Joyriding: back to the future

'The latest autonomous vehicle prototype by Toyota Research Institute (TRI) will have two steering wheels to prevent robot joyriding' (Sept 2017) apparently.

The article does not say why a self driving car needs even one steering wheel. We are meant to know that all current cars have one steering wheel and for current legal reasons the public road testing has to occur with a human driver who could take over. However, cars without steering wheels are planned. The term ‘joyride’ is used to jokingly consider the possibility that the car (robot) might take pleasure in driving and seek its own route, map its own future and find full automobility.

There is clearly the philosophy/AI argument here about whether machines can really think. My point it to consider the pleasure of driving and I’m going to crash the philosophy discourse and ignore whether machines can or can’t think and declare they are a long way off having emotions. But we do.

In my PhD I regularly compared the demonised joyrider with the ‘normal’ driver (a narcissistically small difference?). Both got pleasure from driving. I admit to my own pleasure in mastering car driving and was moved to quote poetry:

My horse he spurres with sharp desire my hart:

He sits me fast, how ever I do sturre;

And now hath made me his hand so right,

That in the Manage myseffe takes delight.

(Sir Philip Sydney 1554-1586, Sonnet 49 Astrophil and Stella)

This quote focusses on the pleasures of riding a horse well. Those pleasures have not diminished but remain class-based, which might explain the response of the authorities to the apparent increase reported in the Guardian (13 June 1997) of horse riding by young people In a working class estate near Cardiff. Gwent police are considering using the Town Police Causes Act 1847 against furious riding'. The headline is "Neighbours rein In joyriders of the Wild West of Wales" and PC Ewan Jones is reported as saying, 

A lot of these riders don't even have a saddle for their horses. We have clamped down on motor cycle riding and this is the result of that. Some, youths worked out that you don't need tax or documents for these animals.

What will be do when cars have no steering wheels and we can’t expect the pleasure of driving them. We don’t expect to be able to drive a train or fly a plane but much modern masculinity and the structures of wider society do expect we drive our own cars. I can’t imagine how early, and still some modern, motorists dealt with having a chauffeur drive them. Self-driving cars place all users in this apparently privileged but passive (feminised) position. Wired suggested You Won't Need a Driver's License by 2040 nor traffic lights etc.

In this article Google is said to be demonstrating their self-driving system to Senators by giving them ‘joyrides’. This usage takes us back to the earlier usage of the term simply to mean a pleasurable non-utilitarian journey.

Meanwhile we find UK motorists caught at ‘extreme speeds’ on quiet lockdown roads. That is using their own cars in which to joyride. You won’t be able to speed in self-driving cars. It is this loss of control (manhood/autonomy) that many drivers fear as owner and non-owner drivers seek many the same things.

Self-driving cars should also be more difficult to steal and would require cyber skills.

Joyriding N Ireland: dangerously conventional protests

Kilpatrick (1997) carried out her research into joyriding in Belfast in early 1994 and I missed her work in writing up mine. I cited many other’s work in both Northern Ireland and the Republic but mostly on the generics of joyriding. I avoided examining the specifics of the situation there as the Troubles (’68-98 according to Encyclopaedia Brittanica) were ongoing (and still very resonant today). I briefly touched on some of the differences for joyriding in Belfast (all the work seemed to be on this area) in my PhD. Not only might joyriders attract the attention of the police (then the Royal Ulster Constabulary, RUC) but also the British Army. They risked shooting by either if they crashed through - or came too close to - a checkpoint. In addition the loyalist and republican paramilitary forces actively ‘policed’ anti-social behaviour. The provisional IRA (pIRA) were known to ‘kneecap’ joyriders - that is disable them by shooting them in the knee - or deliver a punishment beating.

Yet despite these additional high risk factors for joyriders the descriptions in Kilpatrick are entirely in line with my, and others, findings. Her work with 15 juvenile offenders who had stolen cars or allowed themselves to be carried in such a car. They mostly did it for the thrill, usually in company, didn’t necessarily look for the added excitement of a police chase and might steal from the car and may graduate to fewer but more professional theft. Not only was Belfast the focus Kilpatrick points out some real differences in the narrowness of that focus, more than half the cars thefts in Northern Ireland were in Belfast with South Belfast (near the University) a particular hotspot with 85% being recovered (a high rate) and of those two thirds being found in West Belfast (a largely Catholic, republican area).

Mulcahy (2013) adds some further Northern Ireland specific facts/suggestions. The heavy armour on police and army vehicles made chases less than feasible and considerations of public policy counselled against them. He mentions a suggestion that the youngest member of a joyriding team might act as a ‘sandbag’ (to absorb bullets) by lying on the parcel shelf.

Some of this situation is captured in this account of a joyrider who was kneecapped (O’Docherty, 1993). Johnny McGivern had stolen more than 100 cars and had signed a document presented by the pIRA promising not to steal any more cars. He did and he and his friend received a public beating with a baseball bat and chair leg. He stole another car and was arrested by the legal authorities but the station where he was being held was bombed and he was released for his safety before being formally questioned. He continued to offend and was eventually shot in the leg by the pIRA as were 58 others that year. Such joyriders were seen to be anti-social to their own community through theft of cars and dangerously displaying them but also as potential informers if they came within the orbit of the security services. The young men didn’t see themselves as political or particularly criminal. They were not ‘hoods’ (ie gangsters) (McCullough and Schmidt, 1990).




The Extern organisation tried to work with and for such young men with an Auto Project offering car mechanics and banger racing (set up in 1981!). Their research McCullough et al (1990) sets out how car theft then was less of a problem than in the rest of UK or Ireland (South Wales said to have a particularly bad problem) but joyriding in Belfast was seen to be a particular problem. McCullough and Schmidt (1990) interviewed joyriders and those who work with them. They too focussed on Catholic West Belfast. They note young women did steal cars or more often allowed themselves to be carried in stolen cars ‘but the number is relatively insignificant’ (1990,2).

They establish a timeline in which accounts of joyriding in Belfast the start in the late 60s when paramilitary groups encouraged teenagers to steal cars and antagonise the Security forces by burning cars to use as roadblocks or diversions. As these tactics increasingly annoyed the communities in which they lived the pIRA turned against them and instated informal punitive sanctions. So the joyriders proclivities were enrolled in republican/nationalist protest against British rule. Acting against them formed a part of the pIRA’s localist politics. Thought there is some suggestion that more cars might be stolen after a punishment shooting as a ‘collective act of defiance’ (1990,8). This might be seen as ‘protest’ joyriding.

In an earlier post I talk about Greene’s suggestion that some young black men in New York/New Jersey were engaged in ‘protest joyriding’. One might argue that the specifics of Belfast during the Troubles meant that this too was a protest. That is the joyriders were taking on the authorities or the paramilitary forces. I would argue that both Greene’s and Belfast’s joyriders are still deeply conventional despite doing illegal and potentially dangerous things. Parker argued in his early study of joyriding in Liverpool that (Parker 1974b) "While joyriding is a delinquent action, it is motivated by respectable and conventional desires.” I concluded in my PhD from a green perspective that ‘Car use continues to be respectable and conventional but its taken-for-granted nature is now being contested’. That is the joyrider is presented as very different to the respectable owner driver but given the bad driving and ecological damage of that car use I see that as doing ideological work to bolster the current consumerist car culture.

Pascal Menoret seeks to argue that the joyriding he observed in Riyadh constituted a revolt but that can wait til another blog. Much of his ‘joyriding’ was ‘drifting’ in cars they or friends owned.

References

Kilpatrick, R., 1997. Joy-riding: An addictive behaviour. Hodge, J.E., McMurran, M. and Hollin, C.R (eds) Addicted to crime, pp.165-190.
McCullough D and Schmidt T (1990) 'Joyriding in West Belfast', in Car Theft in Northern Ireland., Recent Studies On a Persistent Problem CI RAC Paper no 2 Dave McCullough, Tanja Schmidt and Bill Lockhart Belfast: The Extern Organisation.
Mulcahy, A., 2013. Policing Northern Ireland. Routledge.
O'Docherty Malachi 4 April 1993 The Independent ‘It was one damn good car: In hospital after a kneecapping, and just before he died, Johnny McGivern wrote about his life, in stories introduced here by Malachi O’Doherty’ available at https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/it-was-one-damn-good-car-in-hospital-after-a-kneecapping-and-just-before-he-died-johnny-mcgivern-1453233.html accessed 16 May 2020.

Jane Austen investigates ‘gothic criminology’: feudal evil or camp stylings?

Picart and Greek (2007b) see much criminology as ‘gothic’, though Surette (2007) prefers a ‘critical gothic criminology’. They take gothic literature and largely apply it to more recent cinematic and media discourses’ (2007b,11). This paper argues that the glowering gendered menace of the gothic might be tempered with some Austenian good sense - Wilkes (2013) argues for her sociological significance. The architectural metaphor of classicism has been used to describe early or pre- criminology. Or is it just the rational application of law and criminal justice inspired by the Enlightenment. Also following an architectural metaphor, I suggest the use of the term 'gothic criminology' be confined to the currently nameless pre-modern criminology.[i] That pre-modern criminology plays out in Lombroso’s collections, and displays, of skulls and tattoos as much as the ongoing fascination with serial killers. That is, there is a trace of gothic throughout criminology if only in the occasional effort made to expunge it.

This paper has a number of origins and should, like The Castle of Otranto or the Name of the Rose, pretend to be the work of another, unknown author, found in mysterious circumstances. Instead an honest attempt is made to set out its multiple origins.

The first point of origin is that I used to teach at St Mary’s University which shares premises with Strawberry Hill House the home of Horace Walpole, the author of that first gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto. A related second is that the University is a Roman Catholic one and the gothic has long been associated with Catholicism (O’Malley, 2006). Thirdly in my criminology teaching I often start with, what I found myself eventually calling ‘gothic’ to describe the variously, ‘common-sensical’, ‘medieval’, ‘popular’, ‘religious’ or just nameless criminologies which trade in notions of sin, evil and guilt.[ii] That is a pre-modern (feudal) take on crime. I point out that none of these attitudes have been supplanted but merely supplemented and that with all these additions and accretions criminology itself might be seen as ‘gothic’ rather than ‘classical’ as the next week’s lecture would claim.

It was disconcerting to find Picart and Greek (2007a) already using the term rather differently than I was in my lectures; not pre-modern but postmodern. We shall examine all these but what we seem to share is the contention that the subject matter of criminology can be gothic. Gonzalez (2008) uses the term crypto-criminology to allude to some of the same issues.[iii]

And finally, channelling the more gothic Charlotte Brontë, gentle reader I own to a personal connection. Family myth, giving me my third name, claims distant descent from the family of Jane Austen. Finally published after her death, Northanger Abbey, is Jane’s ‘take down’ of the excesses of gothic romances like Walpole’s Castle of Otranto and more specifically Anne Radcliffe’s Mysteries of Udolpho. Some of her spirit but also that of Walpole will guide us.

Picart and Greek assert that Katz (1988) ‘discussed evil in Gothic dimensions (2007,19) in his analysis of ‘righteous slaughters’ and cold-blooded ‘senseless’ murder. The declaration on Katz’s front cover (for which I blame his publisher obviously) plays with the truecrime schlock school of popular criminology and might be reason enough to declare it gothic, ‘A CHILLING EXPLORATION OF THE CRIMINAL MIND - FROM JUVENILE DELINQUENCY TO COLD-BLOODED MURDER’.

Katz does not use the term ‘Gothic’ in his book save once to describe the script used in some graffiti. He does, however, make extensive use of the word evil. One example particularly caught my eye. Discussing some gangs Katz noted that the Conservative Vice Lords (!):

wore black capes with gold lettering and earring; using a top hat, canes, and gloves, they created a logo worthy of a collaboration between Noel Coward and the devil (1988,136)

That does not immediately suggest evil nor the gothic but camp! Fincher (2006) suggests that the Gothic is camp because it is queer. Fincher opens his article with a quote from Susan Sontag:

in the eighteenth century; there the origins of Camp taste are to be found (Gothic novels, Chinoiserie, caricature, artificial ruins, and so forth). But the relation to nature was quite different then. In the eighteenth century, people of taste either patronized nature (Strawberry Hill) or attempted to remake it into something artificial (Versailles). (2018,10)

It is gratifying to see the queer, the camp and Strawberry Hill all brought together. I have not written about camp before but saw the outside of Strawberry Hill House most days for 20 years and the inside often before its restoration and the inside on several occasions since. In 2010 I also attended the V&;A’s exhibition about Walpole and Strawberry Hill House.[iv] I have written about what has now become ‘queer criminology’ (Groombridge, 1999) and for the Sage Dictionary about ‘queer theory’. Katz’s work is due a thorough reconsideration from a queer perspective which would be as post-modern as Picart and Greek’s (2007b) claims for him as gothic.

One trouble for Picart and Greek (2007a) and, indeed, for some of my own arguments, are the definitional issues. Edmundson (1999:29) asserts that a weakness of Camille Paglia’s Sexual Personae, ‘lies in Paglia’s inability to find much that’s not Gothic in art from the late eighteenth century to the present’. Edmundson seems himself to find much gothic in popular culture from soap opera and reality TV to literature and the more obvious horror film genre. Similarly, Picart and Greek (2007b) tend to see everything that criminology looks at to be gothic. Punter goes further claiming gothic, is the paradigm of all fiction, all textuality’ (1998,1).

I shall examine each of the chapters in Picart and Greek’s edited collection (2007a), many by them. I shall then pick up on other’s use of the term gothic in criminology before concluding with my own proposed use of it.

Monsters All

Peter Lorre is pictured on the front cover, his eyes are droopy and ‘dead’, he has a scar on his forehead and a cigarette dangling from his lips. The poster for the film The Man Who Knew Too Much (Alfred Hitchcock, 1934) transforms his physiognomy still further to a caricature of evil. Some that ‘evil’ may have been carried over from playing the child murderer in Fritz Lang’s M (1931). The charity Changing Faces (2017) noted the discrimination and hate crime suffered by people with disfigurements. He’s not Emily Brontë’s (1870) Heathcliff nor Anne Rice’s (1977) Lestat. He is not the brooding hero/villain of early gothic fiction - and we shall return to him when looking specifically at Benson’s chapter (2007). I mention it here because it signals early my unease about too readily reaching for the gothic label.

Picart and Greek’s chapter is extensive and introductory aiming ‘toward a gothic criminology’ with its ‘focus on themes such as blood lust, compulsion, fear, godlike vengeance, and power and domination’ (2007b:11). This may be gothic, but it plays to the true crime and schlocky end of crime talk. Early on they quote Edmundson on the growth of the gothic in, ’American popular culture, academia and even public policy’ (1997:xii). They and their contributors might have done well to make more use of him than that. For instance, when he notes, ‘Jane Austen and her brilliant rebuttal to the Gothic genius of her age’ (1999,138).

Picart and Greek (2007a) point to two sources for gothic criminology; first gothic literature and secondly Stanford Lyman’s ‘gothic sociology’ (Lyman,1990) and his sociology of evil (1989). Picart and Greek (2007a) recognise the polysemy of the term gothic to mean either ‘primitive’ or a returning aspect of European civilisation repressed by Enlightenment thinking; or goth sub-culture but recognising the original architectural usage. I am not a historian but the contention that 18th Century England was marked by reason and order might take have been taken with a pinch of salt or some Foucault.

I have to agree that, ‘the settings and trappings of the Gothic have become such a hallmark of horror that they have become cliché gimmicks’ (2007a,23) and fear that Picart and Greek reproduce too many of them. I would also challenge their association of the gothic with Christianity, I prefer O’Malley’s (2006) association of it with Roman Catholic Christianity specifically. O’Malley illustrates this point by quotes from Austen’s Northanger Abbey in his opening paragraphs where our gothic-loving protagonist Catherine Morland is given no doubt that in Protestant England her fears cannot be justified.

Drawing from an internet Glossary of Literary Gothic Terms[v] they find the following themes appear in both the Gothic and criminology:

body snatching, claustrophobia, the devil, imprisonment, exorcism, the grotesque, the Inquisition, masochism and sadism, necromancy, possession, the pursued protagonist, pursuit of heroines, revenge, reason, somnambulism, superstition, transformation/metamorphosis, and witches and witchcraft. (2007a,29)

I would certainly include many of those in my simpler definition of gothic criminology as early or pre-criminology and am glad to hear them declare, ‘the primary effort of criminology has been to demystify concepts such as these’ (2007a,29) but the whole book is haunted by those terms and a celebration of them.

They particularly pick up on issues of imprisonment and punishment. In my lectures on the justifications for punishment I note the usual acceptable ones of deterrence, retribution and rehabilitation generated by Enlightenment and Positivist or neo-classical criminologies but also a strain of revenge that plays out in popular/populist penology. This is the gothic. Yet, when noting the victimisation of virtuous and idealistic heroines they miss the chance to mention Northanger Abbey.

Finally, some sympathy for the Devil is examined. They note criminology ‘long ago sought to eliminate discussions of the devil or persons influenced by the devil to do evil’ (2007a,31/32). Agreed, putting my hands up to that one and feel strongly they should have done more to disentangle demonology and criminology.

Towards the end of their chapter they introduce the rest of the chapters in the anthology and this will be drawn on for discussing those chapters below. True to the book’s title Picart and Greek (2007a) state the chapters will all be about ‘contemporary monsters’ which, derived from Latin, warn (monere) or point to (monstrare) the boundary between the horror and the fascination. The ‘monsters’ represented are:

Ingebretsen (2007) paedophilic homosexual priests;Houck (2007) the hyper-masculinised rogue cop;Benson (2007) the masculinised mother;McKahan (2007) the drug addict;Gill (2007) the white-collar criminal;
Greek (2007) the hyper-masculinised rogue cop and corrupt practices;Surette (2007) Paranoid policy making;Picart and Greek (2007c) the serial killer andPicart and Greek 2007d the terrorist.

The Reverend Ingebretsen (2007) drawing on his own book Ingebretsen (2001) seems to be right in identifying a gothic theme to some coverage of priest’s sex with children or young people but he also notes the similarity between Church cover ups and those relating to the Enron corporation. Foucault is cited on the disciplinary power of priests and therefore our fascination with their imperfections. He is right to distinguish paedophilia from ephebophilia and to note that other priests of other denominations were equally suspected but wrong to downgrade those observations to a footnote. Unhelpfully for Picart and Greek’s (2007a) project he notes the emergence of the gothic as ‘the genre of the age’ and ‘a style of memory – late postmodern pastiche’ (2007,60).

For Picart and Greek (2007b) the City itself has become a gothic monster and Houck (2007) examines the hyper-masculinised rogue cop that bestrides it, Dirty Harry. Yet despite the effusive, and repeated, thanks he gives to his editors Houck’s chapter doesn’t really help Picart and Greek’s (2007a) development of a gothic criminology let alone a coherent one.

Early on Houck admits, ‘this is not to say that Dirty Harry is a Gothic film per se’ (2007,68). We are treated to an annotated synopsis of the movie. There are precious few mentions of the gothic beyond some assertions about the city and Harry and his doubled villain. There are, however, many rather straight forward Freudian readings of the phallic nature of Harry’s gun and various buildings. As the chapter title archly suggests, ‘my that’s a big one’.

A queer reading suggests itself too. For instance, in discussing Harry’s relationship to his bosses, ‘such foppery might be appropriate for the “fifth floor” but it might get you killed or rendered queer – perhaps both outside precinct headquarters’ (2007,77). Two pages later Houck, musing on why Harry is called ‘dirty’, says, ‘The whole queer bureaucratic edifice buggers harry; the “fifth floor” continues to sodomize its most virile hard body” (2007,79). Clearly neither a Freudian nor queer reading rules out the gothic but these both run stronger in this chapter.

Analysing the 1934 version of Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much Benson (2007) pits the damaged masculinity of the villain, Abbot – played by Peter Lorre, discussed above – against that of the masculinised mother who shoots one of the villain’s accomplices, Ramon. Abbot himself is shot by the police so the doubling that Benson presents as gothic is only partial. Benson does not pretend that the film is gothic though makes much of Hitchcock’s exposure to German expressionist film but he glosses it as gothic.

Like several other contributors he relies on Ingebretsen (2001) on the meaning of the monstrous and monsters; showing us boundaries, allowing ‘a community to reinterpret itself’ (Benson 2007,92). That seems like a Durkheimian functionalist view of the role of deviants and criminals more generally which most criminologists operate with without resort to monsters.

Abbott is marked as monstrous by his physiognomy (no mention of Lombroso or phrenology). MacArthur (2011) notes how in adapting Psycho Hitchcock casts the conventionally good-looking Anthony Perkins not the fat bespectacled protagonist of the novel. Benson recognises he has a bit of a sell in depicting the ‘poised, accomplished, and loving modern mother’ (2007,93) as monstrous. Clearly, she is a modern, possibly feminist woman. It is she who is competing in an international skeet shooting competition and can dance with another man in front of her husband. That man is then shot in her arms! I am sure when the film was released, she might have been seen as progressive, if not ‘fast’, but Benson’s citation of John Knox from 1558 on the monstrousness of a women exercising a weapon doesn’t convince. Whilst the gothic is touched on throughout a much stronger case is made within Benson’s chapter for a nationalist reading of English pluck winning out against ‘Johnny Foreigner’. Moreover, towards the end Benson starts to offer a Bakhtininan, carnivalesque reading of the film. Slightly beside the point but I’m concerned that the skills required to use a shotgun on clay ‘pigeons’ and those to use a rifle to shoot the baddie standing by your daughter are too easily overlooked.

Ingebretsen’s (2001) warning of monsters is mentioned again in McKahan’s (2007) analysis of the drug addict.[vi] He notes the use of gothic tropes in some drugs films and reporting. Thus, despite claiming the horror – particularly of drug-related deaths - was beyond depiction reporters ‘seemed to impose Gothic narrative discourses’ (2007,119). It would have been nice to have had some reports analysed to back this up. Indeed, he briefly referred to ‘execution-style’ killings earlier in the sentence which, however gruesome, suggests rationality more than righteous slaughter.

McKahan makes the claim - relying on Ingebretsen (2001) – that there has been ‘an expansion in the Gothic writing style of criminology in the cold war discourses of the 1950s’ (2007,121). A big claim and reference to Ingebretsen’s work doesn’t seem to back it up nor does my own knowledge of criminological literature. I am grateful to have an analysis of some very old movies like Edison’s 1894 Chinese Opium Den and the Lumières Fumiere d’opium (1899/90). These representations are inaccurate and, today, insultingly racist and sexist. I should have known such dens were legal for the Chinese then. Other films are found to use stereotypical and clichéd depictions of drugs, their effects and users but racism and orientalism seem to feature more strongly than the gothic.

In Picart and Greek’s (2007b,35) introduction to Gill’s (2007) chapter on white-collar crime as monstrous they cite Marx on the vampiric nature of capitalism depicted in Das Capital. Gill makes no mention of Marx. Both might have usefully referred to Neocleous (2003) on the wider vampire discourse in Marx (as there are only three specific vampire mentions in the whole of Das Capital). Others argue that Marx himself was a gothic writer (for instance Francis Wheen, 2006)[vii]. Lyman (1989) may have influenced Picart and Greek (2007b) but none of his writings on the sins of white-collar crime are cited by Gill, and Ingebretsen (2001) gets a mention in the references but not in the text.

But to return to the unmentioned Marx. Gill notes the rise of dramatic representations of monsters, the ‘successful corporate bloodsuckers’ who run ‘profitable if malign organizations and companies’ (2007,142). However, after the introduction, half of the chapter looks at the horror genre and specifically teen-friendly TV series like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Beyond recognising the titles I don’t know any of the series but a number of takes on the horror genre over time are set out. Do they support or subvert conventional moral codes? The second half mentions the corporate malfeasance and corrupt practices of authorities and their agents. Again, the gothic is touched upon. None of this readily supports Picart and Greek’s (2007a) gothic criminology.

Greek (2007) examines the hyper-masculinised rogue cop and corrupt practices in films about the NYPD and LAPD using the Jewish legend of the Golem. As ever there is a nod to the work of Ingebretsen (2001). Bertman (2015) explores potential links between the Golem and Frankenstein’s monster but it is surprising Greek (2007) does not make the connection, particularly when noting the Golem and the police’s tendency to become uncontrolled. Greek oversimplifies - to help his cause - by claiming that the Golem and the police share a mission ‘to protect and serve’ (2007,164). There is clearly a compensatory strand in Jewish folklore that would welcome a mighty protector, but many Golem’s are simply household slaves or even potential sex-slaves (Morris,2004).

Greek (2007) examines a number of movies from the 80 and 90s and the real police scandals sometimes reflected in those movies like the beating of Rodney King and deaths and beatings in custody. His readings of good cop/bad cop and due process/crime control movies are unexceptional and back up his assertion on the criminological significance of such movies. I am far from convinced the films ‘fall squarely within an American Gothic tradition that first appeared in the gangster films of the 1930s and film noir crime dramas of the 1940s and 1950s.’ (Greek 2007,166).

In other discussion of the Golem he mentions Meyrink’s (2010) version where instead of the Golem aspiring to a human state the humans become robotic. A mention of Robocop might have been made hear as might some attempt to engage with Houck’s earlier work on Dirty Harry rather than just trail of in discussion of the cops in Prince of the City, ‘they model themselves on the rogue cops in a Clint Eastwood film’ (2007,175).

From time to time a cop is seen to be Golem-like but he makes a very interesting point in discussing Dark Blue 'the closing moments feel tacked on …as the bad cop … redeems himself by destroying the entire corrupt bureaucracy’ (2007,186). That sounds like the actions of a golem or even a blinded samson but to analyse the film as depicting a golem-like figure based on the section you don’t think fits seems perverse.

In discussion Greek (2007) sees the distaste amongst police officers for such dramas as congruent with Surette’s analysis in the following chapter to which we now turn. In their introductory chapter Picart and Greek make clear their disagreement with Surette saying his conception of ‘gothic criminology’ is ‘the opposite of what we mean by the term’ (2007b,28). They suggest his concerns about the influence of the gothic on criminal justice policy ‘assumes an uncritical engagement’ and misses that their gothic criminology maintains the ‘humanity of its monsters’ (2007b,28). Perhaps this is why he proposes a critical gothic criminology, but they feel that theirs already is. Surette may have a simpler nastier gothic criminology in mind a bit like my proposed usage. We shall see.

Surette’s chapter is very different in that he has read the introduction and the work of other contributors. This gives us a chance to further analyse some of these issues. Surette sets out his take on gothic criminology. It is not always clear if he means his version, Picart and Greek’s (2007a) or, more often, the media’s popular/populist version but he makes many good points. Surette notes, gothic criminology ‘reexamines the notions of sin, evil and foreignness’ after ‘mainstream criminology migrated to scientific positivism and … “deviance”’ (2007,199) which I’ll take as support for my contention for a pre-modern gothic which now lives on in late and post-modern forms. Combatively he also lumps both serial killers and their profilers together in the gothic universe. He is also very clear on his social constructionist theoretical perspective. In this both factual and fictional media play a strong role and the whole feeds back into criminal justice policy. He runs us through his law of opposites whereby the uncommon crimes of serial killers are given the greatest coverage and common property crimes given the least. Moreover, the front-end of criminal justice – policing – is covered more than the backend though I think he might be downplaying the gothic charms of prisons and the movies that depict them.

He is concerned that in this gothic atmosphere crime is no longer seen as a social problem but down to ‘biology or mythology’ (2007,205). He sets out five broad theoretical perspectives in criminology but first makes a further statement about how he sees gothic criminology, which raises the ‘grim possibility that crime cannot be explained … that it may simply be an unavoidable form of evil or mysterious fact of social life’ (2007,208). This is clearly the pre-criminology that I argue should alone bear the title ‘gothic criminology’. As a ‘pre-criminology’ perhaps it should not be admitted to the canon but I’ve always drawn criminology widely to include any attempt to talk about crime and what to do about it from the Bible to boxoffice, Beccaria to Lombroso and right realist to left idealist etc and back again. Whilst this gothic criminology may not be able to explain crime it still ‘knows’ what to do about it: from praying to brutal and arbitrary purgings whose theological intentions can’t disguise their punitive effect.

Surette (2007) finds something about the gothic to discuss in all the theoretical perspectives. First, he links classicism and rational choice theories with their emphasis on the rational actor rather than the criminal – for which reason some might exclude these from the criminological canon – so rightly associates much business crime with such a calculating attitude. He goes too far, though, by importing gothic imagery in portraying such a person also to be a ‘violent ladies’ man’ (2007,209). He goes even further awry in claiming a connection between classicist demands that ‘punishment must be swift and decisive’ and the gothic. He is plainly wrong here. My gothic criminology and the popular gothic expect arbitrary, protracted, spectacular punishment; so arbitrary that sometimes the wicked are not punished at all.

His second group are biological theories of crime. Clearly the disfigured monster is popularly and prejudicially associated with crime and sin long before Lombroso tried to catalogue it. Moving from the biological to the psychological for his third group he notes the tendency for media depictions of vampires to have a strong psychological content.

He is correct in claiming that the fourth group of the sociological don’t sit well with the gothic other than providing a mise en scène such as a rural or foreign setting, but he does miss a trick here too. MacArthur (2011) makes a strong claim that some early gothic novels reflect concerns about the French Revolution. Moreover, she notes, arch-conservative Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France wrote his warnings in gothic terms, fearing that the highwayman or murderer, in pursuit of his natural rights, had ‘escaped from the protecting restraint and wholesome darkness of his cell (2011,11).

In his fifth group what might be called critical criminologies are seen to demand societal action and criminal justice reform so have less media interest and potential for gothic reportage. Valier (2002) is scandalously ignored by all contributors to Picart and Greek but she examines the power of horror and specifically notes the, ‘gothic seductions of contemporary punitive populism’ (2007,319). Surette too notes the social conservatism of the gothic and fears for the populist criminal justice policies and practices that in entrains. He even sees the ‘Three strikes and you’re out’ policies for locking up third time serious offenders for long periods a gothic policy. I’m less sure and might want to play up the political dimension, including the role of the National Rifle Association (a gothic monster?).

Surette’s real concern is with the media. He wants context and, intriguingly suggests sports news as a potential model. With statistics, forecasts and commentary etc. I’m less sure as much of that is vacuous filler and pointless speculation. But televised or internet audio streamed trials with expert commentary may be a first start in shining some light into the gothic of our courts.

Surette (2007) includes some consideration of serial killers and their hunters but Picart and Greek (2007c) give a whole chapter to the topic and the compulsions they share with vampires. They follow Simpson (2000) in linking these factual and fictional monsters. Much of the chapter is given to lengthy descriptions of a number of ‘80s serial killer movies with analysis linking to the real cases that inspired the stories. They note that such movies mirror the demographic of white male protagonists. I don’t know the movies or cases well enough to comment on the adequacies of description and analysis. I agree that it ‘may now be impossible to separate real serial killers from their reel life counterparts’ (2007c,249). We are taken through some of the definitional issues of what constitutes a serial, spree and mass killer. They note too that such killers would not be recognisable by external physical features that Lombroso would expect. Frustratingly, they set out the cycle of build-up to killing and argue that it might fit the heterosexual male but not, ‘if the serial killer turns out female and lesbian (and from the lower classes)’ (2007c,253) then close the chapter there!

Jarvis (2007) writing at the same time examines some of the same issues but includes more recent films and the wider culture of murderabilia and serial killer fandom. It is understandable his work is not covered by Picart and Greek (2007c) but very poor that Greek (2017) does not remedy that deficiency. Jarvis connects the serial killer’s consumption of body parts with our consumption including of serial killer movies and memorabilia. Marx’s deployment of gothic metaphor features strongly.

Also woefully ignored is Halttunen’s (1998) Murder Most Foul: The Killer and the American Gothic Imagination which covers some of the same ground. She notes it is possible to contest the gothic even when faced with murder; she speaks of Sister Prejean and Detective Somerset who ‘will not label murderers as moral aberrations, subhuman monsters. The murdered is not, they agree, the devil; he’s just a man’. Though, perhaps a trace remains as the quote immediately continues, ‘subject to sin as they are subject to sin’ (1998,250).

Picart and Greek (2007d) examine the terrorist as Mass Murderer in their final concluding chapter. They conclude that chapter rather hopefully suggesting they have offered a ‘rich panoply of tools for getting at complex stories of how “evil monsters” -within and without, individual or communal – are generated’ (2007d,283). I agree they have attempted to read a number of complex stories sometimes through a gothic lens but more frequently other analytical frameworks offer themselves. Thus, the focus on islamist terrorism in this chapter raises the issue of race and orientalism. They rightly address this; often more so than mentions of gothic. Of at least two films they discuss they say of one that, ‘the film has few gothic elements’ (2007d,274) and of the other, ‘there is no stereotypic low-key lighting’ (2007d,279). Whilst the white supremacist bombing in Oklahoma City is mentioned in passing no high school massacres or workplace examples of people ‘going postal’ are mentioned. Did they not fit even the loose definition of the gothic they employ?

The gothic in criminology and law

We have already noted Valier’s (2002) discussion of the gothic but there have been many other contributions in both law and criminology. Some engagements go deeper than others with mentions of the gothic or deployment of the term to illustrate a point. None present as a specifically gothic criminology. Literary and cultural studies contributions cannot but help notice the extent of crime in gothic literature and practices. Punter claims many early gothic novels are ‘obsessed with the law, with its operations, justifications, limits’ (1998:19) and so should crime be though criminology rates only one glancing mention. Bridging the gap from literature and towards the law and criminology Moran finds the gothic in Bentham’s work posing his rationalism against the ‘ghostly presence, a set of fictions, that haunts law’s reason’ (2005,89). Moran also notes:

Criminal law, criminal justice and criminology are locations par excellence of production of ideas of evil, particularly in the context of violence and sexual acts. There is a long juridical tradition of associations between criminality, particular bodies, the monstrous and the grotesque. (2001,79)

More specifically from criminology we find Young (1996) noting the influence of the gothic on romantic views of some criminals. Not content with hybridising cultural and green criminology Nigel South (2017) adds gothic to the mix – a golem, monster or welcome addition to the criminology family? Several other contributors to Brown and Carrabine (2017) also mention the gothic in passing. South relies (2017) on Rafter and Ystehede (2010) for his discussion of gothic criminology and only mentions Picart and Greek (2007a) glancingly.

In his ‘update’ on gothic criminology Greek (2017) fails to mention Rafter and Ystehede (2010). One suggestion might be the merely glancing reference to Picart and Greek (2007a) by Rafter and Ystehede (2010). Of the four mentions of Lombroso in Picart and Greek (2007a) none firmly picture him or his concerns as gothic. A couple associate his biologism with the gothic. On the other hand Rafter and Ystehede are clear from the start, ‘we locate Lombroso’s science of criminal anthropology in the context of late nineteenth-century Gothicism’ (2010,263). Which reminds that there are different gothics from pre-modern to Picart and Greek’s (2007a) postmodern one via my architecturally inspired one and Walpolian (Strawberry Hill House) and Victorian ones (Pugin’s Houses of Parliament).

Such was Lombroso’s gift for publicity criminology his work is cited directly by Stoker in Dracula, ‘The Count is a criminal and of criminal type. Nordau and Lombroso would so classify him, and quâ criminal he is of imperfectly formed mind’. We find too that Lombroso believed in life after death and spirits.

As a gothic criminologist ‘Lombroso conjured up mentally warped and physically hideous figures; to tame these monsters, he called for new, more drastic forms of social control (2010,270). Suitably vampiric, a famous quote from Lombroso-Ferrero eventually speaks of ‘the irresponsible craving for evil for its own sake, the desire not only to extinguish life in the victim, but to mutilate the corpse, tear its flesh and to drink its blood’ (1911,24/25). All of this Gothicism at the same time as the attempt to do science. Rafter and Ystehede (2010) see this as a form of gothic doubling whereby the gothic is not the antithesis of the Enlightenment but its flipside.

Rafter and Ystehede suggest ‘Lombroso’s influence persisted, especially on analyses of female criminality (Rafter and Gibson, 2004), but by the end of the century, scientific Gothicism had migrated into psychoanalysis and popular culture’ (2010,279). These would seem to suggest fertile ground for further enquiry.

Whilst Lombroso was often progressive in his policy proposals for much crime he was ‘draconian’ (Rafter and Ystehede 2010,279) on born criminals. I noted earlier the failure of Picart and Greek’s (2007a) contributors it is especially egregious when Rafter and Ystehede (2010) pick out this from Halttunen:

The Gothic narrative of the crime of murder played a primary role in shaping the modern response to criminal transgression, both mandating the social quarantining of criminals in penitentiaries and mental hospitals, and reinforcing the radical otherness of the criminal deviant on which that quarantining rested’’ (1998, p. 248).

Relegated to a footnote they find a gothic content in Stan Cohen’s (1979) The Last Seminar. Rafter and Ystehede (2010,282) state, ‘In Cohen’s story, it is not the criminals who are to be feared but academia and the discipline of criminology itself, which he pictures as a cross between a hydra and a haunted tower of Babel’. For me this is not gothic criminology but a recognition that criminology itself tout court may be marked by the gothic.

Arntfield (2016) also mention Picart and Greek (2007a) en passant as coining the term ‘gothic criminology’ but had derived a connection between contemporaries, Bram Stoker and Lombroso in their study of the influence of the gothic on criminal investigation and forensics. He concludes by calling for a literary criminology; perhaps the books and articles I’ve been discussing; and this too, is just that.

Sothcott (2016) barely mentions Picart and Greek (2007a) but riffs extensively on Valier (2008). Valier (2008) finds the moral panic framework inadequate given the permanency of gothic events. Given his examination of the use of representations of the gothic to support a punitive populism his failure to cite Surette (2007) is strange. Sothcott (2016) finds however that the gothic can also be an identity that stands with not just against ‘the other’. His preferred framework is a cultural criminological reading of the TV series Gotham. Instead of a good/bad Manicheanism he finds nuance.

He is wrong to claim, ‘As its name implies, Gotham City is also imagined as a place of Gothic ambiguity’ (2106, 439). He is right that in Batman comics and movies it has acquired that but its application to New York City comes from a Washington Irving article and many point to the ‘Wise Men of Gotham’ a tale about a town in Nottingham, UK that wanted to avoid the cost of a visit from King John. They acted foolishly to persuade him elsewhere (Nigro 2011).[viii]

This is my first proper extensive engagement with the gothic in writing but in my sports criminology book (Groombridge, 2016) I review a host of criminologies and smuggle my definition of gothic in whilst mentioning Picart and Greek (2007a) too. Moreover, my Perverse Criminologies (Groombridge, 1999) is seen by some as ‘queer’ and I’ve already connected that to camp and the gothic above but clearly with my subtitle, ‘the closet of Doctor Lombroso’ I reference German Expressionist cinema, a further iteration of the gothic. Therefore, in one sense I was already doing what Picart and Greek (2007a) now call gothic criminology. In the next section I actually try consciously to apply the gothic.

Doing gothic criminology

Whether we accept Picart and Greek’s (2007) or my more limited definition of gothic criminology it has been clear I feel even they stretch the meaning of gothic and some of their contributors barely try to fully address it. Here I’ll attempt some of my own.

My PhD (1997) was on Car Crime, specifically: the taking and driving away of; or taking without consent of the owner (TWOC); or even simple theft of a motor vehicle not for profit or as part of an insurance fraud by the owner but for fun, commonly known as joyriding (or sometimes twoccing by the young men responsible). Clearly as young men often below the legal age for driving (in the UK) their driving was not always good and ‘displaying’ the stolen car on your estate become a fashion, so deaths occurred; sometimes in the course of a police chase. How can we drag the gothic into such a modernist consumerist crime? Many were serial offenders, but it was the, sometimes, horrific injuries that grabbed the media and political headlines.

Kenneth Baker, the home secretary, told the 1991 Tory party conference ‘As we all know, some joyriders are deathriders who wreck property and other people's lives’ (Furbisher and Hughes, 1991). His usage did not take off but in 2002 ‘Kieran Conlon snr struggled with his emotions as he demanded tougher laws for offenders and appealed for the community to turn its back on the death drivers’ (Murray, 2002). In the next year a couple of local newspapers used the term. A search on Lexis Nexis finds no use of the term in the last year. What might be seen as an attempt to deploy a gothic linguistic censure (Sumner, 2005) of joyriding fails.

Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Phantom of the Opera contains many crimes and a gothic story line derived from a novel stereotypically involving a disfigured protagonist. As a musical (with strong operatic elements) audiences apear to overlook his crimes as incidents that punctuate and drive the plot – attempted murder, two murders, kidnapping, coercive control, blackmail etc. Hogle (2016) mentions crime rarely in his book and referencing Lambroso (!) a couple of times does not inspire confidence. Just as Psycho and Nightmare on Elm Street etc are endlessly called in aid of the gothic the same might be done for Phantom.[ix] More people have seen it than many horror and crime movies. Here the intention in part is to side with Sothcott (2016) and Valier (2008) to show that the gothic does not always support a gothic penal response. The police fail to catch the Phantom and he disappears leaving only his mask.

Sometimes Gothicism is attached to the victim and not the offender. Sophie Lancaster was murdered for being a goth.[x] The Columbine school shooting is only mentioned by Picart and Greek (2007a) as a mass shooting incident. Most will know that the supposed goth leanings of the perpetrators were amongst a number of other ‘explanations’ (videogames, pop music). Griffiths (2010) examines some of the same themes as Valier (2008) and Sothcott (2016) examining the self-identifying goths pictures as folk devils after Columbine. Griffiths (2010) notes physical and online attacks on goths, rules against black gear by schools and panicked media moralising. But interviewing goths (in New Zealand) he found a robust fight back by the ‘folk devils’ online and in mainstream media rejecting the label.

Conclusion

I find many of Picart and Greek’s (2007a) readings and those of their contributors illuminating but not always that gothic. It seems that they are engaged in cultural criminology - of which I approve and practice - sometimes in a post-modern style. They find much which is criminal or deviant and might be called gothic. I’m not convinced that this amounts to a gothic criminology. Many of the contributors specifically cite Ingebretsen (2001) or channel him in their use of monster and monstrous throughout. This is not gothic criminology but monstrous criminology. In the thirteen years since the publication of Monsters In and Among Us cultural, visual, queer and narrative criminologies have all grown but the specifically gothic has not made the same progress. Greek (2017) is still hopeful and as we have seen the term gothic is widely used in a variety of criminological texts.

I wish Picart and Greek (2007a) well but here I want to make explicit that which has been implicit throughout that I want to reclaim the gothic from postmodern takes; to recognise that gothic literature was part of a Romantic backlash against Industrialisation but that it did so through a folk memory of a gothic reality not just a fictive one. That is then victims did not tremble whilst reading Lewis’s The Monk by candlelight but lived in mortal terror of their own feudal lords and religious leaders. To return to Jane Austen, MacArthur notes that Catherine, the naïve heroine of Northanger Abbey, credits ‘even the most ordinary object with Gothic significance’ (2011,9). Picart and Greek (2007) seem to do so and try to drag their contributors along with them.

It should be clear that I don’t believe in evil. I don’t think Picart and Greek (2007a) necessarily do; Katz (1988) may well do. Equally I don’t believe in good nor in the supernatural personifications of the Devil and God. To that extent I am a rationalist but beneath the shine of Apollo I still feel the tug of the dark wine of Dionysus. I have no religion or faith yet taught for 20 years at a Roman Catholic University. It seemed right to start my first year criminology lectures with ‘sin’, to help describe a time when there was no criminology to describe crime just theology. Indeed, using Jerome Cohen (1996) Picart and Greek note how, ‘the languages of theology and the Gothic imagination lurk’ (2007b,13) in factual and fictional secular realms.

Impara (2016) mentions Picart and Greek (2007a) but it is her discussion of medieval crimes, and particularly medieval punishments, that is my concern here. As Valier notes ‘gothic writes the present through the evocation of dark medievalism, with the terrifying return of the violence concealed within, yet at the same time enacted by, modern law’ (2002,332). It is this gothic penology that classicism sought to overturn. It is pre-modern not post-modern yet haunts us still (a gothic image) it is this older urGothic - if you like -that I feel should be called gothic criminology and criminology more generally should recognise its gothic elements. These are with us today as Valier notes, ‘gothic tropes are embedded in the practices of the institutions of crime control and punishment themselves’ (2002,321). Or, as Surette has it, ‘Gothic criminology does quite well both historically and contemporarily …the most primitive, long-discredited Gothic theories of crime, such as demonic possession, continually are presented as credible explanations in popular cultural renditions’ (207,212).

The straight lines and clear purposes of classicism set out in penal codes and the American Constitution etc are derived from a reading of ancient architecture. Gothic architecture turns much of that on its head and precedes gothic literature by some several hundred years and informs the settings of early gothic novels and romances. The labyrinthine cellars of the Walpole’s (1998) Castle of Otranto and the elaboration of the architecture of Prague’s Cathedral in Kafka’s The Trial (Kafka,1983) can be connected. Jirsa (2015) connects Kafka’s writing to the cathedral specifically but following Bridgwater (2003) I’d argue Kafka’s work, particularly The Trial and The Castle are modernist workings of themes in gothic literature present then and today. Picart and Greek’s (2007) criminology would be illuminated by more than ascribing ‘gothic’ to a few monstrous aspects of American popular culture and also take into account more European literature, architecture and academics. More too should be made of the Venn diagram where both Marx and Lombroso are clearly gothic thinkers. More generally there should be an expectation that one might also be pastiched and parodied. Remember too that the figure of the detective starts to emerge in some gothic writing. The detective offers a way out of the gothic via the rational.

But, to return to Walpole and his gothic villa, Strawberry Hill House[xi], I know from personal experience that it is no Castle of Otranto. Its exterior is bright white and its interior glows with gilt. Walpole was aiming for a feeling of ‘gloomth’ (his neologism). I’m sure Jane Austen would have loved it. She’d see more camp style than evil.

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Fiddler, M., 2011. A ‘system of light before being a figure of stone’: The phantasmagoric prison. Crime, Media, Culture, 7(1), pp.83-97.
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Furbisher, J. and Hughes D., 3 November 1991 ‘Death-Riders’ The Sunday Times (London)
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Houck, D.W., 2007. ‘My, That’s a Big One’: Masculinity and Monstrosity in Dirty Harry. Monsters In and Among Us: Toward a Gothic Criminology, pp.65-90.
Impara, E., 2016. Medieval violence and Criminology: using the Middle Ages to understand contemporary'motiveless' crime. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Criminology, 8(1), p.26.

Ingebretsen, E., 2001. At stake: Monsters and the rhetoric of fear in public culture. University of Chicago Press.
Ingebretsen, E.J., 2007. Bodies under scandal: Civic gothic as genre. Monsters in and Among Us: Toward a Gothic Criminology, p.44.
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notes

[i] Fiddler (2011) makes much of the gothic architecture of prisons.

[ii] I admit to using the terms ‘hippy’ or ‘west coast’ criminology in describing the labelling perspective.

[iii] Crypto-criminology refers to the dark, devious and dangerous side of human nature accessed 19 April 2020

[iv] Victoria and Albert Museum Horace Walpole Strawberry Hill
http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/h/horace_walpole_exhibition/ Accessed 29 April 2020.

[v] Douglass H. Thomson ‘Glossary of literary gothic terms’ https://sites.google.com/a/georgiasouthern.edu/gothic-lit/glossary-of-literary-gothic-terms Accessed 22 April 2020.

[vi] Misspelt as Ingbretsen.

[vii] Francis Wheen 8 July 2006 ‘The poet of dialectics’ The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/books/2006/jul/08/politics Accessed 23 April 2020. But Wheen adds ‘also a Victorian melodrama, a Greek tragedy or a Swiftian satire’.

[viii] Nigro, C., 25 January 2011 ‘So, Why Do We Call It Gotham, Anyway? New York Public Library available at https://www.nypl.org/blog/2011/01/25/so-why-do-we-call-it-gotham-anyway accessed 29 April 2020.

[ix] Perhaps with the even more popular Les Miserables.

[x] Sophie Lancaster Foundation website http://www.sophielancasterfoundation.com Accessed 29 April 2020.

[xi] Strawberry Hill House website https://www.strawberryhillhouse.org.uk/ Accessed 28 April 2020.

5-year-old boy caught driving on Utah highway was heading to California for a Lamborghini

This story from the USA contains a number of themes of interest: joyriding; differences in US and UK car cultures and media coverage of crime.

The follow up by the same reporter adds further layers of interest after the event with a more local news website (5-year-old caught driving on Utah freeway takes safer luxury spin a day later) adding further layers .

Nominally under the care of his 16-year-old sibling (taking a nap) whilst their parents were at work, the five-year-old took the keys to the family SUV and drove a few miles on local roads before joining Interstate 15. Apparently, the boy is obsessed with cars and had asked his mother to buy him a Lamborghini. She refused.

His crime was detected by a State Trooper when he observed the car swerving and only doing 32mph in a 70mph zone. He had $3 on him. The parents were reunited with their child and their car. The County Attorney’s office will consider whether the parents should be charged. The second article specifically calls this a joyride. Indeed, I was only baited to click on the article by my curiosity to see how it was portrayed.

The second article also moves the story on to the next day when a local Lamborghini owner gives the boy, his mother and sister a trip around the block in his car. He acknowledged, ‘even though the joyride was dangerous, and he doesn’t want to encourage similar behavior, he wanted to cheer the boy up’.

In the third local article this legal trip is also called a ‘joyride’ and we are treated to a picture of the boy on his mother lap in the car.

I don’t know Utah motoring law but surely this is dangerous even if legal.

More interestingly still we discover that owner ‘took his own maiden joyride at age 12’!

No vehicles were damaged and the whole thing is treated as a light human interest story with a warning to watch your children. I would share Trooper Morgan and his colleagues belief that, ‘the child may have secretly hit the road before Monday’s experience’.

In my PhD (1997) I speculated and hypothesised reasons why young black men may not joyride in the UK. How do things stand now?

In my PhD I speculated and hypothesised reasons why young black men may not joyride in the UK. Here’s a little chunk of Chapter 3. How do things stand now?

Information gleaned during fieldwork suggests young black men were involved in 'displaying'

on Blackbird Leys, yet despite the media's normal treatment of black people and crime there

was nothing made of it. There were no 'black joyrider runs down blond-haired girl' headlines

like the 'black mugger' headlines of the early 70s (Hall et al,1978). Where available, figures

suggest (Procter and Townsend, 1994) and observation suggests that young black men do

not attend motor projects. If true, there might be a number of reasons this might be: first that

this represents a real lower involvement of black men in joyriding or second, and not incompatible with the first reason, that if involved they are sent to custody or receive other community penalties. Graham and Bowling (1995) found - though not statistically significant - a cumulative male self-reported participation in car theft as follows: White (4%); Black (1%); Indian (2%); Pakistani (8%); and Bangladesh! (3%).

Reasons for lower involvement might be: first a different relationship to the car amongst young Afro-Caribbean men, that is they may be keen on cars but not for the short-term gratification offered by joyriding or displaying. That is, it may not be 'cool' or 'phat' (hot) to joyride. When the police stop you, it is important to be the owner of the car and have all the documentation in order. It enables you to maintain a 'cool pose' (Clatterbaugh, 1990).

Moreover, like new clothes the car is to be seen, to be appreciated by your friends. Bayley (1986) notes that "cars were a form of display" (pl) that "The cars provided the costumes. " (p2) and "For some people, owning a new car is the nearest they will ever get to perfection in an otherwise flawed and soiled life." (p4) You cannot cruise the block if the police are chasing you. 'Respect' is earned not by short-term flashy display of a car but the long-term use of a car. Joyriding may not be a way of doing masculinity but a way of doing white masculinity. Back (1994) notes how young white men adopt music and clothes come from black styles. The reverse does not appear to operate in respect of cars. Moreover, Graham and Bowling's (1995) findings on different patterns of drug use between different groups indicate different attitudes to drugs. For instance, 12% of white males reported amphetamine ('speed'!) use at some time against less than 1% for blacks.

Other figures for drug use and crime more generally show equivalent overall offending rates so, these differences in patterns of offending suggest different attitudes to the practical and symbolic components of crime. Whilst in no way conclusive, the contention that young black men may have a different relationship to the car is supported by the lyrics of 'rap' songs like DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince's 'Summertime'. Several verses make passing reference to cruising in, or looking after, cars. One verse combines all these themes:

Chillin' in a car they spent all day waxin'

Lean to the side

But you can't speed through

Two miles an hour

So everyone can see you

(1991. A Taylor/C Smith/ R Bell/Hula/K Fingers/W Smith Zomba Productions)

Alternatively, young black men may have an equal propensity and opportunity to take cars but do not do so for fear of discriminatory policing catching them at a greater rate than white colleagues.

Work in California (Schwendinger and Schwendinger, 1985) suggests that young Hispanic Men in gangs have a different relation to the car. Instead of the speed and immediate excitement they prefer a Lo-rider; a car deliberately lowered to hug the ground which ischromed and tricked out with lush fittings. It is driven very slowly round the neighbourhood to flaunt ownership and style. They could not be driven at speed whilst in the lowered position and would not be. The point is to impress your friends and irritate your enemies by driving

around very slowly with the window down. Non-hispanic groups prefer to customize cars by raising the back-end and emphasising speed through coachlines and flame graphics that suggest the dragster or the hot-rod.

Only the American studies mention race though the smaller studies by the probation service in this country routinely monitor race. Neither address the issue. The American studies mention race to disprove the favoured status' hypothesis and the probation studies mention but do not dwell on race as an issue. Thus Davies (1993) mentions that 4.2% of West Midlands Probation Service women motor off ending clients were black as were thirteen percent of male motor offenders. There is no discussion of what this means. Is this low or high for the area? Moreover, as Davies examines both motoring offences and motor theft offences together it is not possible consistently to pull out the full facts for car taking. The numbers for the combined totals are such that the numbers of black joyriders would be too small for useful statistical treatment. It is however important to consider the issue of black involvement in car taking.

The question then is do young black men joyride? Full ethnic monitoring of the Criminal Justice System will, in due course, reveal the extent to which there is differential involvement in - or policing of - car crime. This would still leave unresolved the question of joyriding given the difficulties of defining it set out in Chapter 1. Even, if a greater or lesser involvement in car crime could be shown it would still not indicate whether young black men took cars for the same reasons as young white men.

Some facts are known about black car use, for instance of Afro-Caribbean women only 10% use cars as the driver and 45% as a passenger. The figures for Asian women are higher on both 22% as drivers and 64% as passengers (GLC 1984 and 1987). The stereotype of the young black man, and sometimes the fantasy of those young black men, places him behind his shades, behind the wheel of a BMW (Black Man's Wheels). It is not clear whether this is a racist usage or an ironic appropriation by those young men, taking and driving away the initials but not the product. In another context the initials stood for Baader-Meinhof Wagen, as this left-wing terrorist group favoured these vehicles in undertaking their terminal critique of the bourgeois society that produced them. The proper meaning of the initials is Bayerische Motorenwerke.

Whatever the reason for joyriding - drift, status frustration, sub-culture, unemployment or class warfare - these will be shared by many young men and women. Theoretically then, young black men should be as involved in joyriding as young white men. Even with official statistics it would be difficult to be sure but the absence of media finger-pointing, anecdotal evidence, the findings of McGaghy et al (1977) and monitoring by and observation at motor projects raises the possibility that joyriding is largely a white phenomenon.

I’ll try to update some of this but also confess to missing Greene’s (1994) ‘Naughty by nurture: Black male joyriding is everything gonna be alright’.

Greene’s work is a rebuke to my assumptions but think that differences between UK and US are partially an explanation. Elsewhere in my PhD I’d argued for differences due to cheaper cars, lower age of driving and even absence of roundabouts but should have reasoned that the absence of black men in UK literature and motor projects was part of that difference.

Sadly, Greene was battered to death before publication of his article.

He sets out the many discriminations young african-american men labour under; some, a minority, respond by committing crime. Greene, speaking of Newark, New Jersey notes a ‘protest joyriding’ as paradigmatic. His description of high speeds, screeching tyres, doughnutting and the police chase could come from any description of joyriding. He seems to be on the same page as me in noting, ‘these cars are like those the media dangles as the vehicles to manhood, happiness, and self-worth’ (1994,75).

Moreover, he finds, ‘the media has created the impression of an epidemic of out-of-control young Black men engaging in auto theft’ (1994,75). Which helps me confirm there was no such coverage in UK that focussed on the race of joyriders, i.e. they were presumed to be white. Though I have a partial realist concern when he also says, ‘the media has seized on joyriding and treated it as if it is at the same level of seriousness as other car-related crimes such as car theft or carjacking’ (1996,75).

His own description of joyriding involves car theft but as a robbery carjacking is a notch up in seriousness. It is of concern that media elided the two.

He was writing against a background in a fall of reported auto theft in New York and New Jersey. Unusually New York separated out carjacking from other forms of robbery; just over 2,000 gunpoint robberies a year in 1991 and 1992 and an estimate of 19,000 nationally in 1991 and 21,000 in 1992 (about 1.1% of all auto-thefts . Having a gun as a persuader may explain why, ‘contrary to the impression created by the media, carjackings rarely result in any physical injury’ (1996,79). I’d like to know about any mental and emotional fallout.

He seems fairly unfazed by putting ‘usually untrained drivers on the streets for short durations’ (1996,80) though in my work noted that on way to displaying (and often ruining and possibly torching) the car they drove well enough to avoid detection. I pointed out in my work how bad much driving by owner’s was and felt media demonization was in part to make them feel better. But even today (admittedly in covid19-times) the USA is different. For instance, ‘Nearly 20,000 Georgia Teens Are Issued Driver’s Licenses Without a Road Test’!

He points out, as did I, the history of middle-class white involvement in joyriding. He rails against conflating any rape of woman whose car is jacked as robbery of the car not assault on her. Also, the ethnicity of car jackers not known as bundled in with all robbery.

He complains extensively about the media but provides few examples beyond a ‘review’ of an episode of a CBS series 48 hours called ‘Steal That Car’ (9 December 1992). Black and Hispanic street level thieves were shown and a white professional thief, a white victim and white police officers all feature. We are told rare carjacking deaths and rapes get parsed with joyriding as autotheft.

Greene likens protest joyriding to rap music as providing ‘context and meaning to the behaviour of those who do not accept the legitimacy of their own oppression’ (1996,85). His arguments and footnotes almost suggest such expressive ‘protest joyriding’ is constitutionally protected free speech!

Knowledge of the events that have led to the Black Lives Matter movement makes me very dubious about his claim that Black joyriders when cornered by the police for the misdemeanour of joyriding, ‘these youngsters scatter on foot, knowing the police cannot shoot feeing non-felons’ (1996,87).

About half a million cars were stolen in the USA in 2018. Full details here. Neither joyriding nor carjacking get a mention.

The Crime Survey of England and Wales ending March 2019 shows 27,455 victims of car crime with 4% of vehicle-owning households being victims of car crime (theft from, theft of an attempts of an from) but only 0.4% of theft. Rather randomly, and assigning no significance to it here, 15% of Arab vehicle owners and 7.5% of Buddhists. Men and women seemed equally at risk, but men owned car at twice the rate (or were registered as keeper). The large variety of ethnic self-descriptions available show the majority have higher rates of victimisation. The unemployed seemed to have higher rates of vehicle theft (0.7%) against the employed (0.5%). As indices of deprivation and disorganisation also tend to higher levels of vehicle theft, we might favour this as an explanation over insurance fraud but either potential explanation would need examining.

He contrasts ‘protest’ from ‘traditional’ joyriding in that the protestors are confrontational and don’t seek to avoid detection. In discussing protest, he brings in the ‘double’ scripts of black life (WEB DuBois, Souls of Black Folk):

Such a double life, with double thoughts, double duties, and double social classes, must give rise to double words and double ideals, and tempt the mind to pretence or revolt, to hypocrisy or radicalism.

All good stuff but most people will now be well acquainted with the language he discusses and the trainers and fashion styles. Obviously, I’m back with him when he says, ‘I will discuss that part of American popular culture which emphasizes a connection between materialism, masculinity, and the possession of a car’ (1996,89). But depart a bit when cites Bruce Springsteen’s Thunder Road on the significance of cars. First he overlooks their appeal to young white men and ignores Springsteen’s lyric mentioning ‘the skeleton frames of burned-out Chevrolets’. Secondly, he cites the Honda Accord and Acura Legend as popular cars with the American public and joyriders. I find it difficult to think of those as ‘cool’ or ‘sexy’ cars so feel their availability might be more of an influence. But I’m in no authoritative position to contradict him.

The joyriders I spoke to and those mentioned in the literature were aspirational in their desires but stole the easiest. To shame the motor manufacturers the Home Office from 1991 published an index that compared the numbers stolen to the numbers on the road. Those suggested the Honda was a low risk car. I can’t reconcile the figures but What Car say ‘52,288 cars stolen in the UK in 2019 – one every nine minutes’. With only 40% returned. The Ford Fiesta is most sold and most stolen.

He tells of being pulled over by a white cop when driving in his Acura Legend (!) and ponders how it might have turned out if his son had been driving. This reminds him to think of the wider less fortunate majority of black youth. He only gives footnoted recognition to his failure to address the very similar problems faced by young black women.

He spends much time critiquing various policing and sentencing crackdowns before proposing school and community-based access to and education about cars and driving. He also wishes young men were less interested in gold chains and cars. He is more forgiving of rap quoting lyrics from Everything's Gonna to Be Alright by Naughty by Nature throughout.