Offenders’ Crime Narratives as Revealed by the Narrative Roles Questionnaire

• Date: 01 March 2013
• Published date: 01 March 2013
• Author: David V. Canter,Donna Youngs
• DOI: 10.1177/0306624X11434577
• Subject Matter: Articles

International Journal of

Offender Therapy and

Comparative Criminology

57(3) 289 –311

© The Author(s) 2012

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DOI: 10.1177/0306624X11434577

ijo.sagepub.com

434577IJO57310.1177/0306624X11434577Youngs

and CanterInternational Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology

1University of Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, UK

Corresponding Author:

Donna Youngs, International Research Centre for Investigative Psychology, University of Huddersfield,

HHS Research Building, Queensgate Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, UK.

Email: d.youngs@hud.ac.uk

Offenders’ Crime

Narratives as Revealed

by the Narrative

Roles Questionnaire

Donna Youngs1 and David V. Canter1

Abstract

The study of narrative processes as part of the immediate factors that shape criminal

action is limited by the lack of a methodology for differentiating the narrative themes

that characterise specific crime events. The current study explores how the roles

offenders see themselves as playing during an offence encapsulate their underlying

crime narratives and thus provide the basis for a quantitative methodology. To test

this possibility, a 33-item Narrative Roles Questionnaire (NRQ) was developed

from intensive interviews with offenders about their experience of committing a

recent offence. A multidimensional analysis of the NRQ completed by 71 convicted

offenders revealed life narrative themes similar to those identified in fiction by Frye

and with noncriminals by McAdams, labelled The Professional, Victim, Hero, and

Revenger offence roles. The NRQ thus is a first step in opening up the possibility of

empirical studies of the narrative aetiological perspective in criminology.

Keywords

offenders narratives, Narrative Roles Questionnaire (NRQ)

The narrative framework offers criminology a causal process that can inform under-

standing of the immediate and direct influences on specific patterns of offending

action. This possibility of an immediate narrative intent arises from the dynamic, self-

awareness/experiential, and agency-focused qualities of the narrative that are well

290 International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology 57(3)

recognised within psychological thinking (e.g., Bruner, 2004; Canter, 2008; Crossley,

2000). Proponents of this paradigm draw attention to the naturally storied quality of

human memory and thought, highlighting the ability of the narrative to “vivify and

integrate life and make it . . . meaningful” (McAdams, 2001, p. 101).

In the criminal context, Canter (1994) draws on the narrative approach to show how

offenders’ narratives provide a richer understanding of the meaning of their offending

than dispositional or social theories. He argued that as part of a story or narrative form,

motivation and meaning necessarily become the intention to act; the dynamic process

that is required to move the drama forward. By understanding the narrative then, we

get closer to understanding the action. In this way, it is clear that the offenders’ narra-

tives can operate as what Presser (2009) calls “key instigators of action,” contributing

to explanations of “the neglected . . . here and now of crime” (p. 179).

Canter’s (1994) point that offenders will also draw on the finite set of narrative

themes generally available within any culture finds support in investigative psychol-

ogy studies of offending style (for a review, see Canter & Youngs, 2009). These stud-

ies have been able to apply particular narrative interpretations that have their origins

in the work of Frye (1957) and McAdams (1985, 1993) to specific criminal action

patterns. Four narrative themes have been derived from the detailed consideration of

offence actions and labelled: Adventure, Irony, Quest, and Tragedy. Such themes have

now been proposed for crimes including rape, stalking, homicide, robbery, burglary,

and arson (Canter & Youngs, 2009).

Indications that actual criminal behaviour patterns can be distinguished in terms of

coherent narrative themes does support the suggestion that the narrative, whether

operating explicitly or implicitly, is significant in driving and shaping the action. It

implies, as Toch (1993) argues in relation to the violent men’s stories he studied, that

the offending is the enactment of the narrative rather than the narrative simply being

an interpretation of the context out of which the offence has emerged. This utilisation

of narrative ideas is consistent with Presser’s postpositivist conceptualisation of narra-

tive as one “that effectively blurs the distinction between narrative and experience by

suggesting that experience is always known and acted upon as it has been interpreted

symbolically” (Presser, 2009, p. 184), rather than the narrative operating as a post hoc,

interpretative device that only provides insight into an individual’s subjective under-

standing of factors that motivated behaviour.

Understood in this way, it becomes clear that the narrative framework has the

potential to explain what Presser (2009) calls “dynamic factors at the point of behav-

iour” in her call for a narrative criminology. This is an application that represents a

clear development from McAdams’s important work which showed the usefulness of

a narrative perspective in providing an underlying coherence to human experience

over time, whether by explaining how events have unfolded in a life story or as a psy-

chological form for recognising consistencies in personality and identity (McAdams,

1985, 1993, 1999). Maruna (2001) draws attention to this potential for a general causal

role, showing that different self-narratives are themselves implicated in whether

offenders desist from crime or not.