Understanding life story and narrative in lived experience criminal legal scholarship

• In Event: DCS Handbook on Lived Experience: Lived Experience as a Research Tool

Abstract

Life story and narrative research has developed into a rich qualitative practice within criminology and criminal justice scholarship. With origins in narrative psychology, criminal legal scholars have drawn upon life stories to investigate the detailed descriptions by which people build consequential connections between their lives and the stories they tell. This research has put forth new theoretical and policy considerations, making meaningful contributions to fields related to punishment and coercive social control. Although distinct, the expanding interest in lived experience research within criminal legal settings and the scientific analysis of life stories and narratives within narrative psychology and criminology are fundamentally linked. In these traditions the story and its storyteller are centered both phenomenologically and epistemologically. As such, the current review seeks to parse out the relationship between life story and narrative research and lived experience research. In the current chapter we seek to briefly explore the symbiotic relationship between these fields by: (1) overviewing lived experience and narrative identity as areas of research that complement each other; (2) describing how these fields impact criminal legal research; and, (3) putting forth three points of consideration for how the complementary nature of lived experience and narrative identity inquiry can continue to expand our understanding of those in the criminal legal system.

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Authors

• Philip Mulvey, Sam Houston State University

• Leah Ouellet, Northwestern University

• Dan P. McAdams, Northwestern University