I do not know whether the title is right nor whether it fits what I want to say, but it is sort of catchy, well I think so anyway even if you don’t.  I could never have imagined being capable of thinking up such a title let alone using words such as ‘milieu’ before higher education.  I entered higher education halfway through a policing career.  I say entered; it was more of a stumble into.  A career advisor had suggested I might want to do a management diploma to advance my career, but I was offered a different opportunity, a taster module at a ‘new’ university.  I was fortunate, I was to renew an acquaintance with Alan Marlow previously a high-ranking officer in the police and now a senior lecturer at the university.  Alan, later to become an associate professor and Professor John Pitts became my mentors and I never looked back, managing to obtain a first-class degree and later a PhD.  I will be forever grateful to them for their guidance and friendship.  I had found my feet in the vast criminology ocean.  However, what at first was delight in my achievements was soon to be my Achilles heel. 

Whilst policing likes people with knowledge and skills, some of the knowledge and skills butt up against the requirements of the role.  Policing is functional, it serves the criminal justice system, such as it, and above all else it serves its political masters.  Criminology however serves no master.  As criminologists we are allowed to shine our spotlight on what we want, when we want.  Being a police officer tends to put a bit of a dampener on that and required some difficult negotiating of choppy waters.  It felt like I was free in a vast sea but restrained with a life ring stuck around my arms and torso with a line attached so as to never stray too far from the policing ideology and agenda.  But when retirement came, so too came freedom.

By design or good luck, I landed myself a job at another university, the University of Northampton. I was interviewed for the job by Dr @manosdaskalou., along with Dr @paulaabowles (she wasn’t Dr then but still had a lot to say, as criminologists do), became my mentors and good friends.  I had gone from one organisation to another.  If I thought I knew a lot about criminology when I started, then I was wrong.  I was now in the vast sea without a life ring, freedom was great but quite daunting.  All the certainties I had were gone, nothing is certain. Theories are just that, theories to be proved, disproved, discarded and resurrected.  As my knowledge widened and I began to explore the depths of criminology, I realised there was no discernible bottom to knowledge.  There was only one certainty, I would never know enough and discussions with my colleagues in criminology kept reminding me that was the case.

Why the ‘neo-liberal milieu’ you might ask, after all this seems to be a romanticised story about a seemingly successful transition from one career to another.  Well, here’s the rub of it, universities are no different to policing, both are driven, at an arm’s length, by neo liberal ideologies.  The business is different but subjugation of professional ideals to managerialist ideology is the same.  Budgets are the bottom line; the core business is conducted within considerable financial constraints.  The front-line staff take the brunt of the work; where cuts are made and processes realigned, it is the front-line staff that soak up the overflow.  Neo-Taylorism abounds, as spreadsheets to measure human endeavour spring up to aide managers both in convincing themselves, and their staff, that more work is possible in and even outside, the permitted hours.  And to maintain control, there is always, the age-old trick of re-organisation.  Keep staff on their toes and in their place, particularly professionals.

The beauty of being an academic, unlike a police officer, is that I can have an opinion and at least for now I’m able to voice it.  But such freedoms are under constant threat in a neo-liberal setting that seems to be seeping into every walk of life.  And to be frank and not very academic, it sucks!