I just lost it : offenders' rationalisations for criminal violence

This chapter will show that much of the rhetorical work by offenders was consistent with the literature in terms of the types of excuses and rationalisations used to negotiate responsibility both publicly and privately. However, the main focus of this chapter will be to explore two ways in which offenders navigated personal responsibility for criminal violence that have not been addressed in detail in the literature. The first of these relates to invoking the notion of a threshold, which, when breached, results in irrational and criminal behaviour that is suggested to be outside of the control of the offender. This idea is well known within forensic practice and draws on moral accounting for criminal behaviour, which has as its foundation in community discourses about crime and about criminals. For some offenders, the notion of threshold was also related to culture and this will be discussed in some depth. Second, this chapter will explore how the idea of culture is drawn on by some offenders in justifying their criminal violence, an aspect which has not been addressed adequately in the literature, but which emerges strongly when taking a culturally situated perspective on violence. Several of the offenders whose backgrounds were in cultures that prioritised values of collectivism utilised notions of culture in explaining their criminal behaviour, particularly those offenders with fragile ethnic identity as a function of migrant experience. In other words, culture is one way in which offenders may seek to negotiate personal responsibility for criminal violence. This is consistent with the increasing perception in Australia of a link between culture and crime, such that offenders are suggested to be drawing on readily available community discourses about culture and crime in accounting for their offending. In contrast, accounts of offenders from individualist-oriented cultures were generally culture absent and tended to draw on different, predominantly individualised values for understanding their experiences and explaining their behaviour.