DOI: 10.11648/j.ijls.20260904.15 ISSN: 2640-1908

Narrative Criminology and the Interactional Construction of Crime

Michael Bamberg, Owen Linden
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We put forth the argument that the criminal, as a recognizable social figure, is a narrative construct, produced through the positioning work performed in interactional settings where legal institutions operate. Taking courtroom closing arguments as the analytical site, we apply positioning analysis to two closing arguments from American legal drama television: a closing in Law & Order (Season 21, Episode 1), and a second from For the People (Season 1, Episode 10), with a third, a mercy killing trial, as methodological anchor and comparative baseline. The comparison yields three analytically distinct positions that extend the care-versus-justice dyad. The argument in the Law & Order case absorbs the care narrative into the prosecutorial stance and subordinates it, making the alignment with the traditional McCoy-era prosecutorial epistemology invisible to thematic readings alone. The defense argument in For the People goes further: it does not contest a competing ethical content but the justice framework's authority to frame. We describe this as a delegitimizing narrative, a third position in comparison. The finding has implications for narrative criminology, where contesting the construction of the criminal may require a different account of the institution doing the constructing, and for positioning analysis as a method, where it demonstrates the approach's capacity to distinguish moves that look structurally similar on the surface but are doing opposite work at the level of master narrative alignment.

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