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The ‘Chocolate Cost-of-Living Crisis’
Despite the turmoil and mess the country is currently in, this week’s blog post is dedicated to chocolate, and how to maintain a very much needed chocolate fix during the cost-of-living crisis and the sh** storm which British Politics currently is. Do not even get me started on the Casey Review (2022) which has been overshadowed by that sh** storm I previously mentioned. So, in an attempt to address a serious concern plaguing us all, but disproportionately those most vulnerable, I would like to share some of my findings on the ‘chocolate cost-of-living crisis’.
Before the ‘official’ cost-of-living crisis hit, chocolate was seriously upping its price tag. What used to be 99p or £1 for branded ‘share’ bag (I mean who actually has the self-control to share a share bag?!), has now risen to a huge £1.25 per bag! Now this is for Cadbury’s ‘share’ bags (buttons, wispa bites, twirl pieces to name a few), you are looking at £1.35 for Mars products (Magic stars, Minstrels, Maltesers, MnMs)! Those of us that eat Vegan, lactose-free chocolate are looking at an even higher price tag for an even smaller product. Supermarket chocolate has also gone up in price, and remains nowhere near as scrumptious as the likes of Cadbury, Mars and even Nestle (although I myself am not a Nestle loving due to their questionable ethical practices*). But given the sh** storm the Country is currently in, and the impact of the cost-of-living crisis is having, we need chocolate more than ever! But do not fear: I have some handy tips when it comes to selecting the most reasonably priced and therefore affordable chocolate to help get us through these sh***y times.
The key when looking at the cost of chocolate, and all products, is to look at the price per g/kg. This is usually in teeny tiny writing at the bottom of the price tag on the shelves. Most chocolate (and because I am a self-proclaimed chocolate snob, I am discussing branded chocolate) is coming in around the 85p+ per 100g mark. But there are some sneaky little joys which are undercutting this, and I highly recommend stocking up!
Terry’s Milk Chocolate Orange: £1, (63p/100g): a clear winner! They have various types, dark chocolate, white chocolate and popping candy, and these vary in weights but come in between 63p/100g to 69p/100g!
Cadbury Dairy Milk (360g bar): £3, (83p/100g): the key to Cadburys is the bigger the cheaper! Do not be fooled by the smaller bars and their ‘cheaper’ price. They are not cheaper: and lets be honest who wouldn’t want 360g of chocolate over 150g?!
HOWEVER
Galaxy Caramel (135g bar): 99p (73p/100g): good news for caramel lovers! The smaller caramel bar is cheaper than the 360g Galaxy smooth milk bar (97p/100g), so in this case less is actually more!
Galaxy Minstrels ‘More to Share’ Bag: £1.99 (83p/100g): best value share bag out there at the moment. Again, do not be tricked by the smaller and what may seem like cheaper bags, because they are not!
Growing up with a single-parent father who worked the ‘mum’ shift in a warehouse meant we were very stringent and careful with money: mainly because we didn’t have much. This skill of checking value for money and the price per g/kg is something engrained within me, and something I am extremely grateful for! Check those £’s per g/kg people! It may mean you can have a treat at the end of the week, which doesn’t burn through your pockets, to help off-set the sh** we are currently dealing with.
*it has recently been brought to my attention, the unethical historical practices of Cadbury’s in relation to the Slave Trade, and their racist advertisements in the early 2000’s (not sure how I missed this)! Morally, as I try to avoid Nestle products due to their unethical practices, I will also attempt the same with Cadbury’s: but I fear this will not be an easy transition.
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ASUU vs The Federal Government
It will be 8 months in October since University Lecturers in Nigeria have embarked on a nationwide strike without adequate intervention from the government. It is quite shocking that a government will sit in power and cease to reasonably address a serious dispute such as this at such a crucial time in the country.
As we have seen over the years, strike actions in Nigerian Universities constitute an age-long problem and its recurring nature unmasks, quite simply, how the political class has refused to prioritise the knowledge-based economy.
In February 2022, the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) leadership
(which is the national union body that represents Nigerian University Lecturers during disputes) issued a 4-week warning strike to the Nigerian government due to issues of funding of the public Universities. Currently, the striking University Lecturers are accusing the government of failing to revitalise the dilapidated state of Nigerian Universities, they claim that the government has refused to implement an accountability system called UTAS and that representatives of the government have continued to backtrack on their agreement to adequately fund the Universities.
The government on the other hand is claiming that they have tried their best in negotiating with the striking lecturers – but that the lecturers are simply being unnecessarily difficult. Since 2017, several committees have been established to scrutinize the demands and negotiate with ASUU, but the inability of these committees to resolve these issues has led to this 8-month-long closure of Nigerian Universities. While this strike has generated multiple reactions from different quarters, the question to be asked is – who is to be blamed? Should the striking lecturers be blamed for demanding a viable environment for the students or should we be blaming the government for the failure of efforts to resolve this national embarrassment?
Of course, we can all understand that one of the reasons why the political class is often slow to react to these strike actions is because their children and families do not attend these schools. You either find them in private Universities in Nigeria or Universities abroad – just the same way they end up traveling abroad for medical check-ups. In fact, the problems being faced in the educational sector are quite similar to those found within the Nigerian health sector – where many doctors are already emigrating from the country to countries that appreciate the importance of medical practitioners and practice. So, what we find invariably is a situation where the children of the rich continue to enjoy uninterrupted education, while the children of the underprivileged end up spending 7 years on a full-time 4-year program, due to the failure of efforts to preserve the educational standards of Nigerian institutions.
In times like these, I remember the popular saying that when two elephants fight, it’s the grass that suffers. The elephants in this context are both the federal government and the striking lecturers, while those suffering the consequences of the power contest are the students. The striking lecturers have not been paid their salaries for more than 5 months, and they are refusing to back down. On the other hand, the government seems to be suggesting that when they are “tired”, they will call off the strike. I am not sure that strike actions of the UK UCU will last this long before some sort of agreement would have been arranged. Again, my heart goes out to the Nigerian students during these hard times – because it is just unimaginable what they will be going through during these moments of idleness. And we must never forget that if care is not taken, the idle hand will eventually become the devil’s workshop!
Having said this, Nigerian Universities must learn from this event and adopt approaches through which they can generate their income. I am not inferring that they do not, but they just need to do more. This could be through ensuring large-scale investment programs, testing local/peculiar practices at the international level, tapping into research grant schemes, remodeling the system of tuition fees, and demonstrating a stronger presence within the African markets. As a general principle, any institution that wishes to reap the dividends of the knowledge-based economy must ensure that self-generated revenues should be higher than the government’s grants – and not the other way. So, Universities in Nigeria must strive to be autonomous in their engagements and their organisational structure – while maintaining an apolitical stance at all times.
While I agree that all of these can be difficult to achieve (considering the socio-political dynamics of Nigeria), Universities must remember that the continuous dependence on the government for funds will only continue to subject them to such embarrassments rather than being seen as respected intellectuals in the society. Again, Nigerian Universities need a total disruption; there is a need for a total overhaul of the system and a complete reform of the organisational structure and policies.
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The Origins of Criminology
The knife was raised for the first time, and it went down plunging into naked flesh; a spring of blood flowed cascading and covering all in red. The motion was repeated several times. Abel fell to his death and according to scriptures this was the first crime. Cain who wielded the knife roamed the earth until his demise. The fratricide that was committed was the first recorded murder and the very first crime. A colleague tried to be smart and pointed that the first crime is Eve’s violation in the garden with the apple, but I did point out that according to Helena Kennedy QC, she was framed! In the least Eve’s was a case of entrapment which is criminological but leaves the first crime vacant. So, murder it is! A crime of violence that separates aggressor and victim.
The response to this crime is retribution. In the scriptures a condemnation to insanity. In later years this crime formed the basis of the Mosaic Law inclusive of the 10 commandments and death as the indicative punishment. In the Ancien Régime the punishment became a spectacle on deterrence whilst the crowds denounced the evildoer as they were wheeled into the square! In modern times this criminality incorporated rehabilitation to offer the opportunity for the criminal to repent and make amends.
‘The first man who having enclosed a piece of ground bethought himself of saying “This is mine”’! This is an alternative interpretation of the first crime, according to Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1762/1993: 192). In The Social Contract he identifies the first crime very differently from the scriptures. In this case the crime is not directed at a person but the wider community. The usurping of land or good in any manner that violates the rights of others is crime because it places individualism ahead of the common good. As in this crime there is no violence against the person, the way in which we respond to it is different. Imperialism as a historical mechanism accepts the infringement of property, rights, and human rights as a necessity in human interactions. The law here is primarily protected for the one who claims the land rather than those who have been left homeless. In this case, crime is associated with all those mechanisms that protect privilege and property. Soon after titles of land emerged and thereafter titles of people owning other people follow. The land becomes an empire, and the empire allows a man and his regime to set the laws to protect him and his interests. Traditionally empires change from territories of land to centres of government and control of people. The land of the English, the land of the Finnish, the land of the Zulu. In this instance the King become a figure and custom law subverts natural law to accommodate authority and power.
These two “original” crimes represent the diversity in which criminology can be seen; one end is the interpersonal psychological rendition of criminality based on the brutality of violence whilst on the other end is an exploration of wider structural issues and the institutional violence they incorporate. The spectrum of variety criminology offers is a curse and a blessing in one. From one end, it makes the discipline difficult to specify, but it also allows colleagues to explore so many different issues. Regardless of the type of crime category for any person attracted to the discipline there is a criminology for all.
Between these two polar apart approaches, it is interesting to note their interaction. In that it can be seen the interaction of the social and historical priorities of crime given at any given time. This historical positivism of identifying milestones of progression is an important source of understanding the evolution of social progression and movements. Let’s face it, crime is a social construct and as such regardless of the perspective is indicative of the way society prioritises perceptions of deviance.
Arguably the crimes described previously denote different schools of thought and of course the many different perspectives of criminology. A perfectly contorted discipline that not only adapts following the evolution of crime but also theorises criminality in our society. When you are asked to describe criminology, numerous associations come to mind, “the study of crime and criminality” the “discipline of criminal behaviours” “the social construction of crime” “the historical and philosophical understanding of crime in society across time” “the representation of criminals, victims, and agents in society”. These are just a few ways to explain criminology. In this entry we explore the origins of two perspectives; theology and sociology; image that the discipline is influenced by many other perspectives; so consider their “origin” story. How different the first crime can be from say a psychological or a biological perspective. The origins of criminology is an ongoing tale of fascinating specialisms.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, (1762/1993), The Social Contract and Discourses, tr. from the French by G.D.H. Cole, (London: Everyman’s Library)
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Stop strip searching children!
The Metropolitan Police are under constant criticism, more than any other police force, for at least as long as I have been a criminologist. Their latest scandal began with the case of Child Q, a 15 year old girl who was strip searched in school while she was menstruating after being suspected of carrying cannabis. No drugs were found and Child Q was extremely traumatised, resulting in self-harm and a suicide attempt. Tré Ventour recently wrote a blog about Child Q, race and policing in education here but following this week’s Children’s Commissioner report, there’s so much more to discuss.
The report focussed on the Metropolitan Police who strip searched 650 children in 2 years, many (23%) of whom were searched without the presence of an appropriate adult and as we criminologists would expect, the children were disproportionately Black boys. These findings were not surprising or shocking to me, and I also know that the Metropolitan Police force are not just one bad apple in this respect. The brutal search of Child Q occurred in 2020 but incidences such as these have been happening for years.
A teenage boy aged 17 was subject to an intimate search in 2019 where the police breached a number of clauses of PACE, ultimately resulting in the boy receiving an apology and £10,000 damages for the distress caused by the unlawful actions. These actions started with basic information being withheld such as the police officer failing to identify himself and informing the boy of his rights and ended with the strip search being undertaken without an appropriate adult present, in the presence of multiple officers, without authorisation from a senior officer and with no justification for the search recorded in the officer’s pocket book. Now I understand that things may be forgotten in the moment when a police officer is dealing with a suspect but the accumulation of breaches indicates a more serious problem and a disregard to the rights of suspects in general but children more specifically.
These two cases are the cases of children who were suspected of carrying cannabis, an offence likely to be dealt with via a warning or on the spot fine. Hardly the crime of the century warranting the traumatising strip searching of children. And besides, we criminologists know that the war on drugs is a failed project. Is it about time we submit and decriminalise cannabis, save police time and suspect trauma?
What happens next is a slightly different story. Strip searching in custody is different because as well as searching for contraband, it can also be justified as a protective measure where there is a risk of self-harm or suicide. Strip searching of children by the police has risen in a climate of fear surrounding deaths in custody, and it has been reported that there could be an overuse of the practice as a result of this. When I read the report, I recalled the many conversations I have had over the years with my friend Rosie Flatman who is a practitioner who specialises in working with victims of Child Sexual Exploitation (CSE) and other forms of abuse. Rosie has worked with many girls who have been subject to strip searches when in custody. She told me how girls would often perceive the search as punishment for being what the police believed was disruptive. That is not to say that the police were using strip searches as punishment, but that is how girls would experience it.
Girls in custody are often particularly vulnerable. Like Rosie’s clients, many are victims and have a number of compounding vulnerabilities such as mental ill health or they may be looked after children. Perhaps then, we need to look at alternatives to strip searching but also custody for children, particularly for those who have suffered trauma. Rosie, who has delivered training to various agencies, suggests only undertaking strip searches where absolutely necessary and even then, using a trauma informed approach. She argues that even the way the procedure and justification is explained can make a big difference to the amount of harm caused to vulnerable children in police custody.
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There’s no I in teamwork but maybe there’s space for me and you?
Teamwork is often promoted as a valuable transferable skill both by universities and employers. However, for many the sheer mention of this type of group activity is enough to fill them with dread. This is a shame, and I want to use this blog to explain why.
I’m definitely not one for sports, but even I cannot avoid the discourse around women’s football and Euro 2022. Much has been written about the talents and skill of England’s Lionesses, of which I know very little. Equally there has been disquiet around the overwhelming whiteness of the team, an inequality I am very familiar with throughout my studies of crime, criminality and criminal justice. Nevertheless this blog isn’t about inclusion and exclusion, but about teamwork. Football, like many activities is not a solo enterprise but a group activity. All members need to be able to rely upon their team mates for support, encouragement and ultimately success. If a player doesn’t turn up for training, doesn’t engage in sharing space, passing the ball and so on, the team will fail in their endeavours. Essentially, the team must be on the same page and be willing to sacrifice individuality (at times) for the good of the team. But football isn’t the only activity where teamwork is crucial.
One only has to imagine the police, another overwhelmingly white institution, but with a very different mandate and different measures of success. Here a lack of support from team mates could be a matter of life and death. Even if not so severe, the inability to work closely with other officers in a team can make professional and person life extraordinarily difficult to maintain. It has repercussions for individual offices, the police force itself and indeed, society.
Whilst I’ve the made the case for teamwork, it is not clear what makes a good team, or how it could be maintained. Do all teams work? Personal experience tells me that when members have very different agendas and lose sight of the main objective, team work can be very challenging, if not impossible. There has to be a buy in from all members, not just some. There has to be space for individuals to develop themselves as well as the wider team. However, when the individual aims continue to take priority over the collective, cracks emerge. The same experiences suggest that teamwork cannot be accomplished instantly regardless of intent. Teams take a long time to build rapport, to bond, to gain trust across members and this cannot be hurried. Furthermore, this process requires continuing individual and collective reflection and development. So where can we find an example of such excellence (outside of the wonderful Criminology Team, of course)?
I recently watched the BBC 4-part documentary My Life as a Rolling Stone. Produced to mark 60 years of the band, the documentary explores the lives of Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood and the late, Charlie Watts. There were lots of interesting aspects to each part, but the most striking to me was the sense of belonging. That the Rolling Stones are a cohesive team, with each member playing very different parts, but all essential to not only the success of the band, but also to the well-being of the four men. Alongside discussions around creativity, musicality and individual skills, they describe drug taking, alcohol abuse, romantic relationships, fights, falling out and making up. There were periods of silence, of discord and distrust and periods of celebration and sheer personal and collective joy. Working together they provide each other with exactly what they need to thrive individually and collectively.
These men have made more money than most of us can dream of. They have been to parts of the world and seen things that most of us will never see. All of them are heading toward 80 but keep writing and performing. More importantly for this blog, they seem to illustrate what teamwork looks like, one where communication is key, where disputes must be resolved one way or another, regardless of who was right and who was wrong and where the sheer sense of needing one another, belonging remains paramount. I could use a dictionary definition of teamwork, but it seems to me the Rolling Stones say it better than I ever could:
“You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometime
You’ll find
You get what you need”
(Jagger and Richards, 1969).
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Capitalism and tourism: an ethical conundrum
After a two-year delay in our holiday booking due to the Covid pandemic, my wife and I were fortunate enough to spend a two-week holiday in Cape Verde (Cabo Verde) on the island of Sal. We’ve been lucky enough to visit the islands several times over the last ten years. Our first visit was to Boa Vista but since the hotel that we liked no longer seemed to be available through our tour operators, we ended up going to Sal. When we first visited Boa Vista, there was little to be found outside of the hotel other than deserted beaches and the crashing of the Atlantic waves on the seashore. There was a very large hotel on the other side of the island and a smattering of smaller hotels dotted around, but that was it. After several visits we began to notice that other hotels were popping up along the seashore and there was a definite sense of development to cater for the holiday trade. The same can be said of Sal. The first hotel we visited had only just been built and there were the foundations of other buildings creeping up alongside but in the main, it seemed pretty deserted. Now though there are hotels everywhere and a fairly new very large one not that far away from where we stayed.
The first thing you notice as a visitor to the islands is that this is not an affluent country, far from it. Take a short trip into the town centre and you very rapidly see and sense the pervading poverty. This is a former Portuguese colony, and it comes as no surprise that it played a strategic role in the slave trade until the late nineteenth century whereupon it saw a rapid economic decline. Tourism has boosted the economy and plays a significant role in the country’s population, and this became even more evident during our latest visit. The country is only just recovering from the pandemic and several of the hotels were still mothballed as were the various businesses along the sea front. I’m not sure what the situation was or is in the country with regards to welfare, but I wouldn’t mind betting that they’d never heard of the word furlough, let alone implemented any such scheme. Quite simply no tourism means no work and no work means no wages, such as they are. In conversation with a number of the staff at the hotel, it became obvious that they were not only pleased we were there, but that they wanted us to return again. We were often asked if we would come back and one person, I spoke to pleadingly asked us to return as ‘we need the job’. Of course, it’s not just us that need to return, it’s all the tourists. Tourism supports so many aspects of the economy, not just jobs in hotels but local businesses as well. I think the fact that we keep going back there says something about the lovely people that we’ve been privileged to meet.
But then as I sat one night contently sipping a gin and tonic, debating whether I should have another before dinner, I began to think about whether all of this was ethical. The hotel we stayed in was part of a large international chain. Nearly all the hotels are part of large multinational corporations servicing their shareholders. Whilst my relaxation and enjoyment is great for me, it is on the back of the exploitative nature of the service industry. A business that probably doesn’t pay high wages, those working in the service industry in this country can probably attest to that, so goodness knows what it’s like in an impoverished place such as Cape Verde. My enjoyment therefore promotes exploitation and yet vis-a- vie enables people to have much needed work and pay. Of course, I may have this all wrong and the companies are pouring millions into the country to improve living standards for the inhabitants, and they may pay wages that are very reasonable. But somehow, because of the nature of business, and the eye on profit margins, I very much doubt it. When businesses consider business ethics, I wonder how far they cast the ethical net? As for me, it’s a bit of Catch 22, damned if you do and damned if you don’t. But then so much of life seems to be like that.
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Youth or Adult: can you tell?
This week’s blog begins with a game: youth or adult, secure estate in England and Wales. Below are some statements, and you simply need to guess (educated guesses please), whether the statement is about the youth, or adult secure estate. So, are the statements about children in custody (those under the age of 18 years old) or adults in custody (18+). When you’re ready…
- 70% decrease in custody in comparison to 10 years ago
- Segregation, A.K.A Solitary Confinement, used as a way of managing the most difficult individuals and those who pose a risk to themselves or others
- Racial disproportionality in relation to experiencing custody and being remanded to custody
- Self-harm is alarmingly high
- 1/3 have a known mental health disability
- Homelessness after release is a reality for a high proportion of individuals
- Over half of individuals released from custody reoffend, this number increases when looking at those sentenced to 6months of less
How many did you answer youth secure estate, and how many adult secure estate? Tally up! Did you find a 50/50 split? Did you find it difficult to answer? Should it be difficult to spot the differences between how children and adults are treated/experience custody?
All of the above relate specifically to children in custody. The House of Commons Committee (2021) have argued that the secure estate for children in England and Wales is STILL a violent, dangerous set of environments which do little to address the needs of children sentenced to custody or on remand. Across the academic literature, there is agreement that the youth estate houses some of the most vulnerable children within our society, yet very little is done to address these vulnerabilities. Ultimately we are failing children in custody! The Government said they would create Secure Schools as a custody option, where education and support would be the focus for the children sent here. These were supposed to be ready for 2020, and in all fairness, we have had a global pandemic to contend with, so the date was pushed to 2022: and yet where are they? Where is the press coverage on the positive impact a Secure School will make to the Youth estate? Does anyone really care? A number of Secure Training Centres (STCs) have closed down across the past 10 years, with an alarmingly high number of the institutions which house children in custody failing Ofsted inspections and HM Inspectorate of Prisons (2021) found violence and safety within these institutions STILL a major concern. Children experience bullying from staff, could not shower daily, experience physical restraint, 66% of children in custody experienced segregation which was an increase from the year prior (HM Inspectorate of Prisons, 2021). These experiences are not new, they are re-occurring, year-on-year, inspection after inspection: when will we learn?
The sad, angry, disgusting truth is you could have answered ‘adult secure estate’ to most of the statements above and still have been accurate. And this rings further alarm bells. In England and Wales, we are supposed to treat children as ‘children first, offenders second’. Yet if we look to the similarities between the youth and adult secure estate, what evidence is there that children are treated as children first? We treat all offenders the same, and we treat them appallingly. This is not a new argument, many have raised the same points and concerns for years, but we appear to be doing very little about it.
We are kidding ourselves if we think we have a separate system for dealing with children who commit crime, especially in relation to custody! It pains me to continue seeing, year on year, report after report, the same failings within the secure estate, and the same points made in relation to children being seen as children first in England and Wales: I just can’t see it in relation to custody- feel free to show me otherwise!
References:
House of Commons Committees (2021) Does the secure estate meet the needs of young people in custody? High levels of violence, use of force and self-harm suggest the youth secure estate is not fit for purpose [Online]. Available at: https://houseofcommons.shorthandstories.com/justice-youth-secure-estate/index.html. [Last accessed 4th April 2022].
HM Inspectorate of Prisons (2021) Children in Custody 2019-2020: An analysis of 12-18-year-old’s perceptions of their experiences in secure training centres and young offender institutions. London: Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons.
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Industrial action, knowledge, and blurred lines
Another week has flown by, where has the time gone? Every day I diligently fill out a time sheet, every week I work over my contracted hours and at the end of every week I reflect on the things that have not been done, thinking well when I get time, I’ll have a look at that.
In conversations around the university, I hear students complaining about the current industrial action, one such conversation suggested it was disgusting that lecturers had been on strike. Another overheard student conversation thought it was disgusting that students didn’t turn up for lectures and if they were the lecturer they wouldn’t allow them back in class, after all don’t they know how long it must have taken that lecturer to prepare for the class. Juxtapose this with a workload model that only allows an hour for preparation and marking for every hour spent in the classroom and we have an interesting mosaic of what can only be described as blissful ignorance of what a lecturer’s job entails.
Now I can’t talk about other subject areas but I’m sure that many of the lecturers in those areas will have the same issues that we have in criminology or that I have regarding what we do. There are some subjects within the criminology discipline that are pretty much the staple diet and as such don’t really change much, after all Bentham’s ideas for instance were formed a couple of centuries ago and teaching a class about Bentham’s ideas won’t really change much over time. That is of course until someone, probably far brighter than me, discovers something about Bentham or produces a different take on Bentham’s writings. But generally, I suppose I might be inclined to suggest that preparation time for a lecture and seminar around the topic of Bentham’s ideas would not be too lengthy. But then what is too lengthy? How long would it take to prepare a lecture and a seminar task? That would depend on how much research was required, how many books and papers were read and probably importantly, well it is for me, how prepared the lecturer wants to be for the session. Do we as lecturers prepare for the lowest common denominator, the student that rarely reads anything and perhaps hardly turns up or do we prepare for the student that is an avid reader and will have read more than what they can find on Wikipedia. How long is a piece of string when it comes to preparation time.
Those of you that might have read my first blog about the industrial action will recall how I described that having been signed off ill with work related stress, I was told that I was burnt out. One of the questions in conversation was whether I ever turned off, the answer of course was no. And it is still difficult to do that, Criminology is one of those disciplines that is all consuming. I watch the news, or I read about something, and I immediately think of criminological aspects. I must admit most of the time I have the Metropolitan Police to thank for that. There doesn’t seem to be much delineation, certainly in terms of cerebral activity, between being at work and being off. I want to make my lectures, seminars or workshops (call them what you will) interesting and current. By exploring current issues in society, I end up researching both the current and historic, I end up making links between reality and theory and I produce what I hope is thought provoking and interesting subject matter for consumption in class. I have recently prepared a workshop which required me to read two IPCC reports and a three hundred word plus transcript of a civil case, all highly relevant to the topic of failed investigations. The civil case took me to 10 other stated cases. I can’t tell you exactly how long it took me, but it was longer than a day. Most of it in my own time because the topic is of interest to me. Lecturing, the acquisition of knowledge and at times the production of knowledge takes time, often the lines are blurred as to whose time is being used. My seeds of ideas and basic research are often in my time not my employer’s time. To have students turn up unprepared for my workshops, to turn up late (frequently) to fail to engage and then to have the gall to bemoan industrial action is soul destroying. To have a workload model that allows a pitiful time for preparation of lectures is simply ignorance and quite frankly, crass. We are in higher education not a sausage factory.
It is easy then, to see on reflection, where my time has gone each week. Given the work entailed in lecturing and the myriad of other requirements, it is hardly a surprise that there is a successful mandate for continued industrial action. I’m working more hours than is stated in my contract, cheating a bit on ASOS because it feels impossible not to, and I still can’t get anywhere near to fulfilling my workload. When I fill out my time sheet, I don’t include all of my own time as I’ve described above.
I won’t stop formulating my ideas. I wont stop using my own time to further my knowledge so that I can pass it on to students that are interested. But I would like some acknowledgement that the current system employed for gauging my workload is out of kilter with reality. And for those students that put the effort in and by doing so make my classes enjoyable, I am extremely grateful. As for the rest, well I suppose ignorance is bliss.
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Protect international law
In criminological discourses the term “war crime” is a contested one, not because there are no atrocities committed at war, but because for some of us, war is a crime in its own right. There is an expectation that even in a war there are rules and therefore the violation of these rules could lead to war crimes. This very focused view on war is part of a wider critique of the discipline. Several criminologists including, Ruggiero, DiPietro, McGarry and Walklate, to name a few, have argued that there is less focus on war as a crime, instead war is seen more as part of a metaphor used in response to social situations.
As far back as the 1960s, US President Johnson in his state of the union address, announced “The administration today here and now declares unconditional war on poverty in America”. What followed in the 1964 Economic Opportunity Act, was seen as the encapsulation of that proclamation. In some ways this announcement was ironic considering that the Vietnam war was raging at the time, 4 years before the well documented My Lai massacre. A war crime that aroused the international community; despite the numbers of soldiers involved in the massacre, only the platoon leader was charged and given a life sentence, later commuted to three and a half years incarceration (after a presidential intervention). Anyone can draw their own conclusion if the murder of approximately 500 people and the rape of women and children is reflected in this sentence. The Vietnam war was an ideological war on communism, leaving the literal interpretation for the historians of the future. In a war on ideology the “massacre” was the “collateral damage” of the time.
After all for the administration of the time, the war on poverty was the one that they tried to fight against. Since then, successive politicians have declared additional wars, on issues namely drugs and terror. These wars are representations of struggles but not in a literal sense. In the case of drugs and terrorism criminology focused on trafficking, financing and organised crimes but not on war per se. The use of war as a metaphor is a potent one because it identifies a social foe that needs to be curtailed and the official State wages war against it. It offers a justification in case the State is accused being heavy handed. For those declaring war on issues serves by signalling their resolve but also (unwittingly or deliberately) it glorifies war as an cleansing act. War as a metaphor is both powerful and dangerous because it excuses State violence and human rights violations. What about the reality of war?
As early as 1936, W.A Bonger, recognised war as a scourge of humanity. This realisation becomes ever more potent considering in years to come the world will be enveloped in another world war. At the end of the war the international community set up the international criminal court to explore some of the crimes committed during the war, namely the use of concentration camps for the extermination of particular populations. in 1944 Raphael Lemkin, coined the term genocide to identify the systemic extermination of Jews, Roma, Slavic people, along with political dissidents and sexual deviants, namely homosexuals.
In the aftermath of the second world war, the Nuremberg trials in Europe and the Tokyo trials in Asia set out to investigate “war crimes”. This became the first time that aspects of warfare and attitudes to populations were scrutinised. The creation of the Nuremberg Charter and the outcomes of the trials formulated some of the baseline of human rights principles including the rejection of the usual, up to that point, principle of “I was only following orders”. It also resulted in the Nuremberg Code that set out clear principles on ethical research and human experimentation. Whilst all of these are worthwhile ideas and have influenced the original formation of the United Nations charter it did not address the bigger “elephant” in the room; war itself. It seemed that the trials and consequent legal discourses distanced themselves from the wider criminological ideas that could have theorised the nature of war but most importantly the effects of war onto people, communities, and future relations. War as an indiscriminate destructive force was simply neglected.
The absence of a focused criminological theory from one end and the legal representation as set in the original tribunals on the other led to a distinct absence of discussions on something that Alfred Einstein posed to Sigmund Freud in early 1930s, “Why war?”. Whilst the trials set up some interesting ideas, they were criticised as “victor’s justice”. Originally this claim was dismissed, but to this day, there has been not a single conviction in international courts and tribunals of those who were on the “victors’” side, regardless of their conduct. So somehow the focus changed, and the international community is now engaged in a conversation about the processes of international courts and justice, without having ever addressed the original criticism. Since the original international trials there have been some additional ones regarding conflicts in Yugoslavia and Rwanda. The international community’s choice of countries to investigate and potentially, prosecute has brought additional criticism about the partiality of the process. In the meantime, international justice is only recognised by some countries whilst others choose not to engage. War, or rather, war crimes become a call whenever convenient to exert political pressure according to the geo-political relations of the time. This is not justice, it is an ad hoc arrangement that devalues the very principles that it professes to protect.
This is where criminology needs to step up. We have for a long time recognised and conceptually described different criminalities, across the spectrum of human deviance, but war has been left unaccounted for. In the visions of the 19th and 20th century social scientists, a world without war was conceptualised. The technological and social advancements permitted people to be optimistic of the role of international institutions sitting in arbitration to address international conflicts. It sounds unrealistic, but at the time when this is written, we are witness to another war, whilst there are numerous theatres of wars raging, leaving a trail of continuous destruction. Instead of choosing sides, splitting the good from the bad and trying to justify a just or an unjust war, maybe we should ask, “Why war”? In relation to youth crime, Rutherford famously pondered if we could let children just grow out of crime. Maybe, as an international community of people, we should do the same with war. Grow out of the crime of war. To do so we would need to stop the heroic drums, the idolisation of the glorious dead and instead, consider the frightened populations and the long stain of a violence which I have blogged about before: The crime of war
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Meet the Team: Paul Famosaya, Lecturer in Criminology
Hi all! My name is Dr Paul Famosaya and I have just joined UoN as a Lecturer in criminology. Prior to joining UoN, I have taught as a Lecturer in criminology and policing at the University of Cumbria – where I contributed to the development and running of modules at both Undergraduate and Masters level. In addition, I have taught criminology at Middlesex University, London as an HP Lecturer (during my PhD days). So, over the years really, I have developed and taught a variety of modules around the theories of crime, the crimes of the powerful, global dimensions of crime, policing, new ideas in criminology, crimes & deviance, social exclusion, criminological frameworks etc. I also serve as a reviewer of a few international reputable journals.
In terms of my academic background, I completed my undergraduate degree in Nigeria, 2010 and then went straight on to complete my Masters in Criminology at Middlesex University, London. I then dived straight in to my PhD, which I completed also at Middlesex in 2019 – with my thesis focusing on police experiences, actions and practices.
I came into the world of Criminology simply for my interest in understanding the logic of corruption and the network of greed. I realised that these two components are largely the foundational problems of my home country Nigeria, and many other countries. So, the plight to unravel these dynamics from both institutional and personal level triggered my interest in the discipline. To a large extent, this interest has continued to strengthen my area of specialisation which concentrates largely on the areas of Critical and Theoretical criminology, Police culture, Social harms and Injustice. Criminology is something I’ve really enjoyed doing and while I have taught it for many years, I still consider myself to be a student of Criminology really.
I am currently completing another article on pandemics and criminology – so it’ll be cool to chat with colleagues looking at similar area(s). Looking forward to meeting everyone soon!
Thoughts from the criminology team 