PRISON – AND THEN?

113 levels of mental health issues in the young women, a finding which supports existing research, with self-harm, low self-esteem, personality and post-traumatic stress disorders featuring prominently. Practitioners described how these issues feed into responses such as empowerment and self-esteem programmes and trauma informed approaches; and to practices, such as securing young women to prevent further harm. The stance of this paper is not that young women do not experience these mental health issues, or that all such responses and practices are inappropriate. Far from it, the very high levels of traumatic experiences in the histories of many young women in contact with criminal justice systems will inevitably impact upon states of mental health and wellbeing. However, whilst the interview narratives reveal rich description regarding the psychological needs of the young women and practice to address these, structural constraints were frequently striking by their absence. This may well be because such constraints are out with practitioners’ remit and control, but the paper will argue that uncritical pathologization of young women as, for example, personality disordered, permits an individualisation of both the issue and the response, placing responsibility upon the young woman to ‘get better’ and to change, whilst wider structural and societal issues are marginalised or ignored. Whilst it is critical that research continues to seek to understand and develop responses to the psychological issues faced by these young women, it is equally important that research addresses and brings into the foreground, wider contextual influences and constraints largely overshadowed within practice by a psychological based risk factor approach to young women who offend.

0133 - FOREIGNERS IN A CLOSED COUNTRY: PRO AND CON OF ASKING FOR FD 909/2008 PROCEDURE

Luisa Ravagnani (Italy)¹; Esther Ester Montero Perez De Tudela (Spain)² 1 - University of Brescia, Italy; 2 - University of Huelva

After passing the law that implement the FD 909/2008 on the application of the principle of mutual recognition to judgments in criminal matters imposing custodial sentences or measures involving deprivation of liberty for the purpose of their enforcement in the European Union, Spain is now in the condition to fasten the transfer of foreign prisoners to their national countries. However, based on the questionnaires that we applied, it seems that the process is not without difficulties. It seems that, before deciding about their consent to the transfer, prisoners want to know more about the early release system in the executing state as well as of the possible alternatives to prison available in both countries. In other words, their consent is subordinated to a detailed analysis of the best way to serve a shorter sentence.

Under this perspective, after taking into consideration the Italian prison population in Spain, we try to show what can happen to a sentence passed by a Spanish court and served in Italy, as a consequence of the transfer under the FD 909. We also underline the differences in the implementation procedure between the two countries to show the elements that can influence the prisoner’s decision regarding the transfer.

In the conclusion we make a case for an effective communication strategy in order to assist inmates make an informed decision.

0134 - CO-PRODUCING DESISTANCE? HOW WORKER COOPERATIVES CAN INFORM INNOVATIONS IN SOCIAL JUSTICE

Beth Weaver (United Kingdom)¹ 1 - University of Strathclyde

Desistance research recognises a significant, albeit contingent, relationship between participation in employment, desistance and social integration. Yet, with notable exceptions, developments in social policy and penal practices across Europe have made little progress in addressing barriers to and creating opportunities for employment for serving and former prisoners. This paper reports on an exception to this norm in the form of Italian through-the-prison-gate social cooperatives. Discussing the findings from the first phase of interviews undertaken with key stakeholders (including serving and former prisoner employees) in different cooperatives across Northern Italy, this paper discusses how social cooperatives can enable social integration and encourage desistance. In so doing, it raises important questions about what coproducing desistance and supporting reintegration might really mean for

115 2.12 NARRATIVE CRIMINOLOGY I

Chair: Martina Feilzer

0135 - PUBLIC NARRATIVES OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE – LEARNING LESSONS FROM PRAGMATISM AS A RESEARCH PARADIGM

Martina Feilzer (United Kingdom)¹ 1 - Bangor University

This paper explores the potential of developing the concept of public narratives of criminal justice to further our understanding of public perceptions of crime and criminal justice. Public narratives are conceived as the public’s shared understanding of a phenomenon (Peelo 2005, 21) which are expressed through a shared set of stories used to communicate. Public narratives are different from, but related to, media narratives, political narratives, and academic narratives, but importantly they differ from Durkheim’s collective conscience (shared beliefs, ideas, and moral attitudes).

When individuals talk about complex issues such as policing or sentencing practices they draw on a shares set of stories to explain their views as well as any uncertainties or complexities they want to express. This does not necessarily mean that individuals subscribe to these stories but that they recognize them and use them to communicate, and such common stories can be used to introduce counter narratives.

The paper draws heavily on pragmatism as a research paradigm, considering both quantitative and qualitative research of public opinion and attitudes to crime and criminal justice as valid contributions to our knowledge of public opinion. The paper suggests that future research on public opinion should explore the articulation of public narratives in a society’s self-understanding, and how such public narratives may shift across time and culture. Comparative research into how the people of different countries talk about crime and justice is essential in exploring the merit of this empirical question. If there are differences in public narratives and, in particular the types of stories used to talk about crime, such differences may explain findings of national level variation in relation to punitiveness and levels of trust in justice (Van Dijk, et al. 2007; and Hough and Sato 2011).

References:

Hough, M. and Sato, M. (2011). Trust in Justice: why is it important for criminal justice and how can it be measured. Final Report of the Euro-Justis project. Helsinki.

Peelo, M. (2005). Crime and the Media. Public narratives and private consumption. In M. Peelo and K. Soothill (Eds.). Questioning Crime and Criminology. Cullompton. Willan

Van Dijk, J., J. Van Kesteren, and P. Smit. (2007). Criminal Victimisation in International Perspective. Amsterdam: UNODC.

0136 - COUNTERING THE MASTER: TABOO, SECRETS AND STIGMA IN LIFESTORIES OF RESISTERS

Sheila Adjiembaks (Netherlands)¹ 1 - Jurisdische Hogeschool Avans-Fontys

Narrative research within criminology has been relatively underexposed. However the last decade there is a revival related to the use of narratives within criminological research due to an increasing awareness that narratives can provide meaningful insights based on narrative truths, personal thoughts, motivations and for- and backgrounds of crime. At the same time there is a tangible lack of guidelines when it comes to analyzing narratives. Most research is based on a Grounded Theory approach.

This presentation introduces an alternative way of analyzing narratives in criminology based on positioning theory and the pentad of Burkes dramatism. Several levels of positioning are identified using a Storyline analysis. This kind of analysis is not concerned with emerging themes throughout the collective data (as grounded theory is), but focuses on the (individual) in depth analysis, within the individual (life)story. Results of a qualitative exploration based on the three levels of the Storyline analysis are presented. These levels relate (among other levels) to the wider, societal context which is also known as or embodied by the concept of Bambergs (2004) so-called ‘master’- and ‘counternarratives’.

It is demonstrated that positioning differs and is (co-)constructed by context. In this perspective some preliminary findings related to important themes in criminology, such as

‘taboo’, ‘secret’ and ‘stigma’ will be discussed using data from the exploratory fieldwork on (collecting and analyzing) lifestories of so-called resisters: people who are subjected to and/or grew up in a dominantly criminal environment, but have not developed a criminal career.

0137 - LIFE AS A FILM: NARRATIVES AS A SOURCE OF DATA IN CRIMINOLOGY Przemyslaw Piotrowski (Poland)¹; Stefan Florek (Poland)¹

1 - Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Faculty of Management and Social Communication, Institute of Applied Psychology, Department of Forensic Psychology and Criminology

A research paradigm in which an offender's perspective is used as a source of data in the study on the causes of crime is a relatively new approach to criminology and it is still developing.

One of the key concepts within the approach is narrative. The literature on the subject uses

117 Criminologists point out that the narrative method helps them develop a better understanding of offenders' motives and identify the meaning that perpetrators attach to their crimes (Canter 1994). The two components (motives and meaning) may explain the way in which an intention to commit a crime is formed. Thus, by examining narratives, researchers may delve into the nature of criminal activities.

The subject of the presentation is the characteristics of a research technique entitled "Life as a Film" (LAAF), used for the first time in Poland. It is a part of Canter-Youngs Narrative Experience Interview Protocol version 2 (CY-NEIPv2), created by David Canter and Donna Youngs (2012). The general description of results of 30 first-time convicts imprisoned in Tarnow Penitentiary will be also presented. The control group consisted of 30 men without criminal record.

0138 - NARRATIVE CRIMINOLOGY AND SEMIOTICS: AN APPLICATION TO THE FIELD OF PSYCHIATRIC EXPERT REPORTS

Alfredo Verde (Italy)¹ 1 - University of Genoa

The present paper presents a new perspective in narrative criminology: the use of semiotics according to Roland Barthes' theory about semiotic codes in narratives. Barthes considers narrative texts as musical scores for organ, crossed by different "voices", corresponding to codes: proairetic, hermeneutical, semantic, referential, symbolic. Every narrative, written or spoken, can be analysed dividing it in pieces (Barthes’ “lexias”), and observing the emersion of each code and the interplay among them. One further step is the confrontation among the narratives produced by different narrators, and/or in different socio(cultural) contexts. An example of the possibility of the use of barthesian analysis in narrative criminology is given, analysing the case of different psychiatric expert reports, regarding the same criminal case. As it will be shown, the experts ‘narratives use barthesian codes in different ways, and the result was is the emersion of different narrative styles and the arising of different emotions in the narratee. Some concluding remarks are given about the possibility of discerning which narratives are more or less “true” from the point of view of the narrator/narratee dyad.

2.13 ADVANCES IN QUANTITATIVE CRIMINOLOGICAL RESEARCH AND METHODS II