Scripting the Conviction: Power and Resistance in the Management of Criminal Stigma

Abstract

ABSTRACTPeople with criminal records seeking employment face a dilemma: how to discuss their conviction(s) in a job interview. Convicted job seekers are encouraged to draft, revise, and rehearse their “conviction scripts” and to approach their delivery as a Goffmanian performance. Drawing from participant observation within a nonprofit employment program in Southern California, this article analyzes job seekers’ attempts to craft narratives that will satisfy employers’ curiosities and concerns, with the assistance of professional coaches. I find that rather than challenge criminalizing practices or stigma itself, job seekers are encouraged to dissociate from criminal stigma and develop narratives that reinforce dominant frameworks of personal responsibility, remorse, and rehabilitation. They also regularly veer, however, from these conventions, in search of narratives that more accurately explain and contextualize their decisions. I argue that the act of scripting convictions is thus a political process in motion, a negotiation of power, with real life consequences. While at present, conviction scripting tends to reproduce the inequalities that underlie the criminal punishment system, the article concludes by exploring how criminalized people could craft scripts that contribute to their liberation. [stigma, criminalization, race, criminal records, employment]