After the Pandemic: Criminology and Social Harm after Covid-19

Andy Diaper MA (Crime and Justice) works with vulnerable and excluded people within the community. His research interests are what he calls ‘street life’:  Homelessness, drug dependency/dealing, street drinking, sex work and people who for a variety of reasons enact most of their lives on the street.

 

We are living in exceptional times as Covid-19 appears to be running out of control throughout most of the world. The death toll rises daily at a frightening rate, the fear and tragedy touches everyone’s lives. It feels ever more difficult to get clear and trustworthy information as scientists and politicians in England and indeed from around the world give out contradictory statements. Globalisation has never felt more real or terrifying.  How do we keep ourselves and loved ones safe? Will life ever return to ‘normal’ again? Our collective ontological security is fast slipping away.

Is this a good time to contemplate change? Or to begin planning future research whilst we are surrounded by so much death and pain? The short answer is yes but care and empathy are called for. We are in the extraordinary position of being able to observe the genesis of change that is affecting all aspects of our social world. It is far too early to speculate what changes will occur in the long term but that should not stop tentative exploratory work being carried out now. What better time to start collecting data such as ethnographic inquiry, diaries, collating statistical information now be it false or accurate, the truth can be looked for later.

It is a time of thinking out loud, time to look for the questions to ask, not a time to formulate answers. Perhaps the best way of achieving this is in the form of blogging and social media as opposed to the more formal academic paper. This is also an effective way of reaching a wider audience because of this it is also important to write in an accessible way. Greater reflexivity is required to place us within the research, the epidemic will have touched all our lives. It can be argued that for too long criminology has produced important work deserving of better dissemination, but never gaining the wider recognition it deserves. We are on the cusp of the ‘new normal’ it is an opportunity that cannot be missed.

There has been much speculation on the value of social science during Covid-19. It has been argued that the only science of value concerning the pandemic is medical or related fields such as epidemiology.  This may well be true at the most fundamental level in saving lives and understanding the nature of the virus. The function of the virus is to find hosts to make reproduction possible. However, how the virus can move through populations, who is most vulnerable and at risk is very much the domain of social sciences.

So where does criminology come into play?  At the simplest level it can be seen to fulfil two functions. Firstly, the study of the introduction of the new  ‘The Coronavirus Act 2020’  (2020, Act) and the scope of the effects on our civil liberties. The 2020 Act touches on many aspects either by amending existing statutes or creating new ones. These changes affect many facets of our lives removing some fundamental freedoms: one being the power to restrict public gathering or to prohibit them entirely. It can be argued that when emergency powers are introduced  they can often outlive the original phenomena. Leading to the danger of using the legislation in ways that the Act was not originally created for. There is also the examination of the effects of Covid-19 on crime in general for example the rise in domestic abuse and how some volume crimes appear to have decreased. It will be a time to revisit how we theorise crime.

Secondly there is the social harm perspective to the pandemic. It should be remembered that a zemiological perspective can be used to analyse crime as well as social harm. David Downes famously stated that criminology was a rendezvous discipline and as such zemiology should now be embraced in the same way as sociology or social psychology to give two examples. This is not the place to put a full argument forward on whether it should become a discipline or not. At the time of writing this piece the four nations of the UK are beginning to lift the lock down incrementally. Business and schools  are being urged to re-open despite concerns from elements of the public, press, opposition MP’s and scientists.  On the effect this may have in creating a second spike to the virus, we cannot predict the future, but we can prepare the groundwork for future research. At this time, we do not know what effect this lifting the lock down will have on people’s lives. However, it is not difficult to speculate if this lifting is too early and a second spike is created the devastation could be horrific. It is already tentatively coming to light that the pandemic has affected the vulnerable in society the most. The elderly in care homes, those in poor housing and the lowest paid doing the most dangerous jobs with insufficient protective equipment. Social harm has already occurred, but it could become far worse. It is the time to begin to gather the evidence to build future research even if it does feel very ‘raw’ now. It is also a good time to consider Engels concept of ‘social murder.’

As was said at the beginning this piece contains no answers only questions. By beginning the process when many are struggling to simply get by daily is a big ‘ask’. However, by formulating the questions whilst the pandemic is still all around us, we will form better questions, leading to better research and who knows, answers to better understand and control future disasters.

I will finish on a famous saying from a 1980’s American cop show ‘Hill Street Blues’

‘Let’s be careful out there’

Contact

Andy Diaper, Independent Researcher

Email: Andy.diaper@btinternet.com

Twitter: @andy_diaper

 

Images: courtesy of the author

Inside the COVID-19 State: Protecting Public Health Through Law Enforcement

Dr. Lambros Fatsis is Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Brighton and the winner of the British Society of Criminology’s ‘Blogger of the Year Award 2018’.

 

 

 

After three weeks in a state of isolation following the Coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak, we could be excused for mistaking ourselves for the virus we stay away from. The UK government’s  slogan: ‘Stay at home, protect the NHS, save lives’ has become the mantra we live our lives by, while also setting the tone for a new social contract through which we come together socially by staying apart physically. Accompanying such governmental instructions, new public health regulations were also introduced to ensure compliance through law enforcement. Such emergency measures would be sensible, defensible and desirable even, if being quarantined and policed were to merely supplement rather than nearly substitute the provision of adequate healthcare. Yet, law enforcement has taken precedence over an adequate public health response forcing the government to apologise ‘if people feel there have been failings’.

This is an opportune moment to reflect on why the government chose policing against the public over protecting people from the virus by adopting a law enforcement approach to a public health emergency. The remainder of this blog post will grapple with that question by critically assessing the new “Coronavirus regulations”, and arguing against criminological analyses that disguise the medical nature of the Covid-19 pandemic as a criminal justice matter.

Policing the public as a virus

In the wake of the Covid-19 crisis, the UK government set up a coronavirus action plan to limit the spread of this infectious disease through emergency legislation which created new offences and widened police powers.  These new regulations came in the form of a Coronavirus Bill which passed through Parliament on March 25, 2020 accompanied by a statutory instrument which gave legal force to the new social distancing rules. These rules prohibit people from ‘leav[ing] the place where they are living without reasonable excuse’, during the lockdown, and empower the police to ‘direct’ or ‘remove’  individuals ‘to the place where they are living’ allowing the use of ‘reasonable force, if necessary’. Breaching the prohibition amounts to ‘commit[ting] an offence’ which is ‘punishable on summary conviction by a fine’. Put simply, failure to comply with these instructions means breaking the law and, therefore, committing a criminal offence.

As these laws became daily practice allowing the police to impose fines, disperse gatherings and remove people to their homes, police forces around the country have also issued court summonses, resorted to online shaming, deployed vehicle checkpoints and used aerial drones and roadblocks to enforce the lockdown, targeting ‘bored’ drivers, dog walkers, people sitting on park benches and even shops selling Easter eggs. Such stories may be dismissed as unfortunate, and perhaps inevitable, mishaps, or isolated cases that are harmless if not altogether amusing. Yet other incidents, such as the violent arrest of a man who was moving a tree for his mother, alert us to the danger of extending police powers without due regard for the consequences: especially when their vague nature, broad scope and worrying dependence on discretion render them illiberal, discriminatory and illegitimate too.

Policing as the virus

None of the above is meant as a suggestion that emergency laws should not be observed. However, it must also be stressed that conformity depends on democratic legitimacy, not repressive authority. As they currently stand the new police powers are arbitrary in their design and unrestrained in their force, raising questions about who is more likely to be targeted under such legislation, on what grounds and based on whose interpretation of such laws. For example, whatever may count as ‘reasonable excuse’ or ‘reasonable force’, in The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (England) Regulations 2020, largely relies on police officers’ individual judgement, despite additional guidelines that change nothing in the actual legislation. Since there is no explicit prohibition on leaving one’s home only once a day, no time limit by which one has to return home, and no requirement that one may leave one’s home only for exceptional reasons, enforcing such vague regulations ultimately results to their arbitrary application by officers who are given wider powers of discretion to decide what restrictions are breached and what charges are to be made. This is made worse by the realisation that these regulations convert almost all “normal” social behaviour into anti-social behaviour, thereby turning fundamental rights and civil liberties such as freedom of movement and assembly into criminal offences.

Some might dismiss such concerns as little more than liberal hand-wringing, yet policing requires ‘the common consent of the public, as opposed to the power of the state’. This means that without public support, policing becomes a fraudulent imitation of its legally-defined remit, and the law morphs into a counterfeit image of itself. In the light of the two-year time span of the Coronavirus Bill and the lack of parliamentary scrutiny or approval of the Coronavirus regulations, references to a “police state” may sound flippant, but they are not unfounded. Such warnings may cultivate alarmism, but they also nurture attentiveness to what happens when citizens’ activities are supervised by diktats from government instead of democratic consent.

Protecting the public from the virus

As critics and supporters of policing as a tool for managing public health emergencies clash, the question of whether policing has any role to play in the Covid-19 crisis asserts itself and demands credible answers. Although the government introduced the Coronavirus Bill ‘for the purposes of preventing, protecting against, controlling or providing a public health response to the incidence or spread of infection or contamination’,  it is not clear why the only ‘relevant persons’ for enforcing these regulations must be ‘constables, police community support officers (PCSOs)’ or ‘those designated by local authorities and by the Secretary of State’. Given that Covid-19 is a public health threat, it might be sensible to suggest that it requires a medical rather than a criminal justice response.

Accustomed though we have become to consider ourselves a public health risk, as potential hosts cells in which Coronavirus multiplies, it does not follow that the only, the best, or most urgent response has to be the policing of our movement or the restriction of our civil liberties. At least not without testing on a mass scale, and ensuring that the NHS is adequately equipped with enough Protective Personal Equipment (PPE), ventilators, healthcare staff and hospital beds. The decision to prioritise policing over healthcare, therefore, is based more on politics and expedient crisis management than on the prevention, detection, containment, and eradication of Covid-19. As public health experts, Prof. David McCoy among them, note: a ‘greatly expanded testing regime combined with aggressive case detection and contact tracing, coupled with continued physical distancing and improved hygiene’ would have helped us ‘avoid the harms of draconian, population-wide lockdown’.

This is not to suggest that we should disregard the current rules and regulations, but to abide by them in the full knowledge that we are being policed as the virus instead of being tested for the virus. Staying at home to protect the NHS is eminently sensible and truly commendable, but it is done in order to protect the NHS from the initial and ongoing failures of the state to take action. It is a collective effort we willingly make as a result of state failure. Not only did the UK government procrastinate, missing important deadlines to bulk-buy PPE and ventilators, despite shortages in the NHS, but testing also lags behind, ignoring the World Health Organisation’s message to ‘test, test, test’ when Covid-19 was still treated as an epidemic rather than a full-blown pandemic.

Rethinking policing in times of crisis

In the absence of adequate support for the NHS, the government’s public health agenda has ultimately resulted in policing instead of protecting the public, thereby attempting to police itself out of a public health threat. Policing Covid-19 away, however, does not just reek of state negligence by breaching its duty of care to the public. It also invites police- friendly criminologists and dyed-in-the-wool crime scientists to rethink their approach to policing by situating it into its political context, instead of pretending that it is a neutral civil institution. In the context of the Covid-19 crisis this involves asking not what the police should do to respond to a public health crisis, but whether the police should (ever) have a(ny) role in managing such crises.

Designing public safety, be it from violence or infectious diseases, is not and should not be the exclusive property of the police. It can also be practiced in non-coercive means through investment in healthcare, welfare and upheld through social solidarity and mutual aid, not tainted by suspicion, surveillance, punitiveness, or shaming. This involves thinking about who and what the police is, what it does, who does it do it to, and who does it do it for, therefore heeding Raymond Chandler’s oft-quoted yet otherwise largely ignored observation that ‘cops are like a doctor that gives you aspirin for a brain tumor, except that the cop would rather cure it with a blackjack’.

 

Contact

Dr. Lambros Fatsis, Lecturer in Criminology, University of Brighton

Twitter: @lfatsis

 

Images: courtesy of the author and Pexels

Higher Education and Desistance from Offending

Debbie Jones is an Associate Professor of Criminology and Director for Undergraduate Studies, Swansea University. Mark Jones was an Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Adult and Continuing Education at Swansea University at the time of the research. Our lead partner in this research is The hub in Swansea.

It is often the case that those entrenched in patterns of offending find it difficult to stop due to stigma, discrimination and other structural issues limiting opportunities to bolster aspiration (Ministry of Justice; Shapland & Bottoms). Several studies have concluded that studying within Higher Education (HE) can be a significant ‘hook for change’ offering development of personal agency and widening positive social networks, key factors towards desistance   (Lockwood et al., 2012; Runnell, 2017).

Yet, despite widening access to HE being a global endeavour (Evans et al., 2017), the Prison Education Trust highlight that HE can feel unwelcoming for those with a criminal record. Evans et al (2017) found that despite a drive to widen participation and access to HE in Wales, the internal culture and narrative can become ‘entangled’ re-enforcing the status quo at the expense of developing non-traditional student participation such as adult learners. Evans et al (ibid) conclude more needs to be done to assure greater equality across all demographics of society. We were therefore interested in how HE might be considered a useful public criminology approach for crime avoidance and support marginalised groups to reach their full potential.

This Blog shares our research carried out in Swansea, Wales which was funded by the Society for Research into Higher Education. The project explored the aspirations, barriers, and challenges for those at risk of offending to study in HE and considered what might be needed to support the desire to desist from offending within the context of a HE setting.  The project brought together academics, third sector and statutory agencies and most importantly we worked with those at risk of (re)offending as partners by carrying out research through ‘doing with’ rather than, ‘researching on’.

The data collection phase consisted of two engagement events. One for those that had offended or were at risk of offending and were members of our partner and host organisation ‘The Hub’ (n = 16) and the other with practitioners who worked with people at risk including two participants who were also studying at Higher Education and had offended (n = 10).

We adopted a Pictorial Narrative Approach as a data collection tool and community engagement activity which captures participant’s narratives in a visual manner using drawings, words and symbols and offered immediate triangulation and increased trustworthiness of the findings (Glaw, et al., 2017) through a focus group format.  The research produced interesting data with common themes across both groups.

Aspirations varied but everyone wanted to be happy and ‘get back on track.’ A common desire was to ‘sort my head out’ and have better mental health and well-being which was seen as a ‘daily struggle.’

Several people stated getting back on track in life meant getting a job with some wanting to use their own experiences to help others. The two most dominant aspirations related to positive family ties and relationships, and employment and these were often offered together. Getting back on track related to feeling secure and notions of home, family, health, employment and money. Such aspirations are key drivers to desistance (McNeill) and might be the necessary pre-requisites before any consideration can be given to embarking on HE. However, one of the more concerning factors that came through in the data was the haunting experiences of previous education.

Indeed, 12 of the 16 participants in the first focus group reported negative experiences, and like a ‘lost soul swimming in a fish bowl’ with loneliness and isolation a difficult past experiences to overcome. Many also recounted the negative learning experiences within the classroom related to ‘getting the answers wrong’ and being ‘told off’ and ‘sent to the back of the class.’ This left many feeling publicly embarrassed, intimidated, seen as a problem and not wanting to engage in future learning. All participants stated that they felt they had not been given a fair chance.

Ten participants identified learning difficulties as a barrier to education and that their behaviour led to exclusion. A common theme was bullying experiences within education from both teachers and peers. Ultimately this meant that most had feelings of alienation and resentment towards primary and secondary school and that it didn’t meet their needs.

Most participants had experiences of child and teenage abuse (neglect, physical and ‘dark’ stuff) and had been within the care and or criminal justice system during primary and secondary education and that due to all of this they were not ready for education.

However, for participants who had been to prison, it was often ‘the beginning of their education’ where they found hope and aspiration. Prison education was viewed as offering opportunity to develop basic skills such as reading and writing and for one participant it offered the chance to pursue a higher level of educational attainment which they pursued at University on release from prison.

Most participants identified university as marketing itself as a vehicle for gaining employment but really ‘just wanted the money.’ Three of the participants in the first group had attended university and felt the level of debt acquired during a degree was excessive and there were no guarantees that it would lead to a job.

One participant who studied Drama at university, said he had been promised the degree would lead to future opportunities but the course kept changing throughout and he felt let down by the institution.

There was a general mistrust of university and people that worked there and that the university was out for itself and getting money and that it viewed people like them in negative ways and didn’t always support future employment.

There was recognition however that university could help people gain confidence and improve their well-being. One participant reported, ‘I applied for university but they rejected me because of my conviction, only drink related offences mind you, but they rejected me anyway but even when I walk across the campus now I feel proud and it makes me walk with my head heal high – the university has a good vibe about it’.

Participants felt that universities need to develop inclusive environments that widen access and offer opportunities to those with a criminal past.

Barriers reported by the participants focused on funding, judgment, mental health and stigma due to their previous criminal conviction(s).

All participants from the first group were claiming benefits and felt university was completely out of reach and that the debt associated with going to university wasn’t worth it. Many of group do not have access to transport so simply paying public transport fares was viewed as out of their reach most of the time.

The participants reported that they felt their convictions would prevent them from going to university. One participant reported that he had been told that he needed to be ‘clean from drugs for two years before I can start doing courses, it’s really fucking hard’. Another participant articulated the views of the group when he said, ‘if you have the money they’ll take you but not if you have a conviction’.

The expression of isolation and stigma associated with a criminal conviction was overwhelming for this group and that university ‘didn’t want someone like me’ due to this. The group did want to access HE but the thought of entering into an institution was overwhelming. The words used included ‘scary’ ‘intimidating’ ‘big.’

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They expressed a desire for a new type of HE which focused on delivery to them in their community setting, supported by workers who understood their background and specific needs.

A few participants felt that if they were not treated appropriately in respect of their background and needs, they would likely get angry, frustrated and harm their confidence.

So what does this mean and what can HE do to actually be more supportive of potential students with offending backgrounds and really be a widening access environment? We believe that there are some very clear opportunities that HE could offer to support people who have offended, or are at risk of offending, and these include:

1. Higher Education based within the ‘community’ setting to remove fear of HE campus and potential stigma and judgement
2. Introductory and ‘hook’ HE opportunities to remove fear and stigma and build confidence and trust with HE
3. Specialist trained student services to meet needs of those students with a criminal record or risk of offending
4. Free HE opportunities to support motivations and aspirations of HE
5. Better outreach and marketing of HE and student loan system to those at risk of offending
6. Higher Education opportunities within prisons that support transition to community setting upon release

We are working on developing such initiatives in Swansea as well as applying for more funding to research this exciting and emerging area on desistance and HE.

 

References

1. Evans, C., Rees, G., Taylor, C., & Wright, C. (2017). ‘Widening Access’ to higher education: The reproduction of university hierarchies through policy enactment. Journal of Education Policy, 34(1), 101-116.
2. Glaw, X., Inder, K., Kable, A, and Hazelton, M.(2017), ‘Visual Methodologies in Qualitative Research: Autophotography and Photo Elicitation Applied to Mental Health Research’. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 16, 1-8
3. Lockwood, S., Nally, J., Ho, T., & Knutson, K., (2012). ‘The Effect of Correctional Education on Postrelease Employment and Recidivism: A 5-Year Follow-Up Study in the State of Indiana’. Crime and Delinquency, 58(3), 380-396.
4. McNeill, F. (2019) Rehabilitation, Corrections and Society. Retrieved July 01, 2019, from http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/159625/7/159625.pdf
5. Ministry of Justice (2010) Understanding Desistance from Crime. Available at: http://www.safeground.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/Desistance-Fact-Sheet.pdf

6. Prison Education Trust (2017). To be truly inclusive, universities must help prisoners feel they belong. Available at:https://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2017/aug/16/to-be-truly-inclusive-universities-must-help-prisoners-feel-they-belong

7. Runell, L. (2017). Identifying Desistance Pathways in a Higher Education Program for Formerly Incarcerated Individuals. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 61(8), 894-918.
8. Shapland, J., & Bottoms, A. (2011). Reflections on social values, offending and desistance among young adult recidivists. Punishment & Society, 13(3), 256–282. https://doi.org/10.1177/1462474511404334

 

Contact

Debbie Jones, Hillary Rodham Clinton School of Law, Swansea University Deborah.a.jones@swansea.ac.uk

Twitter name – @debjonesccjc

Mark Jones, Director at Higher Plain Research & Education

Markjones1977@yahoo.co.uk

Twitter name @A_HigherPlain

 

Images: courtesy of the authors

Co-ordinating a research project in 6 continents

The challenge and joy of coordinating a research project in 6 continents in the era of the internet

 

Vania Ceccato is a researcher at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. She is also a BSC International Ambassador.

 

This story is about the challenges and potentialities of doing collaborative work in Criminology using your own computer, with no funding, but supported by a ‘gaggle’ of a highly motivated researchers, ready to work.  Back in early 2016 I was teaching undergraduates how to put together a graduation thesis and teaching them how to apply a survey to general population. I incentivized my students to explore their own mobile phones and digital devices to make the data collection. Through this I taught them how to carry out an online survey and later critically analyze the collected data. I had long wished to question Metro passengers about their safety perceptions; so I handed my students questions on sexual violence and sexual harassment in transit in particular.

That did not work very well. Students were, overall, reluctant to ask such questions and passengers were unwilling to answer them. However, I do not attribute this failure to the students or passengers.  At that time, most of us did not feel comfortable talking openly about sexual harassment, at least when compared to recent years. Therefore, it was no surprise that my students were fairly reluctant to ask transit riders about their experiences of sexual harassment while using transit. Just a year later, the appearance of the #MeToo! Movement on the internet and outside cyberspace made it easier to get information about these problematic daily-life experiences. I decided then to have another go with the survey but this time asking my own students about sexual harassment.

Things went much better—the survey was answered by more than 1500 university students in the Stockholm region. Additionally, it later gained answers from 13,323 students worldwide, in 18 cities (as shown in map below)!

What prompted this sudden change? This project originally began with the suggestion from a colleague in USA. She thought we should extend the original survey, apply it in our respective universities, and write a comparative paper. So we did. In the process, I mentioned our ideas with colleagues in a global user-list and suddenly, we were 14 universities engaged in this global project: researchers wanted to take part and apply the survey in their own universities, from Lagos- Nigeria to Vancouver-Canada, from Tokyo-Japan to Bogota-Colombia, 3 others came along during the process. It was amazing to see so many people, determined to see this project succeed. We did not have any funding to offer and I thought it would be a big of waste of everybody’s time if people would give up along the process … but it was worth it the risk.

I was lucky in having my colleague and mentor Prof Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris at UCLA coordinating this research enterprise with me. She was equally engaged and very interested in getting an overall picture on sexual violence/harassment in transit environments. Apart from the time difference (when she was waking up in Los Angeles, I was ready to go home from work!), it was lovely to have Anastasia to discuss ideas, worries, share instructions and support anyone in the group.

Of course, in a project of such global scope, there will always be incongruences and challenges when collecting and analyzing the data. This study was no exception, we faced a number of challenges: particularly when communicating over email and using various online sharing-platforms. Interestingly enough, most of the challenges we faced had nothing to do with technology or limited funding.

One of the earliest problems was the need to obtain approval from the university and/or from a special Ethical Review Board before approaching the students with the questionnaire. This process turned out to be longer than we expected and varied from country to country (taking around one to four months). I thought some of my colleagues would give up along the way, but thankfully they persevered!

Then came translation. In order to make comparisons with other cities possible, questions were later translated into seven languages (English, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese and Chinese) using Google Docs. This sharing platform ended up working very well and greatly simplified the process.

More complicated, were the differences in local and cultural norms. It was impossible to standardize all questions. In some cities the ‘race’ question in the USA (‘ethnic background’ in Sweden) was substituted with “country of birth/origin question”. In certain cases, the race/ethnicity question had to be omitted because in cities, the law does not allow asking questions on race, ethnicity or religious beliefs. Similarly in some cities, it is not considered appropriate to ask about someone’s sexual orientation in surveys, and our colleagues had to omit such questions.

We exchanged information mostly by email, and during the process of data collection and analysis, we split ourselves into smaller groups. Many of our meetings were performed over Skype or the similar communication platforms. Remote meetings did not always work but ultimately, we were able to put together a schedule of tasks to accommodate time differences between Manila, Stockholm and Los Angeles.

In all but two cases, the researchers were able to gather the minimum requested sample size of 300 students (some got more than 1000 students). To do so, they often had to follow different strategies such as adding an additional university, having a raffle with small rewards of “lucky money”. The questionnaire was distributed in different ways. For the large majority of cases, the survey was distributed electronically, either using a web platform, (for example, WordPress, Google Docs, etc.) email lists, or university pages with links to social media and to external electronic questionnaires. In a few cases, researchers distributed hard copies combined with an electronic version while in two cases, the link to the survey was posted on social media. 18 cities in 6 continents resulted in 13,323 students worldwide.

With data in hand, we provided instructions to all researchers to follow a particular set of research questions. Out of 18 case studies, 10 researchers presented their preliminary results in the Conference Crime and Fear in Public Places in Stockholm in October 2018, when a proposal for an edited book was suggested (the book proposal was later approved in early 2019). In order to homogenize the analysis and presentation processes, we created a framework of analysis and shared this via email with our colleagues. They were later invited to write essays of 2,500 words discussing their findings and contextual facts about their city. Using Skype or other communication platforms, they also worked in groups in four chapters putting together data, forming statistical analysis together and then writing.

However, our broad analysis brought with it some problems. For example, why did city A have 35% while city B had 78% in a particular question? Did they understand the instructions of analysis? This process was not always straightforward. It took months until we could agree upon a minimum set of questions and answers that were the same for everyone. Together with my co-coordinator in the USA, we combined statistics, compared results, checked and double-checked numbers and references. During that time we sent hundreds of emails, back and forth, before finally writing the final chapters, often with help from my colleagues. By August 2019, the edited volume was nearly complete. Yet, it took more than a month or so for us to get all permissions and high resolution pictures into one place before we finally submitted the book. There were many complications but eventually we did it!

So what can we take away from this research? The survey showed, without any doubt, that sexual violence/harassment in transit environments is unfortunately a common occurrence globally. However, the extent of harassment, ranges considerably from one city to the other. Additionally, the omnipresence of the potential for harassment in transit settings, leads to the adoption of certain behaviors on the transit riders behalf. Avoidance strategies prompt transit riders to avoid particular times, travel routes, and settings that are deemed as, particularly risky, or even avoid using transit completely, opting for other transportation options. This, of course, demands changes in the way transit systems are built, but also long term changes in society’s values and attitudes towards mobility and safety—both being highly gendered. We finalized this research by critically drawing from the results of the empirical work and proposing recommendations on how to respond to sexual harassment and sexual assault in transit environments.

So what can be learnt from the experience of doing research over emails and communication platforms?

We live in a world where we can communicate with someone across the oceans with a single click! This opens a door to a new world of possibilities, whether it be contacting a family member, friend, or doing research with colleagues.  It was a long and bumpy journey, but a worthwhile one. Our experience shows that it is possible to carry out a Global study like this one.  If you want to try to do something similar in the future, make sure you have three things before you start:

1. Clear aim and objectives and some pretty good ideas how to achieve them
2. A computer, internet and some ‘basic internet knowledge’
3. (Most importantly) A great motivated group of researchers you can rely on to ensure that things are done on time, ethically, and with good care for the research process and quality of data. You might want to share the research coordination with someone senior, more experienced researcher in the area.

A book summarizes this joint efforts (Transit Crime and Sexual Violence in Cities: International Evidence and Prevention) and is coming out soon from Routledge. Country reports might be available on request.  A special issue of International Journal of Comparative and Applied Criminal Justice will be available in March 2020. On behalf of my colleague Prof Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris at UCLA, USA, I would like to thank everybody that took part in this project, and in particular, a friend from the UK who directly contributed to the original survey applied in Stockholm in 2016. Thanks!

 

Contact

Vania Ceccato, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden

Email: vania.ceccato@abe.kth.se

 

Images: courtesy of the author

 

Working remotely: Criminology in a time of Covid-19

Dr Charlotte Harris and Dr Helen Jones

How is the BSC – a Society of members with shared interests but geographically disparate –  working during the COVID-19 pandemic? Like you, our sense of normality has changed enormously over the past week. Our sense of ontological security has been rocked.

Many of you will have experience of working from home. It has been part of a working pattern for academics almost since time began. But for most, shared experience was grounded in being present with students through teaching and with colleagues through research activities.  Now, this has  become a more distant set of activities.  And working from home may be even less routine for those who work as criminologists outside academia.   Life has changed perhaps less for us, the paid staff of the BSC, as we routinely work from home and, we wanted to share our experiences – and those of other criminologists – to suggest ideas that might help as we negotiate this isolated and potentially isolating landscape.

Creating a Workspace

As an academic, you might have lots of experience of working from home, or you might have done this infrequently. You might need long-term or short-term ‘fixes’ to help you work remotely. Try to get clarity from your institution of what they are providing. Will your employer pay for your internet costs, pay for an ergonomically suitable workstation (including desk, chair, lighting, webcam, headset). If you need these things immediately, it might be worth buying them now, keeping the receipts and trying to claim the cost back later. But ask first if possible.

You may not have a separate room at home that you can work in. A room divider might be useful to not only give you a blank space behind you when you are on the webcam, but also to pin things to and to screen off your workspace when you are done for the day. Creating a sense of work/home separation is vital to your mental health.

Pace yourself and prioritise. It is too easy to work beyond healthy work limits. Begin to create daily rituals that include breaks. You might be self-isolating but you can still do some stretches in front of a window, brew some tea, set a timer for regular breaks

Sharing a workspace

One thing has changed even for some of us at the BSC office – you will probably not be the only person working from home.  You may have to share workspace with family members, some of them children.  And it won’t be just the children who might struggle to differentiate work and leisure time and contact.  Have set times to take a break, make coffee, establish  a timetable for the ‘oncall’ parent but try and be flexible to spontaneity and the joyous interruption.

Keep a work journal

You might already do this: many people who work remotely do. It is easy to lose track of what you have been doing. At work our day is punctuated by teaching, visiting the library, having a meeting (that is likely to be minuted), or having a coffee with colleague. You do not get this at home, so make a note for yourself of what you have done, what you need to do (and tick those things off your list as you do them) and document decisions taken. Do this and your work doesn’t become invisible.

Communication

Communication is central of effective remote working. You will need ways of clarifying immediate questions, coupled with regular scheduled meetings.  There are a range of tools and your university is responsible for organising this. It might be Slack, Hangout Chats, Skype, Teams or some other communication tool but you shouldn’t have to figure this out for yourself. There has to be an organisational strategy underpinning communication, even in these quickly evolving times.

Your institutional IT protocols should allow you to access all necessary resources remotely.  However, this might take time to arrange and can seem insurmountable if you are not very technologically-minded, and have never had to be.   Don’t panic, most will be sortable.

It might help you (and other people) feel less isolated if you have webcam on. We are visual creatures and it helps to visually connect with others. But if a camera does not work for you, do not feel pressurised to have the camera on. Don’t give in to pressure.

Managing emails

How can we avoid the perils of endless emails? In the era of ‘reply all’ it can feel that every email needs to be responded to, and now. Well they do not. Practice what you want other people to do. If an email is for information only, put those recipients into the C.C. panel and make it clear that they do not have to reply. Just check emails twice a day and also let people know. This allows more reflection time, and you will notice that some of the ‘Urgent’ emails have already been answered. It is about managing expectations, so be clear about what you can and cannot do.

Being human

Even in these pressured and quickly changing (and challenging) days, being present to your colleagues is a good thing. A quick message (entitled ‘Good Morning’), that people know is non-urgent and they do not have to reply to can go a long way to creating a sense of camaraderie. A paragraph of what you did yesterday and what you plan to do today would suffice. Maybe something funny or a small win (‘I got what I needed from the supermarket!’): it doesn’t have to be work related.

Your message may be as small as ‘I’m here’ when you start work, but it helps to create a sense of presence and awareness that we are still here and we still matter. If you feel isolated reach out, to a colleague, to your Faculty head, to us here at the BSC (because we are human too and we have been working remotely for many, many years).

Words of Wisdom from our colleagues

Emma Milne, University of Plymouth – As much as is possible, separate work and home – don’t work on your sofa or bed, work at a table and (ideally) in a spare room. So work stays work and home stays home.

Tim Newburn, LSE – On the issue of extended periods at home trying to write etc, I think the greatest dangers of remote working relate to the absence of (a) structure, and (b) human contact. I try (and often fail, but still try) to have a sense of the shape of the day. It is easier to keep going, ironically, if one has regular breaks. So, dividing the day into chunks tends to help. Then, regular checking in with others is crucial (another thing I’m only too good at letting slide). I think in the coming weeks and months we’ll discover that Skype/Zoom/FaceTime etc and going to be essential tools for keeping in touch with colleagues as well as friends and for looking after our own, and others, mental health. Other than that, I recommend both listening to lots of music and reading lots of fiction. Both are extraordinarily good for the soul.

Vicky Canning, University of Bristol – Time: the amount of time which goes into effective – quality – online teaching should not be underestimated and will shift the current workload model. Online teaching also opens up issues on both the delivery of sensitive materials and copyright with regard to use of online materials and images. Online institutions generally have legal teams to consider potentially libellous claims (such as when discussing corporate crime). This puts individuals at serious risk (I have 3 colleagues taken through court for this) so this should be considered. Also, from a worker rights perspective, we differ from other countries in that our institution owns copyright to our work. Whilst replay actually legally requires our permission to be reused under performance rights (so universities can own it, but not play it without our explicit permission) however this is not the case for lecture slides. As such, it would be good to have a formal agreement in kind from the University that we can delete our materials at the end of term so we are not at risk of writing ourselves out of jobs.

James Treadwell, Staffordshire University –  Firstly, this is not something to fear, and my big lesson is, regardless of your mode of delivery, that a real passion for subject of criminology and a love of debate and teaching cuts across all forms of delivery. I really do believe that. Secondly in the early days it is easy to get concerned about how people react to you when you can’t see them, and that for me is often the big change between in person and online. In my experience many engage with webcams off in live sessions. Do not be too phased by it. Also, do not let recorded sessions make you try and adopt a style that is not you. After a while it becomes second nature. I really like the live online forum because it can actually help to be even more topical, post articles, news stories and things in the message board and be contemporary and you will not have too much to fear about the shift to online.  But as you spend more time delivering in these new ways, find time to do the simple things too, stretch your muscles, do some exercise, spend half hour with a book in the sun in the garden to make up for the time you would walking to and from lectures. It is still important you enjoy your job, but it is a job and it is now coming into a different part of your world. But it is a job. Now more than ever it is vital you do not let it take over that home world.

Emma Williams, Canterbury Christchurch University – Make a call to a colleague every day and talk.

Marian Duggan, University of Kent – Make a (realistic) schedule of the day / week where possible. I have this on a whiteboard, broken into hourly chunks. It is a helpful frame of reference for what I should be doing and when. I also use the Pomodoro Technique (time allocation system) to keep tasks to their allocated time. Info about this is available online. For people (like me) who are unable to keep their working space separate from their general living space, try to get in a routine of setting up and packing away your work stuff to mentally break between ‘work’ and ‘home’.

Lizzie Seal, University of Sussex – Don’t have a 5 year old.

Do you have any other tip that you can share?   Tweet us @BritSocCrim and use the hashtag #WorkingFromHome

 

Copyright free image courtesy of: https://www.lostandfoundinedtech.org/

Unmasking Ineffectiveness: The UK’s Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007

Sharon Hartles was awarded a Master of Arts in Crime and Justice (with distinction) from the Open University in December 2019. 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.

 

The Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007 (CMCH Act) has never been as visibly under the spot-light or as open to public scrutiny as it is currently. The reason this is the case is the loss of life of 72 individuals (and subsequent contempt) which occurred during a preventable and foreseen fire that took place at the Grenfell Tower. This fire occurred on Wednesday 14^th June 2017, and has been labelled amongst other things as ‘Britain’s worst fire in a century’. If an event such as this was not tragic enough, it resulted from the failures of a plethora of companies and large organisations fuelled by cost-cutting measures in the pursuit of profiteering.

On Monday 10^th June 2019, Scotland Yard announced its intention to pursue suspects for offences of corporate manslaughter and gross negligence manslaughter. However, due to the delayed public inquiry, a 2021 timeframe was given as a date for formal charging decisions. This reveals the clear links to corporate manslaughter and provides the grounding for why this law is now centre stage of media interest. A more recent headline on Thursday 6^th February 2020 by the BBC News entitled: ‘Grenfell Tower inquiry backs protection for refurbishment firms giving evidence’ reveals an additional layering of contempt taking the form of ‘protection’ granted to those potentially suspected under the CMCH Act. It is apparent, that such ‘protection’, in the form of impunity, is deeply ironic given the fact that, had ‘protection’ – in the form of health and safety of the Grenfell residents – been the driving force behind the Grenfell Tower refurbishments, ‘protection’ against incrimination would not be required by those who now find themselves facing possible corporate manslaughter charges.

Critical academics with an interest in crimes of the powerful, particularly corporate crimes, are well versed in the ineffectiveness of the CMCH Act. Within this field of study, a large body of data can be readily drawn upon to evidence that in its first ten years only a paltry total of 26 companies have been successfully prosecuted under the CMCH Act. What is even more noteworthy, is that 25 of these companies could have been prosecuted under the previous law. The law of Involuntary Manslaughter was underpinned by the unlawful killing of a human being without malice aforethought. Gross Negligence Manslaughter was a subsidiary element under which successful corporate prosecutions took place. However, this was not without its flaws because it did not reflect the way modern organisations operate, which may have been a factor behind the significant lack of its implementation.

In the 50 years prior to 1998 there were a total of four cases, where individual directors and business owners faced manslaughter charges. Each of these cases was successful because they were small organisations where the management had a more ‘hands on’ involvement. Between 1998 and the introduction of the CMCH Act the number of cases rose to approximately 20 due to a joint protocol between the Police, the HSE and the Crown Prosecution Service. All of these prosecutions had something in common and that was they all concerned small businesses (and not large corporations). In part, this was because it is easier to identify an individual such as the senior manager or director as being ‘a controlling mind’ in small companies, and therefore relatively easier to prosecute. Unlike the previous law, the CMCH Act was designed to encompass the failure of health and safety management, the degree of that failure should determine the corporate and individual charges laid.

The CMCH_Act, defined corporate manslaughter in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and corporate homicide in Scotland, and was given Royal Assent on Thursday 26^th July 2007, coming into force on Sunday 6^th April 2008, and was fundamentally devised to hold both small and large organisations to account. Yet none of those, aforementioned 26 companies prosecuted under the CMCH Act have been large organisations. In contrast to the 26 prosecutions under the law of corporate manslaughter in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, in almost twelve years there have been no prosecutions in Scotland under the law of corporate homicide. For this reason, Claire Baker, Member of the Scottish Parliament put forward a proposal for a Bill to reform the law to ensure ‘where loss of life is caused by the recklessness or gross negligence of individuals, companies or organisations that, where proved, the wrongdoer can be convicted of the offence that reflects the appropriate seriousness and moral opprobrium of what occurred’. The final proposal was lodged with The Scottish Parliament on Tuesday 12^th November 2019.  This Private Member’s Bill has since received the right to be introduced and subject to the three-stage scrutiny process.

The ineffective nature of implementing corporate law can be seen globally and is not localised to the UK. This can be illustrated through the SNC-Lavalin scandal that demonstrates how: ‘Canada is weak on corporate crime’. The law is manipulated to favour ‘powerful interests, and the unprecedented power of multinational corporations’. Such crafting leaves ‘ordinary people exposed to the harms that result from corporate greed taking precedence over the rule of law’. According to Professor Gary Slapper, ‘Justice is mocked if an important law goes unenforced‘ and this has certainly been exemplified by the lack of successful prosecutions under the CMCH Act, when compared to the thousands of fatalities, resulting from gross breaches of a duty of care.  A key criticism of this law is the loophole in the form of the inclusion of section 18, which explicitly states ‘No individual liability’.

On Friday 21^st July 2006, in response to the government publishing the Corporate Manslaughter Bill, Dorothy Wright, a founder member of Families Against Corporate Killers (FACK) stated:  “Having read it I don’t feel the bill is worth the paper it is written on”.  Furthermore, Hazards Campaign noted that FACK met with Labour Government ministers and argued without success, for individual Directors Duties and Responsibilities to be included in a bid to tighten up the Bill. In the light of this, FACK openly claim that the CMCH Act was a betrayal of families as soon as it was passed. Thirteen years in the making (between the initial proposals in 1994 and the introduction of the CMCH Act) its legacy is that companies which kill will never be anything more than symbolically ‘at risk’ of a corporate manslaughter conviction. Therefore, this leads to multiple questions including: what was the purpose of enacting an ineffective law? and: Who stands to benefit from it?

It has taken the death of a further 72 people (increasing the corporate death toll rate) and the high profile nature of the Grenfell Tower tragedy to yet again unmask the ineffectiveness of the CMCH Act.. Almost fourteen years after the government published the Corporate Manslaughter Bill, FACK’s response proved to be predictively accurate. ‘A fine however large is not an appropriate or a proportionate penalty for the crime of killing a person by flouting health and safety law which is in fact criminal law. Larger corporations will pay the fine and carry on killing and maiming as usual’.

The Grenfell survivors, those bereaved and the community, should not have to play a pivotal role in pursuing truth, justice and accountability. However, their publicised plight may serve to save other families from suffering the same fate at the hands of large organisations/corporations whose actions appear to be beyond the reach of the CMCH Act. The legislation has to be reviewed. Adopting Claire Baker’s Proposed Culpable Homicide (Scotland) Bill which encompasses an appropriate sentence for the wrongdoer is a fairer form of justice. For this reason debate around enacting reform into the UK’s Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide laws must be prioritised.

Originally posted on:  sharonhartles.weebly.com

Direct link: https://sharonhartles.weebly.com/unmasking-ineffectiveness-the-uks-corporate-manslaughter-and-corporate-homicide-act-2007.html

 

Contact

Sharon Hartles, Open University

Email: sh28739@ou.ac.uk

Twitter: @shartles1

Images: courtesy of the author

Women, History, Invisibility and Prisons

Women, History, Invisibility and Prisons: A contribution to the Women’s History Month

Susanna Menis is a Lecturer in Law at Birkbeck London University, School of Law. Her recent book provides a revisionist prison history which brings to the forefront the relationship between gender and policy. It examines women’s prisons in England since the late 18^th century to the beginning of the 20^th century.

Historical criminology research on prisons in England comes across as genderless. Yet, these histories reflect the story of male prisons (Naffine, 1997) – not least because, there have been many historical records to draw upon. When we say the ‘invisibility’ of female prisoners, it is meant to suggest that the experiences and needs of women have been ignored. Many have argued that prisons are ‘a man’s world; made for men, by men’, and as a consequence, women have been subjected to regimes designed to deal with the needs faced by the larger prison population, that of men (Heidensohn and Silvestri, 2012; Priestley, 1999; Heidensohn, 1985). When attempts are made to examine the history of female prisons, because, as put by Zedner (1994:100) ‘to suggest that they [women prisoners] were simply “not foreseen” is patently implausible’ – requests are made for comparative analysis (Garland, 1993; Wiener, 1993). It is this sort of intellectual chastisement that has fostered the reproduction of theoretical frameworks shaped upon ‘a masculinist vision of the past’ (Spongberg, 2002:3).

The historiography of women in prisons in England is small (e.g. Smith, 1962; Heidensohn, 1985; Dobash et al., 1986). These (hi)stories however, have used at face value traditional and/or revisionist prison historiography to contextualise the history of female prisons: hence, failing to reclaim women’s subjectivity to a great extent (with the exception of Zedner, 1994). Instead, historical primary sources evidence that despite their small numbers in comparison to men, penal policy was as concerned, proportionally, with female prisoners as it was with the male prisoner (Menis, 2020).

The discourse of the invisibility of female prisoners has lots to do with the taking at face value, the (hi)stories told about the separate and the silent systems. These were prison regimes imported from America in the 1840s because they were financially convenient, requiring minimal contact with the prisoner. They were adopted inconsistently and interchangeably, initially, in the three national penitentiaries: Pentonville, Millbank and Brixton (Menis, 2020). We know lots about these regimes, because volumes have been written on them. However, what is missing from such narratives is that the few women sentenced to the national penitentiaries were subjected to a specific female-version of the regime; also, the majority of women, because of the nature of their offence, were sent to local prisons, where the two American prison regimes were applied unsystematically.

Social reformers such as Mary Carpenter, clearly acknowledged the importance of having in female prisons a different penal regime than in male prisons because ‘there is a very great difference between the inmates’ (1864: 207). Partly, this was informed by the understanding that imprisonment for women was recognised as a hindrance to social integration and the regaining of respectability for work and marriage purposes. Indeed, female convicts were transferred, towards the end of their sentences, to Fulham Refuge. This was aimed at ‘erasing the considerable stigma of being recognised as a female ex-convict’ (Zedner, 1991:171). As explained by Fulham Refuge’s governor, they hoped that people who might be intimidated by the idea of employing female ex-prisoners could ‘be induced to take them from a benevolent institution such as a refuge’ (Revd J.H. Moran (1854), quoted in Zedner, 1991:182). Also Du Cane (1885:170) considered that ‘these “refuges” were not prisons either in appearance or in discipline—they were homes and intended to afford the advantages of a treatment approaching in its characteristics to that of home influence’. However, from 1888 Fulham was reinstated as a ‘prison’, and for the next eight years female convicts were accommodated only in Woking prison; from 1896 it was only Aylesbury prison housing the small numbers of female convicts: on an average day in 1897, 202 women were recorded as present, having the yearly average reception standing at less than 50 (Report of the Commissioners of Prisons and Directors of Convict Prisons for the year 1896-1897, 1897:10, 43).

Most women, however, were sent to the 65 local prisons around the country. The second Prison Commission report for 1879 and Susan Fletcher’s memoir (1884) provide a valuable insight into the regime applied in these local prisons. By the end of 31 March 1879, only 63 prisons also housed women, and only Westminster gaol was a female-only prison. These prisons could have had a daily average population of as few as one woman (e.g. Southwell) and as many as 500 women at one time (e.g. Westminster and Liverpool). The Report tells us that only Lancaster goal employed women in gum breaking and cotton picking; otherwise, policy informed by (as we identify it now) stereotypical understanding of femininity and womanhood, meant that female prisoners were subject predominantly to employment in housekeeping. Susan confirms that also later in the century, the ‘hard labour’ she was sentenced to was ‘rather a myth’; as far as she was concerned, she ‘did a little knitting’ because she liked it, ‘but not an hour’s hard labour during the twelve months’ (1884:337).

Historical records evidence that the development of female prisons is closely related to the development of male prisons (Menis, 2020); however, denying a history of female prisoners in its own right fosters a stagnation in the discipline. The uncritical assertion of women’s ‘invisibility’ has led researchers to neglect the contribution of policy specifically concerning the female prison population in the shaping of mainstream prison policy. However, let us not confuse ‘bad’ with ‘different’; prison regimes have left much to be desired for, whether you were (are) a man or a woman. When first arriving to Westminster gaol, Susan Fletcher was faced with the ‘filthy horrors of the reception’. She describes in her memoir how ‘all wash from one tank, and wipe on one towel, and the poor women, wild with grief, or crazy with delirium-tremens, are screaming in the reception-cells’. Despite still being served bacon and beans during her stay (in 1879 the Prison Commission requested for these items to be removed), Susan thought that the food was not nutritious; her ring, which ‘fitted so tightly’ when she had just arrived to prison ‘came off very easily’ after only a week in custody. While waiting to progress to a position of trust (e.g. work in the kitchen and laundry), Susan had to spend 23 hours of the day in her cell. In that regard, she said (1884:320-1, 329):

A saint might grow more saintly by such a discipline, perhaps; but even a saint’s body could hardly get more healthy. Common men and women, social beings, with all their best instincts unsatisfied and blighted, must be made worse in every way by such unnatural conditions.

Women’s History Month raises awareness by documenting, acknowledging and celebrating women’s lives; it is about reclaiming historical ownership for experiences which have been kept muted. To find out more including relevant events:

Women Making Waves https://www.rmg.co.uk/see-do/women

Alternative arts http://www.alternativearts.co.uk/womens-history-month/4581216304

Women’s History Network https://womenshistorynetwork.org/

 

References

Carpenter M (1864) Our convicts. London: Longman, Vol 2.

Dobash RP, Dobash ER and Gutteridge S (1986) The Imprisonment of Women. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Du Cane E (1885) The Punishment and Prevention of Crime. London: Macmillan and Co.

Fletcher SW (1884) Twelve months in an English prison. Boston: Lee and Shepard.

Heidensohn F (1985), Women and Crime. London: Macmillan.

Heidensohn F and Silvestri (2012) Gender and Crime. In Maguire M, Morgan R, and Reiner R (ed.) The Oxford handbook of criminology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 5^th edn, pp.336-361.

Menis S (2020) A History of Women’s Prisons in England: The Myth of Prisoners Reformation. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

Naffine N (1997) Feminism and Criminology. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Rafter NH (1983) Prisons for Women, 1790-1980. Crime and Justice 5: 129-181.

Priestley P (1999), Victorian prison lives. London: Pimlico.

Smith A (1962) Women in Prison. London: Stevens & Sons.

Spongberg M (2002) Writing Women History since the Renaissance. Palgrave Macmillan.

Zedner L (1994) Women crime and custody in Victorian England. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

Second Report of The Commissioners of Prisons (1879). London: HMSO.

Report of the Commissioners of Prisons and Directors of Convict Prisons for the year 1896-1897 (1897). London: HMSO.

 

Contact

Susanna Menis, School of Law, Birkbeck, University of London

Email: s.menis@bbk.ac.uk

 

Images: courtesy of the author and permission given by artist, for Woman in a cell © Noriko Hisazumi 2019