Synopsis: A Criminology of Narrative Fiction

The purpose of this article is to summarise A Criminology of Narrative Fiction (McGregor 2021), which is the subject of this special issue of the Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Criminology. The monograph is a development and expansion of ‘Criminological Fiction: What is it good for?’ (McGregor 2020), which was published in the January 2020 issue of the journal. Although the axiology and research framework of the article and the monograph differ, their argument and conclusion are identical. My thesis is that some narrative fictions can provide at least one or more of the following types of criminological knowledge: phenomenological, counterfactual, and mimetic. A Criminology of Narrative Fiction employs the phenomenological, counterfactual, and mimetic values of fiction to establish a theory of the criminological value of narrative fiction.