Artful Dodgers: Practitioner Texts, Official Documents and Unreliable Narrators

• In Event: Narrative Criminology IV: What Narratives of the State Do, and Doing Resistance

Abstract

This paper draws upon two qualitative studies conducted in Wales (UK): the first is a study of 30 young people with experience of the public care and youth justice systems (2006); and the second (2014) an unpublished case file analysis of 15 young people with complex needs who were subject to statutory supervision by a Youth Offending Service. The original text-based data are re-analysed through the practice of literary criticism and the prism of narrative criminology. Authorised narratives on the lives of young people in conflict with the law are crafted by professional practitioners in official documents such as pre-sentence reports and case files. Such documents do not merely narrate and represent the past lives of young offenders, but also inform, justify and influence the future actions of the criminal justice system and ancillary agencies. Such assessments shape the trajectories and outcomes of young people for both good and ill. The practitioner, in the role of archivist and state-licensed storyteller, exercises discretion in ways which can either enhance or harm the future prospects of young people. Full case files, meanwhile, are characterised by lacunae as well as peripheral documents that reveal less orderly and more challenging narratives from the margins.

Author

• Jonathan Wynne Evans, University of South Wales