This paper starts where previous research in this scientific field, research about individuals who managed to end their criminal lifestyle, ends – by talking in terms of Pierre Bourdieu’s forms of capital. In former studies the researchers pointed out access to a job and parenting as helpful factors to end a criminal lifestyle. Our purpose with this paper, however, was to find out if it is possible to understand criminals successfully ending their criminal lifestyle from Bourdieu’s capital metaphors and Mark Granovetter’s concept of strong and weak ties. The empirical data consists of interviews with a life story perspective by eight members of an organization called KRIS (Criminals Return Into Society). All the interviewees included in this study have managed to end their respective criminal lifestyle. The results indicate that our interviewees had help in their ending of the criminal lifestyle by access to or by establishing social capital. The social capital in the interviewees’ cases were constituted by on one hand strong ties, on the other hand weak ties. In a couple of cases both types of ties were involved. Nevertheless, the results indicate that the social capital itself cannot make an ending of the criminal lifestyle possible. The following factors in the individual’s life has to be fulfilled in order to end his or hers criminal lifestyle: (1) exhort a strong motive inside him-/herself, (2) accept no drug use of any kind and (3) carry through a switch of field from the criminal society to the conventional.
Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:lnu-34797 |
Date | January 2014 |
Creators | Karlsson, Jimmy, Lindberg, Ida |
Publisher | Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för samhällsstudier (SS), Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för samhällsstudier (SS) |
Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
Language | Swedish |
Detected Language | English |
Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
Format | application/pdf |
Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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