Narrative Criminology #3: Time, Shame and Stigma in the Narratives of Men Who Have Sexually Offended

Session Submission Type: Complete Thematic Panel

Abstract/Description

Shame and shaming, stigma and stigmatization are factors well-known for their potential to impede the desistance processes of individuals attempting to desist from crime. At the same time, shame and stigma are repeatedly emphasized as characterizing the lives of people who have been convicted of sexual offences, whether or not they live in social and geographical contexts impacted by so-called Sexual Offender Registration and Notification (SORN) laws. This panel brings together narrative criminological and desistance thinking, asking what time, shame and stigma mean for people who have sexually harmed others in the past while trying to imagine another future. Discussing narrative strategies for ‘knifing off’ past harmdoing, facing the challenges of disclosing sexual offending history upon release from prison, and imagining a future, desisting narrative identity, the papers offer novel insights and potential implications for enhancing and deepening our understanding of desistance from sexual offending.

Sub Unit

• Area X. Critical Criminology / 73. Narrative and Visual Criminologies

Individual Presentations

• “I Need to Say Something About it at Some Point“. Disclosure Challenges for Men with Multiple Sexual Crime Convictions - Ingeborg Jenssen Sandbukt, Oslo University Hospital, University of Oslo, Norway

• Shame, Integration and Non-Integration of Sexual Violence Perpetration in the Self-Narratives of Young, Norwegian Men - Anja Emilie Kruse, University of Oslo, Norway; Hannah Helseth, Norwegian Centre for Violence and Traumatic Stress Studies (NKVTS); Mari Todd-Kvam, Uppsala University, Sweden; Carolina Överlien, Norwegian Centre for Violence and Traumatic Stress Studies (NKVTS)

• I Was/I Am: Temporal Identity in Men Convicted of Sexual Offences - Amelie Pedneault, Washington State University; Danielle Arlanda Harris, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Griffith University

Chair

• Danielle Arlanda Harris, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Griffith University

Discussant

• Shadd Maruna, Queen's University Belfast