The criminological insights of news-making criminology

I claim tendentiously, and in the spirit of advertising, to be 'The UK's premier new media criminologist'.  Professor David Wilson of Birmingham City University has better claim to 'old' media and much besides.  Here, in a guest blog, he takes issue with a recently published article in the BJC.

Elizabeth Turner’s article in the new edition of The British Journal of Criminology – Beyond Facts and Values: Rethinking Some Recent Debates about the Public Role of Criminology – neatly summarises the three, and often competing perspectives, on Criminology’s public role.  Turner identifies these three perspectives as: “fighting for truth”; “news-making criminology”; and “democratic under labouring”.  The second perspective can be readily associated with Barak and Groombridge, and the third with Loader and Sparks.  

Turner – while offering a new take on democratic under labouring, via her use of the work of Bruno Latour – appears aligned with the third perspective, and thanks Richard Sparks in her acknowledgements.

No problem with that, except that in doing so, she rather airily dismisses “news-making criminology” as “appearing[ing] to empty criminology of any meaningful content so that all that matters is getting one’s favoured discourse heard”, (page 157).  No evidence is presented to support this editorial and, crucially, Turner fails to cite Mike Rowe’s recent work Just like a TV show: Public criminology and the Media Coverage of ‘hunt for Britain’s most wanted man’ or my own Looking for Laura: Public Criminology and Hot News both of which predate her article.  Had she done so, she might have been able to modify this conclusion or, at the very least, acknowledge that good “news-making criminology” is indeed filled with criminological insight.

More broadly, some of this tension between the three perspectives that are identified is not simply about the plural – and contested - nature of criminology as a discipline, which Turner ably describes, but also about a clear preference for most criminologists to remain rooted in the academy.  Tucked away behind the university’s walls, I sense a reluctance on the part of many criminologists – for different reasons – to engage with any public, never mind “news-making” debate.  For some, the media is a scary monster to be avoided at all costs, or a machine that will grind their beautiful and complex arguments into simplistic soundbites and, in doing so, render them meaningless.   Turner’s conclusion comes perilously close to this latter position, which essentially sees “news-making criminology” as superficial and unworthy.  

I appreciate that I am probably fighting a losing battle on this, and have also had perhaps unfair advantages in that I was trained to present TV programmes by the BBC and now have considerable experience of doing so, but it does seem short-sighted that so few of my academic peers want to engage with the print and broadcast media.  They are far more comfortable – dare I say “proud” – of being democratic under labourers or diplomats, than public criminologists, or dare I say it, “public intellectuals”?

However, at the end of the day, most – if not all - of the growth in the numbers of students who want to study criminology has come from the media’s interest in the subject and their corresponding need to have experts to comment.  None of our students have had any exposure to Criminology save the ‘popular criminology’ of true crime books and documentaries, or what they see in the newspapers, hear on the radio, watch on TV or glean from the internet.  It simply doesn’t make sense to me that we should  ignore where their interests have come from, or fail to contribute to the outlets more generally that are prepared to popularly debate those things which are at the heart of criminology.  

Turner presents her three perspectives as if they each have equal weight and support.  Nothing can be further from the truth.  Sadly, democratic under labourers and diplomats proliferate, either because of temperament, inclination or downright academic snobbery.

Ripper Street

I once used to open my introductory lecture in criminology by asking the students who was interested in serial killers.  Over half of the, mainly women, students would raise their hands.  I would then say that I wasn’t and that they’d learn nothing about them in my classes.

I have, however, lightened up a bit; and now open my crime and media module with discussion of the case.  Not of the many murders, which victims might reasonably be seen as ‘true’ ones and certainly no speculation as to the killer; though, of course, these are all mentioned BUT in how the media of the day and more recently - in press, books, films, games etc - represented it.  That is the focus on the murders worldwide by the media, the part played by the media in giving Jack a name and continuing a culture in which a gynocidal maniac becomes a tourist attraction.

So, in part, I play the game that is the organising principle of the BBC’s Ripper Street.  I use the very interest in ‘Jack the Ripper’ to engage my students.  Sadly still too many fall for the Ripperology aspects and see my continued use of the term ‘Whitechapel Murders’ as a prissy political correctness.  I have not watched any of the Whitechapel Series on ITV  as there is sometimes so many series about crime that ‘I must watch’ that - based on trailers, previews or even chance - I don’t watch them all.  The DVDs of Breaking Bad my son bought me for xmas must be watched.

Clearly both Whitechapel and Ripper Street as have others draw shamelessly on the interest in ‘Jack’ as does this blog post.  This is not a review.  For fan boys I recommend this from Den of Geek and for feminist ire and irony Grace Dent.  If this were a review I might mention that it feels like a graphic novel.

I am glad to see that the writer says, ‘In truth, I’ve never been much of a Ripperologist’ but pick up on the ‘almost’ in the claim that, ‘Strangely, the whole series was unlocked by almost throwing him away’.  I ‘almost’ throw him away too but Ripper Street would have far fewer viewers and commentators if he had truly been discarded.  So if this is not a review what is it?  In part it’s a teaching aid, a checklist of criminological concerns and tiny alternative to overuse by criminologists of the The Wire.

So what did I spot in the first two episodes?  Let me know if I missed any.

Episode 1: ripper tours; the significance of the media; the possibility of ‘copy cat’ killings; the passing off of one murder for that a serial killers and the rise of photography and its early use in policing and for pornography.

Episode 2: vigilantism; public order policing; the need for juvenile justice; need for abolition of the death penalty; the media again; the meaning of criminal tattoos (kings’s a mugging!); shades of Fagin (a form of ‘grooming’?) and international police cooperation (Pinkertons).

And always victims.  William D. Rubinstein says, ‘probably more is known about the lives of these five than of any other group of working-class women in Victorian England’.  Ripper Street gives some idea of similar lives but still very much a tourist view.  Let me be your guide!

Trust me I’m a doctor. Who’s the criminologist? My ‘honours’ list.

In a recent edition of Celebrity Mastermind a celebrity was asked ‘In the field of criminology what does the term alibi mean?”.  I was so struck by this sudden appearance of my discipline in the Christmas schedules that I didn’t even get to hear whether the correct definition of an alibi was given, or the common erroneous presumption that it meant excuse.  I could not hear because some idiot was shouting at the screen, ‘In any field!’.  It was me.  Having calmed down - and looked online see even quite pukka sources claiming it has come to mean ‘excuse’ - I retreat to the complaint that the question mistakes the criminological for the legal, or vice versa.

So what is criminology?  Well, rather than taking you through an early lecture in my modules, let’s examine who is a criminologist.  This issue arises from time to time.  Sometimes students waste words and risk my ire by claiming that some writer or other is a criminologist, when what I want is an assessment of whether their argument has merit or not.  I take a fairly broad position in which any discussion of crime in any discipline (and none) might be considered criminological, from the blatherings of Peter Hitchens and many politicians to signed up members of the British Society of Criminology.  I do though argue that criminologists have too readily ceded ground to others such as police, think tanks, NGOs and tabloid media and need to engage more (Criminologists Say).

One group that has a particular right to speak are victims.  I believe everyone has something to say about crime as only the lucky will never have been a victim and only the saintly - yes Durkheim, I did say that - will never have offended.  But I am concerned about some who seek to speak for the victim but immediately turn to what they propose to do to the offender.

In the great criminological choir some get chosen for solo parts: thus by the accident of victimisation Helen Newlove becomes a Baroness and Victims Commissioner after her husband is kicked to death.  Sara Payne’s daughter, Sarah, dies at the hands of Roy Whiting and through the boost of the News Of The World’s campaigning zeal Sara becomes an honorary doctor of the Open University.  As this story shows Roy Whiting has been seriously victimised but don’t expect his name to feature in any politically astute honours list.

But back to honours and Dr Sara Payne.  She lends her name, and more controversially her title, to The Sun’s Justice Campaign.  A number of academics are concerned about this and as an OU graduate I am uneasy but probably because I’m opposed to honours systems in all areas of life.  Yes, I know my father, Brian, has an honorary degree from the Open University.

So far Sara Payne is not advertised or billed as a criminologist.  However, Mark Williams-Thomas is, and some in the criminological community are unhappy about this.  I welcome his voice and enthusiasm but am more concerned that his very policey/punitive approach is seen as representative of UK criminology.  A better example of this ‘who can be described as a criminologist debate’ though is Roger Graef.  I recall a colleague being very exercised that he was described as a criminologist.  But, enjoy the irony here, I’m happy to honour him with that title.  And similarly Richard Garside a very sage commentator on crime and criminal justice.  And famously Against Criminology and now sadly dead I honour Stan Cohen.

Police and Crime Commissioners The introduction of a new species of local politician to Britain

The Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs) who will be elected on 15 November represent the imposition of a significant new, American model of local politics into the British system.  I've asked
Marian FitzGerald Visiting Professor of Criminology University of Kent to do a guest blog about this.

Background

PCCs will replace the Police Authorities which were originally established in 1964 and which, at that time, comprised one third local magistrates and two thirds local councillors.  Police Authorities were responsible for maintaining an ‘efficient and effective’ police force, and could hold their Chief Constables to account on these grounds, though they were not allowed to interfere in operational matters. 

Under what was known as the Tripartite Agreement, policing policy was jointly developed by the Home Office, the Association of Chief Constables and the Association of Police Authorities. Over time, however, the role and influence of these two last bodies has diminished considerably, with that of the APA marginalised very much further, faster and sooner than that of ACPO. From the 1970s and in particular during the 1980s many left wing local authorities, frustrated at the lack of truly democratic control of the police had set up their own police committees which, while they lacked any statutory power, arguably wielded much greater political influence locally than did the police authority. Successive governments themselves also diluted the membership of the police authorities from 1994 onwards by introducing additional members appointed somewhat ad hoc by the Home Secretary, albeit notionally on the basis of representing the interests for example of the local business community. From 1997 the advent of New Labour brought increasingly centralised control of all public services which further attenuated the role of both ACPO and the already weakened APA in several ways. 

The creation under New Labour of a number of powerful new, national bodies concerned with policing (including SOCA and the NPIA) along with the proliferation of nationally driven targets and performance indicators diminished the power of Chief Constables and, with this, the status of the body representing the senior ranks. In addition, David Blunkett  as Home Secretary in particular appeared to be pursuing a strategy of  marginalising force-level hierarchies further by focusing attention at the sub-force level of the Basic Command Unit. In this context he began to cultivate the Police Superintendents’ Association (that is, the body representing BCU commanders) rather than ACPO. Inevitably these developments further constrained the notional powers of the Police Authorities and, with hindsight, the current accusations that Police Authorities had become too close to their Chief Constables, might be traced back to the two sides being brought closer together in resistance to what appeared to be a consistent attack by central government on the independence of local forces. 

At the same time, Blunkett’s ‘radical’ proposals for police reform which appeared high profile in a (singularly incoherent) white paper soon after he took office in 2001 had fallen short of meeting his personal preference for giving Home Secretaries the unambiguous right to sack Chief Constables. He had already signalled his intentions in this regard by ensuring the departure of Paul Whitehouse, Chief Constable of Sussex; but the formula in the White Paper was that the Home Secretary must nonetheless act only via the local police authority in this regard. The issue was forced to a head when, following the Bichard Inquiry into the Soham murders, Blunkett had wanted to sack the Chief Constable of Humberside (where Ian Huntley had lived and was known to the police before taking up the post as a caretaker in the Cambridgeshire school where he committed the murders) but the Police Authority opposed him. The Chief Constable was still forced ultimately to resign and the chair of the Police Authority – presumably by coincidence – was subsequently, publicly and very personally discredited.

PCCs

Role and powers

According to the Home Office website, PCCs ‘will cut crime and deliver and (sic) efficient police service’ [I suspect this is a typo, resulting from the original formulation based also on that of police authorities which, as cited above, referred to an ‘effective and efficient police service’]. While they (like police authorities) will not have the power to intervene directly in operational matters or individual cases, their capacity for cutting crime and improving police effectiveness depends on the use they make of their powers, as described in detail in the appendix. Critical among these is their power to appoint and to dismiss the chief constable.

The secretariat which previously served the Police Authority transfers to support the PCC. The secretariat is paid for out of the police budget (which comprises the grant from central government and from local tax in the form of the police precept). The PCC’s salary will be funded separately by the Home Office and varies according to the size of the police force – ranging from £100,000 in the largest forces (West Midlands, Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire) down to £65,000 in the four smallest forces (which include Warwickshire and Gloucestershire); but in the bulk of forces the pay is £85,000.

The term of office for a PCC will be four years and the initial proposal to limit the number of times PCCs can stand for re-election has been dropped. Even had it been retained, all PCCs would have been eligible to stand for re-election at least once; but now they can fight to stay in office as often as they choose.

Eligibility

The Mayor of London has already been given the powers of a PCC by the government and the Mayor’s Office for Policing has replaced the Metropolitan Police Authority. I assume that his powers cover not only the Met but also the tiny City of London police force. So the following apply to the other 41 forces in England Wales.

Candidates must be ‘British, Commonwealth or EU citizens’ aged over 18 who are registered to vote in their force area. Exceptions are individuals who have ever been convicted of an imprisonable offence and individuals who are currently engaged in any of the following occupations:

civil servant, judge, police officer, member of the regular armed forces, employee of a council within the force area, employee of a police related agency, employee of another government agency, politically restricted post-holder, member of police staff (including PCSOs) or member of a police authority.

Any MP or MEP wishing to stand must first resign their seat. To be accepted as a candidate requires the endorsement of at least 100 local electors and all candidates have to put up a deposit of £5,000 which they will lose if they fail to get 5 per cent of the votes cast.

Accountability

The Home Office website stresses that the PCCs are accountable only to their local electorate, although many of the briefings for candidates remind them of a number of national priorities they must bear in mind when taking local decisions, as well as a range of inspectorates and other national bodies with oversight of policing to which their decision-making will (by inference) be subject.

Locally, however, they are directly accountable to no-one, including the Police and Crime Panels (PCPs) which have also been set up by the legislation. 

The PCPs have no direct power over the PCC and (with the two exceptions referred to below) any decision made by the PCC does not require reference to the PCP, still less depend on their support. The PCPs will comprise

at least one representative from each local authority in the force area, with a minimum of 10 councillors and 2 co-opted independent members, and a maximum total membership of 20.

A full description of their intended role is also included in the appendix. Note that the only powers of veto the panels can exercise are with regard to the setting of the police precept and the appointment (but, apparently, not the dismissal) of a Chief Constable, though in both cases a two thirds panel majority is required.

While the secretariat which supported the Police Authority transfers to the PCC who replaces the Authority, there would be an obvious conflict of interest were the same secretariat also to serve the panels. So a parallel arrangement is needed for this purpose and, according to the Home Office website, it will provide

£53,300 funding for each panel each year to cover support and running costs. Expenses of up to £920 will also be available to each member.

 Who is standing?

The initial Green Paper placed considerable emphasis on the notion that the post of PCC was open to any individual citizen who met the criteria above. Yet it seemed obvious from the outset that

a    only the more affluent independent individuals could afford to fund their own campaigns and, additionally, take the risk of losing a £5,000 deposit (which, as has been noted by various commentators, is ten times that required to stand for parliament) but     even so, anyone lacking access to the organisational resources of an established political party would be at a considerable disadvantage, given that the electorate they would need to reach extends over several parliamentary constituencies in many cases. (Greater Manchester, for example, returns 27 MPs).

While responses to the consultation have never been published, many are known to have expressed the concerns covered in the following section and some of these have been reflected in the finalised arrangements for PCCs and PCPs. With regard to the specific concern that the successful candidates would predominantly represent political parties, a proviso has now been made that each should, on appointment, take an ‘oath of independence’.

The list of confirmed candidates on 26 October was published by the Home Office and shows whether they had any party affiliation. The breakdown was as follows:

Con	41
Lab	41
Lib Dem	24
UKIP	24
Green	1
EDL/English Democrat	6
Independent	55

Concerns

As noted above, widespread concerns are known to have been expressed in response to the Green Paper, although these have never been published; and there was strong parliamentary resistance to the legislation – especially in the \House Lords. The concerns fall broadly under two headings but there are important links between the first and the second.

Democratic legitimacy

The anticipated turnout in these elections is under 20 per cent. But this is unlikely to be evenly spread across the population which is eligible to vote: it is likely to be skewed by area, age and SES. That is, it will be higher in more middle class areas; and younger people – that is, those aged 18-24 - will be under-represented among voters (while anyone aged under 18, of course, isn’t eligible to vote anyway).

All of the posts will be contested, although there is a wide variation in the numbers of candidates and this appears unrelated to the size of the force area. Most have at least four candidates and Devon and Cornwall holds the record with 10. Regardless of the turnout, therefore, the vote will be split. The system to be used will give voters a first and second preference, with the preferences taken into account if no candidate initially secures more than 50 per cent of the ballot. So, if the predictions of turnout are correct, candidates may be successful on the basis of securing the support of no more than 11 per cent of the electorate.

 Importantly, these posts will endow a single individual with democratic legitimacy without them thereby taking their place among peers who have been elected on the same basis and on whose votes they are therefore dependent if they are to secure support for their policies. These checks and balances on the power of individual elected representatives have long been the basis of British democracy (albeit the introduction of elected mayors has already broken with this tradition) and is a key characteristics of parliamentary democracy. Hence, for example, when Tony Blair as Prime Minister got Cabinet backing for the invasion of Iraq, he nonetheless faced the challenge of securing a parliamentary majority.

Politicisation and skewing of police resources

Any fan of The Wire will be only too well aware of the problems which can arise when an elected office holder who has the power to hire and fire their local police chief wishes to use that position to boost their electoral position, especially when they are running for re-election. Where – as will increasingly be the case – the current police chief is the office holder’s appointee and/or is closely identified with them, further problems may arise if the election is won by a rival in whose eyes the police chief may de facto be suspect from the outset.

Against this background, specific areas of concern with regard to the way in which PCCs in England and Wales are likely to use their powers are as follows.

To maintain and build on their electoral base, the PCCs will need above all to be responsive to the concerns of a small minority of the local electorate which, in turn, represents a very much smaller proportion of the population overall. Yet those sections of the population overall which will be of little interest to the PCC (since they are either disenfranchised or much less certain to vote) will include those who are most directly affected by crime and policing – in particular young people and those living in the most deprived areas where crime tends to be highest and problems of violence are particularly serious.

In some parts of a force area the PCC may have few or even no supporters; but in many there will be a mix of the enfranchised (a minority of whom will have voted for the PCC) and the disenfranchised – whether simply in terms of the age divide or because (for example in ‘gentrified’ areas) there is a close juxtaposition of the affluent and the relatively poor. In these situations, the pressure on the PCC from their electoral base is likely to result in pressures to co-opt the police against the young or the less affluent simply because they are perceived as a threat by the PCCs’ supporters.

Only about a fifth of the population is likely to be a victim of crime in any given year and (see above) victims are over-represented among the disenfranchised and in the areas where electoral turnout is likely to be lowest. So the main demands on the PCCs from their core constituency seem likely to relate to low level crime and disorder, especially antisocial behaviour and to maintaining the visible police presence which they have become accustomed to since the national roll-out of Safer Neighbourhood Teams in around 2004. It should be pointed out here that the term ‘antisocial behaviour’ is a subjective concept and that behaviour which might be deemed antisocial in lower crime, more affluent areas may, in more deprived, high crime areas be unremarkable. In  the more deprived, high crime areas  also, what does nonetheless count as anti-social behaviour (such as street prostitution and drug dealing) may still be more likely to go unreported since, as with crime more generally, local people may be more reluctant to go to the police for a variety of reasons, including the fear of reprisals.

Yet police numbers have already been falling for several years and ongoing cuts to police budgets make it almost certain that this will continue, while civilian staff are shed at an even faster rate.  This suggests that pressures to maintain police visibility and to increase the resources committed to low level crime and antisocial behaviour will inevitably detract from    the policing of areas where crime is more serious and also  police activities which are essential but of which the public in general will be far less aware.

With regard to a) not only is the crime experienced by local residents more prevalent and more serious in the more deprived areas of the force, the main crime hotspots are always town and city centres where de facto the resident population tends to be small and where, in any case, many victims of crime may not be local residents.

With regard to b) the loss of civilian staff may be seen politically as more acceptable than a drastic fall in police numbers but this element of the police workforce had also increased rapidly in recent years as officer posts were civilianised precisely to free up officers to perform their warranted tasks. Increasingly civilians have not only provided the necessary administrative back-up for the visible side of the business, they, along with officer colleagues have performed specialist tasks to improve both the prevention and detection of crime – for example through improved crime pattern analysis and provision of forensic support. Yet if officers cannot be spared to maintain and improve these functions because of the need to maintain visibility, this must surely have an impact on the ‘efficiency and effectiveness’ of the service sooner or later.

Finally, at a much more general level, even without these very real concerns about the day-to-day impact of the PCCs on the delivery of policing in their particular force area as they try to meet the demands of their narrow electoral base, it seems inevitable that successful candidates belonging to the Labour party (and other non-Coalition backed PCCs, including any representing UKIP) will use this very significant power base to score political points off the government. In this sense also, local policing may be caught in political crossfire in a way which is unprecedented and with consequences which, while unpredictable, may nonetheless be undesirable to anyone who would maintain the principle that the police should remain above party politics.

Final comments

Three very disparate and personal reflections are as follows.

The present government appears determined to continue the trend of taking public services out of the frame of democratic accountability through privatisation and arms’ length commissioning or contracting out. The rush to increase the academies programme and establish free schools in particular seems designed to marginalise the role of local authorities in a way which (along with cuts to the funding of other services) hollows out the role of local democratically elected representatives to an unprecedented degree. It therefore seems ironic – to put it no higher – that the government should set such store on the importance of ensuring that the police service becomes democratically accountable at local level. The irony is compounded by the additional cost involved at a time when government funding is increasingly being cut back in the name of reducing the deficit.

In future any minister may need to think twice before questioning a trade union’s mandate for industrial action on the grounds that only a minority of its members voted.  

It will be interesting to see how the PCCs (and the government as evidence of the importance of its having imposed them) try to claim success in terms of having reduced crime when, officially, crime recorded by the police has been going down anyway since 2002-3. Despite the recession – and to the perplexity of many commentators - the results published on 18 October 2012 suggest that it is steadily continuing to fall.

Birth Certificates: Sex and Consent

There is some retrospective absolutism and absent-minded nostalgia in these contrasting but connected stories.

The Guardian has news of condemnation of Max Clifford by 'child protection expert' Paul Roffey who claims "You don't need a birth certificate to realise the age of a girl even if she looks older than her age. People invariably know they are breaking the law and they still know now"

And also in the Guardian this artistic celebration of Groupies and their stories of actively seeking of sex with pop stars.  No mention of birth certificates here.  Not sure I know how old they are.

And since the age of consent varies around the world from: 12-21 (or any age provided married or even none) one cannot be too absolute when the legal concept of under age sex and the psychiatric, let-alone the media, definition of paedophilia all clash with the changing biological capacity for sex.

But the law in the UK is 16 now and was in the '60s and '70s (I write about the time here).  However willing, the fans, groupies and the merely curious were legally incapable of consent and a responsible man should have checked their age.  Just as a responsible man should check for informed consent.  So not only birth certificates but consent forms.

I think the point Clifford was trying to make was the unlikelihood of the young pop stars being that responsible at that age in that age.

Litter: a green issue?

I recently gave a webinar (using Mikogo) for Zilch (slides here from Slideshare) for a number of litter activists.  And then two days later attended an ESRC funded seminar on green criminology which still further sharpened my interest.

The litter activists obviously needed no persuading that we need to do something about litter but did not seem persuaded of my criminological or even green arguments.  Many were punitive (though often involved in interesting educational or citizen action themselves) and seemed intent on cleansing the streets.  In my search for the term litter (see ‘Matter All Over the Place: Litter, Criminology and Criminal Justice’ in the forthcoming Routledge International Handbook of Green Criminology) in criminology texts and elsewhere I found the use of litter to mean the excluded and criminalised of society found on the streets. Human detritus.

Green penology is hardly developed but I'd like to suggest that the green take on punishment should be to reduce, reuse and recycle not throw away lives, even of offenders against ‘green’ laws or sensibilities.  It is tempting to be as punitive on the polluter as society, suite and State has been on human detritus; and when we note that litter can be used in that criminalisation we may be more tempted.  But greens need to be better.  Mediation seems to be the more green option.

But and here I agreed strongly with one contributor (Clean Highways) on the power of the law to oblige local authorities and other 'amoral calculators' (or even 'political citizens' see Pearce and Tombs and my discussion of) to clean up.

Troll: Isn’t it good, Norwegian's would

I was at a Westminster Skeptics event - social media panel on 24 September on the Outed, Outers and Outlaws of social media including:

once anonymous police blogger Nightjack outed by the Times;

outers (Peter Ede, @PME2013, revealed ‘Lord Credo’ to be no Downing St insider and here are his views on ‘Trolls’;

and ‘outlaws’ of social media like Paul Chambers of #twitterjoketrial fame.

It was a lively event and I didn’t get my question/point in.  This post is based on the thoughts I would have been trying to encapsulate.

I tend to see things in criminological terms and have published on criminology and ...:

‘green’ issues (car use and litter)

masculinity (not only of criminals, victims, criminal justice agents but also of the majority of criminologists)

‘sexuality’ (what a ‘gay’ or ‘queer’ criminology might look like)

sport (the extent of crime within sport and its criminal justice systems)

but don’t offer criminology as a solution as I’m too skeptic.

A lot of the discussion that evening touched on what I saw as criminological themes of deviance and ethics and who, how and what to control on the internet. Some of this touched on how to deal with trolls.  This, and related matters, is now the topic of earnest discussion in and with the prosecuting authorities and within the academic community.

I had known of and shared on facebook and twitter Clever Pie and Isabel Fay’s  ‘Thank You Hater!’ but am glad to have come across serendipitously (an under-appreciated research method) Leo Traynor (@LeoTraynor) who claims to have a jaundiced eye but in meeting his troll he showed the spirit of Restorative Justice without explicitly mentioning it.

There are many definitions of Restorative Justice, some quite tightly tied to criminal justice or blended with community justice.  Where I incline to it is in the writings of Nils Christie who on the topic of terrorists says:

In the Nordic countries we have our own breed of monsters, not quite as bad as terrorists, not evil all the way, but close to it. We call them Trolls. You do not treat Trolls. Nor do you train them, put them into programs for rehabilitation. It is a condition to be a Troll.

and,

‘The Norwegian Trolls have one peculiar point of vulnerability. They are endangered by sunshine. By the first glimmer of sun that might find them, they crack or turn to stone. That is the explanation of the many strange stone-formations you find if you walk in the Norwegian mountains.’

So from the perspective of Christiesque criminology I hope to encourage the open and community-based ‘policing’ and ‘punishment’ of ‘problematic situations’ (in Hulsman’s term for what other call ‘crime’) that I see as part of the founding (myth) of the internet.

University of the Third Age - some founding history

This blog is called Public Criminology because of my desire to bring criminology to the public.  Partly this stems from my interest in the widest dispersion of knowledge beyond the ivory bunker of academe but also from my father, Brian also an academic and author of Television and the People.  I teach at a conventional University but was an Open University student.  He was involved in the formation of the University of the Air as it was nearly called.

Another open way of learning is the University of the Third Age and Brian was involved with the foundation of this too as he writes below.  This is the full version of a shorter article in Third Age Matters a sort of educational Saga magazine.  I have added some links.  And offer you some reverse nepotism.

2012 marks the 30^th anniversary of the University of the Third Age. Thirty years ago there were two U3As, one in Cambridge, the other in London. The U3A in London is now the only British U3A that is actually 30 years old. In all, there are now 859 U3As in the Britain, with nearly 900,000 members. (Cambridge left a few years later when it rejected a national conference decision). 

I felt honoured to be the speaker at the recent London celebratory event. I was asked to tell members a brief version of how I came to be involved in setting up this pioneering organisation (brief because there were other items in that festive afternoon!). About 150 people came to the celebrations, so the atrium at their headquarters (the former Hampstead Town Hall), was packed. When it was my turn to reminisce I told four short stories about key people in the history - Mary Wane (an unfamiliar name), the late Michael Young and Eric Midwinter (familiar names but not to all the members there), and one of their own members, the late Sidney Jones. In this article I’ll say more about other people and their backgrounds. 

Mary Wane, a member of a U3A in the Lake District, used to be the British Council’s rep. In France. In 1978 she invited me to give lectures about British adult education to three universities in different parts of France. They had all recently set up Universites du Troisieme Age (UTA), and they were already very popular. I was accompanied by Cynthia Wyld, administrator with the influential Beth Johnson Foundation.

In the mid-1970s, there was increasing interest in Britain in expanding educational opportunities for older people. I was the Director of Extra Mural Studies at London University and I belonged to an informal group which included people from charities such as Help the Aged and Age Concern, as well as adult education specialists from several organisations, including universities and local authorities. I reported to them what I’d seen In Nanterre (Paris X University), Grenoble and Lyon. The British adult education organisations had older people who were active students, but the French reckoned that it was worth setting up departments which specialised in providing older people with formally recognised study opportunities. My department and Keele Universiity organised summer schools with Lyon and Grenoble UTA

How then could I turn interesting and useful discussions into effective action?

There was a real limit to what I could do, however. London’s Extra-Mural Department then worked all over the London area. Moreover, not only were my staff and I busy, but there was academic disapproval for backing a rival organisation! One of my staff supporters was even formally chastised by his professional trade union. 

Michael Young came to the rescue. He was already a remarkable innovator, inventing useful organisations which would then run themselves, In 1980 I told him about the U3A over sandwiches at his Bethnal Green office (now the HQ of the Young Foundation). He based his radical approach on medieval universities, which had studied for the sake of studying, without reference to degrees. 

He welcomed the opportunity and started planning the U3A as we know it with the sympathetic academic Peter Laslett at Cambridge University and the socially versatile Eric Midwinter (now well known as a speaker at U3A national conferences and elsewhere). In the Autumn, Unesco, the British Council and the Government Department of Education and Science backed my Extra Mural Department to hold an Anglo-French conference on Learning, Education and Later Life at Wye College. I drafted a resulting statement about principles and policies. It was published in Adult Education by the National Institute of Adult Education (now known as the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education) Professor Michel Philibert (Grenoble) prepared a French translation for the journal Gerontologie.

In July 1981, Philibert was asked to speak at an exploratory meeting at Cambridge when it was decided to start a U3A in the UK. Supporting grants were made by the Nuffield Foundation (credited to Midwinter at the Centre for Policy on Ageing) and to me at London Extra Mural by the Christian and Voluntary Service . 

Later that month, they were ready. Eric Midwinter talked about the new project on the BBC’s weekly radio programme, You and Yours, inviting interested listeners to make contact. About 400 people replied - far more than expected, and seriously curious. Eric arranged for all the London names to be sent to me. 

I urgently needed help. My contacts all over Greater London included Sidney Jones, on the staff of what was then the North London Polytechnic. He was in charge of teacher training, but he’d been an active participant in those informal discussions about older learners We decided to establish ourselves formally as FREE (the Forum for the Right of Elders to Education), to be co-ordinated by Dianne Norton from Age Concern and Jones hosted the first FREE meeting at his Poly. He’d started their course on Learning in Later Life. Would he become an active ally and colleague? 

Sid gladly agreed. He was keen and practical. He found several places to start - the Working Men’s College, for example. We brought together several of his students and some of the people who’d contacted the BBC, so we were well supported and active from the very beginning. I chaired the group that started planning our activities, and later, at a packed meeting at the Polytechnic of Central London (then in Regent Street), I was later formally elected Chairman. By the end of the year we had 887 members. 

These French and British initiatives, very different though they are, led to both countries co-operating in the International Association of U3As. Stanley Miller was recently the first British chairman. His successor is Prof. Francois Vellas, son of Pierre Vellas, who started the very first such department at Toulouse University. 

Brian Groombridge, U3A Founder Member Emeritus

British Society of Criminology South Branch and the Mannheim Centre for Criminology – LSE 2012/13 Seminar Series

British Society of Criminology South Branch and the Mannheim Centre for Criminology – LSE

2012/13 Seminar Series

10 Oct Professor Rosie Meek, University of Teesside

The role of sport in rehabilitation and desistance from crime

LSE: New Academic Building, Room 1.07

7 Nov Matthew Bacon, University of Sheffield

Taking care of the drug business: A study of police detectives, drug law enforcement and proactive investigation

LSE: Connaught House, Room 1.05

5 Dec Professor Jon Silverman, University of Bedfordshire and former Home Affairs Editor BBC 

Crime policy and the media

LSE: New Academic Building, Room 1.07

16 Jan Professor Wayne Morrison, Queen Mary University of London Lessons for the study of state crime from the Nazi era

LSE: New Academic Building, Room 1.07

13 Feb David Scott, University of Central Lancashire 

Ghosts beyond our realm: prison officer occupational culture and less eligibility

LSE: New Academic Building, Room 1.07

13 Mar Ros Burnett, University of Oxford

False allegations of abuse in positions of trust

LSE: New Academic Building, Room 1.07

15 May Professor Mike Nash, University of Portsmouth 

Co-operating or Coerced? The 'others' in public protection.

LSE: Connaught House, Room 1.05

12 Jun Professor David Wilson Birmingham City University

What we can learn from the history of British serial killing

LSE: Connaught House, Room 1.05

The seminars will begin at 6.30pm, with wine from 6.15pm, and we recommend arriving early to be sure of a seat.  We hope you will also be able to stay for drinks with the speaker afterwards.

Map:http://www.lse.ac.uk/resources/mapsAndDirections/findingYourWayAroundLSE.htm  

Directions:http://www.lse.ac.uk/resources/mapsAndDirections/travellingToLSE.htm

Different faces of criminology

On 14 September I enjoyed the highlife discussing efficient and effective policing with the private sponsors circling to offer back and middle office solutions to Chief Constables and the incoming Police and Crime Commissioners courtesy of Reform and then on 19th at the Southbank for the Koestler Exhibition for offender art.

My Blog Posts at Works for Freedom

I'm a regular blogger at Works for Freedom.  Here are links and summary.

Litter don't you hate it?  Want to lock them up and throw away the key?  I urge you to think again if only because we all litter.

Obviously you don't discriminate against women, ethnic or sexual minorities etc etc but what about beards, vegetarians or the tattooed?  Or have you?

Here I carry the class war onto the trains.  How first class carriages are criminogenic.

And how about surveillance on the soccer pitch and a rant about tax avoidance.

More prosaicly how do we evaluate schemes to cut crime etc?

Whilst a big fan of the Leveson Enquiry there are still issues of police priorities and time.

And finally I confess my lack of religion but acknowledgment of its influence in some criminal justice practice but urging it to butt out mostly.