Bridging "quality" and "quantity" in the study of criminal action

This article summarises the main findings of a study on the narrative construction of deviant actions which focused both on the contents and the structures of the narrative accounts provided by criminals. The research was conducted by collecting narrative interviews. These involved 34 individuals detained in two penal institutions in Rome. These accounts are typically constructed in a non-investigative context. Their exploration is mainly qualitative, but our aim here concern the quantitative sight of qualitative data and viceversa. The project was focused to find if there are any differences in the narrative accounts provided by different offenders, classified according to the type of crime they committed and their experience in the area of deviance. All interviews were analysed using a qualitative data analysis software and taking the “Evaluation model” as a reference. Participants were divided into three groups according to their criminal experience and into four groups according to the crime they committed. The results show that there are important differences in the way a crime is reconstructed by offenders with different criminal history. The paper also proposes solutions and innovative strategies to deal with quantification and qualitative data.