The narrative-based approach acts as the only tool capable of creating and assigning a meaning to individual life stories, linking individuals to their actions. The use of narrative as a reference frame for understanding the motive of the crime therefore offers an innovative perspective into criminology and its forensic application. Through the stories of the criminals and the victims, of society, and the world of justice as a whole, doing narrative criminology means listening to and accurately analysing criminal life stories to shed some light and meaning on the obscure elements of reality that from time to time take shape as a violent act. After a review of the most recent literature in the criminological narrative area, the present work analyses the role of the criminologist as an expert who provides an essential contribution during investigation and trial phases. Moreover, the work proposes the use of a narrative approach and the contribution of a narrative criminologist in two different moments of the criminal procedure: during the investigation phase, through a preventive methodological narrative training of forensic experts, with emphasis on team work, and in the trial phase through the use of criminological interviews to assess criminal liability and dangerousness.
A correct understanding of the dynamics and mechanisms that make it possible for a woman to become a victim of intra-family violence allows the necessary measures to be taken so that she can escape from the situation of victimization. Emilio C. Viano, President of the International Society of Criminology, defines the victim of an abuse as “any subject injured or that has suffered wrongdoing on the part of others, who perceives herself to be a victim, who shares the experience with others looking for help, assistance and compensation, who is recognized as a victim and who presumably is being helped by public, private or collective agencies/structures”. Before the birth of Anti-Violence Centers it was believed that the awareness of being a victim was the necessary condition for a woman to ask for help. Experience has shown that, in reality, it is the request for help that allows her to begin a process of awareness together with the operators in the Anti-Violence Centers. This reflection has led to the creation of a theoretical model called “The Circular Model of Victimization”. The aim of the research, and which is presented here, was to verify whether the Italian Anti-Violence Centers recognize the Circular Model in the daily operational reality, and thus to ascertain whether this model can be considered a real empirical model, as well as a theoretical explanatory model. In conclusion, the revisited Circular Model of Victimization will be presented, in which it is assumed that the way out of the circuit of violence passes from a first moment of perception of victimization to arrive at a real awareness of the same.
This contribution will present the observational method, whose main goal is the in-depth analysis of the criminal situation concerning both the dynamics that are triggered within the relationship – therefore interpreting them through the eyes of the individuals involved – and the dynamics faced by those who observe the relationship from the outside and then have to represent or judge it. The method is the result of the encounter between two approaches, narrative criminology and visual criminology, from which it borrows the concepts of narrative and image. Narrative, in this case, means the stories produced by individuals, who describe the events through their point of observation, and the arguments produced by criminologists and operators based on the perspective they adopted in observing the story; therefore, the narrative plays a central role. The observational method defines the relationship metaphorically as if it were a room within which the protagonists act and perceive themselves according to where they are placed and what they see subjectively. Those who observe the room from the outside will describe it as if it were a photograph. Here the concept of image borrowed from visual criminology returns. Starting with the first activities that are carried out talking about criminal acts (fact-crimes) and then the inspection activities (technical–judicial and psycho-criminological), we will highlight the role of the criminologist and the narrative approach that distinguishes his or her work.
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