This pre-arranged panel brings together four early-career researchers to explore the role that narration and storytelling play in their respective Scotland-based projects. The panellists will pin down the ways in which storytelling becomes central in a wide range of qualitative methods, including ethnography, oral history and correspondence-based data collection, exploring convergences and divergences between these different applications. One focal divergence-turned-convergence that will be examined is how storytelling in research might give a platform to both marginalised people and those who hold positions of power, but who may, nonetheless, represent marginal perspectives. All four papers offer insight into narratives previously unnoticed, contested, or even obscured in Scotland. In doing so, we each reflect on the ethical and emotional dimensions of storytelling, for participants and researchers alike- as well as the diffuse ways a story can be shared. We ask who these stories are for, how we might seek to use them, and what harms or benefits lie therein. Ultimately, this panel aims to highlight the value of storytelling and story-sharing in the toolkit of the contemporary criminologist.

How can we, as researchers and criminologists, harness the power of storytelling to produce insight into the issues that lie at the core of our projects? The presenter will attempt to address this question by reflecting on his experience of using narrative methods in his doctoral research, which delves into the complex and dynamic understandings of safety and insecurity of Edinburgh-based lesbian, gay, trans, and queer people over 60 and the lived experiences that shape those understandings. Oral history interviews were conducted giving participants the opportunity to shape the data collection's initial trajectory. Follow-up questions revolving around themes identified in the participants’ narratives were asked only after they had finished narrating their stories. In some cases, follow-up interviews were conducted after a preliminary data analysis to zero in on the themes identified as key. This process has produced a rich collection of elaborate, but organically ‘messy’ life stories — ‘messy’, because they were at times inconsistent, contradictory, non-linear, charged, emotional and ambiguous. However, this presenter will set out the reasons for treating this ‘messiness’ more as an advantage, than a shortcoming, of this methodological approach, problematizing linearity, succinctness, clarity, objectivity and impartiality as values that, especially when they are imposed by the qualitative researcher, can easily box in the participants and restrict the richness of their accounts or, even, distort them. The practical challenges of these methodological decisions will also be unpacked, especially in relation to the emotional labour on the part of the researcher and the difficulties of ceding control of the data collection process in a high-stakes context. Finally, the presenter will explore the benefits of employing storytelling-based methods in research for the participants themselves and the frequently therapeutic effects of remembering, revisiting and restructuring past experiences through telling stories, in some cases, for the first time.

The art of letter-writing has been lost somewhat, superseded by emails, messaging and texting in different forms and forums. And yet prisons remain stuck in a different reality, in an archipelago which exists out of time and space, as a total institution (Goffman, 1961). In prisons, communication with the outside world remains significantly dominated by letters. When phone calls are strictly limited by minutes and credits, when “email a prisoner” gives limited time, space and opportunity for exchanges, pen and paper provide the only avenue to the world beyond. The long-lost art of letter writing therefore, remains rife in the prison realm.

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate the strengths of letter-writing as a qualitative method of inquiry in prison research. It aims to do so by drawing on the author’s PhD research on experiences of isolation in Scottish prisons, carried out through letter exchanges with prisoners over the course of over a year. The positive elements of letter-writing were significant not solely from a researcher prospective, but also from that of the correspondents themselves. Through a process of catharsis and storytelling, participants were able to reflect on and recount narratives of their trauma in isolation. However, a number of emotional and ethical challenges were encountered in the process, which researchers need to be mindful of prior to embarking on correspondence-based prison research.

While criminologists have extensively examined the rise of private security and the privatization of public policing, the focus has primarily revolved around economic and political aspects, neglecting the nuanced interplay of emotions and emotional labour within such hybrid systems. This study bridges this gap through an inductive multi-method qualitative approach, utilizing ethnography to explore emotional labour within British Transport Police (BTP) operations at Edinburgh's Waverley railway station in Scotland. As a public police force largely funded by the private sector and responsible for safeguarding predominantly private property, private sector dynamics significantly influence the BTP's operations. The findings of this study, through the use of observation, narrative storytelling and interviews, uncover a symbiotic relationship between the BTP and the private sector within the hybrid security landscape, underscoring the indispensable role of effective emotion management by all stakeholders—police officers, private staff, and the general public—for operational success. Key insights highlight the considerable emotional labour demands on BTP officers, prompting the adoption of softer policing approaches, partly shaped by their interactions with the private sector .Additionally, private sector phenomena such as ambassadorship and heightened customer service expectations have propelled the BTP towards a proactive policing stance, prioritizing the maintenance of calm within their jurisdiction. Academic research on the BTP remains limited, particularly regarding ethnographic studies of BTP operations in Scotland. This study addresses this gap through ten months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2022, encompassing hundreds of hours of immersion within BTP response teams patrolling Edinburgh Waverley train station in Edinburgh, Scotland and surrounding rail infrastructure.

Keywords: storytelling, policing, Scotland, plurality, nodal governance, hybridity, and plural policing

“He won’t be honest with you… I’ll tell you the real story”

This paper forms part of a panel on the power of storytelling in criminological research, drawing on the presenter’s ongoing doctoral research on the politics of Scottish Imprisonment, 1999-2020. The wider research project explores 20 years of struggle to change the prison, uncovering the conflict and contention underneath the settled ‘consensus’ over penal reform in Scotland. Oral history interviews with actors across academia, media, politics, and criminal justice provided the researcher with a rich set of stories; but also with a range of epistemological, ethical, and emotional questions. Participants held different kinds of capital in the close-knit Scottish penal field, as well as complex relationships with each other and, sometimes, the researcher. The way ongoing interactions within this network shaped the stories told prompted reflection on the power of a story to not only construct the past or imagine the future, but also to have seen and unseen impacts in the present. This paper reflects on the value of uncovering untold or even ‘marginal’ stories from elites, as well as the ethical dilemmas – both expected and unexpected – involved in understanding and retelling them. It will highlight the importance of such recovery in the Scottish penal field, which has a particular set of ‘stories’ about the prison that have come to be reproduced over time. Overall, the paper seeks to highlight the importance of questioning the stories we tell as a nation, as penal actors, and as researchers.