”Jag kunde bara slåss” Förklaringar och vändningar i tidigare kriminella kvinnors personliga berättelser

Abstract

”Fighting was the only thing I was good at”– Accounts and biographical turns in previously criminal women’s personal storiesToday’s narrative criminology offers a more nuanced approach to understanding crime than many previous approaches. In this article we draw on personal stories from four middle-aged women with criminal experiences to explore some analytic tracks in this area. First, we show how recognizable sad tales, employed by the women to account for previous crimes and drug use, are supplemented by incorporated aspects of happy tales, as well as reflexive markers of storytelling and ”accounts of accounts”. The women identify their formerly active neutralizations, and they account for why they used them. Second, we refine an analysis of biographical turning points by focusing details that complicate the points at issue. Life changes are narrated as more uncertain, oscillating, long lasting and educational than might be expected. ”Doing motherhood” and a Meadian story of taking the role of the other are conspicuous; the narrators try to depict their lives from their children’s point of view. Having a child and, eventually, caring for it is attributed a life changing significance.