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Meet ... Paul
Rock |
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I
am by now one of the oldest living inhabitants, the Old Deuteronomy
of criminology at the LSE. I entered the School in 1961 thinking I
was interested in demography, but discovering what demography
entailed, I drifted into criminology, then taught by Eryl Hall
Williams, and there I stayed. There are those who follow the
School’s traditions to treat criminology as a Fabian project.
Others have been more ambitious politically or intellectually. But
I was enamoured of the discipline because, unusually at the time, it
was not an exercise in a rather remote grand theory or abstracted
empiricism but awash with intriguing accounts of the everyday life
of people. Like Robert Park, I took it that ‘the real world was the
experience of actual men and women and not abbreviated and shorthand
descriptions of it that we call knowledge’.[1]
Criminology took me to Nuffield College, Oxford, where, like so many
of my generation, I became something of an auto-didact, sniffing the
academic wind from America; gossiping and exchanging references with
other research students in a virtual hedge school; scouring
bookshops; researching one, rather marginal form of compliance-based
enforcement, debt collection, that led to Making People Pay; and
assembling my own homespun version of sociology that took shape in
summary form in The Making of Symbolic Interactionism.
I returned to the School as a
stripling assistant lecturer in 1967, and, apart from occasional
sabbaticals and visiting appointments abroad, there I have stayed.
From the first, I found it immensely collegial and supportive,
always stimulating and providentially placed near to the Westminster
and Whitehall which became my field of social anthropological and
historical research. That interest in policy-making was, like so
much else, a matter of contingency, the outcome of an invitation by
a friend, Chris Nuttall, to become a Visiting Scholar at the
Ministry of the Solicitor General of Canada in 1981. No one in
Ottawa knew quite what a Visiting Scholar was, but I did declare a
vague curiosity about the interplay between criminology and
politics, and, with great generosity it was proposed that I should
study policy work that was then in the making, the work that was to
become a federal-provincial initiative on justice for victims
(published as A View from the Shadows). It was research that set me
on an almost ineluctable course – what was in effect the comparative
study of policy-making for victims in England and Wales (Helping
Victims of Crime); the emergence of the activist, campaigning
victims (After Homicide); the introduction of a court witness
service (The Social World of an English Crown Court); and the
awarding of near or quasi-rights to victims (Constructing Victims
Rights). Victimology had not only become familiar terrain, where I
knew the principals, but its mapping might have done something to
rectify the extraordinary elision of the victim from criminology,
and the resulting deformation of a discipline which tended to view
formal social control as sinister, absurd or incomprehensible.
I did on one occasion attempt to show
that I could write about matters other than victims, and that men
could write about women in the days of high feminism, producing
Reconstructing a Women’s Prison. And I did take theoretical stock
periodically lest my empirical work became overly empiricist (most
prominently in the co-authoring of Understanding Deviance with David
Downes). But, remembering what Al Reiss had once said to me about
how too many criminologists flit promiscuously like butterflies from
research flower to research flower, I seem to have stuck to my
metier.
I may have said on retirement in 2008
that I would never ever again write a big book, but an invitation
from the Cabinet Office to consider working on the 'official history
of criminal justice' resolved what I should do in the mornings of what was to
become the big, terminal sabbatical. It was an invitation too
attractive to resist and, in collaboration with David Downes and Tim
Newburn, both of the School, I returned, like Sisyphus, to the
mountain. Despite being daunted at first (one always doubts that
one will manage to pull it off this time), it has actually proved to
be a task that is more than fulfilling. David and Tim are attending
to the police, prisons, juvenile justice and much else. I have now
almost finished piecing together the history of the liberalising
criminal justice legislation of the 1960s and the origins of the
Crown Court and the Crown Prosecution Service. Ahead stretches the
void.
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Spotlight on:
Applied Criminology Centre, University of Huddersfield |
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 Professor
Alex Hirschfield describes the work of the Centre of
which he is the director.
The Applied
Criminology Centre (ACC) originally started out, in the
early 1990s, as the Applied Criminology Group (ACG).
Located in a West Yorkshire police station, it undertook
pioneering research into repeat victimisation and how
intelligence on this could be used by the police to
target vulnerable homes with a proportionate response.
With the appointment of Alex Hirschfield as Professor of
Criminology in 2004, the ACG expanded, moved onto campus
and became a research centre.
Over the years the ACC
has built up a strong portfolio of applied research and
evaluation in the fields of criminology and
policing. A founding principle of the ACC was that it
should, not only produce innovative research that
contributes to academic debate, but also, and quite
crucially, supply practitioners with 'actionable'
recommendations. The word 'Applied' in its title is at
the core of what the ACC does which is:
"to
undertake quality research that is of use to
policymakers and practitioners, that advances our
understanding of crime, adds to the evidence base on
what works in reducing crime and that is communicated
through publication, conference presentations, teaching
and professional training."
ACC's mission and aims
are underpinned by two overarching goals; how better to
understand crime and how to more effectively respond to
crime. 'Understanding crime' is predominantly concerned
with research that adds to knowledge about when, where,
how and to whom different types of crime occur, who
commits it and why, who are the victims and what is
the impact it has on people's lives. 'Responding to
crime', focuses on what society does about crime and
those who commit it and whether or not this works. It
requires expertise in 'policy evaluation' and the
attribution of change (in crime, people's perceptions)
to policy interventions. With its dynamic, highly
skilled and multidisciplinary research team, the ACC has
strong track records in both.
Our topics
range from designing out crime in housing developments
and reducing alcohol-related violence in town centres,
to tackling crime on public and commercial transport
and understanding high crime neighbourhoods. We also
research the role of the police in the detection and
prevention of crime, (including serious offences such as
homicide)the impact of prisons and the criminal justice
system on offenders and families of prisoners and the
prevention of terrorism, violent extremism and hate
crime. We adopt a broad approach in researching these
topics that includes a concern with victimisation,
offending, perceptions of crime and safety and the
presence of crime opportunities, particularity, how
these are influenced by the social, physical and built
environment but also by policy interventions
ACC projects include
research studies (ESRC: Crime and the Spatial
Concentration of Disadvantage; Social Context of
Pathways in Crime; EPSRC: Surveillance and Crime
Reduction; AERC: Alcohol Supply Points and Crime; EU
Mental Health of Children of Prisoners) and major
national evaluations for the Home Office (Reducing
Burglary Initiative, Impact of 24 hour drinking on
crime), Neighbourhood Renewal Unit (New Deal for
Communities Crime Theme Evaluation) and Department for
Transport (crime on bus networks) Our International
comparative research on the implementation and
effectiveness of approaches to crime prevention through
environmental design (CPTED) builds on existing
collaboration with Japan, the Netherlands, UAE, New
Zealand, Italy, the US and key links in Australia - ACC
having submitted evidence to the Parliamentary Inquiry
into CPTED in Victoria, Australia
We are keen to share our
knowledge with all those who play a role or have an
interest in reducing crime. If you would like to get in
touch visit our website:
http://www.hud.ac.uk/research/researchcentres/acc/
or email Professor Alex Hirschfield directly: a.hirschfield@hud.ac.uk
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People |
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Meredith Rossner had a very
successful .book launch for Just
Emotions: Rituals of Restorative Justice.
Paul Rock said at the launch
 "Meredith and I first met in 2006
when I was marooned with her in Philadelphia in Larry Sherman’s
great mansion on the fringes of Mantua, the city’s badlands. We
talked criminology incessantly over indifferent takeaways from
Sithar and on nervous evening walks around the block with Gertie,
her Pomeranian, whom she very properly acknowledges in the opening
pages of Just Emotions. She was then completing the thesis which
became the book that is being launched today, and I was greatly
struck by its clarity, penetration and intelligence. It did, after
all, have a very good pedigree, having been supervised by Randy
Collins, a man in Erving Goffman’s direct lineage, and by Larry
Sherman, the polymath criminologist who has, I am delighted to say,
emigrated to Cambridge. Just Emotions is a meticulous, clever and
original analysis by an American of English and Australian data, and
it is American criminology at its best, embodying diverse skills
accumulated at the University of Pennsylvania, methodologically
sophisticated, an amalgam of the quantitative and the qualitative.
At its heart is a Goffmanesque or Simmelian dissection of the forms
of the interaction ritual embedded in restorative conferences, and
it examines step by step how, in Howie Becker’s phrase, people do
things together in the staging of successful and unsuccessful
performances. It focuses closely and to good effect on the formal
properties of solidarity, rhythmic entrainment, spatial alignment,
emotional balance, role-taking and effervescence that bear upon
restorative outcomes, and especially the transformations and
epiphanies which successful conferences can achieve. It is those
forms, she claims persuasively, that trump the content of encounters
and the social characteristics of the participants. Hers is at once
an innovative work that feeds directly not only into sociological
and criminological theory but also into the conduct of an important
venture in criminal justice. Its launch today is important for the
discipline and for practitioners, but it is important for another,
more parochial reason as well. Criminology, once a great ornament
of the School, has been depleted of late, and I am more than
delighted that the publication of Just Emotions in the Clarendon
series that we at the Mannheim Centre jointly founded marks, through
the addition of a significant, young criminologist to the Law
Department, and in conjunction with the very welcome return of Niky Lacey, the beginnings of a renaissance of the discipline in the
LSE".
 Kevin Stenson also
had a book launch: Youth On Religion: The Development,
Negotiation and Impact of Faith and Non-faith Identity’ by Nicola
Madge, Peter Hemming and Kevin Stenson (Routledge).
We held the launch of our book ‘ in
the New Academic Building, LSE on 16th January. This event was
jointly, and generously, sponsored by the LSE Sociology Department
and Brunel University. Over fifty people attended, including many
from different departments in the School. The Youth On Religion
study was funded (£0.5M) by the AHRC/ESRC Religion & Society
Programme and led by Professor Nicola Madge (Brunel). Following a
presentation of some of the findings by Professor Madge, responses
were provided by Professor Linda Woodhead (University of Lancaster),
Professor Grace Davie (University of Exeter), Professor David Voas
(University of Essex) and David Goodhart (Demos).
The research took place in schools
and colleges in Bradford, and the London Boroughs of Hillingdon and
Newham, where over 10,000 13 to 17 year-olds responded to an online
survey and around 160 17 and 18 year-olds participated in interviews
and discussion groups. These young people included those from
Muslim, Christian, Sikh, no-faith and other backgrounds. The study
is interdisciplinary and not criminological in the narrow sense.
However, its findings are relevant for criminologists interested in
understanding relations between young people across the ethnic and
faith boundaries, as well as issues of community cohesion, which
form the subject of one chapter in the book. The book combines an
updated Durkheimian analysis of the changing forms of social
solidarity and the functions of religion with an account, rooted in
symbolic interactionism, of how young people make sense of and
negotiate their religious or non-faith identities.
Millions of young people in Britain
are growing up in urban multi-faith communities where their views
and opinions have hitherto been largely ignored. The study amplifies
the voices of these young people, gives insight into the meaning of
religion in their lives, and the implications for social cohesion.
It paints a generally optimistic picture of mutual tolerance and
respect. Participants felt personally responsible for their own
religious and cultural identities but, at the same time, were
respectful and interested in the values and beliefs of others. They
were not, however, complacent about the challenges for interfaith
relations in multicultural locations, and called for public policies
that would help to promote greater mutual mixing and understanding.
Inevitably, however, the research also uncovered inconsistencies
between rhetoric and reality as well as overt tensions between faith
groups. Close friendship choices, for example, were restricted
mainly to those of the same faith.
A key message from the research is
that maintaining their optimism about social cohesion would seem to
be dependent on future patterns of societal equity as well as the
development of new forms of national identity that can transcend
ethnic and faith-based identities. These findings, nonetheless,
emerge from this study of young people in diverse areas and there is
a need for further research to see whether the same is found among
others living in less mixed locations, including those from families
who have actively decided to move to more segregated areas.
For more details visit:
http://bit.ly/1gg6rHD
Visit Tom Daems 10
November – 18 December 2014
 Tom
Daems will be visiting the Mannheim Centre for Criminology from 10
November till 18 December 2014. Tom studied (European) criminology
and political science at K. Leuven, Belgium and was an M.Sc. student
at LSE’s Department of Sociology in 2002-03 where he obtained his
degree in Crime, Deviance and Control. He is currently an
Assistant Professor in Criminology and Sociology of Law at Ghent
University, Belgium. Tom is inter alia the author of Making Sense
of Penal Change (OUP, 2008) and co-editor of European Penology?
(Hart, 2013) and Institutionalizing Restorative Justice (Willan,
2006). During his stay at LSE he will be doing research and talk to
people about his current book project on the criminological legacy
of the late Stan Cohen, to be published early 2015 with Boom / Lemma
(in Dutch). Tom will also give a seminar in the Mannheim Centre /
British Society of Criminology Seminar Series. He can be contacted
at
Tom.Daems@UGent.be
Meredith Rossner's blog on the jury system
10/12/13
Meredithe opens her blog as follows:
"The jury system is often portrayed as
ineffective, cumbersome, and riven with silent prejudices
against defendants. But a growing body of research suggests
otherwise, with juries generally performing their important
functions admirably".
She
outlines her case in full at:
http://www.democraticaudit.com/?p=1917
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Postgraduate
update |
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 Congratulation to Daniel Bear on the successful
defence of his doctoral thesis
Adapting, Acting Out, or Standing Firm: Understanding
The Place of Drugs in The Policing of a London Borough.
His examiners were Professor Robert Reiner and Professor Alex
Stevens from the University of Kent. Of his viva Daniel said "
having Robert's encyclopaedic knowledge and years of experience in
police research alongside Alex's expertise and critical insights
into drugs policy made the viva a wonderful learning experience as
well as an object lesson in constructive feedback and
encouragement for the new academic kid on the block". Daniel is now
a professor of public safety at Sheridan College, Toronto.
Johannes Rieken, just back from
Colombia, via California writes "When I came to LSE over five years
ago I only intended to do an MSc. However, a year later I found
myself
writing a PhD on micro police (inter)actions using video based
methods. I started a postdoc in the International Development
Department right after my viva last June. In this new environment I
am doing more comparative research particularly looking at police
professionalization and training. For this purpose I also started to
work with the Norwegian Policing College in Oslo and the Police
Academy in Bogota. For me this journey shows that LSE and
particularly the Mannheim Centre is a great place to become immersed
in a topic. There are so many brilliant people that help you to
explore and find ever new but interconnected angles on whatever your
criminological interest may be".
Tara Lai Quinlan
Working PhD Title: Examining
Policymaking in the Creation of Post-9/11 Counterterrorism Community
Partnership to Address Al Qaeda Inspired Terrorism Risk in London
and New York City
Project Summary:
My research is a comparative analysis
of policymaking decisions to incorporate “soft” power measures into
post-9/11 counterterrorism policing. The project specifically
examines post-9/11 police-Muslim community partnerships designed to
help control Al Qaeda inspired terrorism risk in two contrasting
cases – London and New York City. On the one hand, since 9/11
London has implemented the Muslim Contact Unit and Prevent, both
incorporating significant community partnerships components to
reduce Al Qaeda inspired terrorism risk. On the other hand, since
9/11 New York City has not significantly incorporated community
partnerships into counterterrorism policing to reduce Al Qaeda
inspired terrorism risk, instead primarily relying on surveillance,
infiltration, covert intelligence gathering, and other “hard” power
counterterrorism policing measures.
This is a mixed methods study.
First, the project relies on semi-structured elite interviews with
current and former counterterrorism law enforcement officials and
policymakers in London, New York City and Washington DC. Access to
elite officials was secured through existing law enforcement
contacts and furthered using the snowball approach. Fifteen
interviews have been completed in London, and research interviews in
New York City and Washington DC will take place between April and
August 2014. Interview data is being analysed using thematic
analysis and limited quantitative analysis. Second, the study
relies on documentary analysis of significant publicly available
counterterrorism policy documents, which are being analysed using
thematic analysis. The documentary analysis will help triangulate
findings from the semi-structured interviews. Third, a sampling of
key counterterrorism speeches and policy documents are being
analysed using discourse analysis. The research findings will form
the basis for a PhD dissertation to be submitted in May 2015, and a
summary policy analysis provided to all interview subjects.
Department of Sociology
London School of Economics & Political
Science
Houghton Street
London WC2A 2AE
T.L.Quinlan@lse.ac.uk
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Recent Events |
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Mannheim/BSC Wednesday
Seminars
15th January: Falling crime or
flawed statistics? by Marion Fitzgerald
 Professor
Marion FitzGerald, a Visiting Professor within the University of
Kent’s
School of
Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research,
gave a seminar on falling crime figures. She has spent much of her professional life
challenging received wisdom and this seminar was no exception.
In her seminar she
challenged the self-congratulatory stance taken on the reported fall in crime
statistics. She reminded her audience of the statistical modelling that the Home
Office had developed in the 1990s and the factors that were likely to predict
crime rates. The economic conditions currently prevailing such as withdrawal of
protective services, deprivation, blocks on social mobility, increase cost of
desirable consumables, growth in economic inequality and the 'carnival' of
consumption might reasonably expect to see rises in crime, but the reverse is
apparently the case.
Professor FitzGerald
argued that a preoccupation with reducing crime figures every year had meant
that the official crime figures have largely excluded new types of crime. For
instance, she suggested that much acquisitive crime may have migrated to
cyberspace and was not being recorded. In her words: 'The police service has
been driven for nearly 15 years by the imperative to demonstrate year-on-year
reductions in crime. So it has developed a mindset which is resistant to
recognising new types of crime (such as card fraud and the many scams
perpetrated over the internet) and it has been more than happy for the Home
Office to absolve it of taking any responsibility for them. Yet proactive police
work in some forces, using the internet and social media, is uncovering large
amounts of unreported crime.’ Her message to criminologists was 'to stay
critical.'
Professor FitzGerald's
reputation attracted a bumper audience and the discussion after her talk was
lively and stimulated more questions than was time for. One challenge was the
question of parochialism and could Professor FitzGerald's explanation explain
crime trends elsewhere? Other questions raised the issue of whether displacement
and recording frailty could satisfactorily explain trends in other types of
crime such as drug usage.
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Hermann Mannheim quote of the month |
In
1948 Hermann Mannheim, an early critic of juvenile justice
sytartegies, published
“Juvenile delinquency in an English
Middletown ” He writes
(page78)
"During the first years of the war, the Cambridge Juvenile Court, in
common with all other Juvenile Courts in the country, experienced
serious difficulties in finding vacancies in Approved Schools for
juveniles... inevitably this state of affairs produced grave
problems here as elsewhere. The juveniles concerned had to be kept
month after month in Remand Homes entirely unsuitable for the
purpose. As a result many of these juveniles became restless and
began to suffer from a sense of injustice and absconding was
frequent."
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From The Archives |
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Forthcoming Events |
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Recent Publications |
'Who governs? Democracy,
plutocracy, science and prophecy in policing'
Criminology and Criminal Justice (2013) 13
pp.161-180 by Robert Reiner
This article critically
analyses two key debates about police and
policing: the problematic definition of their
role, and how they can be rendered
democratically accountable. Both issues have
been radically altered through the profound
transformation of policing produced by the last
three decades of neo-liberal hegemony. The
article focuses on how this has developed in
England and Wales, although there are parallels
with other jurisdictions. The complex role of
the police has been distilled down to criminal
catching. Accountability has become accountancy,
under the auspices of New Public Management. The
current British Coalition government’s
tendentious ‘austerity’ measures make these
perennial problems especially acute. The
Coalition purports to be democratizing police
accountability through elected Police and Crime
Commissioners. These claims are critically
analysed in principle, but how they work out in
practice is hard to prophesy. It is suggested
they may play out in ways that frustrate their
architects’ hopes, due to the continuing baleful
consequences of neoliberalism.
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