Radical interactionism, narrative criminology and restorative justice. Navigating violent acts and conflicts from the perpetrator’s perspective

Journal title RIVISTA SPERIMENTALE DI FRENIATRIA
Author/s Adolfo Ceretti, Lorenzo Natali
Publishing Year 2025 Issue 2025/2
Language English Pages 12 P. 51-62 File size 202 KB
DOI 10.3280/RSF2025-002004
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Based on ‘radical interactionism’ (Athens, 2007) and narrative criminology (Presser & Sandberg, 2015), this contribution foregrounds violent offenders’ ‘cosmology’ – a notion directed at reassigning a meaning to (violent) human behaviour beyond any rigid and formal distinction between ‘normality’ and psychic suffering. This concept helps to recognise and understand the symbolic and emotional dimensions that are accessed by social actors when they prepare and carry out a violent act. Drawing on the story of Stefania Albertani and using ‘transformative interviews’, we aim to valorise the reflexive knowledge that emerges from the first-person narrative of the offender. In so doing, we advance an innovative theoretical proposal that aims at producing a form of transformative knowledge with the potential of problematising and re-orienting the public imagination around violent offenders and prison institutions.

Keywords: Radical interactionism; narrative criminology; restorative justice; violent crime; transformative interview.

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Adolfo Ceretti, Lorenzo Natali, Radical interactionism, narrative criminology and restorative justice. Navigating violent acts and conflicts from the perpetrator’s perspective in "RIVISTA SPERIMENTALE DI FRENIATRIA" 2/2025, pp 51-62, DOI: 10.3280/RSF2025-002004