Why Criminology terrifies me
Cards on the table; I love my discipline with a passion, but I also fear it. As with other social sciences, criminology has a rather dark past. As Wetzell (2000) makes clear in his book Inventing the Criminal: A History of German Criminology 1880-1945 the discipline has (perhaps inadvertently) provided the foundations for brutality and violence. In particular, the work of Cesare Lombroso was utilised by the Nazi regime because of his attempts to differentiate between the criminal and the non-criminal. Of course, Lombroso was not responsible (he died in 1909) and could not reasonably be expected to envisage the way in which his work would be used. Nevertheless, when taken in tandem with many of the criticisms thrown at Lombroso’s work over the past century or so, this experience sounds a cautionary note for all those who want to classify along the lines of good/evil. Of course, Criminology is inherently interested in criminals which makes this rather problematic on many grounds. Although, one of the earliest ideas students of Criminology are introduced to, is that crime is a social construction, which varies across time and place, this can often be forgotten in the excitement of empirical research.
My biggest fear as an academic involved in teaching has been graphically shown by events in the USA. The separation of children from their parents by border guards is heart-breaking to observe and read about. Furthermore, it reverberates uncomfortably with the historical narratives from the Nazi Holocaust. Some years ago, I visited Amsterdam’s Verzetsmuseum (The Resistance Museum), much of which has stayed with me. In particular, an observer had written of a child whose wheeled toy had upturned on the cobbled stones, an everyday occurrence for parents of young children. What was different and abhorrent in this case was a Nazi soldier shot that child dead. Of course, this is but one event, in Europe’s bloodbath from 1939-1945, but it, like many other accounts have stayed with me. Throughout my studies I have questioned what kind of person could do these things? Furthermore, this is what keeps me awake at night when it comes to teaching “apprentice” criminologists.
This fear can perhaps best be illustrated by a BBC video released this week. Entitled ‘We’re not bad guys’ this video shows American teenagers undertaking work experience with border control. The participants are articulate and enthusiastic; keen to get involved in the everyday practice of protecting what they see as theirs. It is clear that they see value in the work; not only in terms of monetary and individual success, but with a desire to provide a service to their government and fellow citizens. However, where is the individual thought? Which one of them is asking; “is this the right thing to do”? Furthermore; “is there another way of resolving these issues”? After all, many within the Hitler Youth could say the same.
For this reason alone, social justice, human rights and empathy are essential for any criminologist whether academic or practice based. Without considering these three values, all of us run the risk of doing harm. Criminology must be critical, it should never accept the status quo and should always question everything. We must bear in mind Lee’s insistence that ‘You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view. Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it’ (1960/2006: 36). Until we place ourselves in the shoes of those separated from their families, the Grenfell survivors , the Windrush generation and everyone else suffering untold distress we cannot even begin to understand Criminology.
Furthermore, criminologists can do no worse than to revist their childhood and Kipling’s Just So Stories:
I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who (1912: 83)
Bibliography
Browning, Christopher, (1992), Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, (London: Penguin Books)
Kipling, Rudyard, (1912), Just So Stories, (New York: Doubleday Page and Company)
Lee, Harper, (1960/2006), To Kill a Mockingbird, (London: Arrow Books)
Lombroso, Cesare, (1911a), Crime, Its Causes and Remedies, tr. from the Italian by Henry P. Horton, (Boston: Little Brown and Co.)
-, (1911b), Criminal Man: According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso, Briefly Summarised by His Daughter Gina Lombroso Ferrero, (London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons)
-, (1876/1878/1884/1889/1896-7/ 2006), Criminal Man, tr. from the Italian by Mary Gibson and Nicole Hahn Rafter, (London: Duke University Press)
Solway, Richard A., (1982), ‘Counting the Degenerates: The Statistics of Race Deterioration in Edwardian England,’ Journal of Contemporary History, 17, 1: 137-64
Wetzell, Richard F., (2000), Inventing the Criminal: A History of German Criminology 1880-1945, (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press)
The never-changing face of justice
There are occasions that I consider more fundamental questions beyond criminology, such as the nature of justice. Usually whilst reading some new sentencing guidelines or new procedures but on occasions major events such as the fire at Grenfell and the ensuing calls from former residents for accountability and of course justice! There are good reasons why contemplating the nature of justice is so important in any society especially one that has recently embarked on a constitutional discussion following the Brexit referendum.
Justice is perhaps one of the most interesting concepts in criminology; both intangible and tangible at the same time. In every day discourses we talk about the Criminal Justice System as a very precise order of organisations recognising its systemic nature or as a clear journey of events acknowledging its procedural progression. Both usually are summed up on the question I pose to students; is justice a system or a process? Of course, those who have considered this question know only too well that justice is both at different times. As a system, justice provides all those elements that make it tangible to us; a great bureaucracy that serves the delivery of justice, a network of professions (many of which are staffed by our graduates) and a structure that (seemingly) provides us all with a firm sense of equity. As a process, we identify each stage of justice as an autonomous entity, unmolested by bias, thus ensuring that all citizens are judged on the same scales. After all, lady justice is blind but fair!
This is our justice system since 1066 when the Normans brought the system we recognise today and even when, despite uprisings and revolutions such as the one that led to the 1215 signing of the Magna Carta, many facets of the system have remained quite the same. An obvious deduction from this is that the nature of justice requires stability and precedent in order to function. Tradition seems to captivate people; we only need a short journey to the local magistrates’ court to see centuries old traditions unfold. I imagine that for any time traveler, the court is probably the safest place to be, as little will seem to them to be out of place.
So far, we have been talking about justice as a tangible entity as used by professionals daily. What about the other side of justice? The intangible concept on fairness, equal opportunity and impartiality? This part is rather contentious and problematic. This is the part that people call upon when they say justice for Grenfell, justice for Stephen Lawrence, justice for Hillsborough. The people do not simply want a mechanism nor a process, but they want the reassurance that justice is not a privilege but a cornerstone of civic life. The irony here; is that the call for justice, among the people who formed popular campaigns that either led or will lead to inquiries often expose the inadequacies, failings and injustices that exist(ed) in our archaic system.
These campaigns, have made obvious something incredibly important, that justice should not simply appear to be fair, but it must be fair and most importantly, has to learn and coincide with the times. So lady justice may be blind, but she may need to come down and converse with the people that she seeks to serve, because without them she will become a fata morgana,a vision that will not satisfy its ideals nor its implementation. Then justice becomes another word devoid of meaning and substance. Thirty years to wait for an justice is an incredibly long time and this is perhaps this may be the lesson we all need to carry forward.
Emotions and reason in criminal justice – or facts vs conspiracy?
I was watching a You Tube clip from Channel Four news (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUYPGNvsHXk) about the Tommy Robinson contempt of court case. It provided an explanation of the law, the justice system, and why the case is not as claimed, an example of the repression of free speech, but simply, the processes of justice working as they should. It is a clear and dispassionate account explaining that Tommy Robinson has not been ‘disappeared’ but has simply been jailed for contempt of court, to which he pleaded guilty. Tommy Robinson currently presents himself as an independent reporter – well not currently, he is serving his sentence, but you know what I mean. Prior to this he was leader of the English Defence League and a reporter for ‘Rebel Media’, a Canadian far right online political commentary media site, described as a ‘global platform for anti-Muslim ideology’.
He then re-invented himself to his most recent role of independent reporter, which for him became a mission to report on cases of serious sexual assaults committed by Asian men, whether the court had placed reporting restrictions on the case or not. This was seemingly for him, a way to ensure a conviction, to influence juries about defendants and secure justice for victims. The incident which led to his imprisonment occurred when he posted a Facebook live commentary on a case, which had reporting restrictions. He was arrested for breach of the peace, it transpired that his activities also meant he was in contempt of court, which given he was already on a suspended sentence, led to his jail sentence of 13 months. The outrage focused on the fact that Robinson was arrested and jailed within one day, there were claims he had no legal representation and that this was a repression of free speech. The Channel 4 news report points out the facts. Contempt of court has to be dealt with quickly, as it threatens to derail trials, at great cost to the taxpayer and those seeking a fair trial and for justice to be done. As well as pleading guilty, Robinson knew, as a reporter, he should follow the laws on reporting restrictions. The report emphasises the consequences of derailing the trials, and therefore that his intentions to secure justice are misguided.
This case and this report highlights one of the great challenges for our justice system, that the laws and processes in place to support victims, uphold rights of defendants and witnesses and secure justice are frequently misrepresented and misunderstood. The explanations of the law in the report are clear, concise and easy to grasp, but as I said earlier they are dispassionate, and many would argue, so they should be. The problem is, those who present opposition to these facts, claiming fake news, alternative facts, repression of free speech and political correctness gone mad are not dispassionate. They tap into emotions of fear, a sense of injustice, hate and then offer solutions which promise to alleviate these fears and make the world a better place. For those who are afraid, who feel their lives could be better, this will get their attention, more so than someone presenting facts, laws, and objective reviews of events.
A recent conference at De Montfort University, the Emotions and Criminal Justice conference, tackled this theme as to how the CJS needs to acknowledge the emotional impact of crime and justice, beyond the immediate victims and their family, to the wider public who read about cases. Professor Robert Canton in his presentation ‘Mending what has been torn: Reflections on emotions related to punishment and reconciliation’, outlined the need to understand the type of thinking which occurs when we hear about crime, and what people would consider to be an effective response. He stated ‘the separation of emotion and reason is a bad start…lets talk about emotions as well as reason.’ He cited feelings of anger and disgust against those who have wronged us, and it is these very feelings which Tommy Robinson taps into from his roving reporting on serious sexual assault cases. What is also interesting about this case is the emotions of Robinson’s supporters, that they disregard facts, or don’t know them in the first place, and instead go straight to the position of a sense of injustice, an unfair system and repression of free speech. On the one hand, the presentation of the facts in the report can easily be defined as reason, and the cries of injustice and repression from Robinson’s supporters across the globe, as emotion. But to those expressing this, they are perfectly within their rights, they are upholding this precious commodity of free speech, they are reasoned, right and need to be heard. The dispassionate fact checkers are almost spoiling their fun, tackling their misguided emotional response with reason, established laws and pointing out the flaws in their argument. In amongst all this thinking, I realised one other thing. The supporters of Tommy Robinson, via twitter, gained a lot of traction and attention about their ‘plight’, the report I found was something I came across and chose to watch as I follow Channel Four news, and, crucially, I wanted to know more about the facts of the case. So many people would not seek out such facts, and are all too comfortable to ignore the issue, have their prejudices and conspiracies confirmed and hang on to those initial emotional responses as the facts and explanations of the case. Before we all get too despondent, perhaps the signs are there, of recognising these views as part of our society, to grasp the significance of emotions in all of this, and just maybe, to ensure future generations don’t fall into the same traps.
Safety in Numbers?
Paula Bowles has taught Criminology at the University of Northampton since 2010. Her research interests focus on historical criminology, zemiology, state and institutional violence.
In childhood, I loved numbers, the ability to manipulate, rearrange, reorder, substitute one for another, to create symmetry and yet always end up with an answer. Numbers were as abstract as a jigsaw puzzle, lots of meaningless pieces that, if assembled in the right way, meant that eventually the whole picture would emerge. Along the way the process could go awry, but there was always certainty, always an answer: a solution to the problem. Importantly, that puzzle or equation could be tackled again and again, and provided all the pieces were in order, the solution would be rendered visible once more.
In adult life, my love of numbers has dissipated, primarily because of their application to people. With a global population inexorably heading toward 8 billion…
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