A New Way of Teaching Criminology for Investigation and Trial: A Narrative-Based Approach

Abstract

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.

New Criminological Perspectives: The Observational Method

“…As we have seen, during the trial phase, the role of the criminologist is fundamental because, during the psychiatric expertise stage, he or she may be called upon to express an opinion on various aspects of the criminal proceedings concerning the offender, such as imputability, social dangerousness, ability to stand trial, as well as the ability of a witness to testify. Once appointed as a consultant, the narrative criminologist, in order to draft the consultative paper, will need to collect not only the different pieces of information regarding the crime but also, and above all, the different factors that make up the life history of the offender and that have, in some way, contributed to a specific criminal behaviour (Schioppetto, Monzani, and Ciappi 2019). First of all, the narrative criminologist must identify the object of his or her research, the subject suspected of committing the crime or the victim, depending on the role played in the trial, and especially the individual, unique and unrepeatable model of interpretation derived from the narrative of the alleged perpetrator's life story.…”