Examining Crime Through a Security Lens: The Case for a BSC Specialist Network on Security

Dr Alison Wakefield is based at the University of Portsmouth where she runs the Professional Doctorate programme in Security Risk Management. She is also Chair of the Security Institute, the UK’s main professional association for security practitioners, and an Associate Fellow of the Royal United Services Institute.

Security is a significant theme of the research and innovation programmes of governments, inter-governmental organisations, think tanks and research foundations. It is likely that it will only become more significant. The latest edition of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) strategic intelligence report Global Strategic Trends opens with the statement that ‘the world is becoming ever more complex and volatile’, whereby ‘the only certainty about the future is its inherent uncertainty’. Among the numerous and interconnected challenges discussed in the report, it predicts an increasing threat from crime and extremism, and increasingly fragmented societies along with decreasing social cohesion. Criminology has much to contribute to our understanding of those multiple challenges and how we should deal with them, on topics ranging from social crime prevention to the relationship between crime, criminal justice and future technologies.

Most, if not all, criminological research can arguably be placed under a ‘security’ heading, especially if one takes an expansive view of the concept as depicted in the word cloud below. Yet ‘security’ has no obvious disciplinary home, as a cross-cutting research theme that spans many, if not most, academic disciplines. It is a foundational concept of international relations, which evolved as a field of study after the First World War as scholars sought to explain the causes of war and conditions for peace, and in which ‘security studies’ is a substantial sub-field. The relationship of security with criminology is not made obvious in a discipline that has traditionally made crime, as opposed to security, its conceptual focus, although conceptions of crime as harm perhaps bring criminology closer to security studies, and specifically to its schools of thought that favour a ‘human security’ perspective over a state-centric view of security. Today, priority areas for security research and policy development cut across the sciences, social sciences, humanities and business studies. These include the need to understand human behaviour better, the intersection of security with development as well as other areas of public policy, scientific and technological security solutions, the interactions of humans with such solutions, and the development of the risk management-based approaches that underpin these. Many of such areas require interdisciplinary teams and perspectives that are equipped to address the multiple facets of complex security problems.

The MoD report demonstrates that most of the risks and uncertainties facing the world in the twenty-first century can be conceptualised as security challenges. As a concept, ‘security’ is better suited than ‘crime’ both to considering the range of threats and response strategies at the global level, and to micro-managing risk in the most specific and localised of contexts. It embraces a much broader range of threats, associated with a wide variety of social, political, economic, technological, demographic and environmental conditions. It also presents enormous challenges, conceptually, analytically and practically. As a result, its study needs to draw on the expertise of multiple disciplines, at the multiple layers of strategy, policy and practice from the global to the local. Most academic disciplines and learned societies would benefit from making their contribution to the analysis of security challenges more explicit and better understood by their members, with security certain to be a central theme of research and innovation funding for the foreseeable future.

Security research and innovation

Research funding programmes with a focus on security include the Partnership for Conflict, Crime and Security Research (PaCCS) programme, established by the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) (formerly Research Councils UK) programme in 2008 as the Global Uncertainties Programme; the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 Secure Societies Challenge; and the Centre for Research and Evidence on Security Threats (CREST). CREST was launched in 2015 following a competitive process managed by the Economic and Social Research Council. A consortium of psychologists from the universities of Lancaster, Bath and Portsmouth was selected to develop and deliver a national hub for understanding, countering and mitigating security threats. CREST-funded projects cut across a variety of disciplines, but its home discipline reflects the significance now being afforded by the UK government to behavioural science as a dimension of the national security solutions of the present and future.

Other bodies that have formed within the UK to facilitate innovation and collaboration in the development and delivery of security solutions include the Joint Security and Resilience Centre (JSaRC), which is a partnership of UK central government and the security industry located in the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism (OSCT) within the Home Office, the Security and Resilience Industry Suppliers Community (RISC) and the Academic RISC. RISC was established in 2007 as a security industry alliance serving as the principal channel of communication with the OSCT and other government departments and agencies on security-related requirements and policy issues. It was founded by the trade associations ADS, the British Security Industry Association (BSIA) and techUK, and it informed the development of JSaRC. RISC’s corporate members are a range of representative bodies within the security sector, with around 6000 companies being represented through the participating organisations.

RISC’s activities have also included representing industry perspectives in submissions to the UK government’s Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR), Security Export Strategy and National Security Capability Review (NSCR). The chair of RISC and the Minister of State for Security and Economic Crime co-chair the Security and Resilience Growth Partnership (SRGP), a forum that informs government-industrial co-operation on security issues. In 2014 Academic RISC was founded, inspired by the RISC approach, as a network of universities to promote academic engagement in solving challenges in national security and resilience. Academic RISC is chaired by Professor Chris Hankin, Director of the Institute for Security Science and Technology, Imperial College, and now comprises 120 member universities which receive updates on opportunities circulated by the UK government.

The contribution of criminology

Criminology has a huge contribution to make to such initiatives. For example, as our government has recently acknowledged, the UK’s future resilience to cyber security threats relies on a significant expansion of the cyber security profession and its broadening out to encompass a much wider range of capabilities, beyond the current, limited routes into the profession primarily through the STEM disciplines. Cyber security is, above all, about the strategic management of risk, and needs to take much greater account of the human factors that are a central feature of both the threats and the solutions, the partnership working and intelligence expertise on which those solutions rely, and its significant legal, regulatory and ethical dimensions. These human considerations are at the heart of criminological thinking. Michael McGuire’s[i][ii] work to bring technology to the forefront of criminology has been a valuable step forward, mapping out key areas of our discipline’s contribution to understanding, utilising and managing technological advancement. The concepts of crime science and applied criminology have become increasingly influential within criminology with their emphasis on practical applications to crime problems. Many police studies scholars, myself included, have long advocated expansive conceptions of policing that recognise the multiple actors undertaking policing functions, and the centrality of partnerships and networks to protective security, intelligence-sharing and other security/policing functions. Ten years ago, Lucia Zedner explored the relationship between security and criminology in her influential textbook[iii] and, if the value and potential contribution of criminology is to be fully recognised by government and industry as the competition for security research funding becomes fiercer, it is time to look at this again. Security should not be seen as a sub-set of criminology. Rather, criminology is arguably a sub-set of security in the context of the research programmes and cross-sector collaboration initiatives to which I have referred, or at least needs to be communicated as being one of its essential components in responses to research and funding calls and within inter-disciplinary networking.

Recently, the critical criminologist Alex Vitale controversially claimed that criminology ‘has become a technocratic pursuit of small questions divorced from ethics’, but security is far more than a technocratic concept. Its breadth is illustrated by this far from exhaustive word cloud of security terms.

Indeed, in the aforementioned MoD report it is argued that ‘the defence and security community should consider placing human security (“the people”) at the centre of their world view’. This influential report and its American equivalent view the world through a security lens, but encompass the ‘megatrends’ confronting the world in the coming decades, across the areas of global governance, economic development, technological advancement, demographics, migration, health, resources, environment, conflict, disorder and insecurity. Critical perspectives are as important as any to our understanding of challenges across these broad areas and how we can confront them. Developing sub-fields of our discipline such as green criminology and post-conflict/Southern criminology address vital aspects of sustainable development and bring ethical considerations to the fore.

A proposal for a specialist network

Through this blog I want to solicit interest in forming a BSC specialist network on security, with a view to raising the collective profile of criminology within government and industry, and collaborating with others to examine and map out criminology’s contribution to our understanding of security challenges and the search for solutions. This extends across security concepts and definitions; the global ‘megatrends’ and national and local political and economic trends shaping our world today; security risks and threats that extend beyond traditional crimes to include human rights abuses, environmental threats to life, corporate crime and corruption, for example; the multiple actors and agencies from the global level downwards that influence the construction of security challenges and the responses to them; and the laws, strategies, policies and practices that make up those responses. Since these areas are so broad that they potentially encompass all topics of criminological interest, what I am specifically looking for is members who would see particular value in collaborating through the lens of security, stepping outside the constraints of a crime/criminal justice perspective on the world while bringing the same expertise and interests to the table. This also requires a shift in language and terminology, with a focus on security problems, security solutions, and security agencies and departments, alongside our common concerns of crime and criminal justice.

The overarching aim of the network would be to support the engagement of criminologists – individually and as a collective – with stakeholders globally, regionally, nationally and locally. While making shared research interests its priority, the network would help inform criminology teaching and student employability in related areas, enhancing links to possible guest speakers and employers: a further means of reinforcing the contribution and stature of criminology across a variety of dimensions. I am in a position to support the development of members’ connections with the corporate and commercial sectors in particular, through my current voluntary role as Chairman of the Security Institute, the UK’s main professional association for security practitioners with just under 3,000 members at the time of writing.

As a first step, I would like to organise a meeting at this year’s BSC conference at the University of Lincoln from 2nd to 5th July, and a panel session at which to introduce the proposal for a specialist network in security, as well as to showcase some of the important research being undertaken in this area. I would like to hear from BSC members who would be interested in participating in the network, forming a committee, meeting up at the conference and/or contributing to the conference panel, and would be grateful if expressions of interest could be emailed to me at alison.wakefield@port.ac.uk before Tuesday 7 May. I strongly hope the idea of such a network will be of interest to BSC members both old and new, and also welcome general comments and feedback.

^[i] M.R. McGuire, Technology, Crime and Justice: The Question Concerning Technomia (Routledge 2012).

^[ii] M.R. McGuire, T.J. Holt (eds), The Routledge Handbook of Technology, Crime and Justice (Routledge 2016).

[iii] L. Zedner, Security (Routledge 2009).

 

Contact

Dr Alison Wakefield, University of Portsmouth

Email: alison.wakefield@port.ac.uk

Twitter:  @DrAlisonsTweets

Website: http://www.port.ac.uk/institute-of-criminal-justice-studies/staff/dr-alison-wakefield.htm

 

Images: courtesy of the author

Unfinished Business: Moving beyond the Australian National Apology (2008) towards Indigenous justice

Sharon Hartles is a MA Postgraduate Crime and Justice student with the Open University.  She has an interest in crimes of the powerful, including state and state-corporate crime.  In an explicit attempt to move beyond criminology, she draws upon a zemiological approach to evidence the social, political and economic context in which crime is produced and interwoven into society via socio-economic inequalities.

 

On the 13th February 2008, the seventy-third day of his Prime Ministership and his first act of office, the then Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd (on behalf of the government) moved a motion of Apology to the Indigenous Australians in which he stated: “For the pain, suffering and hurt of the stolen generations, their descendants and for their families left behind, we are sorry”. Dominant mediated discourse formulated The National Apology in order to offer the spirit of healing, to enable a future in which a new page in its history could be re-written: a future in which Indigenous and non-Indigenous people are reconciled and united as one Australian nation. For this reason, the 13th February 2008 was deemed to be a monumental day in Australia’s history. Selected Indigenous voices celebrated the occasion declaring how the apology had changed the history books for Aboriginal people.  On the tenth year anniversary of the National Apology, Australian Government sponsored propaganda commemorated what it had achieved so far in its  journey towards reconciling the nation. However, a removal of the rose tinted glasses reveals an alternative version of the ‘truth’.

The National Apology went firmly against the stance held by Kevin Rudd’s predecessor John Howard during his time as Prime Minister, March 1996 – December 2007, who refused to say the word sorry on the basis that Australians of today are not responsible for the actions of an earlier generation and he “did not subscribe to the black armband view of history”. Moreover, archived and seemly forgotten was the Northern Territory National Emergency Response Bill 2007 (NERB). Extreme authoritarian and totalitarian proposed interventions deemed a justified response to tackle the Aboriginal Problem. Programmes incorporated the following: a five year takeover of sixty Indigenous communities; soldiers and police were to oversee and enforce alcohol and pornography bans; quarantining of welfare payments for the purpose of ensuring money would be spent on necessities, and furthermore the compulsory testing of Indigenous children for signs of sexual abuse.  The NERB was the emergency response to address the serious problems highlighted in the Little Children are Sacred, 2007 report.  Apparently, the protection of children from ubiquitous social harm and abuse is of paramount concern to all Australians…  All Australians except those Indigenous communities who resided in the Northern Territory!  Incredulously, less than six months prior to the National Apology the NERB reflected populist and dominant state rhetoric which was clearly entrenched in colonial, imperialistic and white supremacist ethnocentrism.  With little irony, all of this was swept under the carpet with the election of a new Australian Prime Minister and government. Furthermore a disclaimer denounced this discourse to be that which was authorised by ‘previous’ Ministers, Parliamentary Secretaries and departments. In this way previous hegemonic ideology was excused.

With this in mind, a critical viewpoint may suggest that the offered National Apology was constructed in part to appease the widespread backlash and public outrage incited by the proposed NERB. Moreover, the National Apology constructed under the guise of reconciliation merely represents a shift in political discourse. Instead of favouring a crime-control approach taking the form of the NERB, the Australian Government shifted its approach to governing the Indigenous population through a social welfare approach, concealed under the veil of reconciliation.

Kevin Rudd, in his role of Prime Minister and on behalf of the new government offered an apology to the Indigenous people in atonement for “the removal of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families, their communities and their country“. Nevertheless, lessons have not been learnt and the practice of removing Indigenous children from their families persists. 17,664 Indigenous children were in out-of-home care in 2016-17, compared with 9,070 in 2007-08. Therefore this equates to a staggering 80% removal rate increase between 2007-08 to 2016-17, from 32.7 per 1,000 to 58.7 per 1,000. Furthermore, in contrast to the ten year anniversary propaganda promoted by the Australian Government, a reconciliation progress report published by the Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation (ANTaR) (2010) offered an alternative truth. The ANTaR report noted the government failings to advance on the pledges in its reconciliation blueprint; making six recommendations to address this and ‘close the gaps‘. Eight year later (2018) ANTaR’s review highlights the governments continued drift away from the commitments it made in the original proposal.

And what of the constructed offered apology?  It was a very small step in the right direction, insofar as it partially acknowledged the brutal destruction of Aboriginal society which non-Indigenous populations has systematically and progressively erased from collective memory, referred to as the Great Australian Silence. However, can a partial half-truth or a historical revision of past events really unite the Australian nation? The constructed National Apology was flawless in its meticulous choice of discourse, and exemplified strategies of state-denial and state omission. ‘Mistreatments, mistakes, injustices, wrong-doings of the past’ NOT forced abduction which was sanctioned by colonial and post-colonial laws, underpinned by assumptions of superiority of the migrants (and their descendants).  All done in a bid to Westernise and civilise the Aborigines while eradicating their culture.  No mention at all of other state-sanctioned ‘crimes’ such as murders, land grabbing or cultural genocide or annihilation. In fact John Howard did not accept “that genocide had been practised against the Indigenous people”. ​

If the Australian Government truly wishes to strive towards Indigenous justice and bring together all Australian people and atone for its past, surely this must begin by being honest and acknowledging its state-sanctioned ‘crimes’ which have resulted in intergenerational trauma. While the Aboriginal people patiently wait, and show remarkable dignity and fortitude they continue to suffer a multitude of harms ranging from: physical, financial, economic, denial of cultural safety, emotional and psychological abuse, which have been (and are still being) inflicted upon them by the Australian Government’s constructed apologetic half-truths about past (and present) events.

Originally posted on:  sharonhartles.weebly.com

 

Contact

Sharon Hartles, MA Postgraduate Crime and Justice student with the Open University

Email: sh28739@ou.ac.uk

Twitter: @shartles1

Images: courtesy of Flickr

Systemic Elite Abuse: sexual violence against women in universities

Dr. Maurice Punch, Visiting Senior Fellow at LSE, has worked in universities in the UK, USA and the Netherlands (where he lives): his areas of specialisation have been policing, corporate crime and research methods; he is currently writing on deviance in elite student societies and sexual violence against women in universities. His last book was What matters in policing? (with A. van Dijk & F. Hoogewoning: Policy Press: 2015).

There’s disturbing evidence of an ‘epidemic’ in universities in the UK, USA and Australia which should redirect our gaze to ‘crime in the colleges’.  I refer to Systemic Elite Abuse regarding the sexual harassment and abuse of women students. My focus is mainly student-student and male-female as women are disproportionally victimized. Universities are elite institutions in educational systems including prestigious establishments; women students can be victimized by an offender perhaps with high status in the university community; and the offences can have a systemic character. Indeed, there’s ample evidence with great concern in UK, Australian and US universities. Sexual harassment of women students is said to be “at epidemic levels” in UK universities (The Guardian): and “more than half of university students in Australia were sexually harassed at least once in 2016”. The Australian Human Rights Commission reported on this with the Sex Discrimination Commissioner stating:

“It is confronting to learn that sexual assault and sexual harassment are a common part of these students’ experiences in their academic, their social and their residential life —- Sadly, the impacts of these experiences have devastating impacts and it can be life-changing, affecting health, studies and future careers’” BBC News

In response the ‘Universities UK’ organization has proposed useful guidelines in this area (Changing the culture); US President Obama launched a Task force on college sexual assault; and the AAU mounted a survey in 2015. Some 150,000 students took part in this survey from 27 institutions with around a quarter of “female, college seniors” reporting  “unwanted sexual contact – anything from touching to rape – carried out by incapacitation, usually due to alcohol or drugs, or by force”. Two ‘Ivy League’ universities were high offenders in the survey. I’ll mention a particular US case illustrating incapacitation and force: but first I’ll outline some focal points.

Some material focuses on ‘harassment’ as when in Sydney male students broke into women’s bedrooms and trashed them or barged into female showers. But lists were produced of women considered “bait” for sexual advances who were then pursued which forms potential criminal activity. And if abuse is reported how do the university, police, prosecutors and courts react; how is the accused treated and sanctioned; and, crucially, how is the victim treated?  Particularly in the USA but also elsewhere the university often reacts poorly and / or defensively; the criminal justice agencies are inadequate or reluctant to pursue cases; and if it reaches court the accused gets off lightly but the female victim is systematically discredited. Sometimes the university uses its legal muscle to reach a settlement, to deny liability and to impose non-disclosure: the victim never gets to court to give her account or see the offender prosecuted.

Yet some cases are serious sexual assault or rape, including group rape, and are indisputably criminal. It is a major injustice if such cases are not pursued or the offender gets off lightly while the victim is not taken seriously and is undermined in court. In some US cases involving college athletes as offenders there was clear institutional and judicial bias. One such case attracted intense publicity for the powerful victim statement which went viral (with her approval: The Guardian). At Stanford University during a fraternity party a male student – and star swimmer – took a highly intoxicated woman, not a student, outside and aggressively sexually assaulted her: he was interrupted and caught by passing students. He contested the case with the trial drawing much attention. Firstly, there was the mild sentence passed by the judge (six months with three years’ probation): he served half of the sentence. Secondly, and crucially, this blatantly downplayed  the victim’s suffering. Indeed, she made a court statement which powerfully conveyed the long-term deleterious consequences for women of sexual abuse – irrespective of a trial`s outcome – while the abuser proceeds with his life and career. She graphically details the aggressive nature of the assault; the profound and lasting effect on her; and especially her resentment at him insinuating consent. In court she was subjected to:

“narrowed, pointed questions that dissected my personal life, love life, past life, family life, inane questions, accumulating trivial details to try and find an excuse for this guy —— After a physical assault I was assaulted with questions designed to attack me, to say see, her facts don’t line up, she’s out of her mind, she’s practically an alcoholic, she probably wanted to hook up” The Guardian.

She especially stresses that being a top athlete at a leading university should never lead to leniency and how fast someone can swim “does not lessen the impact of what happened to me” The Guardian.

The universal factor here is the dramaturgy not only in university sexual offences trials but in most such trials. In campus cases the offender is presented as the ideal student with a bright career ahead and the female victim has to be denigrated. The status of the offender, and the university, are in effect employed to minimize the offence and sentence while the female victim may have to leave the university and remains scarred for life.

This topic does make for gloomy reading: are there, then, any positive developments? In recent years there’s been increasing attention to the matter; several high-profile prosecutions have attracted stiff sanctions; and diverse universities – also medical and judicial agencies – have made provision for prevention and for treating victims. These include:

• New York State passed a 2015 law requiring, “all universities and colleges in the state to adopt ‘yes means yes’ affirmative consent policies and guarantee the rights of sexual assault survivors”. Police launched an initiative with a dual mission, “reduce sexual violence on campuses and get more victims to file police reports” (Mother Jones: 2018)
• Sydney University has a confidential, single point of access call-centre and an on-line module on “consent, respect, good communication and positive intervention” (University of Sydney)
• Cambridge University has been working, “with students, staff, victims and specialist organizations for the past two years to try to improve things. This work has culminated in the campaign Breaking the Silence – Cambridge speaks out against sexual misconduct, launched in October 2017. Spearheaded by the Vice-Chancellor, it raises awareness of the University`s zero-tolerance approach to sexual conduct”. Students can access a ‘University Sexual Assault and Harassment Adviser’ and attend bystander training and consent workshops.

Clearly many initiatives are new and piece-meal but they do raise awareness, establish facilities and, above all, treat victims in a caring manner. A key factor is the explicit stance of the university.

Universities are primarily for scholarship, research and teaching. But nowadays many strongly support diversity, absence of discrimination, gender equality, protection of the environment, free speech and oppose any form of discriminatory conduct. In particular drunkenness, violence, abusive behaviour – especially against women, minorities, staff or visitors – are matters of deep concern. Given the contemporary debate within academia about sexual and other forms of harassment and discrimination, it simply must be that the university endeavours to ensure an environment where everyone can study in peace, everyone is safe and there’s no discrimination; and where a persistent effort is made to tackle sexual abuse. The tenor here is that offences committed within the university community and its remit should be taken most seriously under an explicit code of conduct and be backed with serious sanctions from the university itself.  For it surely cannot be that marauding males can abuse women students with impunity.  And that some universities, police and courts, treat serious sexual offences against female students poorly or weakly and with the offender treated lightly while the victim faces prolonged trauma.

The university should adopt a firm approach on such conduct backed by suspensions, expulsions and possible prosecutions within a strategy to change the culture on sexual harassment and abuse. The key is to mobilize students, academic and support staff along with a multi-agency coalition with external partners, to create a supportive environment for all to study and work in without harassment and without sexual abuse of women.

 

Contact

Maurice Punch, Senior Visiting Fellow, Mannheim Centre, London School of Economics and Political Science.

Email: m.punch@lse.ac.uk

Images: courtesy of the author and WikiMedia Commons CC-BY-3.0

 

Crime at the Car Wash? Serious Organised Crime and a View from Inside the NCA

Louise Westmarland, Professor of Criminology and Steve Conway, Lecturer, PuLSE at the Open University, organised a conference in November 2018 bringing together police practitioners and academics working in the field of organised crime. This was held with thanks to funding from HERC and the BSC.

 

What is the National Crime Agency (NCA) and how does it deal with organised crime?

On 2 November 2018, the BSC’s Policing Network, in collaboration with the Open University’s Harm and Evidence Research Collaborative (HERC) held a conference on Serious Organised Crime and a View from Inside the NCA at the Open University in Milton Keynes. Details of the event and the speakers are available on the HERC website.

The event gathered a mix of academics and practitioners to consider recent developments in organised crime, its impact and responses.  In recent years, there has been an increasing recognition from both researchers and CJS professionals that a range of organised crimes and social harms can occur in the most mundane of contexts.  Attendees heard about illegal deer hunting in sparsely populated rural areas; exploitation of young people by drug dealers in residential housing estates; and the use of modern slave labour at the local car wash.  The very banality of these settings can further hide and obscure these issues.

Mr Rob Jones, Director at the National Crime Agency (NCA), provided the keynote speech Serious Organised Crime: A view from inside the NCA in which he set out the challenges facing his organisation in relation to cybercrime and county lines. His paper explained the national and international challenges of organised crime. These themes were expanded on by DCI Darran Hill of Thames Valley Police in his paper on The Stronghold Campaign: Fighting Organised Crime in Partnership. Providing a local context, DCI Hill explained the importance of partnership working in combating organised crime, illustrated by the case studies of county lines drug trafficking and successful efforts to close illegal carwashes in Thames Valley.

These papers gave way to a lively discussion about the nature of modern slavery and contributors from the audience included senior officers from the local area. Is it unethical to use a hand car wash as it is possible that the workers are being exploited? If you have used a hand car wash were the workers wearing wellingtons and proper waterproof gloves? After Rob and Darran had given us the police ‘inside view’ on these issues, we enjoyed papers by Dr Anna Sergi from Essex University called From mafia to Organised Crime: A comparative analysis of policing models and then a paper by recent Open University PhD graduate, Dr Sarah Hutton Disrupting Organised Crime?

One of the surprising aspects of the morning conference was the frankness and candour of the talks. Rob Jones’ paper on the NCA was definitely an insider’s view, and the talk about Thames Valley’s efforts related to turning young people away from drug crime certainly raised eyebrows. One of the most unexpected contributions was that Darran contradicted a conventional police view – that all drug crime can be solved and that the war on drugs is being ‘won’.

It was good to obtain the current police and NCA view on organised crime and the response to it from Rob Jones and DCI Darran Hill. It became apparent that their organisations are looking to academia to answer a number of questions in respect of debriefing, evaluating operations and securing expertise to deal with organised crime i.e.

• What difference police organised crime operations have made (what is the legacy)?
• How organised is modern slavery and human trafficking?
• What are the offender pathways into organised crime?
• How to retain the expertise needed to deal with cybercrime?
• How to re-balance proactive/reactive policing (especially in respect of policing organised crime) after the balance has been tipped firmly towards reactive policing by government cuts?

From Milton Keynes to mafia?

After a coffee break, Anna Sergi treated us all to an entertaining high-speed ride around the organisation of mafia-type organisations; followed by Sarah Hutton’s ‘insider out’ view (as a cop turned academic), detailing her work with organised criminals, whom, she argued, are actually pretty disorganised. Dr Adam Edwards offered some sage observations, including organised crime policy trends and their analytical focus. As he pointed out in his paper:

The way organised crime is addressed in the UK has undergone a major overhaul in the last few years with the creation of the National Crime Agency. The first strategic assessment provides a good snapshot of the current state of organised crime. However, it points to a lack of knowledge about organised crime and its drivers–some of which could be addressed through research and deeper analysis. If the NCA is going to have a better record than its predecessors, it must work on getting the basics right. Knowing your enemy would be a good start.  (RUSI 2014, cited in Edwards, 2016: 987, emphasis added)

These papers all ended up asking a fairly basic question for a conference on organised crime, namely:

So, what exactly is organised crime?

In fact, Dr Sarah Hutton and Dr Anna Sergi highlighted the difficulties and differences that still exist in establishing a definition of organised crime. This is the starting point for any research into the subject. A good solution was put forward by Dr Adam Edwards, Orlando Goodall and Mark Berry in their explanation of the way that organised specific crimes are being analysed using crime script analysis. Orlando and Mark followed a thought provoking talk by Adam Edwards, who gave us the benefit of his experience and unparalleled knowledge of the field. He talked about Sayer’s (2000) realist social relations approach, from threat indication…and its related problems such as privileging enforcement over prevention, to (realist) causal explanation.

Then the afternoon kicked off into a lively no holds barred discussion, with nearly everyone in the audience taking part. This numbered around 30 by now, having reduced from 50 in the morning (well, it was a Friday). All of the papers throughout the day, whilst from contrasting standpoints, had highlighted an interesting range of largely unexplored areas of organised crime. Until recently who would have thought that the local car wash was a site of organised crime? Or a nail bar?  By providing a detailed analysis of the organisation of different crime types, as diverse as the illegal taking of deer, the speakers stimulated so many questions that the session overran, we went straight to tea break and home.

Louise Westmarland and Steve Conway with thanks to Dick Severns and all the conference speakers, convenors and helpers.

Also published on the HERC blog

Contact

Email: louise.westmarland@open.ac.uk

 

Copyright free images courtsey of the authors

 

From Narrative Justice to Narrative Methodology

Rafe McGregor is Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Edge Hill University.  His research specialisations are narrative criminology, criminological fiction, and neoliberalism.  Narrative Justice was published by Rowman & Littlefield International in 2018.

 

In Narrative Justice (2018), I defined methodology as a theory of research, set of principles, and system of methods regulating a particular inquiry or a discipline more generally.  The theories I developed involved research into the ethical and cognitive values of exemplary narratives (narratives high in narrativity in consequence of their circumstantial, causal, thematic, and closural complexity) and concluded that regardless of their truth or falsity: (1) every story has a moral, but that moral may be virtuous, vicious, or somewhere in-between; and (2) stories can provide genuine knowledge just by being stories.  These conclusions were combined in the theory of narrative ethical knowledge, which establishes the first principle for a methodology: (a) stories convey knowledge of what lived ethical experience is like in virtue of their narrativity.  The second principle is widespread and uncontroversial within criminology: (b) explanations of crime or social harms have the potential to reduce crime or social harm in virtue of developing understanding of the causes of the crime or social harm.  The methods employed for the three practical examples in Narrative Justice involved a comparative analysis of two exemplary narratives.  The first employed two biographies, one of a real person and one of a fictional character, in order to establish the former’s responsibility for collaboration in crimes against humanity.  The second employed two narratives concerned with totalitarian oppression, one fictional and one documentary, in order to understand how an exemplary narrative can succeed in exploring the psychology of a torturer while simultaneously condemning his or her actions.  The third employed a comparison of two ostensibly documentary narratives, an article and an essay, to illustrate the fictional basis of both.  With respect to the distinction between fiction and documentary, these can be set out as: (i) the use of a fictional narrative to illuminate a real person’s character; (ii) the use of a documentary narrative to illuminate a novel’s psychological failure; and (iii) the comparison of two documentary narratives to reveal their fictional basis. (i) and (ii) can be collapsed into: the comparison of a fictional and documentary narrative for the purposes of disclosure.  (iii) is the comparison of two documentary narratives in terms of fiction for the purpose of demystification.  In each case, the relationship between fiction and documentary is exploited in order to explain the causes of ideologically-motivated crime.

The method involves the careful selection, analysis, and comparison of documentary and fictional narratives.  One begins with the subject of inquiry and then selects two complementary exemplary narratives, either one documentary and one fictional (if one’s purpose is disclosure) or two documentary (if one’s purpose is demystification).  In the former case, the fictional narrative is employed to illuminate the documentary (by direct or indirect means) and in the latter, the comparative analysis of two documentaries as exemplary narratives (rather than as documentaries) reveals the extent to which they are fictional.  Two brief examples will demonstrate the method in practice.  If one wanted to explore the extent to which wealthy expatriates are complicit in the crimes against humanity the Emirate of Dubai perpetrates against migrant workers, one might select Jim Krane’s Dubai: The Story of the World’s Fastest City (2009) as one’s documentary narrative and Joseph O’Neill’s The Dog (2014) as one’s fictional narrative.  At the general level, the two can be juxtaposed so as to exploit the extent to which the latter’s basis in the imagination complements the former’s basis in fact, combining the representation of objective facts about the relationship between expats and migrants with the representation of subjective experiences that could not be achieved in non-fiction.  More specifically, there is a contrast in the way in which the two narratives represent the relationship between prosperity and deprivation in Dubai.  Krane is for the most part concerned with growth, development, and success, devoting only one of four parts of the history to the cost in terms of human rights violations and environmental damage, whereas O’Neill’s narrative focuses on the moral corruption of the anonymous narrator, of the extent to which his lucrative employment requires him to not merely consent to crimes against humanity but play an active role in their commission.  If one wanted to explore the fallacies employed to justify the crimes against humanity perpetrated by colonial powers against communist insurgents during the Cold War, one might select George Robert Elford’s Devil’s Guard (1971) and Tim Bax’s Three Sips of Gin (2013).  The two can be apposed so as to reveal the identical contradictions in form and content that undermine both narratives from within.  Elford’s narrator and Bax’s autobiographical narration describe situations in which traditional non-combatants are prepared to die for their freedom and combatants to fund their resistance by any means available, belying the colonisers’ claims that the counterinsurgency was in the interests of the indigenous populations.  The comparative analysis of the two texts exposes a multiplicity of self-contradictions that demystify the justifications endorsed by both authors – which are revealed as at best ignorant and at worst deceitful.

These examples are textual rather than visual, but the theory and principles underlying the method facilitate its application to any type of exemplary narrative as well as across different modes of narrative representation.  In consequence, one might juxtapose Roméo Dallaire’s autobiographical Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda (2003) with Terry George’s Hotel Rwanda (2004) in order to illuminate the question of responsibility during the Rwandan genocide.  With respect to the methodology I am setting out here, the distinction between minimal and exemplary narratives cuts across the distinction between descriptive and depictive modes of representation.  The method involves the selection of two exemplary narratives, one fictional and one documentary (if the aim is disclosure) or both documentary (if the aim is demystification), and facilitates a variety of combinations within these parameters (including the use of more than two exemplary narratives for sustained analyses).  There is coherence among the theories, principles, and methods described above such that the theories determine the principles, which underpin the methods and although I have identified two methods, these are more accurately described as two instantiations of a single method of comparative analysis.  The central thesis of Narrative Justice, which is that exemplary narratives can reduce ideologically-motivated crime, thus establishes a new methodology for criminology and my hope is that it will be adopted, adapted, and developed by others.

 

Contact

Dr Rafe McGregor, Edge Hill University

Email: mcgregor@edgehill.ac.uk

https://sites.google.com/site/rafemc/

 

Images: courtesy of the author

Thinking about Knife Crime Beyond Dangerous Myths and Comfortable Untruths

Dr Lambros Fatsis, Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Southampton and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. He is the 2018 BSC Blogger of the Year.

A weekday evening in front of the telly usually evokes images of idling on the sofa, engaged in bouts of momentary eye-rolling, head-shaking, and throat-clearing in response to breaking news. For criminologists and other social scientists, however, the situation is much worse. The tiniest falsehood attacks us like a mutating virus which instantly transforms us from spectators, who tune in to find out what is going on, into detectives who comb out truths that news anchors and their guests ignore, conceal, avoid or deny. Unsurprisingly, recent news stories about knife crime are one such example of media frenzy and a source of criminological nightmares. This is because what often passes as serious discussion on this issue often degenerates into a grotesque pantomime where “the right approach” is sought without due respect for the available evidence or regard to the communities that are worse affected. As a result, much of what non-criminologists are exposed to when knife crime becomes news is blunt sophistry at the expense of sharp-edged facts. Sensible, perceptive, and considered responses are hardly absent of course, but they are drowned out by the white noise of superficial, impulsive, knee-jerk punitive reactions that reinforce, instead of challenging, dangerous myths and comfortable untruths about the issue in question.

In the aftermath of the Jaden Moodie murder, the usual explanations (gang membership and “black-on-black” crime) reappeared for an inevitable encore, accompanied by their equally predictable solutions (more stop and search). The best illustration of such views can be found in the last twenty minutes of the recent Question Time  in the form of Melanie Phillips’ ill-informed spiel on the matter, with Rod Liddle’s Sunday Times op-ed being another contender. If such analyses and their recommendations were correct, it would all be well and good. But since they are not, a fierce rebuttal of these frequently recurring falsehoods is due especially since rogue demagoguery of this kind has achieved the status of common knowledge despite most, if not all, evidence to the contrary. The remainder of this blogpost, therefore, will tackle these issues head-on before concluding with an invitation to think about crime by enlisting our intellectual, moral, and civic conscience as active ingredients of any solution to the social problems that cause crime.

Gangs

Every time knife crime is debated, gangs quickly appear as the usual suspects that ought to be responsible for the violence that haunts city streets and citizens’ minds. In fact, this idea is so widespread, even among senior law enforcement officials, that the commentariat could be excused for falling prey to it. The Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service, for example, recently declared a ‘relentless war on gangs’ as a fitting response to the “knife-crime epidemic”. Given the seriousness of the matter, the head of the Met could be excused for her rough and tough approach were it informed by evidence and not so gravely misguided.

However, recent data on gangs from the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime and the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies show no concrete evidence of the link between knife crime and gang membership, as does the evidence from Stopwatch and Amnesty International on the Metropolitan Police Gangs Matrix database. To make matters worse, a recent investigation by the Information Commissioner’s Office found the Matrix in breach of data protection laws ‘with the potential to cause damage and distress to the disproportionate number of young, black men on the Matrix’. This echoes criticisms voiced against the Matrix by criminologists like Becky Clarke who describe it as ‘racist’ as did the UN’s Special Rapporteur on racism who feared its disproportionate use as ‘the basis for surveillance operations against young men and boys who are predominantly black and are listed as potential future violent offenders, sometimes without any basis’.  A previous posting on this blog in 2018 by Keir Irwin-Rogers was also critical of the significant limitations in the empirical evidence base on gangs. Such evidence-less approaches to knife crime as the modus operandi of young Black gangsters simply expose the allure that “gang talk” has on the minds of police chiefs, while also demonstrating how easily young Black people “become” gang members when they are perceived, labelled and processed as such by criminal justice system institutions. This might explain why 78% of the people on the Met’s Gangs Matrix database are Black when the Met’s own data shows that only 27% of people accountable for serious youth violence are Black as criminologist Patrick Williams, dutifully reminds us on page 5 of the aforementioned Stopwatch report.

“Black on Black” Crime

Following gang membership, “Black on Black” crime often comes second in the causal pecking order of knife crime, the assumption here being that since most young Black men are the perpetrators and the victims of such crime there must be something criminogenic about “blackness” either as a biological or a cultural trait. Melanin levels excluded, there can be no other explanation for this like involvement in criminal activity because of levels of poverty and disadvantage. Yet according to a recent Equality and Human Rights Commission report, Black and minority ethnic groups are disproportionately locked into a position of disadvantage; a fact which might serve as a more reliable predictor of violent crime than skin colour or cultural pathology.

Against airy-fairy fantasies such as structural disadvantage, however, unqualified self-appointed pundits would have us believe that “blackness” is among the causes of knife crime much like “the evil eye” causes natural disasters or fiscal crises. There must, therefore, be something intrinsically “criminal” about Black people and their deficient ‘fatherless’ family arrangements which causes young people to stab each other. It couldn’t possibly be inequality or social exclusion that lead people to commit desperate and often unjust acts within a violent living environment marred by inequality and social exclusion. The only apparent solution must be to reduce or eliminate “blackness”, not remove the structural barriers that block Black Britons’ welfare.

Stop and Search

Having established that knife crime is what gangs of marauding Black youths do with as well as to each other, dispatching police officers to prowl the streets in search of suspects must be the most appropriate response. Otherwise known as stop and search, this police power enjoys the unequivocal support of police chiefs, the Home Office, and mainstream political parties. So much so that the Home Secretary leapt to his feet to ‘reduce bureaucracy and increase efficiency’ in the deployment of “suspicionless” stop and search which was (thankfully) overturned by government ministers shortly after. Despite such skepticism about the use of “suspicionless” stop and search, authorised by section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, there was a 400% rise in the use of those powers in 2018. Reservations notwithstanding, the widespread use of stop and search to combat knife crime or gang violence remains unchallenged, despite all evidence to the contrary.

According to the latest evidence, this ostensibly indispensable police power is as ineffective and ill-judged as it is discriminatory and criminogenic even, due to its damaging effect on the public’s trust of the police (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here). Indeed as LSE academic Michael Shiner and his colleagues (p.2) note, the ‘defensive rhetoric’ around stop and search as ‘a ‘vital tool’ in the fight against knife crime does not ‘stand-up to empirical scrutiny’. Contrary to ‘police narratives about stop and search’ which ‘revolve around knives, gangs, organised crime groups, drug supply, county lines and modern slavery’, the authors’ ‘analysis tells a different story – one of deprived, minority communities being over-policed and selectively criminalised’. Equally, despite Melanie Phillips’ belief that the police refrain from using stop and search for fear of being accused of racism, Shiner and his co-authors (p.8) found ‘no credible evidence’ to support such a claim. Yet stop and search always wins over facts, acquiring talismanic powers and totemic status by those who defend it, including police leaders whose professional practice should be informed by the available evidence not reflex responses.

Moving forward

Faced with a culture of denial about illegitimate police practices and the institutional racism that guides them, any step forward becomes an uphill struggle especially when evidence of it is regarded as treason. In Melanie Phillips’ mind for instance, it is not the conclusion that institutional racism exists that shocks, but the very suggestion that institutional racism exists. Whatever her confusing argument was Sub-chapter 6.45 and Chapter 46 of the Macpherson report, which she mentions, prove her wrong either way. The challenge is to recognise that (knife) crime is often the visible manifestation of deep-seated patterns of inequality and social exclusion. Policing our way out of social problems, therefore, seems misplaced when the emphasis should be on improving ‘dangerous places’, not hunt for ‘dangerous people’ as Eric Klinenberg argues in Chapter Two of his new book. Taking a stand against the conditions that produce knife crime, therefore, ought to be our civic and moral priority instead of pursuing scapegoats by rethinking knife crime and (re)acting towards it through a combination of a public health and social justice approach to public safety, defended by the Youth Violence Commission and London’s nascent Violence Reduction Unit in London.

This article gives the views of the author, not the position of the institution he works for.

Contact

Lambros Fatsis, University of Southampton

Twitter: @lfatsis

 

Copyright free image courtsey of Shutterstock

 

The spurious link between immigration and increased crime

(Photo above: Anthony Stansfeld, Thames valley Police and Crime Commissioner, reproduced with permission of the Oxford Mail).

Danny Dorling works at the University of Oxford. He was previously a professor at the University of Sheffield, and before then at Leeds. His earlier academic posts were in Newcastle, Bristol, and New Zealand. His most recent book, with Sally Tomlinson, is ‘Rule Britannia: Brexit and the end of Empire’.

Sally Tomlinson was born in Stockport. Her first primary school job was teaching children from the Caribbean and Asian subcontinent in Wolverhampton in the year Enoch Powell was making his anti-immigrant speeches. She has worked in universities in Warwick, Lancaster, Goldsmiths London and Oxford’.

On Saturday 22^nd December 2018, three days before Christmas, the Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Berkshire – Thames Valley – Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC), Anthony Stansfeld, was reported to still be standing by his very recent allegation that that ‘foreign nationals’ were one of the reasons for increasing demand being placed upon Oxfordshire’s police officers in recent years . He had been quoted as claiming that “A significant amount of the more serious crime is now being committed by foreign national offenders.”

Local members of parliament reacted angrily. The Oxford West and Abingdon MP explained that “I am concerned that the PCC singling out foreign nationals as the perpetrators reeks of dog whistle politics and risks an increase in hate crimes to people from other nations who’ve made their home in our communities” The Oxford East MP used statistics to explain that the number of people from abroad committing crimes was actually declining, yet still Anthony Stansfeld (pictured above) would accept no criticism, simply claiming that “I tell the truth on these things.”

So where does this particular version of the ‘truth’ come from? And how does it manage to resist so much good sense, statistical evidence, or warnings of the potential consequences of repeating such accusations which are often echoes of a much older prejudice?

Students of criminology could request interviews with the Thames Valley PCC to ask him where his views come from, but he may not know. Few of us make good judges of our own motivations, beliefs, and what lead to our particular prejudices developing in the first place. Fear and mistrust of others is common worldwide, especially of people who are seen as different. However, the reactions of the two members of parliament for the city of Oxford in this case helps to illustrate that there is also now a strong movement to counter such stereotyping, and that fight-back also has a long history.

There is no correlation between immigration rates and crime. Meticulous research recently revealed that Wales has the highest rate of imprisonment of people to be found anywhere in Europe. Wales is hardly a favoured destination for immigrants, unless you count English people moving there in retirement. Wales suffers from one of the lowest immigration rates in all of Europe. In 2014 less than 5% of its population were born abroad (see the map below). This is a rate of in-migration that is amongst the lowest of any country or region in Europe. Outside of London and Northern Ireland the rate of migration from abroad into much of the UK very low. It is a low rate of immigration into  a large home born population that is most comparable to that found in many Eastern European countries. Eastern Europe also tends to receive few people born abroad, and is very like the North of England and Wales in that respect. The highest rate of immigration from abroad in Europe is found in Switzerland, a country not known for its high crime rates. Next most attractive is the Mediterranean coast of Spain, where a high proportion of the large number of immigrants were born in Britain (we often call them ‘expats’). After those two areas it is central west London that attracts the most people born elsewhere.

Immigrants: The proportion of people living in each region of Europe born in another country (2014)

Key– in the darkest shaded areas over a fifth of people were born abroad, in the lightest areas less than one in twenty was. Areas in the map are drawn in proportion to their total populations.

Source, Figure 9.4 of Dorling, D. and Gietel-Basten, S. (2017) Why Demography Matters, Cambridge: Polity (reproduced with the kind permission of Benjamin Hennig)

We have recently written a book in which we try to explain that, people are apt to blame others when the relative position of their place in the world is falling, as it is currently in the Britain. There is a very real sense that things fall apart when empires crumble, and Britain remains, at the heart of what is a still contracting relic of a former world empire. The fear of outsiders in Britain has been stoked up in recent decades by newspapers whose owners want people to blame others, rather than the single political party they almost all support. Above all else they do not want the blame placed on the economic inequality by income that has been allowed to grow to become the worse, to have become the highest, in all of Europe. Some even try to blame immigrants for that inequality too, claiming that their presence lowers wages, as if people choose to be badly paid! But the highest median wages in Europe are found in cities on the mainland with high proportions of immigrants (the dark areas in the map above).

We all too easily fail to see what is happening when the rich take more and more leaving less for the rest, especially for the poorest. We are encouraged to imagine ogres that are not there. These ogres include ever rising numbers of apparently ‘criminal immigrants’, the fictional supposedly quick-breeding migrants who are taking ‘our’ homes, ‘our’ partners’ jobs, and claiming the best places in what should be ‘our’ children’s schools, and at the very same time apparently committing so much crime. However, the most common serious crime in the UK is speeding in a car. It is also by far the most deadly. The vast majority of car drivers who speed are not immigrants, although the Duke of Edinburgh, was recently involved in a collision and then found to be not wearing a seat belt, and he was born abroad. But the reason he choses not to wear a seat belt, or to drive as he does, is unlikely to be related to some early experience he had as a child living in Greece, France and Germany.

Source, Figure 4.2 of Dorling, D. and Tomlinson, S. (2019) Ruel Britannia: From Brexit to the End of Empire, London: Biteback, Reproduced from the archive of the Daily Express (out of copyright).

Fear of immigrants tends to rise at times when economic fortunes are falling and people are questioning the political strength of their country; scapegoats are searched for. In 1899 the Second Boer war began in South Africa, a war in which the British suffered very bad losses . In 1901 there were racist campaigns against foreign immigrants in the Daily Express.  In 1903 George Edalji, a Midlands solicitor with a mixed race background, was found guilty and sentenced to seven years hard labour for crimes he did not commit. His sentence was reduced and he was later found to have not been guilty of the most serious crimes of which he had been accused. However, he was never found completely innocent despite his sister, Maud, campaigning to clear his name for nearly 60 years, right through to her death in 1961. His wrongful conviction did help bring about the establishment of the  Court of Criminal Appeal for England and Wales which first sat on May 15^th 1908, 111 years ago this year. We can adapt, so when will we learn to stop saying ‘foreign national offenders’?

The crimes people are least likely to be found out for are the common crimes of the rich: driving dangerously, evading taxes, and fraud. The crimes which are most often publicised are the crimes most strongly associated with the poor. Recent immigrants from poor backgrounds are often labelled as racially or ethnically different, living in urban squalor that is apparently of their making (despite the fact that they have only just arrived and have had no time to make it). In contrast, recent immigrants who are wealthy are rarely labelled as living in unusually higher concentrations, but most do. The segregation of the rich away from other people’s neighbourhoods is the most concentrated spatial segregation of all. The rich tend not to mix.

In 2007 it was shown through analysis of the national census that the greatest concentration of overseas born children living in the UK were to be found around affluent Hyde Park in London. They had been born in the USA, their parents most likely worked in finance. In the next year came the great financial crash, for which no banker in the UK was jailed, British, American or of any other nationality.

A century earlier, in 1905, as we recount in our recently book (‘Rule Britannia’) the MP Major Evans-Gordon was instrumental in bringing in the Aliens Act which ‘…gave the Home Secretary overall responsibility for immigration and nationality matters. Ostensibly designed to prevent paupers and criminals from entering the country, one of its main objectives was to stop Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe. Campaigning in favour of the law, Evans-Gordon said, ‘Not a day passes but English families are ruthlessly turned out to make room for foreign invaders,’ and ‘The rates are burdened with the education of thousands of foreign children.’ Problems with health, housing and education were all claimed, as now, to be caused by immigration. A little later, the league was absorbed by Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists.’

  [Note: This quote is an extract from Rule Britannia: From Brexit to the End of Empire, London: Biteback, published January 15^th 2019, By Danny Dorling and Sally Tomlinson; and this article is mainly based on material brought together in that book]

Source, Cover of Dorling, D. and Tomlinson, S. (2019) Rule Britannia: From Brexit to the End of Empire, London: Biteback [an image from the Empire marketing board]

It is good to see MPs today behaving so differently. Less than three years ago one of their number, Jo Cox, was murdered by a man shouting ‘Britain First’ as he killed her, and who gave his name in court on being charged with her murder as ‘Death to traitors. Freedom for Britain’. Since the referendum, racist hate crime has increased by 16 per cent across Britain, and peaked at a 58 per cent rise in the week following the vote.

Hate crime is done to immigrants, not by them. Three weeks after the Referendum a 16 year old Polish girl was found hanged at her school. She had been bullied and told that she ‘did not belong here’. In September 2016 a Polish man was killed in Essex, the Polish Ambassador visiting the scene and expressing shock at the rise of racist and xenophobic behaviour. Long before the Windrush scandal there had been a hostile environment to immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers of all kinds, and a rise of far-right fascist groups in the UK. But many politicians are fighting back against the racism, more than they have ever done so before. Police forces around the country are now better informed and despite cuts, are better equipped to deal with the expectations put upon them. They do not need the spread of untruths by an ignorant Police and Crime Commissioner, or the creation of hostile environments by politicians who appear to harbour a deep dislike of people they see as not like them. It is time we called out the lie of ‘immigrant criminals’ once and for all, for what it is: racism.

Contacts

Danny Dorling, University of Oxford

Email: Danny.dorling@ouce.ox.ac.uk

www.danny.dorling.org

Twitter: @dannydorling

 

Sally Tomlinson, University of Oxford

Email: s@stomlinson.net

http://www.stomlinson.net/

 

Images: courtesy of the authors and permission given to use photograph of Anthony Stansfeld by the Oxford Mail (email Harrison Jones on 15^th January 2019)