Crime Narratives and Criminal Decision Making Among Female Offenders

• In Event: Offender–Situation Interaction

Abstract

This is an exploratory study of the role of the personal narrative in the offending behavior of incarcerated women. McAdams (1993) introduced the personal narrative as a vehicle for understanding personality and behavior. A narrative is how we see ourselves in the world and our relations to others. Narrative identity is organized along themes of Agency (power and achievement) and Communion (love and intimacy). Reasoning that offenders develop, Canter and Youngs (2009) proposed a schema for understanding offending behavior through the study of the offender's narrative identity. Youngs & Canter (2012a) have completed preliminary research with a group of 73 male offenders that lends support to their proposition.
Since there are discernible differences between male and female offenders (Steffensmeier & Allan, 1996), and since the study by Youngs & Canter (2012a) used only male subjects, this study serves as an extension and replication of the earlier work using a female-only study population. Female inmates are interviewed and completed several questionnaires about their offense behavior. The data is being analyzed using non-metric multidimensional scaling (a form of cluster analysis) to examine the narrative themes that arise in comparison to the types of offending behavior.

Author

• Isaac T. Van Patten, Radford University