Suicide rates in prison are much higher than in the community. Significant data supports an approach to understanding this phenomenon that sees suicide as the outcome of incarcerated people bringing their vulnerability with them into prison combined with the pain and deprivation they experience on the inside. This article uses a personality development approach to argue that part of prisoners’ imported vulnerability – which puts them at a higher risk of suicide – results from a life trajectory marked by trauma. To this end, I draw on repeat qualitative interviews with 29 prisoners in Latin America who attempted suicide while incarcerated. Based on a study of their life trajectories, I argue that pre-prison trauma plays a role in suicide in prison by shaping prisoners’ personalities to make them more susceptible to negative emotions and reduced tolerance to distress, adversely impacting their modes of approaching and responding to the world.

The relationship between war and crime is complex and multifaceted. Still, insurgents, armed rebels, and paramilitary groups and the violence they perpetrate are often understood within either a framework of war or of crime. Based on repeat interviews with former members of Colombian paramilitary groups, we describe the role of economic motivations, security concerns, social relations, as well as identity and feelings of power in motivating people’s involvement in these groups. A life-course analysis demonstrates the many possible confluences of war and crime leading to involvement in paramilitary groups and emphasizes how these change over time.

El proyecto Crimen en América Latina (CRIMLA) busca generar una amplia base de datos para analizar los fenómenos de crimen y castigo en el continente. Un equipo de más de 40 investigadoras e investigadores entrevistaron repetidamente a 420 personas privadas de la libertad en cárceles Latinoamericanas. Las entrevistas, realizadas en tres sesiones por cada participante, usaron el formato de trayectoria de vida en que las preguntas abarcan eventos desde la niñez, pasando por la adolescencia y la adultez, hasta llegar a las circunstancias de delito y la vida en prisión. Una de las preguntas centrales que el proyecto busca responder, basado en las cerca de 62.000 páginas de transcripciones compiladas, es cuál es el rol del estado, el mercado laboral, y la familia en la vida de las personas que actualmente están en prisión.

Music is ubiquitous in contemporary societies, and criminologists are paying increasing attention to it, asserting that it takes antisocial, prosocial and anti-establishment forms regarding criminality. Established approaches provide vital ways to understand the relationship of music and crime, but criminologists have yet to theorise the fluidity of music's roles for those who have committed criminalised acts. The life-story interviews we conducted with prisoners in Latin America reveal that music's role in people's lives changes over the course of their lives in complex ways. It also frames and influences the way they talk about their own histories. Informed by repeat interviews with four prisoners, we suggest including the concepts of life courses and life stories to facilitate understanding the complexity and multi-dimensionality of the relationship between crime and music. We also demonstrate and discuss how life courses and life stories are intertwined.