On the whole, participants seemed to have spent at least some time thinking about why they had offended in the past. Occasionally, nonetheless, participants with shorter sentences seemed relatively unreflective in this sense.
The route into offending
"Me mum used to look after me until me dad come out [o f prison] like. I never used to really get upset about it. ‘Cause I knew all about it... When I was like nine I used to rob. From people‘s sheds and stuff.. ‘Cause I was brought up on a council estate. It was kind o f rough. I t ‘s still rough now. " (8i)
Some participants talked about having offended from a very young age - in one case from the age of 7 or 8. Indeed, one was so young when he started stealing he noted "/
didn't even see no right or wrong about it” (16i). For these participants and the individual above (who’s dad had been in and out o f prison whilst he was young) the criminal lifestyle was ju st the norm.
Some individuals noted more specifically that they had learned their criminal behaviour through observation of the offending behaviour o f family members, including fathers and brothers. Occasionally, individuals stated that they had learned from peers. In learning from others, participants described how they would copy what they saw. In example, one described how his offending began:
“I think because o f me eldest brother. He started stealing motor bikes so then so did I. And then he started doing burglaries and so did I. Just things like that.. ” (9i).
A few had also been encouraged by the fact it seemed possible to get away with offending - “...but when they did more and I see they weren’t getting caught I just thought "why not? ’ ” (4i).
Other participants described a downward spiral o f events leading up to their initial offending, including being kicked out o f schools or family homes. One individual felt, in contrast, that offending was “just a phase everyone goes through ” (2i).
Motivation to offend
Whether they described learning from criminal peers or not, a number o f participants talked o f crime - including committing burglaries, fights and stealing cars - as
something you do with your mates. Some felt that they had offended through their loyalty to or affiliation with violent and ‘trouble making’ fnends. For others, offending was more of a past-time. As one summed up:
“I guess I was just with my friends like. That's the shit that we do ” (6i).
In most cases, participants seemed to have grown up with the friends they offended with. There were exceptions however. One seemed to have ‘fallen in’ with criminal peers having been ‘kicked out’ of school. Whilst another noted that his ‘proper’ fnends did not offend, he described how he had actively selected criminal peers when driven to offending by the death of his father. At the age o f fourteen, he felt he had been unable to deal with the intense anger associated with this bereavement, and that, at least initially, his offending had represented a cry fo r help-.
“...all the anger. To get that all out...And that was what I was doing. Just going silly. Silly... I was like blaming it on other people too. Getting my anger out. I couldn ’/ cope. So it was a way o f shouting out I needed help and all that. I was just doing loads o f crime. ” (14i)
More commonly however, offending brought specific benefits or reinforcements. For some, offending kept boredom at bay. A couple went as far as to suggest offending gave them ‘a buzz’. As one described;
''Like one time I walked past saw a handbag in the car and broke in. And then it gives me like a rush. A buzz, sort o f thing. It *s a laugh when you 're doing it, and you 're getting police chases. It's like adrenaline innit" (15i)
Others talked about offending fo r money. The opinion that offending presented an easier option than working for a living was occasionally voiced. The hedonism associated with having money, and lots o f it, was rewarding in itself to a number. A couple acknowledged that there was at least an element o f wanting to impress their friends. Whilst he recognised that his lifestyle may not have been healthy, one individual related how he spent his ‘earnings’:
"...Girls, hotels, Charlie, whatever I wanted, get it. I f you go in my home I got fifteen pairs o f trainers lined up. Just loads o f shit!.. I know it's good and that getting all that money, but it's fucked up as well. " (8i)
Finally, drugs and alcohol were implicated for a number in their offending. A proportion talked o f offending, at least in part, to fund drug habits - particularly crack cocaine, and sometimes cannabis. Others talked o f offending under the
influence o f alcohol or the ‘silly things’ they did when drunk - including ‘smashing things’, drink driving and ‘little common assaults’.
L ack of control and responsibility
"It were just that my co-dealer was doing a street robbery and a man was beating up my friend, like, so I got in there and just got carried away and got caught. I never set out to do it like. ” (4i)
From a number o f accounts - particularly those o f individuals who had committed violent index offences - there was the sense that participants had somehow stumbled into their offences or that it had all been a big mistake. As one put it, the offence that landed him in prison for unlawful wounding had been *‘five minutes o f stupidness
Such a lack o f control or responsibility was particularly linked to violence under the influence o f alcohol, or incidents where participants felt they had become embroiled in what friends were doing (as the above quote illustrates).
A few participants, in contrast to this, noted their personal agency in their offending -
^'Whatever I do it *s my own choice ” (2i).