Adolescent crime memories and emotions. Implications for police interviewing strategies for group offenders

Aims: To explore the characteristics associated with young people who are involved in group offending and to reflect on interviewing strategies for adolescent group offenders. Research design: 20 participants were purposefully sampled from a group of 14- to 17-year-old males, who had been referred to a community-based program. They were asked to share an experience of co-offending. Using a social identity framework, a thematic analysis was undertaken to investigate the participant’s point of view. We chose an interpretative approach to reconstruct the “implicit theories” of the participants in relation to their group and their interactions with the police at the point of arrest. The coding and analysis were carried out by two researchers using ATLAS.ti, but throughout the coding process there was continuous feedback from the whole research team (internal coding). Theme saturation point reached after 20 semi-structured interviews.
Key findings: We identified two themes that were relevant to committing a crime as part of a criminal or delinquent group and their interactions with police officers. These were “crime memories” and “emotions”. For some of the interviewees, their arrest added to the thrill of their offense. For others, the point of arrest was a traumatic event that was seen to increase their risk of group reprisals. Implications for practice: Understanding the crime motivation