A Criminology of Time

We explore offenders’ subjective perceptions of time and investigate how these perceptions shape their decision-making. We do so by examining interviews with 109 active armed robbers and carjackers in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. These offenders view their lives as unfolding within fatalistic time tracks emerging from financial insecurity and unstable futures. Within these tracks, they define the foreground of their offences as temporal episodes. Doing so shapes and is shaped by the feelings of control they experience in the episodes. Outside of their offences, they define the episodes of their lives by contrasting them to the dominant sociotemporal order. We discuss implications for decision-making, cyclical involvement in predatory crime and the function of present orientation.