Analysing Conversations in Forensic Settings, Volume I

This book offers a collection of detailed, empirically grounded chapters examining how ethnomethodology, conversation analysis, discursive psychology and membership categorisation analysis illuminate the interactional foundations of criminal justice. It draws on naturally occurring, recorded encounters across a broad range of settings, from emergency calls to police interviews, courtrooms, the forensic laboratory, youth justice, and mediation services. 

Part of a two-volume project, Analysing Conversations in Forensic Settings, Volume I illuminates the interactional dilemmas participants face in when negotiating fact, evidence and competence in real time across criminal justice settings and as they play out in global (social) media. The collection shows how statutory guidance, evidential requirements and decision‑making practices surface within interactional exchanges. 

Designed for scholars in criminology, psychology, sociology and forensic linguistics, as well as practitioners seeking evidence‑based insights, this edited collection establishes the methodological and analytical foundations for understanding criminal justice as an interactional accomplishment, setting the stage for how categories and identities are constructed, negotiated and contested in criminal justice work developed in Volume II.