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Violence on the Frontline: Guest speakers and CRI3003
Before starting the CRI3003 module, if you asked me what violence was, I was pretty confident that I could answer. Violence, of course, is a “behaviour involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something” (Oxford Dictionary). Alike to the Oxford Dictionary, this was also my understanding. It wasn’t until I started the module that I was bombarded by a whole different understanding: violence as institutional.
At first, this concept confused me. I think anybody who believes they fully understand the complexities of violence is not yet finished in their journey to understanding. This module, unlike other modules on the course, allowed students to listen to guest speakers from the frontline of the many institutions in which we learnt about. This, for me, proved invaluable. It helped me understand institutional violence, and why it is so complex. The speakers, albeit brilliant and informing, sometimes themselves didn’t completely understand the concept of institutional violence, and for me this highlighted the exact reason why it flourishes: lack of understanding within the institution. As violence is not understood as institutional, its insidious nature will never be understood, and neither will its impact. Instead, institutions desperately want to point the finger, and struggle to understand violence which has no actor.
In my opinion, not only did I learn as a student from the guest speakers, I believe the guest speakers also learnt from us. The interaction and questioning as a result of these sessions is where the crucial learning took place, as it allowed me as a student to understand an institutionalised perspective, and it allowed the guest speaker to understand an outsider perspective; a view they may not be encouraged to adopt within the institution in which they operate. This cross examination of ideas allowed for a more informed, deeper understanding. I think it is very easy to think you understand a concept, but applying it in your evaluation of the guest speaker’s experiences accelerates your understanding.
It is fair to say I learnt a lot from all the guest speakers on the module, and I believe it is a great opportunity and privilege to have had as an undergraduate student. Just when you think you understand a case in class, the guest speaker will make you re-evaluate everything you had learnt previously. This is a skill which is not only useful for a criminology degree, but also for everyday life when you enter the social world in which is made up by such institutions.
It is for the reasons stated above that I believe CRI3003: Violence from Domestic to Institutional is a brilliant module. Personally, it was my favourite. It consolidated my learning perfectly and allowed me to demonstrate all of the knowledge I had previously learnt. As I said before, the guest speakers allowed students to question their own understanding, and perhaps view a case in an alternative lens. This multifaceted understanding of such complex concepts is crucial in criminology, and life as a whole.
From my experience, the guest speaker sessions are only as good as the questions asked, so come prepared! In asking the right questions, invisible violence becomes visible, and all of the content learnt before finally falls into place.
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Academic and Pedagogical Activism: Lets change what we can change
I feel some personal context should be provided as a preface to this rather long blog post…
…I chose an academic career path with a specific interest in activism (generally) not because ‘traditional’ protest action is defunct. Quite the opposite. As academics we have demonstrated that our passion for maintaining social justice, transparency, fairness, equality and employment rights, has not diminished. We displayed the collective nature of this passion several times in the past year, most recently through the involvement of over 70,000 staff from 150 universities across the country. As with a previous post, I stress that the thoughts contained here should not overshadow the issues we have raised, and will continue to raise, simultaneously through ongoing industrial action.
As a rather ‘average’ student when it came to attainment prior to starting my undergraduate degree, what shaped my passion for Criminology and my future career path was a combination of the interdisciplinary nature of the subject, but also the incredible student experience that I felt distinguished higher education from the boring, mundane, and out-of-touch schooling system in the UK; a system that often placed more emphasis on the reputation of the institution than the mental welfare of their pupils [I hasten to add, with the exception of my second sixth-form, which has a special place in my heart]. My student experience at university was characterised by a transparent, respectful, and crucially non-hierarchical form of learning. You felt like an adult, on the same level as others around you as well as the teaching team, and that there was nothing you were passionate about that you couldn’t reasonably pursue.
Over the years, however, I have become quite disappointed from seeing sheer refusal in some circles to even consider the student experience as playing a part of university life – the attitude of “they are not here to have a good time, they are here to learn”, which often brings back a lot of pent-up trauma from my schooling days; pigeonholing human beings into pre-characterised slots decided only by a handful of people, obsession with the quantification of success rather than provision of engagement, and an unwillingness to acknowledge uniqueness, neurodiversity, or simply that there were differences between individuals, some potentially requiring more attention.
Having since taught in several universities at varying levels, in starkly different spaces, and with students from an array of unique backgrounds, skills, talents and abilities, I have come to the realisation that these traditional schooling principles that previously governed higher education will always fail to gain traction or support in the contemporary world; from students, and from those academics who have thrived in progressive teaching & learning environments, where they would have failed if traditional practices had been employed. I have also reflected deeply on things that we can change as academics; things that are reliant on choice, and that transgress the traditional boundaries of strike action. Academic development is much more than research ‘impact scores’ or quantification of published texts/articles. It is a holistic process. Challenging dominant hegemony and helping to reinforce social justice is simply not possible without shifts at grassroots level; by actively being the change that we want to see. It is a process that requires active participation from all, rather than a dominant minority.
Interdisciplinary Collaboration
While we are, first and foremost, criminologists, we are also more broadly social scientists. Despite some rather outdated beliefs that the discipline should only focus on “studying crime”, criminology is (and always will be) fundamentally an interdisciplinary subject, encompassing fields of sociology, psychology, legal studies, anthropology and philosophy…to name a few. We always ‘study crime’ in some sense, but this does require the level of fixation with denounced theoretical perspectives that have been historically used as a guise for genocide and ethnic cleansing under the banner of racial purity…but a much heavier focus on reframing the theoretical grounding of criminology to debates within the present – the here and now. As a descendant of genocide survivors from both sides of my family, even the thought of teaching students the nuanced intricacies of strategies and tactics that were used to justify murdering people (like my great-grandparents and their relatives) is unconceivable. Of course, it is important to know the past to learn from it, and to avoid a repeat of the atrocities we have seen in human history, but in such detail? What is being presented to the world as the core of criminological theory by elevating these intricate ideas onto the criminology pedestal of fame?
Our approach to knowledge production should therefore be free from isolation solely to our discipline or institution. Our only allegiance is to the production of this knowledge…knowledge that we are profoundly passionate about, irrespective of its spatial dimensions. Institutions should therefore be facilitators of this knowledge; breeding creativity to roam free from isolation beyond the dominant disciplinary interest, allowing all to extend friendly hands for research collaboration with others who may well disagree with our theoretical positions, encouraging learning from others’ experiences that are different from our own. In doing so, we can avoid the suppression of certain academic texts from entering our curricula under a variety of guises; freeing academia from research isolation into being able to engage with researchers or work that may be useful for personal academic or pedagogical development. To ensure that we are able to successfully advance academic knowledge, but also gain the type of research experience that will serve us positively in our future lives with enhanced research portfolios, we need to rethink our own positionalities in relation to collaborating with other academics and institutions that may differ from our own. It is possible that much of these struggles can be unconscious and rooted in understandable past struggles, bad experiences that have led to mistrust or a sense of hopelessness, but there is no better time to latch onto optimism than the present moment. After all, what are we without hope?
As social creatures, we must venture outwards and embrace the flux of knowledge and healthy collaboration. In a contemporary globalised world, we are intertwined with the social, political, economic and cultural negotiations of our own identities as academics, alongside being ongoing students of the social sciences. As such, aside from the issues to which we aim to draw attention through industrial action, we must reflect on whether we truly practice what we preach. Without this, we are doomed to being perceived simply as moaners from beyond, rather than creators of change from within. Speaking from experience of witnessing the long-term effects of this kind of mismatch between what is preached and what is practiced, in many institutions this is commonplace and, unless care is taken, it can often become problematic. It can both confuse students’ understanding of how their lecturing teams position themselves in relation to what they are teaching, but also affect the academic staff that may well have alternative theoretical or pedagogical views to the dominant narrative.
Co-Creation and Student Participation
In the interests of maintaining healthy staff retention within institutions generally, but within social scientific disciplines specifically, proper care must be taken to ensure that suggestions for co-creation are actively encouraged. Calls for genuine co-creation of curricula, of strategies to shape equality, diversity or inclusion (EDI) strategies, and anti-racist pedagogical practices can otherwise end up either sidelined, ignored, or simply dominated by only a few voices claiming to know it all. Care must be taken to ensure that, in the interests of maintaining healthy communication and morale more broadly, decisions are not made by a dominant few in advance of consultation processes for these things. Genuine co-creation requires:
- Provision of a truly open forum where anything can be discussed without fear or reprisal;
- Entering the space with a wholly open mind where anything is subject to change;
- Full acknowledgement of one’s personal unconscious biases;
- Acceptance of one’s own intersectional privileges that influence their ideas, but that also disadvantage others’ positions;
- Active participation from all members in the forum;
- Recognition that decisions cannot be made prior to the forum, but that improvement is an ongoing process, requiring regular collaboration, rather than enactment of decisions made separately.
As an ongoing process, this is merely a starting point, rather than an end point.
Academics and students are an integral part of this co-creative practice; pedagogical knowledge requires, rather than desires, student contribution. That does not mean this process is easy. It can be difficult, particularly if student attendance or engagement with teaching & learning sessions is low. However, there is no conceivable reason to suggest that we cannot promote continuous, critical, self-reflection of teaching & learning practices, which are known to have a largely positive impact on academic development, albeit with a small number of students if so be it. After all, as social scientists we quite rightly regularly and vocally criticise bureaucratic processes that aim to ‘measure’ success of actions and events, or try to ‘quantify’ experiences and social interactions. Therefore, we should dwell less on numbers in attendance or vague interpretations of ‘popularity’ of sessions, and more on the quality of these interactions. It is the quality that builds engagement, paving the stepping stones for positive student and staff experience at university level.
Innovative Assessment Strategies
A rather different way that student experience of university study can be improved is by revisiting the appropriateness of ‘traditional’, but largely pedagogically defunct, assessments like exams and in-class tests. If we are to be vocally critical of contemporary school-style practices that do not prepare students for higher education, we cannot in good conscience then replicate the same practices that fixate on teaching students simply how to memorise concepts, ideas or authors for one day of regurgitation. Add to this the stresses associated with preparation, time pressures and performance anxiety on the day, and we are left with an assessment style that no longer matches our developing approaches in tackling mental health in higher education. Exams in contemporary society can only serve as a means of boosting grades at the expense of progressive learning styles. It is an example of pandering to bad pedagogical practice simply to give a perception of success, one that once again relies on quantification as a measure of achievement. In eliminating these types of assessments, we can make room for more innovative and progressive styles that can prepare students for the future of employment (whether physical or digital); communicative, collaborative, and largely reflective tasks that make use of technological advancement and help to build on students’ existing skills and talents.
Innovative assessment styles can be inclusive of developing technologies and increasing student involvement in social media platforms. Why fight the craze of video-based platforms when they can be used to the advantage of academic development and employability? In modules that focus on developing knowledge and understanding of research methods (for instance), we can introduce students to increasingly digital methodologies. This will allow them individual autonomy to adopt methods that may well involve contemporary technological platforms or practices, not only shifting criminology away from the mundaneness of what has already been ‘done to death’ (in the worlds of a former academic supervisor), but can also serve as a physical demonstration that the synergy of ‘theory’ and ‘methodology’ does not have to be outdated or out-of-touch…that it can be applied anywhere and in any context provided it is applied in the correct fashion. It is up to our array of skill and talent as experienced academics to enable and facilitate students to be able to apply innovation to their passions.
Linked closely to this are in approaches of establishing the ethical integrity of written work, particularly large-scale projects like dissertations. While not to go into a debate about the appropriateness of written dissertations at this stage, care must be taken to ensure that research ethics committees do not conflate genuine ethical concerns or considerations with what may be personal methodological preferences relating to knowledge production and research feasibility – though this is something that can be tackled through establishing full transparency of the entire ethics process with students, including their entitlement to know who has commented on their work. Often, these challenges can be alleviated simply by reducing dependence on “in-house” disciplinary ethics committees and allowing students to submit their projects to independent ethics committees instead, ones external to their immediate discipline perhaps. After all, there are parallels across the social sciences when it comes to methodology and employment of innovative research methods. A ‘fresh’ pair of eyes can help to provide more objective commentary and avoid potential overlaps between ethical concerns and methodological preferences.
Student Engagement and Student Experience
Essential to facilitating students’ innovative passions are the relationships that we, as academics, build with them. Whatever our teaching & learning styles, whether we choose to create physical, digital or hybrid learning environments, synchronous or asynchronous content (or a combination of everything), fundamentally we should be building a positive, personable, non-hierarchical and entirely transparent rapport with students that breeds autonomy and individual responsibility for learning & development. This means also avoiding any overlaps between what is clear university policy with what we as academics simply ‘want’ or ‘desire’ when it comes to everyday teaching practices – this can sometimes create confusion. Transparency on what students are entitled to do, and conversely what they are perfectly entitled not to do, should be at the forefront of our relationship with them, but also this transparency needs to apply at all levels.
We also know that non-hierarchical relationships have a direct positive correlation with exercising individual autonomy and responsibility. Of course, some clear boundaries must be set in the academic-student relationship, as are done in all places of employment, within reason and common sense. However, where these boundaries become unnecessary and lack logical purpose are when (as I have seen in some academic institutions) they are used to create and maintain a hierarchy of knowledge or status. This is often evident when it is claimed that the path of the academic has been so riddled with difficulty, that the rite of passage to academic status is determined by the level of “trauma” the academic has suffered throughout the journey. It is a ludicrous presumption and can often breed animosity between a student and their lecturer. Our relationships do not need to be parental; whatever personal views we may have of student maturity, as adults, they simply do not require micromanaging or undermining. Students should be aware of the intricacies of their institutions, and who the people are that make decisions on their futures (i.e. their lecturers). As all adults, they are minimally entitled to this level of transparency and visibility.
Students are no less able or capable of producing knowledge – it may not be the type of knowledge that we may have become ‘accustomed to’ within academia, but…absent any methodological or ethical issues…this does not render the knowledge somehow less worthy than what is created in more (arguably) ‘elite’ academic circles (as is sometimes suggested). Our approach to gaining mutual trust and building a positive rapport with students is a crucial first step to ensuring that there is at least a minimal level of engagement. I find that one of the first things I communicate to students, particularly those who have recently commenced their studies, is ‘realistically-speaking, there is no difference between you and me. We are all humans. We are all academic researchers. We are all here for the same purpose; to learn about criminology. My only job is to facilitate your learning’. Of course, this means that students should demonstrate the depth and breadth of independent research required at this level of study – the common mantra still applies; “you get out of education what you put into it”. Though somewhere along the line, and it is unclear when or where, academics seem to have created for themselves a status of unchallenged godliness, one that can only be earned through mental distress. Being an academic is not a status for privilege. It should not be used as a form of power over student bodies; whether physically, psychologically, or pedagogically. It is simply a stage in a process of knowledge production.
At pedagogical level, the most common sticking point that can obstruct the relationship between students and academic staff, as observed in some places, is one of class. It is not always articulated, but it is clearly visible in interactions (or lack thereof) with students. Class is not merely economic status but a culmination of various capitals; social and cultural capital included. We know, for instance, that many students come from low socio-economic backgrounds; working-class homes, single-parent families and/or other challenging life experiences. As with most in neoliberal nations, many have their own struggles and unique stories, lives that we may never be privy to, that can shape behaviours or characters that we may never truly understand. As an institution and a team, we do well to acknowledge this. We take some steps, and do our best as academics, to try to mitigate some of these struggles wherever possible. However, this is an ongoing process and more can be done at varying levels.
For instance, we are aware that given varying degrees of cultural capital, many students will not engage with certain academic texts. This is not to say that the solution to this is to remove theory from our curricula – criminology is fundamentally a theoretical discipline – but there can be at least an appreciation that some texts require a certain degree of cultural capital that may never have been possible to attain throughout the struggles that students have experienced in their lives…regardless of their performance in, or experience of, prior education. Perhaps a rethink is needed of the elitist and white-centric nature of some texts, and/or the methods through which students are introduced to theoretical material might be useful, without the need to suggest that being a successful student is solely reliant on never leaving a library. This ties in closely with aforementioned innovative strategies to engage students, ways that transgress boundaries imposed by ‘traditional academia’ of talking at students, instead allowing them to be the co-creators of their own academic knowledge.
Academic Anti-Racism & Intersectionality
Tied to this are some issues surrounding social (in)justice. There needs to be an adequate level of acknowledgement of the requirement of truly anti-racist pedagogical practices and content. As a critical criminologist and anti-racist activist, it is no surprise that these practices are, and will always, be at the forefront of everyday decisions I make – not least because I was employed on the basis of my research and pedagogical interests in anti-racism. I often make the point that certain buzz words like ‘anti-racism’ and ‘decolonising the curriculum’ are banded about without adequate understanding of what these involve. Whilst we may all potentially agree that this is the case (or perhaps not, this is down to every individual), there is still a gap in knowledge and understanding even on the part of those who do agree with this statement…hence there being a decisive unwillingness to engage in any practices that carry the label of ‘anti-racism’ or ‘decolonising’ across universities. What is being missed is the purpose of these practices. Far from simply being non-racist, anti-racism is an everyday tool that can and must be exercised in all aspects of daily work life within academic institutions.
Much of the challenges of understanding what anti-racism really means, or how it can be utilised to improve teaching & learning, stems from a reluctance to acknowledge our own unconscious biases. Where, as social scientists, we often teach about intersectional struggles and the presence of global social injustice, we tend to overlook the fact that our everyday choices can contribute towards those exact injustices. Ongoing reflection on what texts are introduced to students can help alleviate some of these. Texts should prove to be more inclusive, demonstrate our commitment to shift away from white-centric understandings of crime and criminality, and demonstrate best practice when it comes to the use of appropriate discourse when it comes to ‘race’, so that students do not regularly replicate questionable racial terminology in assessments, and potentially also in later life. Yes, deeply ingrained structural racism across society (and in academia in general) means that many of the “legitimised” academic texts tend to be produced in, or relate to, the US and other Western nations. However, care must be taken to ensure that we are not inadvertently engaging in academic nationalism by restricting students to utilise texts that only refer to England & Wales, for instance.
Changing what we can change
So…given the challenges that have led to unified industrial action in universities across the country, where can we as individual academics start, or how can we contribute towards this? Well, it is important to note that there is nothing that we are required to do as academics that actually makes any of this less possible. It is simply a case of substituting existing practices with others that make more sense and breed positivity; a shift of expectations and priorities, rather than additions to pre-existing ones. It is easy to agree with many of these challenges, but to then find a variety of reasons for why changes cannot be enacted in the way that they should. We know there are unique differences across institutions, and there will be challenges associated with some spaces that are not found in others. But there cannot be a refusal to even try, or to allow others to try, in learning from good practice from institutions which have actually succeeded in bringing positive changes into fruition.
As is evident from student engagement, hierarchical practices of imposition can fail if it is not passionately supported by everyone in the room, particularly where these cannot be questioned. As academics, we quite rightly expect respect for individual autonomy, a dissolution of micromanagerialism across academia, and non-hierarchical forms of leadership. These are good starting points in ensuring that there is healthy staff retention and morale at all levels, so that this positivity can then be reflected in our relationships with students. The only imposition can be the imposition of consistent care and respect for one another. We are all human beings with aforementioned unique diversity of skills, talents, experiences, cultural sensitivities, all of which form our distinctive intersectional identities. Maintaining an optimum level of student engagement & experience, and successful staff retention, requires celebrating these differences in ways that allow them to shine in our everyday working practices. It is in the interests all within our institution that we offer this kind of diversity in our ranks. This is not always found in other walks of life.
This is what sets us apart, and this is what gives us ‘status’.
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Poetry on prisons
Recently in CRI3001 Crime and Punishment we’ve been exploring prison poetry drawn from the volumes published by the fantastic Koestler Arts (some examples and inspiration can be found here). Students were inspired by this to write their own poems on prison and you will find some excellent examples below.
Moonlight
I sing to all of the spiders on the wall
They comfort me from my fear of the unknown
All the sounds outside as I lay here petrified
Of the consequences that lay aheadTime is far behind my state of mind
Noran
Deprived myself of the will to fight
For peaceful nights
Moving on
Longing for the past,
Wanting to go back,
To change our future.
Living with regret,
Feeling sorry for hurting you,
Living in isolation,
Needing to hear from you.
Wondering if you’re doing well,
Do you remember me?
Are you moving on?
Do you like it?
Living on the outside?
Outside of these four walls.
These grey walls entrap me,
Every day I feel smaller.
Unimportant. I’m suffocating.
I hope the world hasn’t changed.
I hope everything stays the same.
So that one day, maybe
I could come back to you
Danique
Trapped,
Between four walls for life.
Non-existent,
I am but a shadow of my past self.
Detached,
No amount of WIFI can ever reconnect what was lost.
A
Prisoner’s Perspective
Prison is an escape, prison is a relief, prison is warm, prison is secure. Prison is easier than the cold, sleepless, torrid nights. Prison is not a punishment. Prison is a consolation.
Prison is lonely, prison is isolated. Prison does not help; it does not rehabilitate. Prison stops the time. Prison fails us.
Prison is opportunistic, prison allows me to be a leader, prison allows people to live in fear of me. Something I never was in the outside world.
Prison isn’t a one fits all, prison is individualised offender to offender. Does prison work? Is Prison effective? Is prison the way forward?
Saiya
I Created This
Pulled up and stopped
Big iron gates spiked with fear and dread
he shouts “Clear” and gates open
with rumbling vibration
Why does this feel like the beginning of the end
Queueing quietly waiting turn for changing clothing
Wishing the view was slightly different
This is my home, the world is now distant
Showers cold and beds so hard
Waiting for the order from the guards
“Dinner served” I hear them shout
Hoping it’s not just bland
Thinking about roast dinners
This is my life, I created this
Given the chance, time and again,
But now this is my life, I created this
SKM
Poetry and other forms of literature offer the opportunity to explore criminological issues in a different medium. They allow for ideas to develop in a more natural way than academic conventions usually allow. As you can see from the poems above, our students rose to the challenge and embraced the opportunity to think differently about Criminology.
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Striking is a criminological matter
You may have noticed that the University and College Union [UCU] recently voted for industrial action. A strike was called from 1-3 December, to be followed by Action Short of a Strike [ASOS], in essence a call for university workers to down tools for 3 days, followed by a strict working to contract. For many outside of academia, it is surprising to find how many hours academics actually work. People often assume that the only work undertaken by academics is in the classroom and that they spend great chunks of the year, when students are on breaks, doing very little. This is far from the lived experience, academics undertake a wide range of activities, including reading, writing, researching, preparing for classes, supervising dissertation students, attending meetings, answering emails (to name but a few) and of course, teaching.
UCU’s industrial action is focused on the “Four Fights“: Pay, Workload, Equality and Casualisation and this campaign holds a special place in many academic hearts. The campaign is not just about improving conditions for academics but also for students and perhaps more importantly, those who follow us all in the future. What kind of academia will we leave in our wake? Will we have done our best to ensure that academia is a safe and welcoming space for all who want to occupy it?
In Criminology we spend a great deal of time imagining what a society based on fairness, equity and social justice might look like. We read, we study, we research, we think, and we write about inequality, racism, misogyny, disablism, homophobia, Islamophobia and all of the other blights evident in our society. We know that these cause harm to individuals, families, communities and our society, impacting on every aspect of living and well-being. We consider the roles of individuals, institutions and government in perpetuating inequality and disadvantage. As a theoretical discipline, this runs the risk of viewing the world in abstract terms, distancing ourselves from what is going on around us. Thus it is really important to bring our theoretical perspectives to bear on real world problems. After all there would be little point in studying criminology, if it is only to see what has happened in the past.
Criminology is a critique, a question not only of what is but might be, what could be, what ought to be. Individuals’ behaviours, motivations and reactions and institutional and societal responses and actions, combine to provide a holistic overview of crime from all perspectives. It involves passion and an intense desire to make the world a little better. Therefore it follows that striking must be a criminological matter. It would be crass hypocrisy to teach social justice, whilst not also striving to achieve such in our professional and personal lives. History tells us that when people stand up for themselves and others, their rights and their future, things can change, things can improve. It might be annoying or inconvenient to be impacted by industrial action, it certainly is chilly on the picket line in December, but in the grand scheme of things, this is a short period of time and holds the promise of better times to come.
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Meet the Team: Stephanie Richards, Associate Lecturer in Criminology
A Warm Welcome
Hello all! I would like to introduce myself. My name is Stephanie Richards and I am your Student Success Mentor (SSM). Some of the criminology and criminal justice students would have already had the opportunity to meet me, as I was their Student Success Mentor previously. So, it will be great to touch base with you all and it would also be great for the new cohorts to say hi when you see me on campus.
It is that time of the year when we see new students and our existing students getting ready to tackle the trials of higher education. Being a SSM I am fully aware of the challenges that you will face, and I am here to support you throughout your time at UON. As a previous student I can testify that studying at university is incredibly challenging. The leap from school/ college can be daunting at first. A new building that seems like a maze or the idea of being surrounded by strangers that you probably think you have nothing in common with can be enough to encourage you to run for the hills….stepping into a workshop for the first time can give you a stomach flip, but once you take that first seat in class you will come to realise it does get easier.
Upon reflection of my experience as a new undergraduate student I would have to be honest and express the difficulties that I suffered adjusting to my new way of life. I could not keep my head above the masses of reading, and when I did manage to get some of the seminar prep completed, most of the time I struggled with the new questions and concepts that were posed to me. This will be the experience of most, if not all the new students starting out on their university education. This is part of the complex journey of academia. My advice would be to pace yourself, time management is key, if you struggle to understand the work that has been set, ask for clarity and develop positive relationships with your peers and the staff at UON…………..being part of a strong community will get you through a lot!
My role is not just about assisting the new students that have started their university journey, I am also here to help UONs existing students. Getting back into the swing of studying can be daunting after the summer break. Adjusting to face-to-face education can be an overwhelming process but one that should be embraced. We will all miss our pyjama bottoms and slippers but being back on campus and getting some normality back in your day is worth the sacrifice.
The team of SSM’s are here to support you throughout your journey so please get in touch if you require our assistance. We never want you to feel alone in this journey and we want to assist you the best ways we can. We want you to progress and meet your full learning potential, and to get the most out of your university experience.
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Meet the Team: Francine Bitalo, Associate Lecturer in Criminology
Hi everyone! My name is Francine Bitalo and I will be your new Student Success Mentor for this year. I am looking forward to meeting and assisting you all in your academic journey. Feel free to contact me for any support.
Being a graduate from the University of Northampton I can relate to you all, I know how challenging student life can be especially when dealing with other external factors. You may go through stages where you doubt your creativity, abilities and maybe even doubt whether the student life is for you. When I look back at when I was a student, I definitely regret not contacting the Student Success Mentors that were available to me or simply utilising more of the university’s support system. It is important for you seek support people like myself are here to help and recommend you to the right people.
Besides everything, Criminology is such an interesting course to study if you are anything like me by the end of it all you won’t view the world the same. Many of you have probably already formed your views on life especially when it comes to understanding crime. Well by the end of it all your ways of viewing the world will enhance and become more complex, theoretical and constructive. The advice I give you all is to enjoy the journey, be open minded and most importantly prepare for exciting debates and conversations.
Look forward to meeting you all.
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Prison education: why it matters?
Five year ago, Dame Sally Coates released an independent report on prison education. Recently the Chief Inspector for Ofsted, Amanda Spielman and The HM Inspectorate of Prisons, Charlie Taylor, made a joint statement reflecting on that report. Their reflections are critical on the lack of implementation of the original report, but also of the difficulties of managing education in prison especially at a time of a global pandemic. The lack of developing meaningful educational provision and delivering remote teaching led to many prisoners without sufficient opportunity to engage with learning.
In a situation of crisis such as the global pandemic one must wonder if this is an issue that can be left to one side for now, to be reviewed at a later stage. At the University of Northampton, as an educational institution we are passionate about learning opportunities for all including those incarcerated. We have already developed an educational partnership with a local prison, and we are committed to offer Higher Education to prisoners. Apart from the educational, I would add that there is a profound criminological approach to this issue. Firstly, I would like to separate what Dame Coates refers to as education, which is focused on the basic skills and training as opposed to a university’s mandate for education designed to explore more advanced ideas.
The main point to both however is the necessity for education for those incarcerated and why it should be offered or not. In everyday conversations, people accept that “bad” people go to prison. They have done something so horrible that it has crossed the custody threshold and therefore, society sends them to jail. This is not a simple game of Monopoly, but an entire criminal justice process that explores evidence and decides to take away their freedom. This is the highest punishment our society can bestow on a person found guilty of serious crimes. For many people this is appropriate and the punishment a fitting end to criminality. In criminology however we recognise that criminality is socially constructed and those who end up in prisons may be only but a specific section of those deemed “deviant” in our society. The combination of wrongdoing and socioeconomic situations dictate if a person is more or less likely to go to prison. This indicates that prison is not a punishment for all bad people, but some. Dame Coates for example recognises the overrepresentation of particular ethnic minorities in the prison system.
This raises the first criminological issue regarding education, and it relates to fairness and access to education. We sometimes tend to forget that education is not a privilege but a fundamental human right. Sometimes people forget that we live in a society that requires a level of educational sophistication that people with below basic levels of literacy and numeracy will struggle. From online applications to job hunting or even banking, the internet has become an environment that has no place for the illiterate. Consider those who have been in prison since the late 1990s and were released in the late 2010s. People who entered the prison before the advancement of e-commerce and smart phones suddenly released to a world that feels like it is out of a sci-fi movie.
The second criminological issue is to give all people, regardless of their crimes, the opportunity to change. The opportunity of people to change, is always incumbent on their ability to change which in turn is dependent on their circumstances. Education, among other things, requires the commitment of the learner to engage with the learning process. For those in prison, education can offer an opportunity to gain some insight that their environment or personal circumstances have denied them.
The final criminological issue is the prison itself. What do we want people to do in them? If prison is to become a human storage facility, then it will do nothing more than to pause a person’s life until they are to be released. When they come out the process of decarceration is long and difficult. People struggle to cope and the return to prison becomes a process known as “revolving doors”. This prison system helps no one and does nothing to resolve criminality. A prison that attempts to help the prisoners by offering them the tools to learn, helps with the process of deinstitutionalisation. The prisoner is informed and aware of the society they are to re-join and prepares accordingly. This is something that should work in theory, but we are nowhere there yet. If anything, it is far from it, as read in Spielman and Taylor’s recent commentary. Their observations identify poor quality education that is delivered in unacceptable conditions. This is the crux of the matter, the institution is not really delivering what it claims that is does. The side-effect of such as approach is the missed opportunity to use the institution as a place of reform and change.
Of course, in criminological discourse the focus is on an abolitionist agenda that sees beyond the institution to a society less punitive that offers opportunities to all its citizens without discrimination or prejudice. This is perhaps a different topic of conversation. At this stage, one thing is for sure; education may not rehabilitate but it can allow people to self-improve and that is a process that needs to be embraced.
References
Coates, S. (2016), Unlocking Potential: A review of education in prisons, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/unlocking-potential-a-review-of-education-in-prison
Spielman, A. and Taylor, C. (2021), Launching our Prison Education Review, https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/launching-our-prison-education-review
Originally published here
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Finding focus in office exile
I have now passed a year of being exiled from my office, separated from people for most of the time. A couple of weeks before the first lockdown I was working in another university and we had just a day or two notice to switch to online teaching. As a doctoral candidate I valued the flexibility of being able to work from home, in the office, and in overpriced coffee shops in Manchester’s Northern Quarter. The weather helped with the first lockdown. I would have virtual office working sessions with my colleagues in the criminology department in my garden. I thought I was coping but the reality was I was masking any fear, sadness and the effects of having no human contact. I was training two or three times per day, counting every calorie I ate. I lost a few pounds, got stronger, fitter and felt physically amazing.
We got some respite in the summer when lockdown restrictions were lessened. However, I lost a family member to Covid-19 and still felt unsure and anxious about going out so I didn’t make the most of it. I did have a couple of work sessions in my local library which was a welcome change of scenery. This was short lived as I currently live in Manchester and we have been in either lockdown or tier 3 restrictions for most of the last year. My saving grace was my gym. We had outdoor sessions, new members joined, and I got to see real people, albeit in socially distanced marked off squares of territory on the gym floor. Life was much better then. I left the house most days.
By December’s lockdown I was starting to struggle. With dark mornings and nights there would be days when I wouldn’t leave the front door. I went from training daily to training once or twice per week and some days I wouldn’t get any more than 2,000 steps in. For my, training is my anti-depressant. It keeps me sane, it keeps be focussed and it keeps me connected to a community of people who value it too. For me, this was a worrying sign.
Fast-forward to today, a year on from lockdown 1. I sit here in front of my laptop day in, day out, trying to concentrate, trying to find the perfect playlist to make me concentrate, taking nootropic supplements (legal, not the drugs), brain vitamins and high caffeine supplements to make me concentrate. I sit here researching symptoms and self-diagnosing ADHD. But really, I just need my office. I need an over-priced lemon and ginger tea, I need a commute, I need people, I need to get out of my living room. But I don’t need it at a cost of losing more lives to Covid-19 so I’ll sit in my living room and wait.
For now, as difficult as it is to focus, I manage. I just have to work harder than ever at it. So for all of our students who are also struggling, I will finish with some of my top tips but bear in mind we all learn differently so find what works for you.
Amy’s top study from home tips:
- Host virtual study sessions with colleagues. I have at least 2 sessions per week with a colleague. We start the session by saying hi and having some human interaction before stating our goals. We keep each other accountable by asking if our goals are achievable within the 2 hour frame and suggesting more specific goals. We then mute and work, coming back at the end of the 2 hours to hold one another accountable and share how we have done. I cannot emphasise enough how much this has helped me!
- Write a to do list each day and week with SMART goals. You’re better off having smaller goals that are achievable than bigger goals that are not
- Use the Pomodoro technique. Ordinarily this is 25 mins work followed by a 5 or 10 minute break. There are online tools and apps or you can set a timer. One of my supervisors recently suggested to me to reduce the working session to 15 minutes to account for my reduced concentration span. This is helping!
- Don’t have the same expectations on yourself as you ordinarily would. These are not ordinary times
- Work with your own mind. My brain works well early in the morning so sometimes I have my laptop open at 5.30am. I have friends that work late in the night. I also know I read well in the afternoon and I do my best thinking when I am on a solitary walk in nature
- Set yourself little goals with rewards. Currently, if I finish editing 5 pages I get an episode of Grey’s Anatomy or a cookie (bad idea) or a 10 minute browse on Instagram
- Lean on the resources available to you. At UoN our students are lucky to have a tonne of informative resources on Skills Hub (see the section on ‘How to Study’), our Learning Development team to help with academic skills, a mental health team who can help support mental wellbeing, and a whole host of other services. Ask for help and accept it when it is offered (this I need to work on)
- Listen to a focus playlist. My go to Spotify playlists are here and here
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Let it be Light
You may have probably heard of the title before and you may or may not be able to place it. It is a quote from the bible! It is profoundly creationist proclaiming the world created in days; from the 1st for the light and the 6th for the people and animals. A seemingly busy week for an almighty being who needed a day of rest afterwards. The contribution of organised religion to everyday life, the realisation that people need rest and recuperation from the labours of work. This however is not the reason I chose this dive into scriptures. I am not a theologian so I will not examine the religious content.
Instead there are two different reasons I have chosen to start with this quote; the first is the positive affirming message it conveys, the second is its immediacy. What we have here is light and brightness that is instant gratification. This message feels like a piece of chocolate melting in your mouth, releasing sweet sensations, as a flooding of smooth cocoa disintegrates, releasing its sensual solids. Therefore, the command on creating light resonates; we rejoice because unlike reality we find pleasure in immediate gratification.
Would we care that light was not created but emerged after the Big Bang and took billions of years to form in the way we now recognise it as our sun? Does it matter that progress is long and arduous and not immediate as the command suggests? Our sense of time dwarfs in the time required for events to happen. It is astonishing that we still try to comprehend the vastness of time through human lifetime. The command is also palatable because it happens without virtually any real effort. It does not represent the labours, pains of creation and development. In short, evolution is painful, long but here is presented as something immediate and effortless. In that a series of commands completing complex processes seems preferable to the reality of evolution. Maybe it is pertinent to point out that the command reveals the “majestic totalitarianism” of the divine against the great equalizer of nature and progression.
In life however, big creations cannot happen by command. “Let it be Baby!” I wonder how many mothers would favour this one, or in our line of work “let it be knowledge” how many will choose this option. This is when we realise that this pleasant message is shielding us from the reality of the process and the nature of reality itself. We may want things to happen immediately, but this is not necessarily the best option. In parenting, if you could more forward into having a baby, why not move further past the terrible twos or even further into the dreadful adolescent years of having your authority challenged. Essentially have a child created fully functioning and obedient to parental will. Maybe because this is not parenting. The stories that remain are those of growing pains; without growth there is no parenting. Let’s explore it in knowledge; can we find shortcuts in the way we learn a trade, an education, a professional identity? Maybe skipping the first parts on getting to know how to write in the appropriate conventions; perhaps we can skip on the tedious referencing process that only anally retentive individuals apparently enjoy. What if instead of books and hours of reading different texts we got laminated sheets with terms and conditions and whenever we embark on writing we are told step by step what we write. Because this will not be knowledge. The slow and arduous process has an exceptional trait within it; insight! After reading my books, making notes on my articles, going over my notes and trying to make sense of what it the point I am trying to make; in a moment after hours and hours of studying, suddenly and unexpectedly, the “penny drops”! This moment of insight is like a lightbulb moment…and that is light! A light, not by magic or immediate gratification, but the sustained understanding that comes from knowledge. It has been a difficult year for all of us but please remember that light comes from inside and to quote a great teacher Goethe, “more light”.
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Helpfully unhelpful: The pathology of being too supportive
When I first arrived in London, I needed to find my way across the city to the now former site of the Home Office at St Anne’s Gate. I didn’t have a clue about how to get there so I asked a member of staff at St Pancras railway station. He helpfully pointed me in the direction of the London Underground. I was swept along by a torrent of people, all going about their business with a purpose, I however, didn’t have a clue where I was going. Finding sanctuary in a quiet eddy and desperately looking around I spotted a member of staff across the concourse. Fighting against the current I scrambled to where the member of staff was and implored upon them to rescue me. Thankfully the underground staff had all been briefed, not specifically about me, I should hasten to add, but about how by being super helpful they could increase customer satisfaction, reduce complaints and attract even more customers. And having explained my dilemma, I was very helpfully led through the ticket barriers, now struggling to hold back the surge, and down the escalator to the platform below. I was told to get on the next train and to get off at St James’ Park. Having arrived at my destination I became confused as to which exit to use and once again found a very helpful staff member who led me part way to the exit, where I spilled out into the sunlight a matter of yards away from my destination.
The following week I once again plunged into the torrent and confident that I knew which underground line to take I allowed myself to be swept along to the barriers and through, and then panic. Which platform and am I sure that was the right line? Once again, a beacon of hope shone across the dark morass, a member of underground staff. Once again, I was led to the platform in a super helpful way and got on the first train. But this time I didn’t arrive at my destination for some, I have to say, traumatic hours. The problem was the first train was not the train to catch, it was the second that I needed; I will most definitely have to complain about that member of staff being unhelpful.
This pattern of visits to London and assistance rendered by sometimes grumpy but always super helpful members of underground staff continued for some weeks. Often, I would stay in London for a week at a time before returning home outside of the metropolis at the weekend. During my stays I visited numerous police stations as part of my work and every time I used the underground, I sought out a helpful member of staff to assist me. Sometimes, if they rather unhelpfully simply pointed me in the right direction, I would set off and then return to them explaining that I didn’t understand their instructions. Armed with more information I would again purposefully set off and then duly return until the succumbed and rather reluctantly but helpfully led me to the correct platform.
Then in a fortnight, two things happened. Firstly, the underground staff went on strike and on arriving at the gates of St James’ Park underground station I found the gates closed. There were a couple of members of staff there, but they weren’t very helpful. ‘What should I’ do I asked, ‘Dunno’, was the reply. Now that was not very helpful, complaint forthcoming I feel. I didn’t make my appointments that day and the following day had to use taxis to get around. Much easier to use taxis you might say, yes but not really justifiable in terms of cost, my boss told me when I suggested I would forego using the underground altogether. After three days the underground opened up again but for some reason there were no staff around to ask for help. I became increasingly anxious and found myself avoiding the underground, using taxis at my own expense, and walking long distances. I was exhausted I can tell you.
The next week I ventured into the underground again, I couldn’t avoid it forever. I found a member of staff and duly asked them, in an almost ritualistic fashion, how to get across London to another underground station near yet another police station. Instead of pointing me in the right direction, which we all know by now is a rather fruitless, time wasting and unhelpful exercise, or super helpfully taking me to the correct platform, they took me to a rather large underground map on the wall. ‘This is where we are’, the very nice lady said, ‘and this is where you want to be’, she added. She then continued to explain how to use the map, how to follow the signs dotted around the stations, how to look for the signs before entering the platforms so as to work out which platform to be on and how to ensure I get on the correct train. I was nervous following her instructions as I made my way to the platform, but I got to my destination and I made my own way back, with help of the wall map of course. From that point onwards, I made my way around London on the underground with increased confidence, I wouldn’t say with consummate ease, but confidently. I made mistakes but because I knew how to read the map, I was able to rectify them and if I couldn’t I knew that I could ask. Of course, now that I drive, I use maps, I would probably have been pestering police officers and random members of the public otherwise and we know how the rare the sight of the former are on our streets. Anyway, I don’t think they’ve had the ‘super helpful’ briefing. Lately though I’ve been using my satnav, and sometimes getting into a right pickle. It seems you can’t beat good old-fashioned map reading.
What’s the point of this nonsensical tale? Well the clue is in the title. As educators we need to consider the purpose of what we are doing and how this will add value to students’ learning and knowledge. We can give students the answers to the essay questions, how to structure a particular essay, what arguments to include, what books and journal articles to read. We can supply them with reading lists that contain links to the books and journal articles, we can coach them to such an extent that their journey is in fact our journey, just as my journey to the underground platform was the staff member’s journey. We can repeat this many times over so that students are capable of completing that essay, but like me on my journey through the underground, they will need the same coaching for every piece of assessment and whilst they may complete each journey as I did, they have learnt very little and become increasingly disempowered and crippled by our helpfulness and their increasing reliance on it. Our jobs as educators is not to provide answers but to equip students with the tools to find the answers themselves. That process requires a willingness to learn, to discover and to take risks. Super helpfulness should not be an organisational strategy to ensure each part of the journey is easily manoeuvred and completed, it should be about ensuring that people can complete any journey independently and confidently. Sometimes by appearing to be super helpful we are simply being very unhelpful and disempowering people at the same time.
Thoughts from the criminology team 