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Confronting campus hate crime through forum theatre methods

Forum theatre methods enabled us to educate students about hate crimes in an interactive, safe and supportive environment

Why are hate crimes at record levels in the UK?

With hate crimes at record levels, we need to look beyond Brexit & recent terror attacks to fully understand exactly what is going on

Chris Allen is Associate Professor in Hate Studies at the University of Leicester. For almost two decades, he has been at the forefront of research into Islamophobic and extremist hate.

Levels of hate crime in the UK have been on an upward trajectory over the past few years. None more so than in 2016-17 when overall numbers increased by 29%: the largest annual increase since records began. During this same period of time, the number of racially and religiously-motivated hate crimes recorded reached record levels. As we enter National Hate Crime Awareness Week, this article offers an explanation for these previously unprecedented levels.

For the Government, recent annual increases are ‘likely’ due to improved awareness, better recording, and a greater willingness of victims to come forward. Given 2016-7’s record levels however, this explanation appears simplistic. While likely to result in a greater number of recorded crimes, there would have had to have been extremely significant improvements for that to have translated into a 29% overall increase. Improvements alone also fail to explain record levels of racially and religiously-motivated hate crimes.

As regards the latter, 2016-7 was notable given how certain events duly impacted the levels of hate crime recorded. The first of these was the Brexit referendum. While ‘Leave’ campaigners have since refuted claims that the referendum catalysed a sharp increase in the levels of hate crime in the days and weeks that followed, official data shows that in the 11 month period following the vote hate crimes surged by 23%. Interesting about this was the unprecedented targeting of white Eastern Europeans, anomalous in the British context where racially-motivated hate crime has historically targeted non-white minorities.

Also unique to 2016-7 were the number and scale of terror incidents in the UK. As the official data illustrated, following each incident – in Westminster, Manchester, London Bridge, Finsbury Park and Parsons Green – there was a sharp increase in the number of hate crimes recorded. Noting how this has been a pattern dating back to the 9/11 terror attacks, both research and third-party data from Tell MAMA (Measuring Anti-Muslim Attacks) confer legitimacy on the notion that these backlashes are undertaken on the basis of exacting ‘revenge’ against Muslims and their communities. It might be assumed that this would go some way to explaining the record levels of religiously-motivated hate crime.

While the Brexit referendum and number of terror incidents go some way to explaining the size of the increase in 2016-7, they fail to account for the year on year rises. To better understand this, it is necessary to take a broader perspective, one that considers how the socio-political landscape of the UK has changed and developed. For Poynting and Perry, this is important as socio-political landscapes can create climates which bestow ‘permission’ to hate and by consequence, enact hate crime. As they go on, this occurs when political actors and political mechanisms function to dichotomously demarcate ‘us’ from ‘them’: actively constructing ‘Others’ that are indeterminably and unequivocally oppositional, fear inducing and threatening.

This – according to Abrams and Travaglino – was evident in the discourses and rhetoric of Leave campaigners. Building on decades of various political actors routinely and repeatedly demarcating ‘immigrants’ as ‘Others’, Leave campaigners ratified the argument that had been premised many years beforehand that halting immigration – made possible by leaving the EU – would provide a ‘solution’ to the ‘problem’: nullifying the threat posed to ‘us’ by ‘them’. Allen and Young argue that the Brexit referendum achieved this by functioning as a political mechanism that conferred legitimacy on who could and who could not belong: politically and conceptually constructing an ‘us’ from ‘them’ in that it immediately functioned to demarcate who Britain could be ‘home’ for from those it could not. While the referendum was a one-off in this respect, it contributed towards – and fed into – the ongoing construction of a climate that was hospitable to being hateful and by consequence, enacting that hatefulness also.

2017’s unprecedented number of terror attacks can also be contextualized within that process of dichotomously demarcating ‘us’ from ‘them’ that in turn, feeds the construction of a climate that is permissible to hate. This can be seen in how for more than a decade in the UK – at least since the 7/7 terror attacks on the London public transport system in 2005 – political actors have repeatedly identified ‘Muslims’ and ‘Islam’ as problematic ‘Others’ both of which pose something of an existential threat to ‘our’ culture, values and way of life. Attributing all Muslims without differentiation the same attributes and capabilities, it is no surprise that Muslims have become repeat and indiscriminate victims of hate after every terror incident. As Poynting and Perry argue, the hospitable climate constructed by political actors and political mechanisms alike provide a ‘guide to action’ for the willing. For some at least, exacting ‘revenge’ on all and any Muslim can therefore be seen to be justified.

While 2016-7 was therefore notable, to fully understand why the levels of hate crime increased so significantly and why numbers continue to rise year on year it is necessary to look beyond those anomalous events to the socio-political landscape that has emerged and developed in the UK over the past decade or so. In doing so, it is possible to see how a hospitable climate has been established that not only bestows permission to hate but worryingly, permission to engage in hate crime: to justify the use of violence against those deemed to be ‘different’.

With this in mind, it is highly likely that hate crime numbers will continue to increase for the foreseeable future. Noting the concerns of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services – the UK’s police watchdog – the UK’s formal exit from the EU in 2019 is likely to catalyse even more hate and by consequence, more hate crime. Add in the potential for further terror attacks, the reality of political actors further adopting nationalistic and jingoistic discourses of ‘us’ and ‘them’, as also the growing threat posed by the extreme right-wing and the future looks increasingly bleak as does the UK’s socio-political landscape.

For further links please see the website of the Centre for Hate Studies

Contact

Chris Allen, Associate Professor, Centre for Hate Studies, University of Leicester

Email: chris.allen@leicester.ac.uk

Twitter: @DrChrisAllen

Website: www.drchrisallen.uk

Copyright free images courtsey of author and Wikimedia Commons

Race Matters: A New Dialogue Between Criminology and Sociology

The symposium created much-needed energy and new connections between scholars working around race and crime.

Authors: Rod Earle, Alpa Parmar, and Coretta Phillips

“I wish my department meeting looked more like this”

This rueful but heartfelt observation by Dr Patrick Williams captures many of our intentions in organising Race Matters: A New Dialogue Between Criminology and Sociology at the LSE at the end of August 2018. We wanted to create a gathering of black and minority ethnic scholars active in criminology and the sociology of race to focus on how race and ethnicity generate not only differential experiences of criminal justice but also of criminology. To achieve this we, as organisers, opted for an invitation-only format that would allow us to focus attention on key issues and speakers, create a small participative environment and manage the prevailing white majority structures and tendencies of British criminology – by reversing them: minority ethnic presence was deliberately majoritised, prompting Patrick’s remark as he prepared to present his paper to a gathering of approximately 30 invited scholars.

Two papers opened the symposium. The first, by Professor Katheryn Russell-Brown, advanced and updated her call, in 1992, for the development of a Black Criminology. This criminology needed resources currently absent, neglected or suppressed in mainstream, white, criminology. These would draw from the humanities as much as the social sciences, refusing a binary fostered by the dominant scientific trends in US criminology. Katheryn insisted that Black arts and artists had shown themselves to be more adequate than criminology to the task of representing black lives and the injuries of American criminal justice. Black criminology was needed to widen the visions of justice that criminologist might pursue, and would be a criminology that valued the extent and range of minority ethnic perspectives.

Katheryn’s 1992 paper prompted Coretta Phillips and Ben Bowling’s 2003 call, some 10 years later in the British Journal of Criminology, for minority ethnic perspectives to be afforded greater recognition and support. Another fifteen years later, and with precious little evidence of change, her paper, with the other symposium organisers, Rod Earle and Alpa Parmar, called out to white criminology: ‘where has all the racism gone?’ The paper, like the organisational effort of the symposium itself, was prompted by a growing suspicion that British criminology lacks the theoretical, conceptual and motivational resources to explain the differentials referred to above, in criminal justice and in criminology that sees black people swept into police cells and prisons, kept out of universities and black academics off the curriculum. Strangely though, it seems that racism has disappeared from criminology’s agenda. The paper develops an analysis of the ‘disciplinary unconscious’ of criminology that allows (or worse, encourages) the erasure of race and racism from its business as an academic discipline. We pointed to the recurring absence of papers on race and racism in criminology conferences, journals and edited book collections, even as racial disproportionality in criminal justice escalates and intensifies. We identified tendencies in British criminology to highlight and theorise US experiences of race and racism at the expense of working with a narrative of British colonialism and the differentials generated by domestic criminal justice systems that have long outstripped those of the USA. As minority ethnic scholars addressing a roomful of other minority ethnic scholars Alpa and Coretta could also share and reflect on the continuing impacts of ‘everday racism’, the small injuries that perforate their academic lives and snag their careers with condescension, indifference and insults, in the knowledge their experiences were like, rather than unlike, most of those in the room.

The second and third keynote presentations were from Professor Shaun Gabbidon and Professor Karim Murji. Shaun began in the particularities of ‘shopping while black in the USA’ in a paper that explored shoplifting as a neglected object of criminological study, before telescoping out toward a sustained critique of surveillance techniques and technologies that smuggle racism through the back door of supposedly ‘race-neutral algorithms’. This is a term used and developed in Pamela Ugwudike’s paper about the ‘under-the-radar’ aspect of familiar racialized dynamics that are cloaked through the operation of new technologies. It was a theme featured in several papers, particularly those of Patrick Williams and Tara Young.

Karim Murji’s paper focussed on the unique styles and insights of Stuart Hall. An established and legendary figure to many criminologists, Karim insisted that the measure of his reputation among criminologists rested on too narrow a reading of his extraordinarily diffuse scholarship. Karim traced and retrieved the sometimes hidden Hall and urged a wider and more critically engaged reading of his works, methods and style.

As one of the leading figures in the contemporary sociology of race the symposium was grateful to welcome Professor David Theo Goldberg for a keynote presentation, ‘On Racial Judgment’. Goldberg has been central to the resurgence of theorising around race, particularly criticising the habits of ‘post-racial’ perspectives that assert the declining significance of race and racism to social divisions. Rather than recognising a historical system of exploitation, these perspective focus on habits of prejudice and individual moral deficiencies marginal to social structures. The persistence of racial judgment, according to Goldberg, and its expansion from the formalities of criminal justice should be a warning to criminologists, and sociologists, that race retains its deadly vitality and is neglected at our peril.

Dr Suki Ali, acting as a particularly creative discussant to the unfortunately absent Professor Mary Bosworth convened a lively discussion around Mary’s paper (delivered by misbehaving technology) on ‘Race and Border Criminology’. The proceedings were also enlivened by Dr Martin Glyn’s delivery of his own ‘data verbalisation’ thesis. Mixing music, poetry and performance Martin urged participants to make their work more accessible to the black and minority ethnic communities that helped them produce it.

The final keynote, from Professor Chris Cunneen picked up and reinforced two recurring and contrasting themes in the symposium. The first of these is the increasing influence of digital technologies in covertly reproducing the dynamics of race and the functionality of racism. Drawing from research with Australia’s indigenous peoples, and particularly young men, Chris reported how policing and criminal justice agencies increasingly resorted to actuarial risk assessment technologies that reproduce discredited white racist schematics. Indigenous communities resist their pathologisation and a key feature of their resistance is their reliance on their arts and crafts to sustain themselves as communities, narrate their experience and express their resilience.

Closing the symposium with brief summary remarks Steve Garner and Omar Khan placed their emphasis on, respectively, the salience of whiteness, positionality and affect, and the way the weakness of criminological analysis of race and racism had serious policy implications.

The symposium created much-needed energy and new connections between scholars working around race and crime. As organisers, we feel it lived up to its ambition to start a new dialogue between criminologists and sociologists of race, and bridged a gap that has widened alarmingly in recent years. Emerging from the symposium are plans to launch a BSC Race Matters network and promote a Black Criminology Month to run alongside Black History Month every October. Papers from the symposium will, we hope, be included in a Special Issue of a leading criminology journal before too long. In the meantime, if you are interested in supporting the formation of a Race Matters network and enlarging the conversation around race and racism in criminology please contact us.

Contact

Rod Earle, The Open University (r.earle@open.ac.uk )

Alpa Parmar, Oxford University (alpa.parmar@crim.ox.ac.uk )

Coretta Phillips, London School of Economics. (coretta.phillips@lse.ac.uk )

Images: courtesy of the author

What future(s) for juvenile justice in Europe?

Modern-day cultural, social, political and economic transformations carry multiple implications for juvenile justice in Europe

Professor Barry Goldson holds the Charles Booth Chair of Social Science at the University of Liverpool and is the Chairperson of the British Society of Criminology Youth Criminology/Youth Justice Network (YC/YJN).

In 1816, the report of the first major public inquiry into ‘juvenile delinquency’ in any European country was published in London, England (Committee for Investigating the Alarming Increase of Juvenile Delinquency in the Metropolis, 1816). The inquiry reflected a series of burgeoning concerns – in England and elsewhere in Europe – regarding ‘juvenile delinquents’ in the high-density urban populations of rapidly growing industrial towns and cities. Moreover, as the nineteenth century unfolded the same concerns inspired a wide range of reform initiatives across Europe and, by the beginning of the twentieth century, recognizably ‘modern’ juvenile justice systems had emerged. In England, for example, the Children Act 1908 formed the legislative foundations of an institutional architecture designed specifically for the administration of juvenile justice and, as such, it represented similar developments taking place throughout Europe.

In 2008, exactly one hundred years following the implementation of the Children Act 1908, a global financial crisis rocked the foundations of European economies. The ‘crisis’ produced, and continues to produce, deep-cutting and wide-sweeping ‘austerity’ measures that, alongside the longer-term reformulation of welfare settlements and welfare states, have had the effect of plunging millions of Europeans into profoundly adverse social conditions. And in 2016, exactly 200 years following the publication of the first major public inquiry into ‘juvenile delinquency’, the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum – also known as the ‘EU referendum’ and the ‘Brexit referendum’ – returned a vote in support of the UK’s departure from the European Union. Many commentators have argued that recent patterns of migration and immigration into Europe imposed significant influence in shaping the vote to ‘leave’. Whatever the motivations, however, Brexit has ‘created severe tensions and strengthened exit movements elsewhere, notably in France, Italy and Denmark’ (Taylor-Gooby et al, 2017: 3).

In the opening two decades of the twenty-first century financial crisis, the re-drawing of welfare settlements and welfare states, Brexit – and the wider tensions that it signals – and unprecedented patterns of migration and immigration, represent key transformational conditions in Europe, just as the industrial revolution characterised radical change across the nineteenth century. Equally, the same modern-day cultural, social, political and economic transformations carry multiple implications for juvenile justice in Europe, just as the industrial revolution had some two hundred years earlier.

How might the past inform the present and to what extent does the present provide a compass to the future? Fundamentally, these are the questions that are addressed in a new book: Juvenile Justice In Europe: Past, Present and Future.

Furthermore:

What do we know about contemporary juvenile crime trends in Europe and how are nation states responding?
Is punitivity and intolerance eclipsing child welfare and pedagogical imperatives, or is ‘child-friendly justice’ holding firm?
How might we best understand both the convergent and the divergent patterning of juvenile justice in a changing and reformulating Europe?
How is juvenile justice experienced by identifiable constituencies of children and young people both in communities and in institutions?
What impacts are sweeping austerity measures, together with increasing mobilities and migrations, imposing?
How can comparative juvenile justice be conceptualised and interpreted?
What might the future hold for juvenile justice in Europe at a time of profound uncertainty and flux?

The above represent a series of pressing questions for juvenile justice researchers and youth criminologists. The book begins to define and develop the co-ordinates of a wider critical research agenda that is vital for advancing knowledge of, and intervening in, the ways in which children and young people in conflict with the law are governed, and will be governed, through reformulating juvenile justice systems in Europe.

References

Committee for Investigating the Alarming Increase of Juvenile Delinquency in the Metropolis (1816) Report of the Committee for Investigating the Alarming Increase of Juvenile Delinquency in the Metropolis. London: J. F. Dove.

Goldson, B. (ed) (2018) Juvenile Justice in Europe: Past, Present and Future. London and New York: Routledge.

Taylor-Gooby, P., Leruth, B. and Chung, H. (eds) After Austerity: Welfare State transformation in Europe after the great recession. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Contact

Professor Barry Goldson, Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology, School of Law and Social Justice, University of Liverpool

Email: b.goldson@liverpool.ac.uk

Copyright free image courtsey of author

Desistance, Structures, Agency and Policy: Presenting Penal Cultures and Female Desistance at Sheffield University

the link between employment and a successful route out of crime has received considerable attention in criminology. However, gender-specific literature on the subject is minimal.

Linnéa Österman is a senior lecturer and researcher at the University of Greenwich. Her research interests revolve around gender and crime, desistance, comparative penology, Nordic criminal justice, and critical pedagogy. Completing her doctorate in Criminology at the University of Surrey in early 2016, Linnéa has been involved in a number of research projects focussing on women’s experiences of justice in various cultures and contexts over the last 10 years. She is a passionate criminologist and a social justice optimist, and dabbles with music-making in her spare time.

On a grey and cold January evening in the not too distant past, I got on a late train to Sheffield for a desistance conference focussing on agency, structures and policy. After a nightmare midnight AirB&B check-in and not enough sleep (think along the lines of phone dying, no charge point, the host not knowing where I was, and an old-school attempt of using a phone box, ultimately confirming that they are truly tourist-photo dedications with no practical use!), I woke up on the morning of the conference kick-off day looking at the programme with a good amount of anticipation. I had been invited to present comparative themes from my recently published book Penal Cultures and Female Desistance, and this would be the first time I would be given a chance to discuss (as well as discreetly, or possibly not-so-discreetly, promote) my newly delivered book baby. Fortunately for all parties involved, I had not been spoiled with a boundless timeslot, so I had decided to focus specifically on the area of gender, employment and desistance. Before summarising my own contributions, some general reflections on the conference could be useful.

A core focus of the event was on structures, and the 2 days contained a number of fascinating talks, many that explored desistance in international or comparative perspectives; refreshingly starting to address the Anglophone bias in the field. This generated thought-provoking discussions around culture, agency and structures, ranging from diverse areas such as the role of consumer culture and recessions for Irish desisters, the different use of time and space along desistance journeys in Israel and England, and institutional influences on young Parisian probationers, to social capital resources among different ethnic group desisters in the UK, and opportunities to design more desistance-focussed assessment tools within CRCs. In all of this, the overarching question of whether desistance can be understood as a social movement was present within many of the presentations.

While these discussions were thought-provoking and inclusive, as one conference attendee sharply pointed out early on: The one structure that seemed to be shining with its absence from much of this was that of patriarchy. Reflective of the broader literature, many of the studies presented had all male samples. However, as noted by the chair Professor Farrall early on, this recent move towards focussing on larger forces in the desistance literature may bring about new opportunities to explore gendered systems across time and space. From a historical perspective, it has for example been found that the ‘marriage effect’ in male desistance did not seem to apply about a century back in time. Professor Farrall drew interesting links between this finding and women’s disenfranchisement and lack of power at the turn of the 19^th Century. Do women in recent time periods have more power to exercise social control in the home environment, thereby make the ‘marriage effect’ in desistance more relevant?

A key question that was repeatedly posed within these discussions was ‘Which processes may structure desistance?’. Although the replies emphasised how little we still know about the answers to this question, the role of ethnicity, socio-economic status, age and maturity, time periods and different criminal justice systems were all suggested to be influential. On the question of gender, however, the chair suggested that ‘the jury is still out on this one’. Those who are familiar with the desistance literature will know some of the grounds for this; research has found that there are significant overlaps in dominant desistance themes for women and men, including the level of immersion in the criminal underworld (Uggen and Kruttschnitt, 1998), and wider factors relating to poverty, low education levels, drug addictions and problematic family backgrounds (Giordano et al, 2003; McIvor et al 2004). That said, we cannot disregard one of the most widely recognised differences in terms of gender and offending, namely, the extent of it. Women generally ‘grow out of crime’ earlier and have significantly lower re-involvement in offending than their male counterparts (Giordano et al, 2003; Rumgay, 2004; Graham and Bowling, 1995; McIvor et al, 2004).; a finding that is confirmed in both self-reported and official data (Uggen and Kruttschnitt, 1998). Women are thus not only less likely to offend, but when they have done so, they are also less likely to do so again.

Beyond these points on extent of involvement, the small number of studies that have specifically looked at gender also find some processes that seem to be gender-related, such as the role of relationships, stigma and social capital (McIvor et al, 2004; Cobbina, 2010; Leverentz, 2014; Estrada and Nilsson, 2012). An exploration of gender roles also quickly casts a critical eye on some of the major desistance claims to date. The classic generalisability problem of just ‘adding’ women to theories developed with (and by) men rings loud in this area, a key example of this being Sampson and Laub’s work (1993; 2003) on desisting men and the value of marriage for desistance, or the so called ‘love of a good woman’ thesis (Leverentz, 2006). With the developing literature on female desisters, we now know that these findings are in direct opposition to how desistance seems to work for women – something I have detected in my work and others before me – namely, that for many women intimate relationships are commonly part of the problem rather than the solution.

Moreover, the consequences of living with both the physical and mental scars of violence and abuse can have an impact on the ability to access desistance-related processes. An unexpected discovery on the conference programme showcased some interesting and emerging work in this area in the way of a PhD student from Stockholm University – Robin Gålnander – who is doing ethnographic work with female desisters. Robin is about mid-way through a fascinating study following ten women in Sweden through their desistance journey. Meeting them every 6 months, Robin aims to catch different phases of desistance, as these women try to put decades of offending, drug dealing and using, behind them. Giving support to what we know about women in the criminal justice system, all of the women in Robin’s study have histories of violent victimisation, perpetrated by men predominantly on the criminal scene. The preliminary findings suggest that these experiences hold them back from desistance paths in various ways, including the challenges of navigating psychiatric care (or lack of), living with PSTD and in isolation, with many spending time under protected identity. As well as it being fascinating to see interesting new work on female desistance coming out of regions outside of the Anglophone setting, on a more personal basis, it was also admittedly energising to attend a criminology conference – especially one on desistance – where someone could take a quick peek at my conference tag and pronounce my name perfectly (accent and all!) without a look of apprehension or confusion on their face. My observation here is a simple one – it is encouraging and positive to see greater international perspectives on this scene, and (though I am maybe somewhat bias here) in particular, ones exploring female experiences in the Nordic sphere.

For my own 30 minutes of room control, I focussed on the comparative role of, and access to, employment for women in Sweden and England. As many readers will know, the link between employment and a successful route out of crime has received considerable attention in criminology. However, gender-specific literature on the subject is minimal. The limited studies that exist are also inconclusive, with some research suggesting that job stability is not strongly related to female desistance (Giordano et al, 2002), and other work emphasising employment as a central role for women’s post-release identity (Opsal, 2012; Leverentz, 2014). We furthermore know that women in criminal justice are especially disadvantaged in terms of employment. Women’s employment situation has been found to be significantly worse compared to their male counterparts; women are less likely to have been in employment before prison, as well as having a job to go to following release (Prison Reform Trust, 2016). As I will not need to point out to readers within this network, women are also, more generally, disadvantaged in employment and wage contexts globally (and especially so in Anglophone areas, where recent shifts in the labour markets mean women are increasingly pushed into low-wage, non-unionised areas of employment). There are additional structural aspects that need to be given attention to fully understand gendered barriers in this area, such as the dominance of female labour in sectors (i.e. care work) where a criminal record is an especially marked barrier (while at the same time, being a relatively easily accessible sector for women with lower levels of education).

In the presentation, drawing out some key themes from the book, I touched on both symmetries and dissimilarities across the female experience in Sweden and England. My study found huge similarities in relation to how women viewed the basic value of employment; as a way to learn to live a ‘straight’ life, to build routines, and to ‘keep busy’. However, these factors on their own are not necessarily sufficient for lasting change. This is where the next identified value of employment comes in, namely, the importance of a ‘good job’. A ‘good job’ in this context is a job that, minimally, allows the woman – and those in her care – to stay above the poverty line. This is about meeting basic needs and having access to a liveable income, and it is at this point that the differences start to emerge between the English and Swedish samples in my data. More specifically, most of the desisting women in the English sample struggled to meet basic needs on their current incomes, despite being in part-time employment. These narratives in turn need to be situated in the totality of life circumstances, such as being in debt. As noted by one of my participants, ‘Amanda’; “Employment gives you enough money to be able to survive, usually, but not at the minute, not in X, the wages are so crap. […] If you’re in debt like I was, cos they didn’t give me money for 3 months, thenyou can’t survive.” The role of welfare sanctions is central here (which is why ‘Amanda’ did not receive any money for 3 months) – Many of the women in the English sample had experiences of sanctions, which often led to a direct destabilisation of their desistance process. We know, of course, that the consequences of welfare policies are gendered, with the last decade of austerity having disproportionality affected women in our society (Women’s budget group, 2016).

Contrasting this theme of ‘access to a liveable income’ to the Swedish data, this type of ‘survival narrative’ in terms of access to bare essentials is completely absent. This marks an important difference in the lived experience of female desistance across the samples. In contrast, a ‘good job’ for the Swedish participants goes beyond mere survival, and narratively links to a chance to start to re-build a new life, paying off debts, and have an economy to engage in activities. As noted by ‘Angel’: “Well, I’ve got a great job now like, and I really want to treasure that […] I’ve got a fucking income now like, I can even pay my debts, it’s just like ‘wow’! You can do things that you’ve never [done before]”. Access to a livable income effectively contributes to the construction of a new non-offending identity for ‘Angel’. However, the value of a ‘good job’ goes beyond monetary factors and also link to what I refer to as ‘humanitarian values’ in the book, namely, the role of having colleagues, who, as pointed out by ‘Jasmin’ “wonder where you are when you fail to appear […] Yeah, just that feeling that people wonder where you are”; producing a lived sense of inclusion and self-worth. In this context, a ‘good job’ aids the process of becoming an integrated member of society. This experience is also supported by financial means, and access to wage subsidy schemes, which forms another major difference in experience between the two samples. While I do not have the space to write about these processes, and the role of active labour market policies, in detail here (hint: read the book – flyer and discount voucher attached!), a major overarching difference that emerges in the data is about how these experiences of a lived sense of inclusion and value that investment in quality employment opportunities and the chance to earn a liveable income produces, in turn provide a major motivating factor for lasting change in the Swedish women’s narratives. The data suggest that these subjective experiences offer a far more powerful tool for change than any of the threats of sanctions, or indeed experiences or further exclusion, that dominate the English women’s narratives.

As always with a good conference, I exit University of Sheffield’s halls with a mind filled with more thoughts and ideas than what it is realistically possible to process after a couple of days intense brain stimuli. The twenty pages of notes that awaits re-opening – after a weekend break from desistance – will hopefully allow me to make more sense of it all. Nevertheless, as I am sitting on a severely delayed and uncomfortably crammed train returning from the first conference in my life where I was able to talk about a book with my name on it – and doing so in the privileged position of a room filled with some of the field’s giants – I can positively say that I somehow manage to keep a beaming smile on my lips, whilst reluctantly switching off the automated Outlook reply and turn my attention to the column of dark blue emails that awaits me.

Originally posted on the BSC Women, Crime and Criminal Justice Blog

Contact

Linnéa Österman, Lecturer in Criminology
Department of Law and The Centre for Criminology
University of Greenwich

E-mail: L.Osterman@greenwich.ac.uk
Twitter: @LiOsterman

Images: courtesy of the author

5 Studies and a New Direction in Indian Criminology

The MPhil program currently offered at the Department of Criminology, Raksha Shakti University is unique and applied in nature

Originally published in LinkedIn and republished here with the permission of the author

Karuppannan Jaishankar, BSC International Ambassador, Professor of Criminology, Raksha Shakti University, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India and President, South Asian Society of Criminology and Victimology (SASCV), India.

When I joined the Raksha Shakti University (RSU), Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India, as Full Professor of Criminology in 2016, I initiated the first MPhil Program in Criminology at RSU and it was greatly supported by Shri. Vikas Sahay, IPS, the Director General of RSU, and Dr. S. L. Vaya, the then Director (R&D).

Further, Dr. Akshat Mehta, Associate Professor and Head, Department of Police Administration, Raksha Shakti University, Dr. Sony Kunjappan, Assistant Professor, Central University of Gujarat, Gandhinagar, and Dr. Sukhdev Mishra, Scientist B, National Institute of Occupational Health, Ahmedabad, Mr. Rooshabh Mehta, Assistant Professor of Statistics, RSU significantly assisted the MPhil Program in Criminology with sincerity and dedication.

I have supervised many PhD students and found their methodological skills are not up to standard, as the academic rigor was missing in their coursework. Hence, I felt that a one year MPhil program can be good bridge between the research student and his/her future doctoral research. Also, the research student can leave with a research degree in an year and they can be in the field, either as a researchers/ teachers or social entrepreneurs.

So far, five MPhil Students have successfully completed their MPhil program under my guidance and supervision. What makes these five researches unique is the novelty of the research problems. All the five researches are oriented towards policy and significantly contributed to fill the gap in their respective literature.

Dr. Sony Kunjappan, an Indian Criminologist, working as an Assistant Professor at the Central University of Gujarat, Gandhinagar was the External Examiner to these five researches and he ensured the quality and assessed them with finesse. Dr. Sony not only supported the MPhil program as an external faculty and examiner, but, he contributed in the preparation of a new curriculum “Criminal Justice Governance.”

In the photo: Left to Right – Mr. R. Ramesh Kannan (MPhil), Prof. K. Jaishankar, Dr. Sony Kunjappan and Mr. R. Rochin Chandra (MPhil).

5 Criminological Researches

“Contemporary Status of Indian Criminology: A Qualitative Assessment” (2017)

Mr. R. Rochin Chandra, currently Director, Centre for Criminology and Public Policy, Udaipur, Rajasthan, India.

The main thrust of this study was to examine the present status and future prospects of Indian criminology in relation to scientific and professional needs. In doing so, an attempt was made (i) to assess the curriculum and training of criminology at the post-graduate level, (ii) to look critically into criminology as an area of professional practice in the country, and (ii) to determine the impact of criminological research in the construction of crime and justice policy. The qualitative case study research served as the main methodology for this study. The study involved the case study of 28 participants from academics, criminal justice agencies, criminal justice support groups, civil society organizations, and professional societies of Criminology. Purposive sampling was used to select the participants for the personal interviews. The participants were asked to participate in formal, semi-structured interviews. The individual interviews were recorded, transcribed, member-checked and analyzed using Creswell’s data analysis process. The study found that the post-graduate curriculum for criminology does not match with the needs of professionals and practitioners. The dialogue with participants also helped to understand the significance of developing a working relationship with the policy maker, practitioners and qualified politicians in creating the job opportunities for criminology graduates. In addition, the participants also viewed that criminologists should engage with media, and disseminate their research findings in order to influence the crime and justice policies.

2. “Effectiveness of Close Circuit Television (CCTV) Surveillance in Victimization Prevention: A Study of Campuses in Tamil Nadu” (2017)

Mr. R. Ramesh Kannan, currently teaching at Kamaraj College, Thoothukudi, Tamil Nadu, India.

The main objective of the study was to find out the effectiveness of CCTV’s in victimization in academic institutions. Data was collected in five major districts (Chennai, Madurai, Coimbatore, Tirunelveli and Virudhunagar) in Tamil Nadu; 60 samples from each city was collected based on purposive sampling technique (totally N=300). Data was entered using MS-excel and exported the database into the SSPS version 20.0 for the analysis of the data; both descriptive statistics as well as inferential statistics were used to explain the data from various aspects. Based on the data analysis, the researcher found that both students and academic faculties/staffs felt that CCTV surveillance cameras in class room are un-comfortable; in contrary the majority of the respondents opined that their privacy was vaguely interrupted due to CCTV surveillance cameras. In addressing the main objective of the study, the researcher found that the majority of the respondents strongly acknowledged that CCTV surveillance cameras help in prevention of crime/victimization, help students to behave well, prevent unauthorized intruders, deter sex offending (eve-teasing/sexual harassment) and also prevent bullying/ragging This finding makes it evident that CCTV surveillance cameras were effective in victimization prevention. On the other hand, the researcher found that CCTV surveillance cameras invade privacy and also made the respondents un-comfortable. The researcher feels that there should be a balance between the use of CCTV surveillance cameras and the violation of privacy rights.

In the photo: Left to Right, Mr. Karuna, D. S. (MPhil), Mr. S. Manikandan (MPhil), Dr. Sony Kunjappan, Dr. Divyashree, Assistant Professor, Department of Criminology, RSU, Professor K. Jaishankar, Ms. Shabana Sheikh (MPhil), and Ms. Leepaxi Gupta, Intern, Department of Criminology, RSU.

3. “Pharmaceutical Drugs Crime in South – West India: A Policy Oriented Study” (2018)

Mr. Karuna, D.S., currently, Doctoral Research Scholar in Social Sciences, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.

The main objective of the study was to examine pharmaceutical drugs crime in south – west region of India. In doing so, an attempt was made (i) to examine pharmaceutical drugs crime (ii) to explore pharmaceutical industries crime (iii) to scrutinize illegal trade of pharmaceutical crime and (iv) to examine the pharmaceutical crime and criminal justice system. The qualitative methodology was mainly used for this study. The study involved the semistructured questionnaire of 57 respondents and data was collected from zonal director, superintendent, and intelligence officers (Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai, Indore and Ahmedabad) of Narcotics Control Bureau. Purposive sampling was used to collect data from the respondents. Based on the case study analysis and data analysis, the researcher has addressed pharmaceutical crimes as a multifaceted criminal activity that creates irreparable loss to the citizens. This study has also highlighted the need for law enforcement and the public health sector to work together in order to prevent illicit medicines from entering the market and to prosecute those responsible. Hence, coordination and concerted efforts are the need of the hour to counter and encounter effectively in order to combat pharmaceutical crimes.

4. “Victimization Narratives of Rohingyas: A Qualitative Study at Bangladesh Refugee Camps” (2018)

Mr. S. Manikandan, currently, Research Assistant, Centre for Transparency and Accountability in Governance, National Law University, Delhi.

The main focus of this research study was to explore the victimization faced by the Rohingyas in Myanmar and in Bangladesh as refugees as well as victimization faced due to the refugee camp situation and problems associated with refugee camps. The objectives of the study are (i) To examine the violence, persecution and collective victimization of Rohingyas in Myanmar. (ii) To analyse the victimization and problems faced during migrating from Myanmar to Bangladesh. (iii) To assess the victimization due to the refugee camp situation and problems associated with the refugee camp. Qualitative case study method was adopted. The study involved the case study of 18 participants from the Rohingyas at a Bangladesh Refugee Camp and the researcher personally visited the Camp for data collection. Purposive sampling was adopted to select the area and population as refugees are special population, and is residing only in refugee camps at Bangladesh. The individual interviews were recorded, transcribed, member-checked and analyzed using Creswell’s data analysis process. Based on the research study the researcher has found three phases of victimization of Rohingya refugees which are: (i) Violence, persecution and collective victimization of Rohingyas in Myanmar, (ii) Victimization and problems faced during migrating from Myanmar to Bangladesh, (iii) Victimization due to the refugee camp situation and problems associated with the refugee camp. The researcher also found that, there is a chance of a fourth phase of victimization which may arise during the process of repatriation and rehabilitation. This phase of victimization will include secondary victimization and psychological trauma.

5. “Domestic Violence against Muslim Women within a Context of Islam: A Qualitative Study” (2018)

Ms. Shabana Shaikh, currently, Independent Scholar on issues of Crimes against Muslim Women.

The purpose of this research study was to discover the experience of Muslim women in Ahmedabad city who were subjected to domestic violence and find the stand of Islam pertaining to the violence against them. The main questions that focus in this research are: the experiences of domestic violence in Muslim women; the effect of socio-demographic factors; and which cultural, social and religious factors in the Islamic tradition play an important role for domestic violence against Muslim women. Qualitative case study research method is adopted as a primary methodology for this study. Purposive sampling was used for the data collection. The reported cases of domestic violence of Muslim women during 2017-2018 were collected from office of District Protection Officer and District Dowry Prohibition Officer. The primary data for the study was collected after going through total 324 cases from all over the Ahmedabad district. Out of 324 registered cases total 49 cases of Muslim Women were selected. The information was noted out from registered application by respondents that were screened by the Protection Officer to ensure the anonymity of the respondents. Descriptive-explanation of each individual case was constructed and document case study methodology was adopted for the study. Documentary Research Method was used for data analysis. Due to time constraints only 15 cases are presented in this study. The study found that the Muslim women are experiencing violence mainly due to the demand of dowry in many forms and threats of divorce from both husband and in-law’s. The women are facing violence because of lack of education, poverty, unemployment and dependency. The important finding is the lack of Islamic knowledge and practice among the Muslim community in the regard of issues like divorce, domestic life and behaviour with women.

Conclusion

The MPhil program currently offered at the Department of Criminology, Raksha Shakti University is unique and applied in nature. All the above discussed researches submitted to the Raksha Shakti University will be soon turned in to research products, such as, book, book chapters and or research articles. These researches are novel, original, policy oriented and written for both Indian and International Scholars. Except one, four of the researches adopted qualitative research methodology which is not much used in Indian criminological researches (Indian criminological researches are more oriented towards quantitative methods and heavily influenced by American Criminology). These researches also give a new direction to Indian Criminology.

Copyright free images courtsey of the author

Research on police issues in Latin America

In Latin America, despite more than two decades of public and political concern about crime, government responses are far from effective and the police is still part of the problem.

Lucía Dammert is Associate Professor at Universidad de Santiago de Chile, with more than 15 years of experience on crime and violence research in Latin America. She has published books and papers in academic journals and is an International Ambassador to the British Society of Criminology.

Crime and violence in Latin America are problems with serious consequences. Not only are the highest homicide rates in the world located in this region, but also street crime affects most Latin Americans on a daily basis. Despite more than two decades of public and political concern about this situation, government responses are far from effective.

The police is still part of the problem. In most countries, police institutions are slowly acquiring information systems that allow them to better understand the problem they are facing. While some promising cases of hot spot patrol programs have been implemented, their results are localized. Moreover, criminological research on police is recent and focus mostly on specific issues such as the use of violence, corruption, and institutional reform initiatives.

Contrary to the broad development of research on police issues, for instance at the BSC, in Latin America police information is still opaque limiting the possibility of conducting studies. Lack of trust between researchers and governments have narrowed research possibilities and the importance of security issues in electoral processes have built a “Chinese wall” for any project that could portray challenges or difficulties of police work.

In this context, and to further contribute to the field, I have conducted two research projects related to police actions in Peru during 2018. Results are currently under review for publication. The first project analyzes the processes of policy diffusion, specifically community policing. Through a participant observation process in 20 police precincts in Lima and more than 80 interviews with members of the police and experts in the field, I was able to analyze Peruvian community policing. Although the police declare that community policing is implemented because it has been proven to be a “best practice” in most northern police institutions, there are important discrepancies in the field. In that sense the research not only broadens knowledge on policy diffusion processes but also sheds light on police adoption and adaptation of internationally approved initiatives. Diffusion brings confusion when there is little opportunity to monitor and evaluate how policing strategies are developed in the field.

The second research project focuses on the concept of street-level bureaucracy and analyzes the gap between the regulatory frameworks of the Peruvian government on gender violence and police action when women report situations of violence or abuse. The fieldwork was done in the city of Lima and shows that discretionary powers of street-level police officers redefine public policy and, far from protecting the victim, confronts it with limited budget for infrastructural investments, modernization of training capabilities and old fashioned management practices. Furthermore, police personnel generally face short term education programs that are not enhanced with regular training programs. Based on qualitative data gathered during two months of participant observation in special offices dedicated to “family issues” at police precincts, the results showed that discretionary power of police officers could erode national legal frameworks and public policy initiatives. Also, the research showed that there is limited social protection networks available to protect women (and their children) and that police response is important to avoid the revictimization of women.

The importance of the academic literature and the debates that take place in the BSC are an opportunity to advance the knowledge of multiple issues that have been explored insufficiently in Latin America. This is not only fundamental to confirm theoretical proposals that have been developed in the north, but also to propose new perspectives that will shape southern criminology.

Contact

Lucía Dammert, University of Santiago, Chile

Email: lucia.dammert@usach.cl

Twitter: @lucia.dammert

Linkedin: Lucia Dammert