“You’re Never Given the Opportunity to Say What Really Happened”: Narrative Constructions of Un-/Worthiness of Early Release in Parole Hearings

• In Event: Narrative Criminology #2: Power and Resistance in Intersecting Institutional and Personal Narratives

Abstract

At last year’s ASC conference, Lois Presser and Sveinung Sandberg explored the “Critical Potential of Narrative Criminology,” mapping out a framework through which narrative and critical criminology converge by highlighting the nuances of narrative environments and contexts, narrative actions, and narrative agency (or lack thereof), including what stories are– and are not– verbalized. Building on this framework, I explore the narrative context for parole hearings using a sample of 100 hearings from Louisiana in 2020. Parole board members use a combination of retributive and restorative questioning during these hearings to construct parole candidates as worthy or unworthy of early release, and candidates’ freedom often hinges on their responses to these questions. Using qualitative coding, I study the proportion of restorative and retributive rhetoric the board applies to each parole candidate and examine this proportion’s relationship to the candidate’s race and gender. I then interview former parole candidates in Louisiana to gain insight into their experience of the hearing process. The results underscore the power of parole board members and the disempowerment of parole candidates in verbalizing and constructing stories about crime, restoration, personal agency, and personal transformation.

Author

• Katie Owens-Murphy, University of North Alabama