The Dejected Revenger-Victim: Criminal Narrative Experience, Perceived Victimhood and the Victim-Offender Overlap

This article develops a conceptual dialogue between victim-offender overlap (VOO) scholarship, narrative criminology, and the Criminal Narrative Experience (CNE) framework. It argues that the Dejected Revenger-Victim (DRV) role should not be treated as evidence of the VOO, but as a narrative-emotional configuration through which perceived victimhood, grievance, helplessness, revenge, agency, and responsibility shape offenders’ self-understandings. By distinguishing aggregate patterns of victimization and offending from individual-level narrative meaning, the article shows how CNE can extend criminological discussion of harm, responsibility, intervention, desistance, punishment, and future research within contemporary criminal justice contexts without excusing offending or minimizing victims’ experiences.