“If Someone Would Have Showed Me”: Identifying Pivotal Points in Pathways to Crime and Incarceration Through Prisoner Self-Narratives

Prison Writing Programs

Prior research on prison writing workshops has found that writing workshops in prison offer an informal space to share personal stories that are difficult to tell. Prison writing workshops provide a narrative outlet for reflection on early childhood experience and developmental history, where participants who may have never shared their personal stories are able to do so for the first time (Jacoby, 2009). Writings by prisoners are one of the most powerful ways to understand the life histories, experiences, and the pathway to crime. For many, writing is a way of doing time (Chevigny, 1999/2011; Draper, 2012, Myrick, 2002; Scheffler, 2002), and many prisoner narratives have been published and are considered classic works on the prisoner experience such as Jack Henry Abbott’s In the Belly of the Beast (Abbott, 1982) and My Return (Abbott, 1987) and Victor Hassine’s (2010) Life Without Parole: Living and Dying in Prison.

Writing offers a rare space in the prison setting through which prisoners can explore emotional experience. Prison-based writer-in-residence Michael Crowley (2014) suggests that

Writing is also the one thing in life where we get to cross out the mistakes and start again. When we speak or when we act we cannot. It is an act of communication and expression that demands forethought. Furthermore, it requires the considered use and exploration of language. This is important in prison, important in desistance. (p. 15)

Writing programs have potentially differential benefits for men and women that reflect gendered pathways to crime. For women in particular, writing in prison offers a space through which women in prison can explore their histories that oftentimes are characterized by abuse and environments in which they have not felt in control of their own experience (Jacoby, 2009). In some cases, writing has been found to be a form of feminist activism for prisoners that provides ethnographic intimacy for researchers and workshop facilitators offering writers the opportunity to tell their stories in ways that illuminate and uncover their personal experiences for themselves and provide a window into the lived experiences of women who historically have had little to no voice (Hernández Castillo, 2015).

Narrative Criminology

Although life histories have been used in criminology to attempt to understand criminality as early as the 1930s in Shaw’s (1930) book titled, The Jack-Roller, which highlighted the story of one delinquent boy, the field of narrative criminology did not emerge until much later. According to Halsey (2017), “narrative criminology is an emerging approach which seeks to understand how offenders, victims, and policy makers represent crime through spoken and visual mediums” (p. 633). One of the leading experts on narrative criminology, Presser (2008, 2009), argues that narrative criminology offers a key framework for understanding and analyzing stories, oral or written, provided to researchers by offenders. Presser (2009) explains that a “narrative is a temporally ordered statement concerning events experienced by and/or actions of one or more protagonists” (p. 178). Within criminology, narrative statements gleaned by researchers from offenders are often viewed as being able to provide insights to the specific identification of factors that are related to criminal offending (Sandberg, 2010). That is, based on narrative statements from offenders, researchers can pinpoint factors identified by them as being indicative of factors relating to onset into or desistance from criminality. For instance, Gilfus (1993) conducted life history interviews with 20 incarcerated women and found that running away from home was the first delinquent act that many had engaged in, often due to abuse at home, that set the stage for further criminal involvement, such as drug use, stealing, or prostitution. In addition, in an examination of autobiographies of three male ex-offenders in the United Kingdom, Hockey (2016) found that underlying traits, such as impulsivity or aggression, contributed to their initial onset into criminality. Furthermore, Hockey (2016) stated that desistance of the men was due to cognitive shifts but not any radical transformation of “self.”

The examination of narratives can assist researchers in making sense as to how offenders manage or change their identity over their life course which, of course, is subject to research participants’ interpretation of life events (Hockey, 2016). As Presser (2009) states, “the narrative is a certain rendering of what is happening or has happened, including a rendering of one’s own actions” (p. 182). Presser refers to this as “narrative as interpretation” (p. 182). In a sense, the narrative provided by the offender is subjective as it is drawn from his or her own experiences. Their experiences are affected and shaped by social, cultural, and situational influences (Singer, 2004). Canter (1994) states that examining the narratives of offenders can provide a deeper and more holistic understanding of their offending trajectory—more so than other traditional theories of crime. In particular, narrative identity theory and identity theory of desistance may provide both the theoretical and methodological foundation needed to understanding onset into and desistance from offending over the life course.

Theories of Identity

Prior to the 1980s, researchers in psychology did not associate the concept of “identity” with the concept of “narrative” (McAdams, 2018). However, the linking of the concepts began with research conducted by McAdams (2018) and others thereafter (Freeman, 2011; Hammack, 2008; Haynes, 2006; McAdams, 2013; McLean & Syed, 2015; Raggatt, 2006; Singer, 2004). The work of these researchers did not go unnoticed in the criminology discipline and, ultimately, it laid the foundation for the formation of narrative identity theory. Narrative identity theory, rooted in narrative criminology, “offers an explanation for the continuous construction of identity over the life course and emphasizes the power of identity to explain behavior” (Stone, 2016, p. 956). Other researchers have also stressed the ability of the theory to explain crime over the life course (Hockey, 2016; Singer, 2004). The theory posits that identities are constructed through the incorporation of life events into a story, or narrative (Stone, 2016). According to McAdams (2018) “some contemporary scholars approach narrative identity as a big story that integrates many different chapters, scenes, and characters, others focus on small stories as they appear in circumscribed domains and contexts” (p. 362).

A key researcher in criminology to bring narrative identity theory to the forefront of criminology was Maruna (2001), who examined the life histories of male ex-offenders from the Liverpool Desistance Study. Building on the previous literature on desistance from crime by researchers such as Giordano, Cernkovic, and Rudolph (2002) who stress social processes as the motivators to change, Maruna (2001) found that desistance is an intentional shift in a person’s sense of self. Subsequent researchers have found that those offenders who desist from criminality have made modifications to their identities and self-narratives resulting in a new “self” (Farrall & Calverley, 2006; Gadd & Farrall, 2004; Vaughan, 2007; Veysey, Christian, & Martinez, 2009).

In 2009, Paternoster and Bushway added to the emerging literature of the exploration of desistance and narrative identity theory with a revised view theory. Their identity theory of desistance argues that “desistance comes about as a result of offenders willfully changing their identities and working toward something positive . . . and steering away from something feared” (Paternoster & Bushway, 2009, p. 1108). This stands in stark contrast to Sampson and Laub’s (1993) theory of desistance, whereby desistance is attributed to bonds to conventional institutions rather than identity change. According to Paternoster and Bushway (2009), most individuals have many views about themselves, and these identities, or selves, “vary in terms of their temporal orientation. Some selves, like the working self, are oriented toward the present while others, like the possible self, are oriented toward the future” (p. 1112). In their phenomenological analysis of the identity change process in prisoners reentering their communities, Aresti, Eatough, and Brooks-Gordon (2010) found that desistance involves an identity shift from antisocial to prosocial that is experienced by reformed prisoners as positive, however, accompanied also by conflict in experiencing the label “ex-offender” and one’s sense of self.

A person can conceptualize oneself, for example, through his or her current strengths and weaknesses (e.g., drug addiction, unemployment) at any given moment. However, the possible self is an individual identity “directed toward the future. This future-oriented self can be defined positively as the self that one would like to become or negatively as the self that one would not want to become or fear that one might become” (Paternoster & Bushway, 2009, p. 1113). Thus, the possible self is a view of one’s self in the future, which can include goals, aspirations, and fears about what one may or may not become (Paternoster & Bushway, 2009). The researchers further explain that the possible self can be viewed in a positive or negative light. For instance, if one views their future self negatively, they have a feared self-identity, and the researchers explain that this can motivate change. That is, if an offender fears that without making changes, they will lose connections with family, return to the streets, or engage in other behaviors that they loathe, these fears can trigger the individual to change. The identity theory of desistance has been empirically supported both in qualitative and quantitative empirical research (Na, Paternoster, & Bachman, 2015; Opsal, 2012; Paternoster, Bachman, Kerrison, O’Connell, & Smith, 2016; A. Stevens, 2012).

Although this research investigation does not specifically test criminal desistance theories, it is clear that such theories, particularly Paternoster and Bushway’s (2009) most recent perspective, provide critical context for the content analysis of the IF Project essays. Because the essays require the adult participants to reflect on pathways to their incarceration, the “identity of self” framework provides the opportunity to explore this in their narratives. This research investigation offers the opportunity to examine the degree to which “self” frameworks emerge in the narratives.

Research Site: The IF Project

The IF Project is a crime desistance and prevention program intended to help people in prison change their lives, succeed upon release to the community, and give back by helping to alter the path of youth to prevent future crime. The central focus is on reconciliation of relationships, reparation of harm, and service to others.

In 2008, the IF Project started with a question posed by Seattle Police Officer Kim Bogucki to prisoners at the Washington Corrections Center for Women (WCCW): “If there was something someone could have said or done that would have changed the path that led you here, what would it have been?” (Yohannes, 2016). The question was initially posed informally to a group of WCCW prisoners and it inspired extensive discussion. On Detective Bogucki’s next visit to WCCW, she was surprised to find the question had inspired a prisoner named Renata Abramson to share this question with other prisoners. Abramson asked the others to take time to consider the question and write down what they felt. The question sparked interest and a set of essay responses to the IF question that encouraged them to examine what could have changed their own lives and inspired a desire to use this information to help others. This launched the development of the IF Project—founded by Bogucki, Abramson, and Director Kathlyn Horan (Yohannes, 2016). With prisoners at WCCW as cofounders of the IF Project (Abramson and others), the IF Project writing workshop provided a space within the prison where participants felt safe to share their personal narratives. In cases where women expressed concerns about writing their feelings, workshop facilitators made it clear that they were in no way required to write details or to write at all if they felt uncomfortable.

The IF Project became a unique partnership between law enforcement and prisoners at Washington’s Department of Corrections’ facilities that engages participants in introspective writing and presentations during both their incarceration and postrelease to search for answers as to how to break the chain of events leading to crime and imprisonment. Writing workshops are conducted inside prisons, jails, juvenile detention facilities, and truancy courts. These workshops last approximately 6 to 8 hr. The workshops consist of several components: (a) an introduction; (b) preliminary writing prompts, reflection exercises, and discussion; (c) posing the central IF question; and (d) discussion and wrap-up.

Study Data: Writing Workshop Essays

IF Project writing workshop essays have been collected by program staff since the program began in 2008. Since that time and through the study period (June 2013), more than 1,000 essays were collected by program staff. IF Project staff provided scanned and redacted versions to the researchers for analysis. In addition to collecting and analyzing workshop essays, members of the research team observed writing workshops to understand how they operate as part of a larger process evaluation of the program (see Helfgott, Gunnison, Collins, & Rice, 2017; Helfgott, Sumner, Gunnison, Collins, & Rice, 2014). Many of the essays collected during this time include responses to other questions or writing prompts posed to IF Project participants during the writing workshops or community setting workshops. For the purposes of this analysis, only essays written by adult prisoners in response to the central IF Project question during a workshop in a correctional setting were included. Thus, this analysis includes essay responses written by adult prisoners incarcerated at the Washington Corrections Center for Women or the Washington State Reformatory, who volunteered to participate in the IF Project between January 2010 and June 2013, and answered the following question in writing: “If there was something someone could have said or done to change the path that led you here, what would it have been.” Once the essays were sorted, 171 fit these study criteria (see Table 1).

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Table 1.

Essays Included for Analysis by Year Written and Prison.

Year	Adult prison
	Men’s	Women’s
2010	24	52 a
2011	—	—
2012	15	35
2013	14	31
Total	53	118

a

Duplicate essays were identified in the files provided for 2010 and 2011; duplicates were removed and this set of essays is grouped into 2010/2011.

The essays were analyzed using an interpretivist/social constructivist grounded theory approach (Charmaz, 2006; Corbin & Strauss, 1990) to identify themes that emerged in responses to the “IF” question. Narrative responses present life course trajectories (Gunnison & Helfgott, 2013; Martsolf & Draucker, 2008; Maruna, 2001; Presser, 2008), including gendered pathways (Chesney-Lind, 1989; Chesney-Lind & Shelden, 2004; Daly, 1992) toward crime and incarceration. To begin our analysis, four members of the research team individually open coded a subset of the adult essays and met to discuss the themes that emerged. With these themes in mind, an individual coder continued the coding process starting first with line-by-line coding to allow for more nuanced subcategories to emerge, given the rich detail of each essay, and then through focused coding (Charmaz, 2006), in which the most significant codes revealed in the initial coding phase were used to categorize the remaining data. This process also consisted of continuously comparing data by checking segments within each code for convergence and recoding as necessary. Finally, individual codes became subcategories of larger code “families” as part of the theoretical coding process (Glaser, 1978). Memo writing facilitated analysis of the data and attendant codes throughout the project.

“Risk Chains”

Adult essays include lengthy narratives that provide detailed life histories and thorough self-reflection and analysis. Many of these reflect what Kennedy, DeBrenna, Kasiborski, and Gladden (2010) refer to in their work as “risk chains,” points marking “chronic adversity,” which result in increased risk (p. 1741). Some of these points evident within one’s chain of risk include poverty; abuse; loss; absence of positive or presence of negative influences; models of violence, crime, and substance use; adult responsibilities at a young age; and system involvement for the participant or his or her family. In the IF Project narratives, crime and system involvement can be conceived of as part of the risk. Examples of life history narratives reflecting these risk chains are presented below. ¹ The first is written by a participant in the men’s prison:

The street life was easy, and fun. I could be careless and nobody would really care. I was could be a grown man or at least think so at the tender age of 14. I was the parent and took care of myself and my younger siblings. I was the oldest out of three children on my mother’s side. She was a heavy drug addict who still tried to keep the family structured, and with the drug abuse that made her lessons fall on deaf ears. I didn’t understand her. I didn’t know her. She allowed this drug to control her. How she can control or try to control this family when she contradicts her lessons when she gets high. Plus I’m the man of this house, I’m the one trying to flip the welfare checks to pay rent and other bills, or hustling food stamps so my younger siblings can eat. I could even be selfish at times. I felt that was my reward for all my work. Now by my confessions you can see there was no positive male figure. My little brother’s Dad stayed with us but he was no different than my mother.

Another respondent, incarcerated in the women’s prison, explains,

I believe that if I had the love of parents to teach me what is met by good and bad. And not be state raised. Being first put into a foster home, were I was sexually abused, and mentally and physically abused all the time being called a fool, stupid, and alot more. Having these things happen to me led me to 1^st become a runaway kid at the age of twelve. And to survive I had to steal my food and clothes. Then I was put in juvi spent time alone in a cell. I felt safe here because no one would beat me harass me call me names like stupid, nigger, and more while in school. When I was releast from juvi I was on the streets of down town Seattle 3^rd & Pike. Here I learned how to become a drug addict and to drink. I also sold my body to have money. This became my life. The street’s. Being on the street taught me to be a service then it lead me to Maple Lane a juvi prison for teens. Here I stayed until I was eight-teen. And again on the street’s I learned how to shop-lift now I was a drug addict and alcoholic/shop lifter. Had I had someone to teach me about the repocussions of living a life of crime and put me in treatment and school I would not of become robber of banks x 3 time’s in prison from a life of crime. If I had one person care for me and take me in a lobe me and show me how to love myself and others.

Uniquely Gendered Pathways

Although the above themes are evident in essays written by prisoners in both men’s and women’s prisons, select life history themes were more prominent for each. For example, as revealed in an essay excerpt above, prisoner essays written in men’s prisons more commonly note the significance of the absence of a male figure, often directly associated with loss of their fathers. These essays also more often commonly include mention of the larger cultural environment and “lifestyle” of crime—what can be broadly construed as the culture of the streets. One essay draws the direct connection between “fighting in school,” which the writer later characterizes as “cool,” to “fighting in prison,” “Playground to prison.” Pointing to the parallels between this “way of life,” one’s own (masculine) identity, and the associated status among peers, another essay reads,

Upon my release I hooked up with my new drug connection. I was starting into a new way of life with a new set of rules. I soon learned from these new so called friends the rules for this new way of life. This street code involved violence without reguard. It had a so called code of honor that I now know is completely false. At the time I thought this is what is meant to be a man. One thing did not change: My peers looked up to me even more.

For the female prisoners, two key noteworthy patterns emerge in the writings—mental health and identity as a mother. Consistent with the literature on gendered pathways (Huebner, DeJong, & Cobbina, 2010), the first reveals the intersection between histories of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse by family and other intimates; feelings of pain; and subsequent self-medication through drugs and alcohol. These are not independent from a need for validation of one’s self that participants also indicate is central to their “IF” answer. As one prisoner in the women’s prison writes,

If someone would have said “let me take you to see a mental health provider, because I think your depressed and need to talk with someone,” I think that would have been what I call “prevention” in my life. With my background of living with an alcoholic mother, and men abusing me, I wouldn’t have turned to alcohol myself to ease the pain of my life. I wouldn’t have run away, only to end up in worse situations. I needed to have a father & mother figure, and to be loved & taught to love. I didn’t know I didn’t need alcohol to numb my pain, until I found out I was depresses—which was after my arrest.

The second prominent theme is the respondent’s role as a mother in making sense of her pathway toward crime and, perhaps even more so, the consequences of it for her experience of punishment. Respondents write about how their crime and substance use affected their children either through losing them to the system or as an influence on them. As one respondent explains,

I was a baby when I started having babies and not only became a struggling teenage mother but also became a struggling drug addict addicted to methamphetamines. Meth soon became my best friend, and my way of life. I put my children second and drugs first.

Others Helping Me

In addition to identifying how adults in their lives contributed to chains of risk they experienced as children, the writers also detail how others in their lives could have provided better examples and direction for them, improved quality of relationships more generally, and a sense of self-worth and validation.

Me Helping Myself

Despite the framing of the IF question, some respondents also characterize their pasts as choices and, in doing so, detail ways in which they could have in the past, and can now, help themselves by way of heightened agency.

Looking backward, it was not uncommon for respondents to characterize their pathways toward incarceration as their choice explicitly and implicitly present ways that reveal how they take responsibility for their actions. One respondent in the women’s prison, for example, begins to describe the crime that led to her incarceration by indicating, “We all have a choice. I made the choice on [date] that changed a family’s life and my life.” The writer goes on to provide contextual details about the pain she endured in her life at the time of the offense related to intimate partner abuse and the events that led to taking “another person’s life” suggesting blurred boundaries around victimization and offending presented in the literature on gendered pathways. Another writer begins, “I could have changed my actions when my conscious stepped into play . . .” A writer from the men’s prison reflects back on when he was young “and began to make bad choices in my life.” And another indicates that gang involvement was a choice.

As revealed in earlier excerpts, in some instances, this choice is discussed in terms of now realized consequences. For example, one participant indicates, in an excerpt presented earlier, that an understanding of the effects of his choices on his children may have led him to change. Another essay from the women’s prison points to a need to have understood the consequences of her choices, “If someone could’ve shared with me how every choice I make never affects just me.”

Some writers point to what they specifically could or should have done to disrupt their paths toward these high-risk decisions that lead to crime. Some of these include direct actions such as staying in school and playing sports, but more often they address ways of accepting help when it was available and asking for it when it was not. Essay excerpts from the men’s prison, for instance, indicate help may have been available, but it was not used:

If I had truly listened to the advice and life lessons of my parents I would’ve made better choices that not only effected my life but others as well. And my parents, my family, and my children wouldn’t have to suffer my sins.

You know there were people who tried to help me, but none of which I liked. They were all elders of the church. I didn’t want to hear that.

A writer from the women’s prison acknowledges a need to have asked for help, but faced in doing so:

I’ve always known I needed help and deep down wanted it but for some reason I just couldn’t ask for it. Instead I ran from it. I expected my family and those who care about me to read my mind and know I needed help, and when they didn’t, I grew angry and hurt. Making it easier to go out and self-medicate myself with drugs and numb my heart so that I didn’t care who I hurt on my destructive path including my loved ones and myself. I could think of hundreds of things that had they happened differently would have changed my path But the biggest thing someone could have said or done to change things for me, realizing it’s ok to ask for help realizing I don’t have to be stubborn all the time or feel ashamed to ask someone to help me.

Another area in which respondents expressed how they could have helped themselves is through their own self-validation. One respondent in the women’s prison writes, “I would of just looked at all the things I had accomplished and quit putting myself down. Maybe I would have been able to forgive myself.” And another essay states simply, “I would’ve believed the people who said good things about who I was, rather than living out the negative events in my life.”

Finally, some respondents indicated a sense that helping themselves includes helping others. As one writer in the men’s prison states, “I see now that being a positive example can help my son.” And, a respondent in a women’s prison explains, “Take care of yourself so you can take care of your children.”

Looking forward, the theme of choice and taking responsibility reemerges as writers reveal their agentic role in their future, in contrast to how their previous paths have been laid out. As one writer in the women’s prison states simply, “It my choice now to get the help & support I need and Im determined to change my life for the better.” For this woman, her identity of self may be shifting. In other instances, this involves a more detailed plan for what will happen next including taking care of oneself and building relationships with, and serving as a model for, others. As writers from the women’s prison indicate,

I am going to get involved in classes and programming more to stay out of trouble and drama in here. Spend more time on myself and writing to keep in contact with family. Continue to build on my relationship with my mother and become a better person for myself and mother for my son. Learn to love myself and that its alright to be alone.

So, if I could help somebody I would love to give my testimony and come back in the jails/prisons and hopefully by my testimony it might help other inmates make better choices in their future. Also, of possible, visit schools and help kids that might be going down the wrong road go down the right road to make better choices and to ask for help. Don’t think that you can do it all on your own.

A writer in the men’s prison describes his plans upon release as follows, “But, when I get out I will be attending Narcotics Anonymous and making friendships with people who are serious about being clean and sober. I also am trying to make very careful choices about my future.” This participant appears to have come to terms with identifying how he must shift his associations and choices to emerge as a possible new “self.”

Finally, another respondent reveals how his past choices inform expectations for how to proceed in the future to prohibit others from doing the same:

I wouldn’t be in prison. Without that example it took the life of a innocent victim and sense of all hope lost for me to want to make a difference. I’m to blame for my actions and I am going to make the best out of my situation by helping others avoid this life choice. That way there is something good that finally comes from all the bad and destruction I’ve caused. I’m an expert on information youth on what to do, unfortunately.

For this research participant, he has accepted blame for his action and has shifted his thinking toward what he needs to do next, offering a glimpse into the transformation of his new identity.