The retrospective approach associated with narrative criminology and the narrative framework is limited in the testing of narrative roles. Narrative roles are identified through the exploration of offenders' stories for crimes for which offenders have previously been convicted. A major criticism of narrative criminology is offenders may change their stories after the fact bringing into question the validity of the narrative account. However, Ioannou et al. (2015) explained narrative reports are taken at face value understanding the statements may contain subjective information and perceptual anomalies. The value of offenders' account is not in their factual presentation but the offenders' perception of their own social and emotional experiences
