‘From villain to hero’: a new approach in pedagogy and rehabilitation?

Liam Miles is a Criminology student at Birmingham City University and has a passion for writing from a range of topics including structural inequalities, systematic violence, conflict in the Middle East, and various theoretical paradigms to crime and deviance. He also works in the Student’s Union as  Vice-President for Academic Experience.

 

From villain to hero delves into the more insightful and inclusive elements of Criminology. The comic recently published by Kevin Hoffin and Adam Lynes answers some questions around rehabilitative practices for offenders who have faced high levels of institutionalism and incapacitation. The narrative explores a typical criminal offence which is realistic in today’s social and economic climate, a jewellery shop heist.  The heist takes place and the comic critically explores the mental and personal conflictions between the offenders, in terms of their rationale and reasonings for the crimes they had committed. These thoughts underpin several theoretical paradigms which are regularly contested within Criminology and they include rational choice, differential association, relative depravation and strain theory. The ontological frameworks have been made accessible for not only a non-academic audience, but possibly individuals who may not have an academic background in reading and writing due factors such as barriers to access education, learning challenges and years of institutionalism. It can be argued that this newly founded mechanism for education provides a fresh approach to learning, teaching and rehabilitation. The theoretical paradigms of criminality have been simplified throughout this comic and gives a space for those learning about these theories to digest them in an interactive and applied manner. I believe that there is immense potential for this comic to play a role in the process of rehabilitation of offenders, particularly of those who have committed violent crime and have inflicted harm onto others. The comic uses graphically designed imagery to display the criminological theory and accurately portray the perspectives and social realities of both the offender and victim. These range from the motives and structural dynamics which arguably led the offenders to commit a jewellery shop heist, following to the victim and their trauma from the experience and exposure to violent crime. These collective narratives can produce didacticism and potentially even rehabilitation of offenders in prison. This approach can help students digest and understand the basic frameworks and theoretical paradigms such as ultra-realism, which itself is a challenging idea to comprehend.

These narratives can be further supported by exploring the teachings embedded within the comic. One scene shows the interviewing of the victim/witness. The witness was told to take her time and to relax whilst she recollected the traumatic events from the robbery. The next scene explored the offenders being interviewed. The rationale and reasoning behind the offender’s motives came to light, and arguably to the reader this revelation subconsciously unmasks the offender and adopts a more humane perspective. This compilation of both offender and victim-based perspectives underpin the critical teachings of ultra-realism. Realism has a subjectivity engrossed heavily in socio-economic climates and the empiricisms contained within builds its ontological frameworks. Exploring crime and justice policy, from a circumstantial lens often produces conflictions amongst ultra–realists as to which is the most appropriate response to tackling crime and punishment. Arguably these concepts are abstract notions and finding one-size which fits all is a regular contest. The conflictions between left and right realism and its approaches to crime and punishment were simplified by the context supplied by the responses to the crime which took place. In one scene, the narrative explored a member of the public who had called for the offenders of the jewellery shop heist to be immediately imprisoned and described offenders as being ‘benefit scroungers’. Upon reflection, this phrase has often been thrown around within the right-wing tabloids, and is an ideological strand embedded within right realism. Examples can include the headline produced by the Daily Express on September 2^nd, 2011 titled: ‘4m Scrounging families in Britain‘, adjacent to an article titled: ‘London’s no longer an English City’ says John Cleese’.

It can be argued that these narratives produce a divide between those who are employed and prosperous, and those who are unemployed and are having to receive support from the state to maintain a basic standard of living, these narratives are fixed and continuously aim to marginalise, stigmatise and segregate those who are impoverished. In relation to the links between impoverishment and criminality, the simplification of the narratives throughout the comics, allows the reader to understand the ways in which these beliefs are perpetuated, particularly through the lens of the media.

On the flip side, the values embedded within left realism were also explored and simplified. The comic displayed another member of the public who was debating with the right realist, and argued that criminality is fuelled by poverty, structural inequalities and the failures within some individuals to economically and socially fit into this neoliberal, consumer capitalist society, whose values endorse competition, narcissism and raised expected aspirations in an unattainable society. A left realist would argue that these issues are out of the control of the offender, and they would be driven to commit crime as an only solution to escape from impoverishment. The principles and implementation of rehabilitation, local state funding, and investment into both the labour market and public sectors would play a vital role in steering individuals away from crime through increased opportunities to live a ‘normal’ life. Of course, the constructs within ultra-realism go a lot further than that which have been drawn upon in this blog however the wider understandings of criminological theory have been contextualised and simplified throughout the comic.

Upon reflection of our own values and approaches, the debate in the comic as to how the offenders should be dealt with, paves room for personal reflection upon our own morals and judgements. It is worth noting these constructs were complimented by the incredible use of imagery and design which draws readers in from the very start. This marks the start of a very inspiring and promising tool within pedagogy, rehabilitation and leisure interests for those who are looking to get inspired, learn new concepts and engage with their discipline in ways which go far and beyond reading papers and journals.

If you would like to receive a copy of the comic, please email Kevin Hoffin at: Kevin.Hoffin@bcu.ac.uk

 

Contact

Liam Miles, Birmingham City University

liam.miles@mail.bcu.ac.uk

 

Images: courtesy of the author

 

 

Bhopal State-Corporate Crime continues to unfold, (1984 – Present), 35 years and counting

Sharon Hartles has recently completed her MA in Crime and Justice 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 harm (including crime) is produced and interwoven into society via socio-economic inequalities.

 

On the 3rd December 1984, part of the Union Carbide Corporation (hereafter UCC) chemical plant in Bhopal, a city of Madhya Pradesh, India, exploded. Within three days of the gas leak up to 10,000 people (men, women and children) died and hundreds of thousands more were poisoned. The UCC plant in Bhopal was built and run by Union Carbide India Ltd (hereafter UCIL) an Indian public company in which Union Carbide, an American company, had a majority shareholding. An Operations safety survey was conducted by UCC technicians for the UCIL in May 1982 (thirty-one months prior to the gas leak), which noted various lapses in safety regulations. Three months before the gas leak, (September 1984) an operational safety/health survey raised concerns about a possible runaway reaction; pointing out that water from an identified leak would hasten this reaction resulting in catastrophic failure.

This state-corporate crime (the spillage of large quantities of methyl isocyanate (MIC), a very toxic substance, into the atmosphere from the pesticide plant) was preventable, insofar as it was a consequence of foreseeable and alterable social conditions. UCC ‘was aware of the possibility of a potential runaway reaction that triggered the MIC leak in Bhopal‘ and ‘was aware right from 1982 that the Bhopal plant suffered from serious safety problems‘. In addition, recommended follow-up action was overlooked. Therefore these capitalist harms were not inevitable, but were determined by the (in)actions of powerful states and corporations or crimes of the powerful. This evidences how the Bhopal ‘disaster’ was not an accident, because an accident by definition is an unfortunate incident that happens unexpectedly and unintentionally. Instead, “it was caused by law-breaking, and involved the complicity of a multinational company and Governments”.

Contemporary criminal justice systems (the Indian Penal Code, the official criminal code of India) recognised parts of this ‘disaster’ (Union Carbide’s gassing of Bhopal) as ‘criminal offences’ under the law of culpable homicide (not murder and not negligent manslaughter). However, in June 2010, seven executives of UCIL were found guilty of criminal negligence (not culpable homicide). What is interesting, but not surprising, is that all seven of those (junior officers and senior officials of UCIL) successfully convicted individuals were Indian. This makes visible the stark inequalities in the application of justice administered by the criminal justice systems. Different social groups, for example the relatively poorer, Indian people prosecuted experienced the Indian criminal justice system differently to the American businessman Warren Anderson. Warren Anderson the Chairman and CEO of the UCC at the time of the Bhopal disaster in 1984, on arriving in Bhopal was arrested and formally charged with culpable homicide, punishable by 10 years to life imprisonment and a fine. Although this is a strictly non-bailable offence, meaning the granting of bail would be unlawful, Warren Anderson posted bail, left the country and absconded from justice (he died in September 2014 and never faced trial).

Lawyers representing UCC and Warren Anderson, argued that neither American nor Indian laws applied due to the globalised nature of the state-corporate nexus.  UCIL reported to Union Carbide Eastern Inc (UCE), a wholly owned subsidiary of UCC incorporated in the USA (however, this operated in Hong Kong). Moreover, the intricate globalized network continued because the Bhopal plant reported through another wholly owned USA subsidiary of UCIL, the Union Carbide Agricultural Products Company.

As a consequence of these global economic processes, representatives were able to take advantage of the globalised space in-between the laws, rendering the crimes of the powerful (state and corporations) beyond the reach of the law. In effect, they used the  letter of the law to defeat it’s spirit. With this in mind, it is clear to see how contemporary crime and justice systems focus their wrath on the ‘players’ with less power, (junior officers and senior officials of UCIL) as tokenistic involuntary lambs sacrificed for the slaughter. Whilst those ‘players’ with elite power (Warren Anderson and UCC) elude punishment and exist to commit further state-corporate transgressions.

Multinational corporations are well versed in ‘creative compliance’: using professional advisers with knowledge of the law to take advantage of legal loopholes and UCC is no exception. In 1994, UCC conveniently sold its stake in UCIL and so no longer has assets in India. Practices such as this promote the evasion of accountability and allows UCC to hide-in-plain-sight, but always just out of the reach of justice. In this regard UCC has concealed its actions to be ‘perfectly legal or at least not expressly illegal’.

Seven years later (2001), UCC merged with Dow Chemical Company, and as such it is completely owned by Dow which means Dow (as the parent company) holds all of UCC’s ‘common stock’. In 2002, Greenpeace stated that under US legislation, as ‘parent’ company of UCC, Dow should incur liability to clean up Bhopal. In a series of statements addressing the disaster, Dow (which in September 2017 merged with DuPont) noted its purchase of UCC excluded clean up liabilities from Bhopal.  ‘The chemical industry learned and grew as a result of Bhopal – creating the Responsible Care program with its strengthened focus on process safety standards, emergency preparedness, and community awareness.’ A critical response might question why a morally Responsible Care programme has not been implemented for Bhopal?

Dow celebrated its success of developing ‘ECOFAST’ technology (November 2018) which it claims will reduce environmental harms. A statement which is ironic given the human, non-human and environmental devastation still taking place in Bhopal. Approximately 25,000 people have died, to date, from the gas leak/gas-related illnesses. Thousands of others suffer from chronic debilitating illnesses, and a staggering 570,000 people were exposed to damaging levels of toxic gas. In addition, year-on-year, children are born with congenital malformations evidencing inter-generational trauma.

​In 2018, in stark contrast to Dow whose primary focus was to promote its ECOFAST pure technology, a world away in Bhopal, reality and priorities differ vastly. The abandoned UCC plant remains full of toxic waste, the soil is 100 per cent toxic and pools of mercury are visible on the ground. Ground water at the site, which provides a drinking water supply for approximately fifteen communities is contaminated because untreated chemicals continue to leach through the soil into the aquifer.

​In 1989, thirty years ago, UCC paid out a sum of $470 million in full settlement and never looked back; leaving the residents of Bhopal exposed to ongoing contamination from their abandoned factory site. This worked out to each gas-exposed victim receiving an amount of $500 for life-long debilitating injuries and to pay for decades of medical bills. The next generation of children (afflicted by Union Carbide’s poison) of gas-affected parents received no financial aid. Activists have been fighting ever since to get more compensation for those affected, to get the site cleaned up and to prevent the devastation from spreading. The state of Madhya Pradesh has declared itself unequipped to deal with the Bhopal clean up and for these reasons claim that the 1989 settlement was inadequate. In a curative petition Dow have been requested by the federal government to pay an amount of $1.2 billion.

Bhopal, has demonstrated how it is the most vulnerable members of society who continue to ‘pay the price’ for the crimes of the powerful or state-corporate crime-waves. Thirty five years after the preventable gas leak at Bhopal, its harms are still manifesting. All of this as a direct result of cost-cutting measures and failure to enforce health and safety regulations. The 3rd December 2019 is the thirty-fifth anniversary of the Bhopal state and corporate crime. It also marks thirty-five years of continuing trauma inflicted upon the Bhopali people and thirty-five years in which the Bhopalis continue to fight for justice and accountability.

As part of this continued fight for justice against the state-corporate massacre which took place in Bhopal the Indian courts yet again summoned Dow chemical to attend a court date, on 13th November 2019, to face criminal charges for the part Union Carbide played in the Bhopal state-corporate crime. However, as the Department of Justice (DOJ) (USA) did not serve the summons to Dow Chemical Company, the likelihood of them appearing was negligible, and Dow Chemical did not appear in court demonstrating disdain for previous negligence. Such incontrovertible evidence illustrates why the unending aftermath of the world’s worst industrial disaster resulting from state-corporate crime has continued to unfold across decades and generations, incurring new victims’ year on year, as the battle for justice for Bhopal endures.

​Justice for Bhopal is an international campaign: a global coalition of environmental and social justice groups led by survivors of the ongoing disaster in Bhopal. There are many ways to support Bhopal, the three listed are just a few of those suggested by the Justice for Bhopal group:

• Send a letter to your elected representative, asking them to contact the DOJ on behalf of Bhopal survivors! (Applies to US citizens only)
• Demand that the Government of India and Madhya Pradesh revise the numbers of death and injury
• Start a Local ICJB chapter or Campus Group​​

Further campaign resources can be found here:

• Bhopal campaign resources

Alternatively, The Bhopal Medical Appeal is a health fund which provides appropriate response for the Bhopal survivors – because Bhopal matters.

 

Originally posted on:  sharonhartles.weebly.com

Contact: Sharon Hartles

Email: sh28739@ou.ac.uk

Twitter: @shartles1

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

 

The Uses of Historical Criminology

David Churchill is Associate Professor in Criminal Justice in the Centre for Criminal Justice Studies, School of Law, University of Leeds. His research focuses on policing, security and crime control in modern Britain.

 

Henry Yeomans is Associate Professor in Criminology at the Centre for Criminal Justice Studies, School of Law, University of Leeds. His research focuses on the regulation of alcohol and drinking in historical perspective.

 

Paul Lawrence is Asa Briggs Professor of History, and Head of History, at The Open University. His research focuses on the history of crime, policing and justice from c.1750.

 

Over the past several years, the term ‘historical criminology’ has slowly and quietly entered the criminological lexicon. Its arrival, without fanfare, signals at least interest in engaging with historical themes and problems in criminological research. But it might also gesture towards a fuller integration of historical approaches and ways of thinking into criminology. If so, it would seem to evoke promising new directions for criminological scholarship: broadening its chronological frame of reference; historicizing its core topical concerns; infusing previously marginal disciplinary perspectives. Yet the potential of historical criminology remains underdeveloped. Explicit discussion of the issues it might raise has been confined hitherto largely to reflective essays derived from specific research projects (Bosworth, 2001; Cox, 2011), or to broader surveys of the relationship between crime history and criminology as fields of enquiry (Godfrey et al., 2008; Lawrence, 2012). At present, there is a lack of broader theoretical and conceptual work on what it might mean to do criminology in an historical way (though see Garland, 2014; Churchill et al., 2018; Churchill, 2018).

In a recent thematic issue of Criminology & Criminal Justice, we have attempted to reach beyond existing work and develop original theoretical insights on the uses of historical research in criminology. This issue arises from an international conference hosted by the Centre for Criminal Justice Studies, University of Leeds, in 2015, which brought together criminologists, historians and socio-legal scholars to address connections between past, present and future across criminal justice topics. This event highlighted the wealth of inventive historical work taking place across disciplines, but also the challenges of establishing fruitful interdisciplinary dialogue around historical criminology without a secure theoretical underpinning. Our three papers result from sustained, critical engagement with these issues at the conference and in subsequent discussions over the intervening years. With reference to the conference itself, we would like to take this opportunity to thank all those who participated in the event, including Adam Crawford, Francis Dodsworth, Markus Dubber, Louise Jackson, Paul Knepper, Stuart Lister, Clifford Stott, Chris Williams and Sarah Wilson.

Our papers focus on three distinct (yet overlapping) values of historical research in criminology: to explain, characterise or contextualise contemporary formations of crime and justice. But in doing that, we develop several common lines of argument, which cut across the separate papers. First, we suggest that historical research must contribute to understanding crime and criminal justice in contemporary society. Criminology as a field is preoccupied with the present and with new developments, and we take this as our starting point, recognising that most criminologists will find history of interest insofar as it helps make sense of present concerns. Second, we contest the notion that the past should serve simply as a foil against which to establish what is new in the present. Given the ‘epochalist’ framing of much prominent work in contemporary social science (Savage, 2009), we are especially concerned to argue that historical approaches might break down (rather than to reinforce) the sense of separation between past and present. Third, we stress the advantages of going beyond the approach of much existing historical research, which uses focused study of a delimited period to provide a fresh perspective on contemporary problems. While recognising the value of such studies, we stress the virtues of long-term, diachronic research which links past and present in a continuous chain. Such a long-term perspective, we argue, is vital in using historical research to explain (Lawrence, Yeomans) or to characterize (Churchill) contemporary crime and justice. Finally, our papers (especially those by Churchill and Lawrence) emphasize the need for collaboration across disciplines to fully realise the potential contribution of historical criminology. In-depth interdisciplinary engagement, through teams spanning history and the social sciences, is perhaps the most viable means of using long-term historical research to make meaningful and lasting interventions in contemporary criminological debates.

The history of crime and criminal justice is a thriving area, and such work seems increasingly to find an audience within criminology. Furthermore, new networks and fora – notably the British Society of Criminology Historical Criminology Network, founded last year – seek to bring together established and emerging scholars interested in historical criminology. Such initiatives, in turn, are posing broader questions about the nature, purposes and future directions of historical research in criminology. We hope this thematic issue of Criminology & Criminal Justice will provide some foundations for more sustained engagement with historical approaches, perspectives and data in criminology, and thus help pave the way toward a more fully historical criminology.

 

References

Bosworth M (2001) The past as a foreign country? Some methodological implications of doing historical criminology. The British Journal of Criminology 41(3): 431-442.

Churchill D (2018) What is ‘historical criminology’? Thinking historically about crime and justice. British Society of Criminology Newsletter 82: 8-11.

Churchill D, Crawford A and Barker A (2018) Thinking forward through the past: prospecting for urban order in (Victorian) public parks. Theoretical Criminology 22(4): 523-544.

Cox P (2011) History and global criminology: (re)inventing delinquency in Vietnam. The British Journal of Criminology 52(1): 17-31.

Garland D (2014) What is a ‘history of the present’? On Foucault’s genealogies and their critical preconditions. Punishment & Society 16(4): 365-384.

Godfrey BS, Williams CA and Lawrence P (2008) History & Crime. London: SAGE.

Lawrence P (2012) History, criminology and the ‘use’ of the past. Theoretical Criminology 16(3): 313-328.

Savage M (2009) Against epochalism: an analysis of conceptions of change in British sociology. Cultural Sociology 3(2): 217-238.

 

Contact

David Churchill, University of Leeds

d.churchill@leeds.ac.uk

@dchurchill01

Paul Lawrence, The Open University

paul.lawrence@open.ac.uk

Henry Yeomans, University of Leeds

h.p.yeomans@leeds.ac.uk

@yeomans_henry

 

Copyright free images courtesy of authorsand Dreamstime

Trophy hunting – can it really be justified by ‘conservation benefits’?

Cecil the lion, before he was a trophy.
Shutterstock/paula french

Melanie Flynn, University of Huddersfield

Killing animals for fun is an activity which divides opinion. It can also be a highly emotive issue, with high profile cases like the death of Cecil the lion sparking global media coverage and outcry. There were even calls for the American dentist who admitted killing Cecil to be charged with illegal hunting.

But despite the strong feelings it occasionally provokes, many people may be unaware just how common trophy hunting is. The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) reports that between 2004 and 2014, a total of 107 countries participated in the trophy hunting business. In that time, it is thought over 200,000 hunting trophies from threatened species were traded (plus a further 1.7m from non-threatened animals).

Trophy hunters themselves pay vast sums of money to do what they do (IFAW claims upwards of $US100,000 for a 21-day big game hunting trip). But reliable data on the economic benefits this brings to the countries visited remains limited and contested.

Now the UK government has announced it is considering banning the trade of hunting trophies from endangered species – making it a crime to bring them back into the country.

Advocates of trophy hunting – including major conservation organisations such as the International Union for Conservation of Nature and the World Wide Fund for Nature – argue that hunting wild animals can have major ecological benefits. Along with some governments, they claim that “well-managed” trophy hunting is an effective conservation tool, which can also help local communities.

This argument depends in part on the generation of significant income from the trophy hunters, which, it is claimed, can then be reinvested into conservation activities.

The broad idea is that a few (often endangered) animals are sacrificed for the greater good of species survival and biodiversity. Local human communities also benefit financially from protecting animal populations (rather than seeing them as a threat) and may reap the rewards of employment by hunting operations, providing lodgings or selling goods.

Indeed, research on trophy hunting does show that it can produce substantial financial benefits, is likely to be supported by local communities, and can be associated with conservation gains.

But it remains unclear in exactly what circumstances trophy hunting produces a valuable conservation benefit. We cannot assume a scheme that works in one country, targeting one species, under a specific set of circumstances, is applicable to all other species and locations.

Also, the purported benefits of trophy hunting rely on sustainable management, investment of profits, and local community involvement. But given the levels of perceived corruption and lack of effective governance in some of the countries where trophy hunting is carried out, one wonders how likely it is these conditions can be met.

And if trophy hunting is really so lucrative, there is every chance the profits will instead be used to line the pockets of rich (possibly foreign) operators and officials.

Death and suffering

This brings us to the question of ethics. Just because an intervention has the potential to produce a social benefit, does not mean the approach is ethical. And if it is not ethical, should it be considered a crime?

This is something of regular concern for social policy. If the evil that a programme introduces is greater than the evil it purports to reduce, then it is unethical to implement it.

I would argue that even if convincing evidence does exist that trophy hunting can produce conservation benefits, it is unethical to cause the death and suffering of individual animals to save a species.

In common with many green criminologists, I take a critical approach to the study of environmental and animal-related crime. This means that I am interested in behaviour that can be thought of as harmful, and may be worthy of the label “crime”, even if it has not been formally criminalised.

When considering global harms and those that impact heavily on the most powerless in society, this approach is particularly important.

Conservation is concerned with biodiversity and animal populations. Contrast this with an animal rights or species justice perspective, where instead of focusing on rights that benefit humans over all other species, the interests and intrinsic rights of individual and groups of animals are considered.

From this viewpoint, trophy hunting undoubtedly causes harm. It brings pain, fear, suffering and death. Add to this the grief, mourning and fracturing of familial or social groups that is experienced by animals such as elephants, whales, primates and giraffes. In light of these harms, trophy hunting is surely worthy of the label “crime”.

Allowing trophy hunting also perpetuates the notion that animals are lesser than humans. It turns wildlife into a commodity, rather than living, feeling, autonomous beings – beings that I have argued should be viewed as victims of crime.

Anthropocentric views also facilitate and normalise the exploitation, death and mistreatment of animals. The harmful effects can be seen in intensive farming, marine parks and “canned hunting”, where (usually lions) are bred in captivity (and sometimes drugged) as part of trophy hunting operations. Where money can be made from animals, exploitation, and wildlife crime, seem likely to follow.

Instead, local communities must be involved in decisions about conservation and land management, but not at the expense of endangered species, or of individual animals hunted for sport. Alternative conservation approaches like photo tourism, and schemes to reduce human-animal conflict must be embraced.

Getting a good shot.
Shutterstock/Villiers Steyn

Banning trophy hunting would provide a much needed incentive to develop creative conservation approaches to wildlife protection and human-animal co-existence. And there is still substantial conservation income to be earned without resorting to trophy hunting.

So governments around the world should introduce bans on trophy imports – alongside providing support for alternative, ethical developments that benefit both wild animals and local communities. Anything less is complicit support of a crime against some of the world’s most vulnerable wildlife.

Melanie Flynn, Senior lecturer in Criminology, University of Huddersfield

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

 

Workplace violence: a social harm perspective

Anthony Lloyd is Reader in Criminology and Sociology at Teesside University. His research focuses on labour markets and work within an ultra-realist harm framework. His latest book, The Harms of Work (Bristol University Press) is out in paperback in October.

 

According to recent figures from the NHS staff survey and research by Unison, violence against NHS staff continues to rise.  Official figures indicate that nearly 15% of staff surveyed had been subjected to physical violence from patients, patients’ relatives or the public while numerous incidents continue to go unreported.  Although many assaults are clinical in nature and therefore take place in mental health settings, the Health Service Journal/Unison report found violent incidents growing in other settings.  Around one-third of staff reported an assault in the previous twelve months and the report draws a correlation between high levels of violence and NHS trusts with large financial deficits and poor performance on elective waiting times.  Could it reasonably be extrapolated, then, that services stretched to the limit generate frustration and dissatisfaction increasingly manifesting in violent outbursts against staff?

The reports of increasing violence against NHS workers follows growing evidence that school teachers face rising levels of physical and verbal abuse from pupils and parents.  Research conducted by NASUWT suggests that one in four teachers experience physical violence from pupils on a weekly basis, including being shoved, barged, hit, punched and kicked.  Almost half of the 5,000 teachers surveyed reported being verbally threatened by pupils. In 2016/17, nearly 750 pupils were permanently excluded for violence against an adult whilst almost 27,000 were given fixed period exclusions for a physical assault on an adult.

Police officers, prison staff and, increasingly, fire fighters are routinely assaulted in the line of work.  In 2017-18, one in five police officers were assaulted in the line of duty with 8,500 prison officers assaulted in the same period.  According to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), 694,000 incidents of violence were recorded in UK workplaces in 2017-18 alone with 374,000 adults experiencing violence at work in that period, 41% of which reported injuries.

These reports and research show that workplace violence is prevalent across a range of occupations with employees often facing threats, intimidation and assault during the course of their work.  Criminology has a track record of investigating violent workplaces (Gill et al, 2002; Martin et al, 2012; Schindeler, 2013).  It is crucial that criminology continue to investigate violence in all arenas, including the workplace.  However, it is also vital to heed Slavoj Žižek’s (2008) warning that physical or subjective violence often masks or distracts from more pervasive and invidious acts of ‘systemic violence’ which underpin neoliberal political economy.  A focus on ‘spectacular’ violence should not detract from the wider violence inflicted upon individuals, communities and institutions through the normal functioning of capitalism.

In my work on service economy employees (Lloyd, 2018a; 2018b; 2019), I observed and interviewed call centre workers, retail employees, hospitality workers, couriers, bar staff and fast-food workers.  While physical violence was not observed and very rarely reported by contacts, verbal abuse from customers was endemic and routine while bullying, harassment and abuse from co-workers and supervisors was frequently reported.  However, the picture that emerged was also one of short-term or zero-hour contracts, minimum wage work, targets and performance management, inflexible work rotas, pressure, stress, instability and the sort of workplace precarity regularly cited within the sociology of work literature (Standing, 2011).

Analysing this research from a social harm perspective opens up the normal functioning of labour markets to a critique that highlights numerous problematic practices and, importantly, absences.

The social harm literature continues to struggle with the fundamental question of ‘harm from what?’ (Pemberton, 2016; Yar, 2012; Hillyard and Tombs, 2004; Raymen, 2019).  What harm occurs when employment contracts increasingly favour the employer over the employee?  What harm is inflicted on individuals and communities through austerity measures?  What harm do we suffer through climate change?  The debate around harm’s ontological grounding continues but my contribution, from an ultra-realist perspective (Hall and Winlow, 2015), suggests that harm can be the absence of positive rights that allow individual and collective flourishing.

Following critical realism, ultra-realist criminology posits the probabilistic causal tendencies of absences (Hall and Winlow, 2015).  For example, the absence of a welfare state would undoubtedly engender harmful consequences for individuals and families.  In this case, the absence of stability was evident through the presence of zero-hour contracts, on-demand work, short-term contracts, ‘flexible’ work arrangements that mostly favoured management, low pay, and often inflexible shifts.  The absence of protection was evident through the presence of unpaid ‘work trials’, failure to pay the National Minimum Wage, regular evidence of physical and mental health problems.  The absence of ethical responsibility for the other was evident in the presence of management bullying, colleague harassment, customer abuse and the ‘special liberty’ (Hall, 2012) or sense of competitive entitlement to act in one’s own interests regardless of consequence or damage to co-workers and employees.  The willingness to harm others is intimately connected to competitive individualism.  Within this theoretical framework, absences have consequences and systemic violence damages far worse than subjective violence.

If we return to the earlier examples of hospital and school violence and consider systemic violence, we see wider harms at work.  The same NHS staff survey that reported significant levels of violence also confirmed that 3 in 5 staff work additional unpaid hours, almost 40% reported feeling unwell due to work-related stress, 56% admitted working while not feeling well enough to perform their duties, 45% felt managers did not ask their opinions, 30% considered leaving their organisation.  One-third suggested they could not provide the level of care for patients that they aspired to, 20% reported bullying and harassment from colleagues and over 40% could not say they looked forward to going to work.

These figures indicate significant issues beyond the threat of physical violence.  Like all public sector organisations, the NHS has been subject to austerity, staff shortages, to the implementation of neoliberal managerialism, particularly the directive for efficiency, productivity and value for money, and to outsourcing and privatisation (Pollock, 2004; Davis et al, 2015).  The staff survey results indicate an absence of protection, stability and ethical responsibility for the other that requires further investigation but seems to suggest that positive rights or flourishing are lacking in a sector that demands more with less, stretches services to breaking point and ramps up dissatisfaction, from both employees and service users.  It is within this context that violent outbursts exist.

The workplace must continue as a site of criminological investigation but should also approach such research from a social harm perspective (Scott, 2017).  Widening the angle of vision to incorporate systemic violence as well as brutal outbursts of physical violence allows us to see the myriad harms of work that contextualise subjective assaults on doctors, nurses and teachers.  Many of our workplaces impede flourishing and well-being, both through subjective violence against the person and the systemic violence of neoliberal ideology.  As neoliberal capitalism continues to erode working conditions, conditions of employment and the social relations between employer, employee and consumer, the absences that emerge generate multiple harms, perpetrated by and against the individual.  It is incumbent upon Criminology to see the whole picture.

 

References

Davis, J., Lister, J. and Wrigley, D. (2015) NHS For Sale: Myths, Lies and Deception, London: Merlin Press.

Gill, M., Fisher, B. And Bowie, V. (2002) Violence at Work: Causes, patterns and prevention, (Eds) Cullompton: Willan.

Hall, S. and Winlow, S. (2015) Revitalizing Criminological Theory: Towards a New Ultra-Realism, London: Routledge.

Hall, S. (2012) Theorizing Crime and Deviance: A New Perspective, London: Sage.

Hillyard, P. and Tombs, S. (2004) ‘Beyond Criminology?’ in Hillyard, P., Pantazis, C., Tombs, S. and Gordon, D. (Eds) Beyond Criminology: Taking Harm Seriously, London: Pluto Press.

Lloyd, A. (2018a) The Harms of Work. Bristol: Policy Press.

Lloyd, A. (2018b) “Working for free: Illegal employment practices, ‘off the books’ work and the continuum of legality within the service economy’, Trends in Organised Crime. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12117-018-9351-x

Lloyd, A. (2019) “Harm at Work: Bullying and special liberty in the retail sector”, Critical Criminology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-019-09445-9

Martin, D., Mackenzie, N. and Healy, J. (2012) ‘Balancing risk and professional identity, secondary school teachers’ narratives of violence’, Criminology and Criminal Justice, 13(4), 398-414.

Pemberton, S. (2016) Harmful Societies, Bristol: Policy Press.

Pollock, A.M. (2004) NHS Plc: The Privatisation of Our Health Care, London: Verso.

Raymen, T. (2019) ‘The Enigma of Social Harm and the Barrier of Liberalism: Why Zemiology Needs a Theory of the Good’, Justice, Power and Resistance, 3(1) 134-163.

Schindeler, E. (2013) ‘Workplace violence: Extending the boundaries of criminology’, Theoretical Criminology, 18(3), 371-385.

Scott, S. (2017) Labour Exploitation and Work-Based Harm, Bristol: Policy Press.

Standing, G. (2011) The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class, London: Bloomsbury.

Yar, M. (2012) ‘Critical criminology, critical theory and social harm’, in Hall, S. and Winlow, S. (Eds.) New Directions in Criminological Theory, London: Routledge.

Žižek, S. (2008) Violence: Six Sideways Reflections, London: Profile Books.

 

Contact

Dr. Anthony Lloyd, Reader in Criminology, Teesside University

Email Anthony.Lloyd@tees.ac.uk

Twitter @lloyd_a1

Copyright free images courtesy of author and  Flickr

Do we know enough now?

Barry Godfrey is Professor of Social Justice and has published over twenty books on the history of crime. He is currently editing a Special Edition of the Howard League Journal on the impact of crime history.

 

 

There have been thousands of studies of criminal behavior and of society’s attempts to control it over the last two centuries. Academics think that even more research will enlarge, challenge, and refine our knowledge, and indeed it will. However, because – or perhaps despite of – the vast number of academics now involved in the criminological enterprise, there is considerable agreement about the causes and consequences of crime and punishment.

Historians of crime would find a similar consensus. The vast majority agree that crime is a social and historical construct; that institutions of control are shaped by their histories; that class, gender, and race all conditioned treatment in, and by, the criminal justice system (and still do); that economic inequalities were broadly linked to crime (and still are); and that society has long relied on ineffective nineteenth century forms of punishment (and still does).

I accept that these conclusions lack nuance. Different viewpoints, theoretical perspectives, and empirical wrangles are important, but I would suggest that any differences are dwarfed by the general agreement. Internal liturgical debates are important to us, but not to the general public and are confusing for policy makers (who often find our debates exclusionary, irrelevant, and frankly, bewildering). I am coming around to their point of view. At the very least, we should concede that our research is sometime incomprehensible to ‘outsiders’ and is not user-friendly to anyone who might transform it into practice or policy. Given that we have a common(ish) platform of academic understanding about crime, I would join others to argue that the greatest challenge for academics is for us to use our research to create a strong, meaningful, and persuasive dialogue which influences policy makers to improve the criminal justice system, and to engender more positive public attitudes towards offenders and ex-offenders.

In 2002 Paul Wiles noted that there was a growing gap between academic and public debate, lamenting that we have ‘lost the knack of engaging’. Sociology seems to do much better – according to Michael Burawoy in his Presidential Address to the American Sociological Association.  Later, in 2010, Uggen and Inderbitzen encouraged criminologists to follow the sociological lead in order to bring together “empirically sound research and comprehensible messages to diverse publics”. This meets the zeitgeist. The ‘impact agenda’ of various research exercises in the UK and elsewhere is of course a half-hearted and largely ‘half-arsed’ attempt to measure our worth in terms and criteria not of our choosing, but it has undoubtedly encouraged a greater level of engagement between academia and policymakers/practitioners. We are also in the business of making sure that our research ‘does something’ to improve policy and practice whether we like it or not. If we fail to engage with the policy realm, then are we at best academic parvenus, at worst a costly (remembering that most of our research is publicly funded) irrelevance?

Having influence over policy and practice is not easy to arrive by, of course. There are unforeseen consequences, and even the predictable outcomes are complex. Policy makers have different agendas, often serve political interests which are antipathetic to our own and require simplicity where we privilege complexity. For every example of the policy realm successfully using our research, there is a disaster story; yet for every disaster story, there is an example of our research being successfully used.

Teaching crime history and criminology may be the biggest impact any of us will have. Our lectures later become the common-sense attitudes towards crime that thousands of students take with them as they graduate from universities every year. However, we also know that sharper and more direct relationships with partners outside of the university can lead to more immediate positive impacts on society. Changing attitudes amongst the student body, hoping that our teaching will cause them to be more pro-social in the future, is a long game. To address the multiple crises society faces today, we need something quicker. We need to press our case. I am not, by any means, suggesting that we stop doing research. That would be perverse given the advantages and opportunities afforded by the second data revolution and the conjunction of readily available digitized crime records, the development of visual methods, and the number and increasing diversity of crime historians nationally and internationally. It would also, I suspect, go against the fundamental essence of being a researcher: research is what we like to do. However, we now have a broad consensus about the causes and consequences of crime, and the shaping of that consensus seems to demand action.  None of us are happy that there are still so many biases in the system, that Victorian penology still predominates, and that class and race still determine outcomes in the criminal justice process. So, is it now time to devote our efforts, not to collecting more and more evidence, but to use what we already know to influence others, and to bring about the change that we, and society, needs?

Contact

Professor Barry Godfrey, University of Liverpool

Email: Barry.Godfrey@Liverpool.ac.uk

Copyright free images courtesy of author

Celebrating Survival

David Best is professor of criminology at the University of Derby, Honorary Professor of Regulation and Global Governance at the Australian National University and Chair of the BSC Prison Research Network.

 

Politically, we appear to be surfing a new wave of being ‘tough on crime’ with more prisons to be built and a growth in the prison population to be anticipated. Outside of the political posturing however, all of us who have spent any time in the UK prison system recognise that prison is a tough, miserable and potentially damaging environment for all of those who have to spend time there, including but not restricted to the prisoners.

This is captured in a wonderfully accessible way in Carl Cattermole’s ‘Prison: A survival guide’ a lived experience account of what life in a UK prison is really like, with the original draft written by someone newly released from a male UK prison. The book does exactly what it says, providing a largely chronological account of how to get through the experience with as little distress as possible.

Illustrated with cartoons from Banx (@banxcartoons), it also provides a sense of hope – particularly around the friendships that can emerge in prison and how they can endure ‘through the gate’ – and the humanity that is a theme of the book comes across incredibly strongly. The book is warm and at times funny and is easy and accessible, but what makes this survival guide so important is the multiple voices contained within it.

Watch a video of Carl talking on Straightline.

Carl is a fabulous narrator and story-teller but his voice is supplemented with those of the partner of a prisoner, the child of a prisoner, a child prisoner, a prisoner who has a child in prison and the experience of a prisoner from a member of the LGBTI community. Each of these accounts is incredibly poignant and insightful and the strength of feeling is intense and powerful.

It would be extremely difficult to read the book without realising the ripple effects of pain and misery that imprisonment causes to families and to communities, but it is also impossible to read the Survival Guide without acknowledging the resilience and strength that emanates from each of these clear and powerful voices.

As a criminologist, I would like to recommend it not only to all of the members of the Prison Research Network but also to all of their students as a rich and layered insight into the prison experience. But it should also be mandatory reading for all prison officers and prison governors.

Of course, expecting politicians to read something that is inconsistent with their own prejudices and soundbites is unrealistic but perhaps some of those working in the MoJ and the Prison and Probation Service may be swayed by the pain and the power of this book.

Whether you think prisons are a necessary evil or not, this is a book that confirms the harms that prison inflicts while clearly proclaiming that there are a group of people who can and will overcome that harm. Whether they should have to is a critical part of the debate ‘Prison: A survival guide’ should generate. And perhaps Carl could be encouraged to follow it up with “Community: A survival guide”?

Buy the Book – Prisonism website

BSC members can win a copy of ‘Prison: A survival guide’ together with a copy of ‘Pathways to Recovery and Desistance: The Role of the Social Contagion of Hope’ by David Best by emailing ‘Prison Book Draw’ to info@britsoccrim.org  The draw runs through September and October with a closing date of October 29, 2019.

Book Summary

Prison A Survival Guide (Penguin, 2019) is the cult travelogue for the obfuscated and complex British prison system. Its primarily authored by Carl Cattermole, a 30 year old ex-prisoner, based in South London and sometimes Latin America, but also features contributions from female, LGBTQ+ and child prisoners and their supporting family members. Its target audiences are anyone who contacts the system: prisoners and their families, criminologists and politicians, citizens who want to bust media myths and know where ‘criminal justice’ £billions are being thrown. The first print run sold out in 10 days. Carl and other contributors are currently touring to promote the book.

 

Contact

Professor David Best, University of Derby

Email: davidwilliambest@icloud.com

Twitter: @davidwbest12

Copyright free image courtesy of author

Cartoons courtesy of Carl Cattermole and Banx (@banxcartoons)