Towards a Global Life Course Criminology? The Role of the State, Labour Market, Family and Life-stories in Latin America

• In Event: Partners in Crime: Qualitative Methods in Life Course Criminological Research

Abstract

Crime in Latin America has risen sharply the last two decades. This is closely connected to the growth of US drug markets, and the associated increase in drug trafficking and illegal armed organisations, but also poverty, diminishing trust in governments, and weakness or failure of states. In most of Latin America, crime is not only a security issue, but tightly connected to issues of poverty, corruption, and absence of the state. Still, compared to the US and Europe, relatively few large empirical studies of crime emerge from this region. While life-course criminology for example, has flourished in other contexts, it has been little applied in Latin America. As part of the CRIMLA-project, and based on qualitative life-story interviews with 400 prisoners in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Honduras, and Mexico, we ask: What is the best way to understand the criminal careers and life-course trajectories of prisoners in Latin America? Three main institutions and structural conditions that are decisive to understand the participants’ criminal trajectories stand out: The State, the labour market, and the family. The fragility of the State is seen in terms of health, housing, education, and security. Many start to work early and throughout their life they only have access to unstable, poorly paid jobs in black markets. Many also get children at a young age and extended family play is important. Sometimes the family and at other times criminal organizations may take the role of formal institutions. We also ask what is the best way to theorize life-courses leading to crime? Inspired by narrative criminology and by emphasizing how life stories are both shaped by and shape life courses, we add a much-needed, integrated constructivist perspective to life-course criminology. The aim is to pave the way for a more critical, contextually and culturally sensitive life-course criminology of Latin America and the Global South.

Author

• Sveinung Sandberg, University of Oslo