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The same old rhetoric, just another place
My sister phoned me the other day in great excitement. She’d just met a former criminology student from the University of Northampton, and she had an awful lot to say about it. She wasn’t in her hometown and had asked directions from a stranger to the river embankment. Having visited the embankment, she returned to town only to bump into the stranger again who enquired whether she managed to find it. They ended up chatting, my sister can do a lot of that, and she found out that the stranger was a police officer. My sister asked whether she knew me, why she would ask that I have no idea, it seems that she has formulated some notion in her head that all police officers must know each other or at least know of each other. This is the bit that my sister got so animated about, yes, the stranger did know me, I’d taught her at the University, and she was now in a budding police career. Apparently, I had done so much to help her. Now I don’t know about being that helpful and I suspect that many of my colleagues played a part in her success story, but it reminded me about what it is that we do and aspire to do as lecturers.
Whilst waiting to play my part in talking to school children the other day I started to read a new edition of a seminal piece of work on policing, The Politics of the Police (Bowling et al., 2019). The preface alone makes interesting reading and in ‘mentioning populist political reactions towards crime’, ‘zero tolerance of the marginalised and outsiders’ and ‘laissez-faire economics’ that promotes individual interests, my mind turned to the managerialist ideals that have dogged policing for over three decades. Those ideals saw the introduction of performance indicators, targets and the inevitable policing by objectives (Hallam, 2000), that resulted in some quite appalling manipulation of data and a diminution of service rather than an improvement. The problem was that the targets were never achievable and were simply put in place for managers to simplify the social world over which they had no control. What didn’t get measured, because it never could be, were the myriad of tasks that police officers and staff undertake daily. Dealing with people with mental illness, searching for missing persons and dealing with minor disturbances are an example of just a few such tasks. Bowling et al. (op cit.) subscribe to the notion that the job of the police is to help maintain social order, an ideal that does not lend itself to measurement. Counting the number of crimes committed in an area or the number of detected crimes is only an indication of failure, not success.
How does that policing narrative fit in with my opening paragraph? The former student was not an ideal student from a managerialist viewpoint. She didn’t attain so called ‘good grades’, I’m not even sure if she fully completed her studies. In terms of performance measurement, she doesn’t even feature and yet she, like so many others we have seen in Criminology, has flourished. Whilst concentrating on ‘retention and progression’ and ‘fails’ and ‘good grades’ we neglect the very reason we exist. Just as in policing where the figures were pored over by managerialist who had not slightest notion of the reality of the social world, so too are we in danger of simply seeking pleasing statistics to keep the wolves from the door because explanations of real success and failure are too complex for managers to understand or manage.
Imagine a world where the police just helped maintain social order, where probation were not plagued by notions of payment by results, where patients were just seen in A&E in a reasonable time and where lecturers just opened the minds of students and allowed them to think for themselves. Imagine the time and expense that could be saved and reinvested in providing real service and dare I say it ‘value for money’ if we stopped gathering meaningless data. Imagine managers casting aside the shackles of neoliberalist ideals and managing people, not using numbers as an indication of failure and impending doom. We can but dream, but my reality, as I’m sure is the reality of many of my colleagues, is the success stories that I occasionally hear and can reminisce about. No amount of number crunching can take that away and nor will it ever provide evidence of success or failure.
Bowling, B. Reiner, R. and Sheptycki, J. (2019) The Politics of the Police. (5th ed.) Oxford: OUP.
Hallam, S. (2000) Effective and Efficient Policing: Some Problems with the Culture of Performance, in Marlow, A. and Loveday, B. (eds.) After MacPherson: Policing after the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry. Lyme Regis: Russell House
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Documenting inequality: how much evidence is needed to change things?
In our society, there is a focus on documenting inequality and injustice. In the discipline of criminology (as with other social sciences) we question and read and take notes and count and read and take more notes. We then come to an evidence based conclusion; yes, there is definite evidence of disproportionality and inequality within our society. Excellent, we have identified and quantified a social problem. We can talk and write, inside and outside of that social problem, exploring it from all possible angles. We can approach social problems from different viewpoints, different perspectives using a diverse range of theoretical standpoints and research methodologies. But what happens next? I would argue that in many cases, absolutely nothing! Or at least, nothing that changes these ingrained social problems and inequalities.
Even the most cursory examination reveals discrimination, inequality, injustice (often on the grounds of gender, race, disability, sexuality, belief, age, health…the list goes on), often articulated, the subject of heated debate and argument within all strata of society, but remaining resolutely insoluble. It is as if discrimination, inequality and injustice were part and parcel of living in the twenty-first century in a supposedly wealthy nation. If you don’t agree with my claims, look at some specific examples; poverty, gender inequality in the workplace, disproportionality in police stop and search and the rise of hate crime.
- Three years before the end of World War 2, Beveridge claimed that through a minor redistribution of wealth (through welfare schemes including child support) poverty ‘could have been abolished in Britain‘ prior to the war (Beveridge, 1942: 8, n. 14)
- Yet here we are in 2019 talking about children growing up in poverty with claims indicating ‘4.1 million children living in poverty in the UK’. In addition, 1.6 million parcels have been distributed by food banks to individuals and families facing hunger
- There is legal impetus for companies and organisations to publish data relating to their employees. From these reports, it appears that 8 out of 10 of these organisations pay women less than men. In addition, claims that 37% of female managers find their workplace to be sexist are noted
- Disproportionality in stop and search has long been identified and quantified, particularly in relation to young black males. As David Lammy’s (2017) Review made clear this is a problem that is not going away, instead there is plenty of evidence to indicate that this inequality is expanding rather than contracting
- Post-referendum, concerns were raised in many areas about an increase in hate crime. Most attention has focused on issues of race and religion but there are other targets of violence and intolerance
These are just some examples of inequality and injustice. Despite the ever-increasing data, where is the evidence to show that society is learning, is responding to these issues with more than just platitudes? Even when, as a society, we are faced with the horror of Grenfell Tower, exposing all manner of social inequalities and injustices no longer hidden but in plain sight, there is no meaningful response. Instead, there are arguments about who is to blame, who should pay, with the lives of those individuals and families (both living and dead) tossed around as if they were insignificant, in all of these discussions.
As the writer Pearl S. Buck made explicit
‘our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is in the way that it cares for its helpless members’ (1954: 337).
If society seriously wants to make a difference the evidence is all around us…stop counting and start doing. Start knocking down the barriers faced by so many and remove inequality and injustice from the world. Only then can we have a society which we all truly want to belong to.
Selected bibliography
Beveridge, William, (1942), Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Social Insurance and Allied Services, (HMSO: London)
Buck, Pearl S. (1954), My Several Worlds: A Personal Record, (London: Methuen)
Lammy, David, (2017), The Lammy Review: An Independent Review into the Treatment of, and Outcomes for, Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Individuals in the Criminal Justice System, (London: Ministry of Justice)
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The Voice Behind the Music
Marginalised voices were the focal point of my dissertation.
My dissertation explored social issues through the musical genres of Rap and Hip-Hop. During the time period of writing my dissertation there was the rising debate surrounding the association of a new genre, Drill music, being linked to the rise in violent crimes by young people in England (London specifically). The following link to an article from the Guardian newspaper will provide a greater insight to the subject matter:
The idea of music having a direct correlation with criminality sweeps issues such as poverty, social deprivation, class and race all under the rug; when in reality these are just a few of the definitive issues that these marginalised groups face. We see prior examples of this in the late 80s, with rap group N.W.A with their song “F*** the police”. The song surrounded the topic of police brutality and brought light to the disgust and outrage of the wider community to this issue. Simultaneously to this, the N.W.A were refused from running concerts as they were accused of starting revolts. The song was made as a response to their environment, but why is freedom of speech limited to certain sectors of society?
In the present day, we see young people having lower prospects of being homeowners, high rates of unemployment, and the cost of living increasing. In essence the rich are getting richer and the poor continue to struggle; the violence of austerity at its finest. Grenfell Tower is the perfect example of this, for the sake of a cheaper cost lives were lost. Simply because these individuals were not in a position to greatly impact the design of their housing. Monetary status SHOULD NOT determine your right to life, but unfortunately in those circumstances it did.
The alienation of young people was also a topic that was highlighted within my research into my dissertation. In London specifically, youth clubs are being closed down and money is being directed heavily towards pensions. An idea would be to invest in young people as this would potentially provide an incentive and subsequently decrease the prospect of getting involved in negative activities.
In no means, was the aim to condone the violence but instead to simply shed light on the issues that young people face. There is a cry for help but the issue is only looked at from the surface as a musical problem. If only it were that simple, maybe considering the voice behind the music would lead to the solution of the problem.
