A queer criminal career

Since the publication of Moffitt’s (1993) important research on adolescence-limited andlife-course-persistent offending, there has been a renewal of the often tacit goal ofcriminology of identifying the individual factors that facilitate and inhibit deviant behaviour.In focusing on early childhood biological, genetic and psychological development, andconsidering social environment only as a mediating factor, these approaches miss some of thequeer pathways to crime. We argue that examining offending by queer people inevitablydestabilises taken-for-granted ideas about offending and desistance from offending.Moreover, given the increasing numbers of young people identifying as queer, and that theyare more likely to be sanctioned by criminal processing systems, we highlight the importanceof exploring the experiences of queer young people. A queer criminological lens can offer upan alternative, queer criminal career, which starts not with bio-psychological dysfunctioning,but with social exclusion and criminalisation of identit