape our identities, make sense of the world, and mobilize others to action. In Narrative Criminology, prominent scholars from across the academy and around the world examine stories that animate offending. From an examination of how criminals understand certain types of crime to be less moral than others, to how violent offenders and drug users each come to understand or resist their identity as ‘criminals’, to how cultural narratives motivate genocidal action, the case studies in this book cover a wide array of crimes and justice systems throughout the world. The contributors uncover the narratives at the center of their essays through qualitative interviews, ethnographic fieldwork, and written archives, and they scrutinize narrative structure and meaning by analyzing genres, plots, metaphors, and other components of storytelling. In doing so, they reveal the cognitive, ideological, and institutional mechanisms by which narratives promote harmful action. Finally, they consider how offenders’ narratives are linked to and emerge from those of conventional society or specific subcultures. Each chapter reveals important insights and elements for the development of a framework of narrative criminology as an important approach for understanding crime and criminal justice. An unprecedented and landmark collection, Narrative Criminology opens the door for an exciting new field of study on the role of stories in motivating and legitimizing harm.

Despite ethnography's long and distinguished history in the social sciences, its use in criminology is still relatively rare. Over the years, however, ethnographers in the United States and abroad have amassed an impressive body of work on core criminological topics and groups, including gang members, sex workers, drug dealers, and drug users. Ethnographies on criminal justice institutions have also flourished, with studies on police, courts, and prisons providing deep insights into how these organizations operate and shape the lives of people who encounter them. The Oxford Handbook of Ethnographies of Crime and Criminal Justice provides critical and current reviews of key research topics, issues, and debates that crime ethnographers have been grappling with for over a century. This volume brings together an outstanding group of ethnographers to discuss various research traditions, the ethical and pragmatic challenges associated with conducting crime-related fieldwork, relevant policy recommendations for practitioners in the field, and areas of future research for crime ethnographers. In addition to exhaustive overview essays, the handbook also presents case studies that serve as exemplars for how ethnographic inquiry can contribute to our understanding of crime and criminal justice-related topics.

This book illustrates the importance of conflicting narratives in understanding and dealing with crime, based on a variety of cutting-edge research. Offenders tell stories about crime and punishment, as do policemen, judges and defence lawyers, but so do politicians and the media. Each tells them very differently and only some stories are believed, while others are rejected as implausible leading to conflict. This book explores how these conflicts are carried out and what relationships exist between (often unquestioned) master narratives and (sometimes loud, sometimes silent) counter-narratives? These are questions of central importance for criminology which have thus far received little attention. This edited collection is international and interdisciplinary in scope, providing empirical insights from such diverse contexts as (social) media, newspapers, comics, police interrogations, social and criminal justice settings, and museum exhibitions. By including contributions from a wide spectrum of academic disciplines and using different methodological approaches, it is of particular interest to students and researchers in criminology and sociology, as well as to scholars of socio-legal studies.

This book introduces narrative justice, a new theory of aesthetic education – the thesis that the cultivation of aesthetic or artistic sensibility can both improve moral character and achieve political justice. The author argues that there is a subcategory of narrative representations that provide moral knowledge regardless of their categorisation as fiction or non-fiction, and which therefore can be employed as a means of moral improvement. McGregor applies this narrative ethics to the criminology of inhumanity, including both crimes against humanity and terrorism. Expanding on the methodology of narrative criminology, he demonstrates that narrative representations can be employed to evaluate responsibility for inhumanity, to understand the psychology of inhumanity, and to undermine inhumanity – and are thus a means to the end of opposing injustice. He concludes that the cultivation of narrative sensibility is an important tool for both moral improvement and political justice.

Drawing on complex narratives across film, TV, novels and graphic novels, this authoritative critical analysis demonstrates the value of fictional narratives as a tool for understanding, explaining and reducing crime and social harm. McGregor establishes an original theory of the criminological value of fiction.