Emotions as explanation of crime

The next Chapter focuses on one of the central tenets of David Canter’s approach to crime; that we need to understand the meaning and significance of the action for the offender, in the offender’s own terms and as it sits within the offender’s broader purview. In short, we need to understand the experience of the crime. Typically, in encouraging Maria Ioannou and other supervisees to pursue this line, Professor Canter had pinpointed an area where understanding was lacking, perhaps because it is such a challenge to study. He found a way. The ‘crime experience’ paradigm that we are currently pursuing looks at cognitive and interpersonal identity, as well as the emotional, components of the roles offenders see themselves playing. This work is causing much interest not only as an approach to exploring differentiation in offending style, but also to exploring the much neglected question of the immediate instigators, the direct activators of criminal action (Canter and Youngs, 2012a; Ward, 2011; Youngs and Canter, 2011, 2012).