Description:
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>As scholars of crime increasingly use narratives elicited from people found guilty of committing crime, it is critical that we reflect methodologically and theoretically on exactly how researchers collect those narratives, and what scholars do with people's stories and conceptualisations of their past, present, and future. To contribute to these reflections, we examine the utility of the Life History Calendar (LHC) and the Life as a Film (LAAF) procedure for collecting retrospective life histories from incarcerated chronic offenders. We note the respective advantages of each method, particularly for capturing the dynamic social contexts and reflected appraisals during critical periods of the life course of offenders. Most importantly, we argue that using the LHC and the LAAF together not only supplements the deficiencies of each method, but they also work together synergistically to improve the breadth and depth of data collection and our ability to understand the interplay between narratives, context, and experience.</jats:p>