Mannheim Centre Seminar Series

Presenter: Dr Simon Tawfic (Department of Social Policy, LSE)

Chair: Dr Johann Koehler (Department of Social Policy, LSE)

Abstract: This paper offers an ethnographic analysis of the emergence of British public protection policing, examining officials’ everyday pursuits to address the dual crises of austerity and police legitimacy. Since the early 2010s, Westminster governments have pledged to take ‘vulnerability’ seriously, while UK police forces, similarly beset by legitimacy crises, have also prioritised the ‘protection of vulnerable people from harm’, establishing public protection teams to signal this commitment. These crises serve as resources for officials to articulate a will to care that blends post-war welfarist sensibilities with contemporary humanitarian ends. Positioning themselves as a last resort against welfare retrenchment, public protection officials leverage discontent with austerity-stricken agencies, asserting the comparative advantage of their relational and compassionate style of working. They aspire to embody the nostalgic figure of the ‘noble bobby,’ assume personalised responsibility to alleviate suffering, idealise welfarist visions of reciprocal honesty and respectability, and embrace psychodynamic models that attribute criminality to disrupted familial attachments and trauma. By foregrounding these historically entrenched sensibilities, I argue that the vulnerability turn in policing is less a novel phenomenon than a re-enactment of enduring ideals about the role of policing and the welfare state. At its heart is a preoccupation to demonstrate care, promising to rebuild trust in policing while relying on state failure as its condition of possibility.

2024/25

‘From the chaotic debris of experience…?’: questions for criminology and criminal justice
Hosted by the Mannheim Centre on Wednesday 11 June 2025
Speaker: Dr Rod Earle, The Open University.

Judges as Agents of Coloniality: Understanding the Coloniality of Justice at the Pre-trial Stage in Brazil
Hosted by the Mannheim Centre for Criminology on Wednesday 14 May 2025
Speaker: Dr Omar Phoenix Khan, University of Bath.

Wronged: The Weaponization of Victimhood
Hosted by the Mannheim Centre on Wednesday 19 March 2025
Speaker: Prof Lilie Chouliaraki, LSE.

The virality of racial terror
Hosted by the Mannheim Centre on Wednesday 5 March 2025
Speaker: Prof Geoff Ward, Washington University.

Authoritarianism and punishment in Latin America
Hosted by the Mannheim Centre on Wednesday 19 February 2025
Speaker: Professor Máximo Sozzo, National University of Litoral and Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the University of Edinburgh.

Arrested Analysis: The Unseen Reach of Sodomy Laws in Uganda
Hosted by the Mannheim Centre on Wednesday 5 February 2025
Speaker: Dr S.M.Rodriguez, Department of Gender Studies LSE.

Orderly feelings in law – an international comparison of criminal cases
Hosted by the Mannheim Centre on Wednesday 13 Nov 2024
Speaker: Prof Stina Bergman Blix, Professor of Sociology at Uppsala University.

A Philosophical History of Police Power
Hosted by the Mannheim Centre on Wednesday 23 Oct 2024
Speaker: Dr Melayna Kay Lamb, Senior Lecturer at the University of Law.

2023/24

The Policing Machine: Enforcement, Endorsements, and the Illusion of Public Input
Hosted by the Mannheim Centre and the Phelan United States Centre on 21 May 2024
Speaker: Dr Tony Cheng, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Duke University.

DIGIQUEER CRIMINOLOGY AND ADDRESSING THE RISE OF ANTI-LGBTQ+ HATE
Hosted by the Mannheim Centre for Criminology and the Department of Methodology on 4 October 2023
Speaker: Dr Justin Ellis, Senior Lecturer, Newcastle School of Law & Justice, University of Newcastle, Australia

Two Centuries of Criminology at the Metropolitan Police: 1829-2023. How policing made democracy possible.
Hosted by the Mannheim Centre for Criminology on 8 November 2023
Speaker: Professor Lawrence Sherman, Chief Scientific Officer, Metropolitan Police

2022/23

ADHD and the Criminal Justice System
Hosted by the Mannheim Centre for Criminology on 14 June 2023
Speaker: Professor Lorana Bartels (ANU)

Working towards justice for women; Retrospective and Forward views from the former Victims Commissioner
Hosted by the Mannheim Centre for Criminology on 8 March 2023
Speaker: Vera Baird, Visiting Professor in Practice, Mannheim Centre for Criminology

Servitude for a time: From the permanent slavery of the "unfree" to the slavery pro tempore of the free
Hosted by the Mannheim Centre for Criminology on 26 October 2022
Speaker: Professor Dario Melossi (University of Bologna)

2021/22

Orderly Britain: How we solve our everyday problems from dog fouling to double parking
Hosted by the Mannheim Centre for Criminology on 8 June 2022
Speaker: Tim Newburn (LSE)

Forensic Psychologists: Prisons, Power, and Vulnerability
Hosted by the Mannheim Centre for Criminology on 25 May 2022
Speaker: Jason Warr (De Montfort University)

Policing the ‘savage horde’: Settler masculinities and racist violence in the U.S. Mexico borderlands
Hosted by the Mannheim Centre for Criminology on 11 May 2022
Speaker: Margarita Aragon (Birkbeck, University of London)

Social proximity, trust, and resilience: What network data tell us about drug markets and enforcement
Hosted by the Mannheim Centre for Criminology on 9 March 2022
Speaker: Giulia Berlusconi (Surrey University)

Prisoner Re-Entry and Neoliberalism
Hosted by the Mannheim Centre for Criminology on 1 February 2022
Speaker: Alessandro De Giorgi (San Jose State University, California)

From criminals to slaves: 'Modern' slavery, county lines, and the cultural politics of victimhood in post-colonial Britain
Hosted by the Mannheim Centre for Criminology on 8 December 2021
Speaker: Insa Koch (LSE)

The comparative political economy of punishment in Latin America
Hosted by the Mannheim Centre for Criminology on 10 November 2021
Speaker: Manuel Iturralde (Universidad de los Andes)

The neglected role of citizenship status and 'illegality' in intersectional analysis
Hosted by the Mannheim Centre for Criminology on 6 October 2021
Speaker: Katja Franko (University of Oslo)

2020/21

Human Rights and Incarceration in Europe
Hosted by the Mannheim Centre for Criminology on 16 June 2021
Speaker: Gaëtan Cliquennois (Nantes)

Children and young people in police custody
Hosted by the Mannheim Centre for Criminology on 12 May 2021
Speaker: Miranda Bevan (LSE)

Digital Technologies and Criminal JusticeHosted by the Mannheim Centre for Criminology on 24 March 2021
Speaker: Dr. Pamela Ugwudike (Southampton)

Where did pre-charge bail go? Explaining the rapid decline of a routine police power after the Policing and Crime Act 2017
Hosted by the Mannheim Centre for Criminology on 24 February 2021
Speaker: Dr. Richard Martin (LSE)

The Construction of Guilt in China
Hosted by the Mannheim Centre for Criminology on 27 January 2021
Speaker: Dr. Yu Mou (SOAS)

The Deviant Prison: Philadelphia's Eastern State Penitentiary and the Origins of the Modern Penal System, 1829-1913
Hosted by the Mannheim Centre for Criminology on 9 December 2020
Speaker: Ashley Rubin (University of Hawai'i at Mānoa)

Roundtable Discussion on Defunding the Police,
with Jonathan Simon (UC Berkeley), Jonathan Jackson (LSE), and Derecka Purnell (human rights lawyer and columnist for The Guardian)
Hosted by the Mannheim Centre for Criminology on 11 November 2020

Social Democratic Criminology
Hosted by the Mannheim Centre for Criminology on 21 October 2020
Speaker: Robert Reiner (LSE)

2019/20

Living in hostile environments: Illegality assemblages and everyday experiences of ‘illegality’
Hosted by the Mannheim Centre for Criminology on 12 February 2020
Speaker: Nando Sigona (University of Birmingham)

The Official History of Criminal Justice in England and Wales
Hosted by the Mannheim Centre for Criminology on 22 January 2020
Speaker: Paul Rock (LSE)

Youth, Justice and Community: An Alternative Vision for Dealing with Youth Crime
Hosted by the Mannheim Centre for Criminology on 11 December 2019
Speaker: Jo Phoenix (Open University)

The Pleasure of Punishment
Hosted by the Mannheim Centre for Criminology on 13 November 2019
Speaker: Magnus Hoernqvist (Stockholm University/Mannheim Centre Visiting Fellow)

Book launch and symposium(co-organised with the Dickson Poon School of Law, King’s College London): The Politics of the Police, 5th Edition
(by Ben Bowling, Robert Reiner and Jim Sheptycki)
Chair: Betsy Stanko; Commentaries: Alison Wakefield (Portsmouth), Jenny Fleming (Southampton) and Ben Bradford (UCL)
Hosted by the Mannheim Centre for Criminology on 16 October 2019

2018/19

12 June 2019
Challenges, Innovation and Reform in the Policing of Drugs
Panel with Matt Bacon (University of Sheffield), Jack Spicer (University of the West of England) and Niamh Eastwood (Release)

29 May 2019
Contemporary Crime Control in Historical Context:
From the ‘New Police’ to the ‘Transformation of Policing’?
David Churchill (University of Leeds)

20 March 2019
The Prison Boundary: Between Society and Carceral Space
Jennifer Turner (University of Liverpool)

20 February 2019
Hate Crime and the Legal Process
Abenaa Owusu-Bempah (LSE) and Susann Wiedlitzka (University of Sussex)

16 January 2019
Reading Pictures: Art History and the Sociology of Punishment
Eamonn Carrabine (University of Essex)

28 November 2018
Taking Stock of Research on Policing and the Police
Panel with Jennifer Brown (LSE), Penny Dick (University of Sheffield)
and Nigel Fielding (University of Surrey)

31 October 2018
‘Betwixt and Between’: The Evolution of Parole as a Public Policy Concern in England and Wales
Thomas Guiney (LSE), with a response from Nick Hardwick (Royal Holloway, University of London)

26 September 2018
Atmospheres of Crime and Justice
Alison Young (Melbourne)

2017-18

11 October 2017
The Promise of Ethnography: Gangs, Active Offenders and Policy
Scott Decker (Arizona)

8 November 2017
Law, 'Truth' and Criminal Injustice: Case-Studies in Gender and Punishment
Anette Ballinger (Keele)

6 December 2017
Political Violence: A Typology
Vincenzo Ruggiero (Middlesex)

10 January 2018
Desistance
Beth Weaver (Strathclyde)

28 February 2018
The Prison Boundary: Between Society and Carceral Space
Jen Turner (Liverpool)

21 March 2018
Transforming Justice: Modernisation in the Lower Criminal Courts
Jenni Ward (Middlesex)

16 May 2018
Panel on ‘Deep Imprisonment'
with Ben Crewe (Cambridge), Alison Liebling (Cambridge), Yvonne Jewkes (Kent)

6 June 2018
The Paradox of Punishment: an Anthropology of Crime, Politics and Welfare at the UK's Margins
Insa Koch (LSE)