The criminological insights of news-making criminology

I claim tendentiously, and in the spirit of advertising, to be 'The UK's premier new media criminologist'.  Professor David Wilson of Birmingham City University has better claim to 'old' media and much besides.  Here, in a guest blog, he takes issue with a recently published article in the BJC.

Elizabeth Turner’s article in the new edition of The British Journal of Criminology – Beyond Facts and Values: Rethinking Some Recent Debates about the Public Role of Criminology – neatly summarises the three, and often competing perspectives, on Criminology’s public role.  Turner identifies these three perspectives as: “fighting for truth”; “news-making criminology”; and “democratic under labouring”.  The second perspective can be readily associated with Barak and Groombridge, and the third with Loader and Sparks.  

Turner – while offering a new take on democratic under labouring, via her use of the work of Bruno Latour – appears aligned with the third perspective, and thanks Richard Sparks in her acknowledgements.

No problem with that, except that in doing so, she rather airily dismisses “news-making criminology” as “appearing[ing] to empty criminology of any meaningful content so that all that matters is getting one’s favoured discourse heard”, (page 157).  No evidence is presented to support this editorial and, crucially, Turner fails to cite Mike Rowe’s recent work Just like a TV show: Public criminology and the Media Coverage of ‘hunt for Britain’s most wanted man’ or my own Looking for Laura: Public Criminology and Hot News both of which predate her article.  Had she done so, she might have been able to modify this conclusion or, at the very least, acknowledge that good “news-making criminology” is indeed filled with criminological insight.

More broadly, some of this tension between the three perspectives that are identified is not simply about the plural – and contested - nature of criminology as a discipline, which Turner ably describes, but also about a clear preference for most criminologists to remain rooted in the academy.  Tucked away behind the university’s walls, I sense a reluctance on the part of many criminologists – for different reasons – to engage with any public, never mind “news-making” debate.  For some, the media is a scary monster to be avoided at all costs, or a machine that will grind their beautiful and complex arguments into simplistic soundbites and, in doing so, render them meaningless.   Turner’s conclusion comes perilously close to this latter position, which essentially sees “news-making criminology” as superficial and unworthy.  

I appreciate that I am probably fighting a losing battle on this, and have also had perhaps unfair advantages in that I was trained to present TV programmes by the BBC and now have considerable experience of doing so, but it does seem short-sighted that so few of my academic peers want to engage with the print and broadcast media.  They are far more comfortable – dare I say “proud” – of being democratic under labourers or diplomats, than public criminologists, or dare I say it, “public intellectuals”?

However, at the end of the day, most – if not all - of the growth in the numbers of students who want to study criminology has come from the media’s interest in the subject and their corresponding need to have experts to comment.  None of our students have had any exposure to Criminology save the ‘popular criminology’ of true crime books and documentaries, or what they see in the newspapers, hear on the radio, watch on TV or glean from the internet.  It simply doesn’t make sense to me that we should  ignore where their interests have come from, or fail to contribute to the outlets more generally that are prepared to popularly debate those things which are at the heart of criminology.  

Turner presents her three perspectives as if they each have equal weight and support.  Nothing can be further from the truth.  Sadly, democratic under labourers and diplomats proliferate, either because of temperament, inclination or downright academic snobbery.

Ripper Street

I once used to open my introductory lecture in criminology by asking the students who was interested in serial killers.  Over half of the, mainly women, students would raise their hands.  I would then say that I wasn’t and that they’d learn nothing about them in my classes.

I have, however, lightened up a bit; and now open my crime and media module with discussion of the case.  Not of the many murders, which victims might reasonably be seen as ‘true’ ones and certainly no speculation as to the killer; though, of course, these are all mentioned BUT in how the media of the day and more recently - in press, books, films, games etc - represented it.  That is the focus on the murders worldwide by the media, the part played by the media in giving Jack a name and continuing a culture in which a gynocidal maniac becomes a tourist attraction.

So, in part, I play the game that is the organising principle of the BBC’s Ripper Street.  I use the very interest in ‘Jack the Ripper’ to engage my students.  Sadly still too many fall for the Ripperology aspects and see my continued use of the term ‘Whitechapel Murders’ as a prissy political correctness.  I have not watched any of the Whitechapel Series on ITV  as there is sometimes so many series about crime that ‘I must watch’ that - based on trailers, previews or even chance - I don’t watch them all.  The DVDs of Breaking Bad my son bought me for xmas must be watched.

Clearly both Whitechapel and Ripper Street as have others draw shamelessly on the interest in ‘Jack’ as does this blog post.  This is not a review.  For fan boys I recommend this from Den of Geek and for feminist ire and irony Grace Dent.  If this were a review I might mention that it feels like a graphic novel.

I am glad to see that the writer says, ‘In truth, I’ve never been much of a Ripperologist’ but pick up on the ‘almost’ in the claim that, ‘Strangely, the whole series was unlocked by almost throwing him away’.  I ‘almost’ throw him away too but Ripper Street would have far fewer viewers and commentators if he had truly been discarded.  So if this is not a review what is it?  In part it’s a teaching aid, a checklist of criminological concerns and tiny alternative to overuse by criminologists of the The Wire.

So what did I spot in the first two episodes?  Let me know if I missed any.

Episode 1: ripper tours; the significance of the media; the possibility of ‘copy cat’ killings; the passing off of one murder for that a serial killers and the rise of photography and its early use in policing and for pornography.

Episode 2: vigilantism; public order policing; the need for juvenile justice; need for abolition of the death penalty; the media again; the meaning of criminal tattoos (kings’s a mugging!); shades of Fagin (a form of ‘grooming’?) and international police cooperation (Pinkertons).

And always victims.  William D. Rubinstein says, ‘probably more is known about the lives of these five than of any other group of working-class women in Victorian England’.  Ripper Street gives some idea of similar lives but still very much a tourist view.  Let me be your guide!

Trust me I’m a doctor. Who’s the criminologist? My ‘honours’ list.

In a recent edition of Celebrity Mastermind a celebrity was asked ‘In the field of criminology what does the term alibi mean?”.  I was so struck by this sudden appearance of my discipline in the Christmas schedules that I didn’t even get to hear whether the correct definition of an alibi was given, or the common erroneous presumption that it meant excuse.  I could not hear because some idiot was shouting at the screen, ‘In any field!’.  It was me.  Having calmed down - and looked online see even quite pukka sources claiming it has come to mean ‘excuse’ - I retreat to the complaint that the question mistakes the criminological for the legal, or vice versa.

So what is criminology?  Well, rather than taking you through an early lecture in my modules, let’s examine who is a criminologist.  This issue arises from time to time.  Sometimes students waste words and risk my ire by claiming that some writer or other is a criminologist, when what I want is an assessment of whether their argument has merit or not.  I take a fairly broad position in which any discussion of crime in any discipline (and none) might be considered criminological, from the blatherings of Peter Hitchens and many politicians to signed up members of the British Society of Criminology.  I do though argue that criminologists have too readily ceded ground to others such as police, think tanks, NGOs and tabloid media and need to engage more (Criminologists Say).

One group that has a particular right to speak are victims.  I believe everyone has something to say about crime as only the lucky will never have been a victim and only the saintly - yes Durkheim, I did say that - will never have offended.  But I am concerned about some who seek to speak for the victim but immediately turn to what they propose to do to the offender.

In the great criminological choir some get chosen for solo parts: thus by the accident of victimisation Helen Newlove becomes a Baroness and Victims Commissioner after her husband is kicked to death.  Sara Payne’s daughter, Sarah, dies at the hands of Roy Whiting and through the boost of the News Of The World’s campaigning zeal Sara becomes an honorary doctor of the Open University.  As this story shows Roy Whiting has been seriously victimised but don’t expect his name to feature in any politically astute honours list.

But back to honours and Dr Sara Payne.  She lends her name, and more controversially her title, to The Sun’s Justice Campaign.  A number of academics are concerned about this and as an OU graduate I am uneasy but probably because I’m opposed to honours systems in all areas of life.  Yes, I know my father, Brian, has an honorary degree from the Open University.

So far Sara Payne is not advertised or billed as a criminologist.  However, Mark Williams-Thomas is, and some in the criminological community are unhappy about this.  I welcome his voice and enthusiasm but am more concerned that his very policey/punitive approach is seen as representative of UK criminology.  A better example of this ‘who can be described as a criminologist debate’ though is Roger Graef.  I recall a colleague being very exercised that he was described as a criminologist.  But, enjoy the irony here, I’m happy to honour him with that title.  And similarly Richard Garside a very sage commentator on crime and criminal justice.  And famously Against Criminology and now sadly dead I honour Stan Cohen.