A Contemporary Study of the Decision to Incarcerate White-Collar and Street Property Offender by Van Slyke and Bales

This month’s article, by Shanna Van Slyke and William D. Bales, deals with the sentencing of white collar criminals. The study analyses sentencing guideline data from Florida for the period 1994 to 2004, comparing ‘in/out incarceration sentences’ for white collar crimes with the offences of burglary and theft.

The authors seek to investigate whether white collar offenders in the 21st century enjoy sentencing leniency compared with nonviolent, street level property offenders. Their findings suggest that, despite operating under sentencing guidelines designed to reduce disparities, white collar offenders are afforded greater leniency, though this relationship varies by the type of white collar crime considered, the offender’s social status, and whether the sentencing occurred before or after the Enron scandal (a national corporate scandal in USA during the period 2001-2002).

The article kicks off with analyses of white collar offenders in the 21^st century. The conventional wisdom has always asserted that white collar offenders are viewed in a different light by the public and are treated less punitively than street offenders by the criminal justice system; however, sentences arising from the aforementioned Enron scandal and others, has cast doubt on this long held assumption. For example, Jeff Skilling, former CEO of Enron, received a 24 year sentence for the offences of conspiracy, insider trading, and lying to auditors.

The article goes on to compare definitions of white collar crime. Sutherland proffers an offender based definition, imagining white collar crime to be ‘committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation.’ This definition accords with the social status based explanations for sentencing leniency or the ‘status shield’ that purportedly protects white collar offenders from harsh treatment. In addition, many of the mitigating factors that judges may take into account in sentencing, such as stable employment, family relationships and community involvement, are more likely to be present in the life of the typical white collar offender. Finally, it is also argued that the Judge may take the view that undergoing the process of arrest, detention and trial is punishment enough for a person with the social status associated with white collar offenders. Moreover, the status shield may operate in a more instrumental manner. For example, it has been suggested that the political influence associated with white collar offenders makes them particularly immune to punishment, as prosecutors may feel too threatened or intimidated to prosecute them for fear of retaliation or other negative consequences.

A second perspective, which is adopted in this article, focuses on the characteristics of the offence rather than characteristics of the offender to explain the greater leniency afforded to white collar crime. Legalistic factors that operate in favour of white collar criminals include the greater complexity of the typical white collar crime, the diffuse nature of the victims who are oftentimes unaware of their victimisation and thus do not report it, the specialised knowledge required to investigate and prosecute many of these cases, jurisdictional issues stemming from the geographical distance between perpetrator and victim(s), and the reluctance of prosecutors to pursue such cases that tend to place an onerous burden on an already overwhelmed court docket.

A third perspective draws upon a large body of public opinion literature and argues that both the public and the criminal justice system view white collar crime to be less serious than street crime and, consequently, less deserving of lengthy penal sentences. A 1988 study by Wheeler et al found that harm and seriousness variables, including presence or threat of physical violence, amount of monetary loss, duration of the offence, nature of the victim and violation of trust, were among the most important determinants used by judges in their sentencing decisions. The authors point out that this suggests that if a crackdown on white collar crime is in fact underway, one potential explanation for it could be the increasing recognition of the seriousness of these acts and a growing intolerance of white collar crime in general, brought about by developments, such as increased media attention on white collar crime, the consumer movement, environmental concerns and the equal rights movement which prompted scholars to question the over-representation of offenders from socially disadvantaged backgrounds in prison, despite the immensely harmful criminality of the more powerful and well-connected members of society.

The next section deals with the existing empirical research in this area, most of it dating back to the 1970s. The authors of this study, therefore, present their work as a timely update to the literature. According to the them, two lines of research, both conducted prior to the introduction of sentencing guidelines, dominate this area of white collar crime scholarship: (1) the examination by Hagan et al of sentencing patterns for white collar and street offenders in 10 federal district courts from 1974 to 1977; and (2) the Yale studies that combine quantitative and qualitative research to evaluate the assessments made by judges in federal white collar crime cases from 1976 to 1978. Hagan et al found that white collar offenders generally did not receive more lenient treatment at the sentencing stage of the criminal justice process. In addition, it was found that the specific type of white collar crime considered impacted sentencing outcomes and that the Watergate scandal of 1970s had no appreciable effect on sentencing disparities because the greater tendency to sentence white collar offenders to prison after Watergate was offset by their shorter sentences.

The article then goes on to address the authors research in relation to the following questions: (1) Are white collar offenders sentenced more leniently than comparable street level property offenders; (2) Does the type of white collar crime committed impact the relative sentencing severity of judicial sanctions; (3) Are high status white collar offenders sentenced more leniently than low status white collar offenders; and (4) Are white collar offenders sentenced more harshly following Enron than similar white collar offenders sentenced before Enron?

In answer to question (1) it was found that white collar offenders were 33.4 percent less likely than street criminals to receive prison sentences. In relation to question (2) considerable variability in sentencing was found across specific types of white collar crimes. Frauds against businesses, those involving credit card fraud, and bribery were significantly more likely to be imprisoned, while offenders convicted of defrauding the Government and embezzlers were no more or less likely to be imprisoned than consumer fraud offenders. In relation to question (3) the findings indicate that offenders convicted of the more high status white collar crime (Medicaid provider fraud) were significantly less likely to be imprisoned, with the odds of receiving a term of incarceration 98.7 percent lower than comparable offenders sentenced for a low status white collar crime (public assistance fraud). The finding for question (4) show there was a significant increase (up 30.7 percent) in the likelihood of white collar criminals receiving an prison sentence after Enron, while there was no significant change in the likelihood of imprisonment for offenders convicted of street crimes.

Discussion

In order to fulfil the principle of equality before the law is it necessary to treat white collar criminals more leniently, seems as a prison sentence will inevitably impact more harshly on a middle class offender?

And so kicked off our discussion on sentencing white collar offenders.  The characteristics of the typical white collar offender were thought to be relevant, as usually he or she will be employed long-term, have a stable family relationship, and may be active in their local community, all things which mitigate against a harsh prison sentence. It may also be judged that after their scare with the law they are unlikely to re-offend and thus pose a low risk to society. Therefore, on the ground that imprisonment serves no practical purpose other than to punish, which every member of the group was opposed to, it may be legitimate to hand down more lenient sentences to white collar criminals. It was also argued that for a middle class offender, prison may not even be the harshest punishment, and that the process of arrest, trial and detention are punishment enough as they usually lead to a loss of status, professionally and personally.

Against this point of view, it was argued that although it might be the case that a middle class person’s subjective perceptions of spending time in prison are worse than a street offender who is well accustomed with the system, this is no reason to excuse middle class offenders from serving lengthy sentences. Three points were proffered in support of this position. First, middle class offenders are better equipped to access legal counsel who can argue their defence and so affording them privileges in respect of sentencing tilts the balance of justice unfairly in their favour. Second, the criminal law has decided that imprisonment is a suitable punishment for criminal acts and objectively prison in fact hurts people, whether or not their subjective preferences have adapted to the harsh reality of a prison regime. Third, the public’s perception that white collar offenders get off lightly may not deter future offenders from criminal activity. Although, it was conceded that sentencing works on the basis of the offender’s individual responsibility and it may not be fair to factor in to someone’s sentence the need to set a general deterrence.

The practice of sentencing guidelines in USA was also discussed and their application was explained to the group. Judges’ discretion is severely fettered  in that they apply the facts of the case (the scale of offence, previous convictions, mitigating circumstances) to a scale and are given a sentence to hand down. The process has led to harsher sentences across the board but still more lenient for white collar crimes compared with street level crimes. It was suggested that if an objective scale turns out more harsh punishment for street offenders it might be that they are deserving of longer sentences due to the risk they pose to society and the harm they have committed. However, it was argued that perhaps there is an inherent bias in the US sentencing guidelines which has created the perception that street crime is more harmful. It was noted that corporate crimes, although the effects are usually diffuse, can lead to very serious consequences such as environmental damage, economic loss and sometimes death. For example, Enron’s mismanagement of the energy market in California led to rolling blackouts during which residents suffered hugely and some people died. 

The discussion then led on to sentencing guidelines in Ireland which were roundly criticised for lack of consistency. The latitude between the sentence a judge in Dublin Circuit Court and a country court, in say Mayo, might hand down for the same offence can be huge, leading the group to talk of a ‘geographical lottery.’ The practice of judge-picking was also discussed, whereby cases are adjourned until a perceived more favourable judge is sitting. The option of   judicial training was discussed in order to achieve better outcomes in sentencing. It was felt that such a practice might work well for sexual offences; however, it’s applicability for corporate crime was doubted. Many of the biases of judges may be unconscious, such as identifying with the offender and it may not be possible to train judges not to hold such views.

The impact of public perception on sentencing was also discussed and it was favoured by the group that public opinion shouldn’t weigh too heavily on judges decisions. Although it was accepted that inevitably it is the case that fear of public outcry plays on judges' minds. The example of Carney J’s reversal of a suspended sentence in Fiona Doyle’s case was given, as well as judge’s references to Love/Hate in the context of a gangland crime case. It was felt that series such as Love/Hate and the media’s reporting of trials can lead to a sort of moral panic regarding a crime explosion in Ireland. It was felt that this may play on a judge’s decision to hand down harsher sentences for street or gangland criminals.

The discussion ended with a look to the future and a discussion of the upcoming Anglo cases for their effect on the judiciary’s and public’s view of the gravity of corporate crimes. This week’s article provided a useful focal point for the group’s discussion of white collar crime sentencing and sentencing guidelines in general.

This month's blog was written by Angelina Cox.

The views expressed herein are those of the author's alone.

Sexuality in Women's Prisons

This month The Differential Association convened to discuss two articles on the issue of same-sex relationships in women’s prisons. In the first article, Pardue, Arrigo and Murphy attempt to create a taxonomy of relationship types and sexual behaviour in women’s prisons. This takes the form of a comprehensive review of the existing literature followed by recommendations. The practical benefits of this are foremost in their minds as they urge the development of a pro-active programme of sexual exploitation/victimisation preventions. The innovation of such a typology is also a useful heuristic tool for further prison researchers. The real-world application of their investigation can meaningfully contribute towards creating a safer prison environment.

Drawing on existing theorists, they state that prison sexuality is shaped by mainstream culture and layered with prison subcultures. In this model, factors intrinsic to the individual interact with factors specific to incarceration.  One imports one’s sexual identity, while it is also possible to export sexual behaviours and norms from prison on release. There is therefore a permeable boundary, represented by the walls of the prison, in which attitudes to sex are those of both the outside and the inside.

Pardue et al argue that so far, the study of sexuality in prison has been marginalised, or portrayed negatively, and that researchers working in the area have been the subject of scepticism.

Their continuum of prison sexuality reads: suppressed sexuality, autoeroticism, true homosexuality, situational homosexuality, sexual violence. Research indicates that the variety of sexual behaviours in women’s prisons is diverse, this continuum attempts to encompass all such diversities.

Suppressed sexuality, which the DA found an interesting conceptualisation, and one little considered in the context of prison sexuality, is an adaptive response to incarceration. It is categorised as the first on the continuum classification, which is correlated with a continuum of potential for aggression. While there is little research on suppressed sexuality in prison, research does exist on non-sexual relationships within prison, such as pseudofamilies and kinships which provide emotional, rather than sexual, support.

The category of autoeroticism, second on their continuum, has traditionally been a subject of moral and regulatory concern within institutions, and especially as related to women and girls. Masturbation was for decades considered an unnatural vice, and indicative of moral degeneracy or mental incompetence. Pardue et al argue from the literature that it remains a stigmatised subject within prisons.

The category of homosexuality is divided into true and situational, and the authors highlight the stigma associated with such sexuality, emanating from outside the prison as well as from within. They write that same-sex female relationships received little academic attention until the 1960s and 1970s, yet the concerns about ‘particular friendships’ between women had been a recurring feature of prison records from the nineteenth-century.

The literature has suggested that women entering prison who self-identify as homosexual are better able to adapt to prison-life and labels such as prisoner through the learned behaviour of adapting to cope with abuse and victimisation of their sexuality on the outside. The literature is also sceptical of the usefulness of a binary straight/gay categorisation (Severance, 2004), as identity is a constitutive feature which can be reshaped and fluid. Many prisoners’ first same-sex encounters occurred while in prison; these figures suggest that such activity should be thoroughly understood as another element of adapting to prison, along with the related trauma and issues some may experience. Sexuality is a heavily weighted subject, with corresponding issues of stigma, emotional response and vulnerability.

Pardue et al argue that sexual violence, the final category of their continuum, had not been studied prior to 1996. There are many potential opportunities for such violence in a prison environment; for example, persons in prison live with deprivations, which can lead to an underground bartering economy. Harmful behaviours can also occur in the daily running of prisons, through strip-searching for example. The authors divide sexual violence into the sub-categories manipulation, compliance and coercion and argue that the issues are again diverse depending on the statuses of the persons involved. For example, if one participant is a prison guard this raises pertinent issues of security, exploitation and institutional abuse. Examples of research focused on sexual violence include Struckman-Johnson and Struckman-Johnson (2006) who studied men and women in prison and found that 75% men and 57% had experienced sexual coercion more than once on at least one occasion. Blackburn, Mullings and Marquart (2008) found sexual victimisation rates were higher in the female prison population than in general population. Consideration of such issues of institutional abuse, exploitation and vulnerability are central to the safe running of prisoner regimes.

The authors highlight the key role of prison officers in addressing the problem of sexual violence in prisons, advising that appropriate education and training is critical in improving prevention and detection. Pardue et al observe that a benign approach taken by prison authorities to this issue could contribute to sustaining the harm. They also acknowledge that prison staff can become implicated or involved in the sexual coercion of female inmates.

Pardue et al argue for innovative, empirically-led research and are keen to see their typology tested and revised with the hope it could feed into policy. For example, women leaving prison should be given counselling akin to post-trauma counselling, both perpetrator and victim should receive psychological and medical assistance following incidents of sexual violence, and the employment of more female staff as well as psychometric testing of potential staff.

Issues which arise in relation to sexual violence in prison include, are the women ‘free’ to report assaults? What are the implications of reporting? Prison has limited health services, the authors argue for the introduction of nursing care, with nurses trained in sexual assault awareness to minimise the risk of secondary victimisation. They cite Haney (2006), who has argued that sexual violence against persons who are imprisoned is a human rights issue.

The continuum of sexual behaviour is also characterised by a corresponding potential for aggression. For example, suppressed sexuality had the lowest risk of aggression while, obviously, sexual violence was at the top end. Some members of the DA found the specific choice of word, ‘aggression’ interesting, and perhaps misleading. In this conceptualisation true homosexuality is less ‘aggressive’ than situational homosexuality. The latter is judged to have more potential for volatile conduct, and may lead to oppression, and the flourishing of a pariah economy. The terminology here is somewhat misleading and may serve to stigmatise gay women and those who begin homosexual relationships while imprisoned, this unconscious reliance on negative stereotyping of gay women as masculine should be avoided.

Tomer Einat and Gila Chen studied perceptions of same-sex relationships in Israel’s only women’s prison, they found that there is tension between the prevalence of such relationships and the negative attitudes towards them, that relationships between shorter-term prisoners were more likely to be based on economic exploitation, and that most Jewish and Muslim women participate in such relationships despite expressing negative attitudes towards them. Einat and Chen found that the prison lacked pseudofamily structures, something they found unexpected considering the literature.

Einat and Chen, in their conclusion, argue that Israeli women prisoners could be experiencing a masculinsation and/or liberation process, becoming more like male inmates and freeing themselves from the constraints of gender. This line of reasoning is somewhat specious; they are equating homosexuality with masculinity. Further, their conception of liberation from gender is tantamount to increasing masculinity. The evidence which leads them to this unconvincing conclusion seems to instead point towards troubling exploitative sexual relationships within the prison they studied. The DA noted the huge differential in the weekly sums prisoners could earn through prison-work, arguably this creates economic disparities which are then resolved in the informal prison economy. Such a differential payment system would appear to be a possible recommendation for reform.

The authors speculate that attitudes will become more positive to such relationships, drawing on evidence that longer-term prisoners conceptualise the relationships in a more understanding manner, this overlooks the fact that the negative attitudes mostly come from short-term prisoners.

Finally, the brief treatment of Muslim/Jewish divide would have provided a very interesting element had it been expanded. The authors concluded, on seemingly little evidence, that the attitudes of women of both religions were not fundamentally different. A fuller exploration of this would have been welcome.

An examination of Einat and Gila’s methodology highlighted some shortcomings. The authors claimed participants were randomly chosen from a participant list compiled by a member of prison staff. More detail on the method of randomisation used, and how the initial list was compiled is required. Selection bias may have occurred during the identification of prospective participants.

The phenomenological approach used throughout interviewing was not continued during data analysis. The use of content analysis to analyse transcripts did not provide an in-depth interpretative approach, required to understand such complex prison experiences. Although two researchers were involved in this study, it appears that peer-reviewing of themes was not completed. Authors also failed to highlight the limitations of using such an experiential form of interviewing, including the difficulty of understanding other people's perceptions, as well as the bias caused by a researcher’s own conceptions.

A systematic approach to data analysis was taken by counting the frequency with which themes and words were used by participants. Word counting may not explore sufficiently the meaning of particular words used by participants, and can lack rigour. Only one respondent spoke about ‘fear’ however, authors presented it as a major theme due to the value they attributed to this experience. It appears researchers’ own conceptions obstructed objective qualitative analysis. Themes highlighting participants’ motivations for partaking in same-sex relationships, along with attitudes towards same-sex relationships during incarceration were presented. Authors provided scant interpretation of themes, and presented respondents’ excerpts without credible interpretation, comparison or analysis.

There is a rich vein of cultural representations of women’s imprisonment, ranging from the ground-breaking television show ‘Orange is the New Black’ to sexploitation films of the 1970s and soap-opera-like dramas such as 'Prisoner Cell Block H' and 'Bad Girls'. Many of these representations provide heavily sexualised characterisation. These cultural manifestations borrow from prison terminology, utilising concepts such as butch and femme. However, as shown in the two articles herein, the active role of research aims to examine lived experiences of women prisoners to present the complexity of sexuality within women’s prisons rather than two-dimensional ciphers.

Most interestingly, this month's discussion quickly moved from a consideration of the two selected articles to a broader (and rapidly spiralling!) debate about the sexualisation of women in the media, both as perpetrators and as victims of crime; in light of the tendency towards such objectification research on women in prison presents a means of acknowledging the subjectivity and integrity of such persons. While DA members, at times, did not remain entirely convinced by the approaches taken in both articles, the thought-provoking and insightful discussion prompted by their subject matter was welcomed and valued by all.

This blog was written by Lynsey Black, Kate O’Hara and Colette Barry.

The views expressed herein are those of the authors’ alone.

A Contemporary Study of the Decision to Incarcerate White-Collar and Street Property Offender

The November article, written by Shanna Van Slyke and William D Bales, looks at the traditional understanding of white-collar offences as somehow less serious and therefore deserving of lesser sentences. They examine whether this tendency has survived the white-collar crime scandals of the early 2000s, notably the Enron episode. The research looks at the sentencing of white-collar and street property offenders in Florida from 1994 to 2004, taking into account legal and extra-legal factors to determine whether a shift in punitivism is evident.

The article provides a timely opportunity to discuss the popular perception of white-collar crime in the wider context of recent Irish events and the seeming groundswell of criticism towards bankers and others perceived to have been complicit in and responsible for the economic downturn. Is the current willingness to take white-collar crime seriously here to stay, or is it an expressive short-term reaction to events?

Venue: Mulligan's Pub on Poolbeg Street

When: Tuesday 19th November at 6pm

Same-Sex Female Relationships in Prison

This October, The Differential Association will be discussing two articles which deal with the issue of the same-sex female relationships in prison.

The first article, by Pardue, Arrigo and Murphy, Sex and Sexuality in Women's Prisons, attempts to provide a typology of the range of sexual relationships found in women's prisons. The other article by Einat and Chen, What's Love Got to do With It, explores inmates' attitudes to same-sex relationships in an Israeli prison. Taking these together, we can compare the suggested typology of Pardue et al, and assess whether we think this conforms to the empirical evidence presented. The issues of victimisation, and exploitation are highlighted in both papers, and it'll give us an interesting chance to discuss one aspect of a topic which is rarely discussed in relation to prison and criminology - sex!

Wednesday October 23rd

Mulligans Back Room, Poolbeg Street

6pm

Superheroes at the DA

In terms of sales figures, it is difficult to argue otherwise than the readership of comic books is still something of a “subcultural niche” (to borrow a phrase from Phillips and Strobl). A quick look at the sales figures show that for August 2013, Infinity was the highest seller in North America, shifting 205,819 issues, with Superman Unchained coming some way behind at 136,319. The Avengers movie, by way of contrast, sold almost 26 million tickets in the US in its opening weekend.

What is undeniable though is the huge influence the comic book industry has exerted on Hollywood in the past number of decades, remarked on in the articles under review. While movie-going does not necessarily translate into comic book sales, the characters and plots on the silver screen can be traced back to their innovation on the page. The cinematic renderings are often not truly reflective of the moral outrage which can be provoked by comic books. It is a medium with a history of worrying the conservatives, epitomised by Fredric Wertham and his crusade against the medium. Indeed, every few weeks within the industry there are fresh outbreaks of anxiety, most recently in the character of Harley Quinn. That these can sometimes translate to the films they inspire is also evident in Jim Carrey's recent decision to distance himself from Kick Ass 2, for reasons relating to its violence content.

The two articles the DA read this month (during which we were also treated to themed baked goods), explored studies on comic books and superhero television shows. Nickie Phillips and Staci Strobl’s study examined paradigms of justice in current comic books, specifically US comic books. Lisa Kort-Butler’s research focused on the depictions of the criminal justice system in cartoon superhero television show aimed at the children’s market.

Comic books often create fictive societies which remain in a state of constant crisis, depicting heroes as holding back a tide of chaos, Kort-Butler writes that “crime seems to be everywhere and the justice system seems helpless to stop it”. Crisis justification becomes the underpinning for repressive policies and extra-legal responses. Kort-Butler analyses superhero television shows from a 15-year period, examining whether they reflect the so-called ‘punitive turn’ in criminal justice policies in the US. She asks whether these depictions are ‘cultural primers’ for children in favour of the dominant views on punishment.

Phillips and Strobl highlight that structural causes are ignored for pathological, individualistic explanations of crime. They identify a post-9/11 era of comics, arguing that story arcs tend to “reproduce the existing power structures of larger society” (308). Kort-Butler too notes that the portrayal of villains accords with the offender as the neo-classical rational actor. Such a view emphasises the importance of tough sentencing, and downplays the importance of social inequality.

Both studies found that traditional law enforcement was depicted as inadequate, or corrupt. Phillips and Strobl argue that this is poles apart from the depictions of the criminal justice agencies in television series, such as NYPD Blue. However, as Kort-Butler finds, in the simplified world of superhero television shows, the police and official criminal justice agencies are ultimately retrieved as the legitimate guardians of society, and all villains apprehended are sent to the police, or the prison, by the heroes.

The hypothesis that they would find a concentration on street crime turned out not to be the case for Phillips and Strobl; the actual findings showed a prevalent concern with organised crime. Perhaps its hierarchical structure and dense networks allows for greater flexibility and breadth in story-telling. They also found that the stories represented dominant, American, hegemonic views on crime and punishment.

What of the moral qualms of many of the most well-known superheroes, such as Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man or Professor Charles Xavier, which prevent them from killing when it can be avoided, as noted by Kort-Butler. Phillips and Strobl argue that even these characters exhibit views on, what they term, deathworthiness, in which the lives of some are seen as less valuable, and disposable, to protect a bigger goal.

Phillips and Strobl argue that the archetypal setting for comic book stories is the traditional, tranquil community. This seems to belie the plethora of titles which take dystopic settings for their action. The prevalence of the traditional All-American settings would seem to be further downgraded following the turn, from the 1980s onwards, which saw titles like Watchmen and Batman: The Dark Knight Returns offer greater reflexivity, and nuanced protagonists with more complex psychological profiles.

Kort-Butler found that in the superhero television shows, aimed at a young audience, these characters tended to minimise some, but not all, evidence of this darker turn. Kort-Butler has published an earlier article working from the same sample of cartoons, in which she found that much criminal activity was centred on greed, criminals could tell right from wrong and rationally chose the wrong path out of self-interest, and that criminals and ordinary persons were sharply differentiated. She writes that this notion of rational actors therefore deserving of harsh punishment matches dominant ideology on crime. Her findings in the article discussed by the DA this month show that incapacitation is prized as the best outcome, and she sees no evidence that there is any confidence placed in rehabilitation.

One of the notable comments from Kort-Butler relates to the use of guns; firearms were shown as the preserve of the law enforcement agencies, rather than the superheroes. The use of guns by the police seemed to be characterised by over-use, and by ineffectual trigger-happiness. The DA speculated that while this did not show guns in a positive light, it may also have the effect of trivialising gun use, after all, in cartoons a bullet rarely finds it mark. However, for the most part her study found evidence of a ‘get-tough’, law and order approach to justice, demonstrated by the heroes’ dismay when villains were released ‘on technicalities’, and in their willingness to go outside the law to capture their foes. However, as the heroes are outside the law, by virtue of the law’s inability and their moral superiority, the use of violence by the protagonists is presented as a desirable outcome.

However, as expressed by Maggie O’Neill and Lizzie Seal, in Transgressive Imaginations, culture can provide sites of resistance to dominant hegemony. In comic books this is demonstrated by heroes like the lesbian, former soldier Kate Kane as Batwoman, Miles Morales, a young African-American boy as Spider-man in Ultimate Marvel continuity, and Daredevil, the character of Matt Murdock, a blind attorney. Paraphrasing O’Neill and Seal, this illustrates the radical, democratic power to culturally re-present normative depictions (O’Neill and Seal, 2012). The empowerment of marginalised groups such as LGBT, ethnic minority or persons with disabilities is all evident within comic books, and recent storylines about the same-sex relationships of Batwoman, in DC, and Northstar and Kyle, in the X-Men books in Marvel, became mainstream news. The DA also pointed to the diversity on show in many of the X-Men books, books which were not part of the sample in either study, despite their huge popularity.

However it remains the case that comic books often present a women-unfriendly world. In a similar vein, Phillips and Strobl question whether ethnicity is a factor involved in deathworthiness, and whether characterisation plays into stereotypical representations of ethnic minorities. It is still true that the rosters of superhero teams are predominantly white and male. This inevitably, would appear to be the flipside of deathworthy, those characters whose lives are valued more highly.

Regarding the limitations of the studies, both articles highlight issues of race and gender which were not explored. This seems to have provided a half-realised opportunity, especially in the case of Phillips and Strobl, who reference these issues in the body of their work without going further. Information on the demographics of comic book readers might also have been interesting. Some figures estimate that almost one-quarter of readers are women, while the general readership skews towards male, and older than what might be expected, considering comic books are so often dismissed as a children’s books, or the domain of the teenage boy.

The DA would also have found a reflexive element to the articles interesting, in which the authors revealed whether they were coming to the research as fans. It was felt that the inclusion of such a reflexive element could have significantly enriched the presentation of the authors’ methodological approaches, particularly so in the case of Phillips and Strobl. Considering that such entertainments are considered ‘niche’, the difference between previous exposure or not could provide immense differences in the selection and interpretation of the content.

In a discussion of the images of crime and justice found in comic books, it should be remembered that we are dealing with a very wide and varied spectrum. Interestingly, in Cultural Criminology and Kryptonite, the authors exclude children’s comic books – a seemingly arbitrary move considering that the readership of many of these titles extends into adult demographic, such as in the newly launched My Little Pony Friendship is Magic line, or the Archie comics. The DA was curious as to the rationale behind such a design choice, and again, the absence of reflections on the authors’ knowledge and engagement with the genre was lamented. Phillips and Strobl’s study lacked definition of the terms of the study, and more concrete rationales for selecting the sample would have been welcome. The aims of their article seem to overspill its capacity, and issues that were briefly touched on, like the Judeo-Christian moralism, and gender and race, were never explored to satisfaction. Phillips and Strobl appear to be aware of this, offering acknowledgement of these limitation and encouraging future research to address such questions at the conclusion of their article. However, these issues may be explored more fully in their recent book on the topic, which should provide an excellent opportunity for the more comprehensive analysis they envision.

Perhaps the most profound insight to emerge from the articles, was the ironic moralising response to comic books considering the dominant hegemonic message they convey. However, while we may agree that the desire for retribution demonstrated in comic books and superhero television shows may be a base response, it is simplistic to say that these gut responses actually dictate criminal justice policy. The comic books, especially, act as dark imaginings of our underlying fears. As such, they may represent safety-valves, and hypothetical world-building, in which we can play out larger concepts and notions of justice. Considering that comic books cover a diverse array of different formats and themes, what can we ultimately say about the industry as a whole? Perhaps only that crime and justice themes continue to be overwhelmingly popular topics for entertainment. Considering the alternatives to the idea of retributive justice found in the sample, in Wonder Woman’s peace-making response for example, it seems that we should focus on the diversity of views. To conclude that “Best-selling comic books are a cultural touchstone for conservative, reactionary values… and reinforce the status quo with seductive and exciting storylines” (328) may be too pat a summary for such a diverse genre.

Epilogue, the story continues...

Having just finished Comic Book Crime: Truth, Justice and the American Way The DA can now answer in the affirmative one question posed above, the book is a comprehensive analysis of all those issues the article could not include within its scope. The book tackles issues of gender, sexuality and race, devoting a substantial amount of space to these analyses and presenting the figures Batwoman, among others, as examples of a counter-hegemonic characters.

The use of excerpts from focus group research are particularly fascinating, providing a telling insight into reader identification; for example, male readers expressed a difficulty relating to female characters in comic books and many participants felt a stigma attached to males reading female-led titles. Reflective of this gender bias, in their focus group research only one female participant could be persuaded to take part. However, the demographic figures suggest female readership is significant.

Interestingly, we also learn that Philips and Strobl did not come to the sub-culture of comic books as total neophytes, and had followed various titles prior to their decision to embark on the study. As the first comprehensive attempt to grapple with comic books through a criminological lens, the study is a hugely welcome addition to cultural criminological.

This months blog was written by Lynsey Black and Colette Barry.

The views expressed herein are the authors' alone.

Beyond 'So What?' Criminology

Roger Matthews, (2009) Beyond ‘so what?’ criminology: Rediscovering Realism, Theoretical Criminology, 13(3), 341-362

The Differential Association article of choice this month was Roger Matthews’ pointed critique of criminology, Beyond ‘so what?’ criminology: Rediscovering Realism. Matthews’ 2009 article was chosen following his barnstorming turn as a plenary speaker at the 9^th North South Criminology Conference, held this year in University College Cork. Matthews, as conference opener, provoked a conversation which continued to echo in overheard conversations for the two days of the conference, and indeed beyond, as is ably proved by this blog entry. His critique of the discipline, and his diagnosis that there was an ailment afflicting criminology, seemed to divide the delegates. At the conference he expressed disappointment that the argument, originally expressed in this 2009 article had, as yet, received no response.

Matthews’ thesis hinges on a three-pronged critique of criminology, judging the problem with the discipline to be a lack of theoretical integrity, lack of methodological rigour and a lack of policy relevance.

The term used by Matthews, ‘So what?’ criminology, is one gleaned from Elliot Currie’s 2007 article, Against Marginality: Arguments for a Public Criminology. It refers to highly technical and quantitative criminological research, which takes as its starting-point previous studies of a similar nature, and which therefore tends to become increasingly and alarmingly niche and irrelevant. Currie argued that this infinite regression of reference points rendered such studies beyond the interest and comprehension of lay persons, rendering it opaque to many criminologists as well.

Much of Matthews’ article hinges on the idea of public criminology. Matthews cites Currie’s call for active engagement by academics with policy-makers and the public, and a chance to engage in dialogue. He also cites the speech of Michael Burawoy while President of the American Sociological Association, in which he also argued for a public sociology. Burawoy advanced the notion of a division of labour within the discipline, something that Matthews does not.

Matthews' tripartite examination appears to suggest that the application of a sound theoretical foundation and the use of appropriate and suitable methodologies to criminological research will, of itself, herald greater policy relevance. This depiction lacks some appreciation of the realities of how political structures and administrative procedures shape the policy-making process. How, and to what degree, expert-led knowledge trickles into policy-making is a full area of study in itself. First, there is the problem of cultural translation as research moves from the academic occupational space to the sites of policy-making. No matter how rigorous criminology is, theoretically and methodologically, this data is often stripped to make it fit for political purpose. That political/policy purpose is in turn shaped by the policy-making culture and institutional rules, all of which mediate how such data is received and understood and filtered into policy. Secondly, the demands of the policy-maker and the responsibilities which underpin their work can vary between policy-making contexts, their requirements are, however, always more varied than needing to be just expert-led. Thus, and increasingly, criminological knowledge is often just another voice in the cacophony of equally vested interests such as victims groups, community activists, criminal justice occupational groups such as the POA, economists, human rights groups and the public voice more generally. This is not to say criminology should not have a place at the table, but the aim is to bring into view the tension and complexity which characterises political engagement. In addition, this problematises the idea that criminology is outside these sites of power simply because we lack underpinning theory and methodological rigour.

Matthews’ call for rigour in theory and method is a noble one, its aims inevitably desirable goals, and we should welcome the debate on the current state of research. Before research is conducted, that which is being researched should be fully understood and conceptually situated. Matthews attempts to draw a line between those who do not problematise the issue of crime, and those who go too far and deny its ontological reality; in the latter category Matthew's has created something of a straw man of social constructionism, an edifice which is then deftly pulled apart by the author. His omission of feminist methodological writings is also something of an oversight, considering his focus on the notions of truth and objectivity which proliferate throughout scientific empirical criminology. Feminist researchers were in the vanguard of the critique of the reductive approach to criminology that Matthews condemns.

The article is critical of the perceived missed opportunities of liberal criminologists following the decline of conservative influence towards the end of the twentieth-century/early twenty-first. Matthews argues that for so long the liberal school defined itself so thoroughly in opposition to conservatives, who held sway throughout the 1980s and 1990s, that when this power waned, liberal criminologists were mute. Matthews argues that their more benign policies, directed towards education and healthcare, were somewhat optimistic and toothless. From his critical realist position, Matthews argues that such policies denied the powerful and negative impact of crime. He situates this as part of the legacy of liberal influence, citing the downfall of penal welfarism as a further unintended consequence of a liberal criminology that was bereft of ideas, but content to produce studies which derided the claims of individualised justice and sentencing to reduce crime, without producing alternative policy ideas.

It seems trite to say that Matthews’ article was thought-provoking. It challenges assumptions within the academy and urges its reader to rethink fundamental conceptions and understandings. By the end, however, the most important question of all feels fundamentally unanswered: where to from here? After the plenary some of us mentioned the desire to engage Matthews in an appreciative inquiry (Liebling, 2004) – what is criminology’s best practice? What work highlights the exciting promise of this discipline? What can we hope for criminology? In moving beyond 'so what criminology', we need to move beyond only viewing criminology's negative characteristics. Surely the situation is more hopeful than this plenary portrayed.

Matthews may be a proselytiser for our conversion to critical realism, but such an approach seems too imperialist to create a truly engaged and reflexive discipline. Consequently, what appeared at the outset to be a call to arms for criminology, may instead be a recruiting call for critical realism. However it behoves criminologists to regularly pose the questions highlighted by Matthews, albeit with the awareness that many will come up with different answers.

We Don't Need Another Hero?

In September The Differential Association celebrates superhero month! We'll be reading two (short) articles which explore the superhero genre from a cultural criminological perspective.

The first of these, 'Justice League?: Depictions of Justice in Children's Superhero Cartoons' by Lisa A Kort-Butler, deals with the representations of superheroes in children's cartoons, a study which throws up some fascinating insights, for example do these portrayals undermine confidence in the criminal justice system. If the police were effective surely there would be no need for Batman! As children lap up images of cartoon justice, are we instilling a normative ideology which reinforces dominant values?

The second article, 'Cultural Criminology and Kryptonite: Apocalyptic and Retributive Constructions of Crime and Justice in Comic Books' by Nickie D Phillips and Staci Strobl, examines paradigms of justice in American comic books, suggesting that the picture which emerged of content was more nuanced than they had anticipated, but that the enduring response was always one which operated outside the rule of law, motivated by vigilantism and a need for revenge.

Date: Tuesday 24 September
Venue: Mulligans Poolbeg Street
Time: 6pm

Beyond 'So What?' Criminology: Rediscovering Realism

The Differential Association returns, surfing the high of the 9th North South Criminology Conference in UCC, with Roger Matthews' article Beyond 'So What?' Criminology. Professor Matthews was one of the plenary speakers in Cork, and provided an electrifying and contentious talk based on the arguments made in this 2009 article, arguing that criminology was making itself irrelevant through lack of theoretical and methodological rigour and by its negligible impact on policy.

If the debate sparked by his plenary in Cork is any indicator, the article should prompt plenty of discussion on the current state of criminological research.

Date: Thursday 25th July at 6pm
Venue: Mulligan's back room, Poolbeg Street, Dublin 2

Michael Ignatieff's 'A Just Measure of Pain'

Michael Ignatieff's career may have taken him to the Canadian parliament and back, but for criminologists and penal historians he will remain entrenched in the mind as the author of the seminal 'A Just Measure of Pain'. The text, published in 1978, emerged contemporaneously with many classic 'revisionist' works from the likes of Michel Foucault and David Rothman - all presenting a retelling of the development of penal and coercive institutions. These authors took the period from the mid-eighteenth-century to the mid-nineteenth-century and attempted to account for the emergence of institutions of confinement and, for Foucault and Igntieff especially, the birth of the penitentiary.

Ignatieff seeks to explain the emergence of the penitentiary, epitomised by the opening of Pentonville Prison in 1842 as the first 'model prison', in the context of the Industrial Revolution and the dramatic societal upheaval this sparked. Ignatieff presents a comprehensive exploration of the period 1750 to 1850, incorporating social history and the biographies of key persons, such as penal reform entrepreneurs John Howard and Elizabeth Fry, to weave together a convincing argument to explain the place of the prison in history. Ignatieff argues that the prison emerged primarily as a result of middle-class fears of men displaced by the coming of the Industrial Revolution, which supplanted an earlier age in which strong bonds of allegiance and fealty held people together in rural communities.

He also suggests the presence of an ulterior motive behind the continued success of the prison as the default solution to crime. Despite the emergence of voices critical of the penitentiary project, going back as far as the mid-1800s, including claims that it could not rehabilitate nor did it reduce crime, the institution has persisted and thrived. This leads Ignatieff to question its purpose, stating that it may have served other ends than those official goals stated. He argues that the extension of democracy in the period was paralleled by increasing state power and control, and a decreasing tolerance for those members of society considered 'deviant'.

The comprehensive nature of the exploration in 'A Just Measure of Pain' is successful partly because it is built around 'levels of why', and an awareness that it was the interplay of myriad contingent factors which contributed to the emergence of the prison. These factors include the importance of the role of individuals, sudden crises sparked by over-crowding as a result of wars and the cessation of transportation, military demobilisation, a fear of 'masterless men', as well as broader philosophical ideas.

Ignatieff's work is perhaps best viewed as a history of ideas, and in this guise it succeeds wonderfully, presenting a history of the prison with a firm cultural grounding and as a product of the confluence of a variety of schools of thought. Ignatieff explores the religious philosophies of Quakerism and sects of NonConformist Protestantism and the importance of this ethos in an emerging approach to industry and social control. He delves into the idea that men could be improved, if subjected to carefully weighted influences, hard work and self-restraint. Enlightenment philosophy and utilitarian ideas also came together in this time - advocating rationality and scientific method - and evident in the work of thinkers like Bentham and Beccaria.

What becomes clear from the work is that the question of how do you punish humanely has been a perennial. Many of the measures designed to remould criminals were at first designed as civilised responses to the earlier implements of punishment, such as shackles and chains and expressive punishments like whipping and branding - however it was not long before the detrimental effects of many of the more progressive means of control were also exposed as harmful. For example, in this litany of 'humane cruelty', the use made of solitary confinement was criticised by many, including John Howard who saw the ill-effects it could unleash on individuals. Likewise, the early institutions used work as a means to numb the prisoner, rendering them malleable to benign influence. The departure from this approach evidenced by the current practicalities of prison work, intended to up-skill and prepare a prisoner for life on the outside, is interesting and speaks to the initial goal of prison as a place to capture men's hearts and minds. 'A Just Measure of Pain' is a stark reminder of the impossibility of eliminating the prospect of cruelty from places in which people are confined and subject to the care of others.

Also evident in the writing is the absolute importance of architecture, the period of prison building of the early nineteenth-century has little parallel in history, something akin to a modern period of castle-building. The architecture of confinement constructed throughout the nineteenth-century proved lasting, and very difficult to dispense with. Of such permanence was the architecture that it may go some way to explaining why today the concept of prison seems inevitable. However, the asylums which had emerged in the same period as the penitentiary, have now largely been supplanted by more modern means of dealing with their populations. This again raises the question of the ulterior motive of the prison, the idea proposed by Ignatieff to explain the continuance of the prison despite its seeming failure to deter or reduce crime.

Lucia Zedner, writing in 'Women, Crime and Custody in Victorian England' argues that Ignatieff's rose-tinted view of pre-Industrial Society was something he later qualified. Ignatieff posits that prior to the Industrial Revolution, the communitarian nature of justice allowed for the informal resolution of disputes, and the hierarchical structure of society meant that masters often handled crimes committed by their employees or peasants living on their land in a way which dealt with the matter effectively. In 1983, Ignatieff did indeed roll back on some of his arguments from 'A Just Measure of Pain':

"the history of the institution between 1780 and 1840 can be described as a passage from squalid neglect to hygienic order… Foucault’s work (and my own as well!) remained captive of that Weberian equation of the ancien regime with the customary, the traditional and the particularistic, and of the modern with the rational, the disciplined, the impersonal and the bureaucratic" ("State, Civil Society and Total Institutions: A Critique of Recent Social Histories of Punishment" Social Control and the State, Ed. Stanley Cohen and Andrew Scull, Oxford, Robertson, 1983, 75-105)

Zedner argued that the penitentiary project had not been completed by the opening of Pentonville in 1842, something which Ignatieff seemed to accept in 1983. Zedner and Mary Bosworth have both argued that the 'revisionist' texts, including 'A Just Measure of Pain', also neglect the position of women within the penitentiary system. Another notable absence in the book is any mention of Norbert Elias' concept of the 'civilising process' as well as the lack of reference to Emile Durkheim's work on the consensus of the majority, and the imposition of this consensus.

The final chapter of the book is certainly the weakest. Lacking the masterful use of historical and cultural detail which is evident elsewhere, it presents propositions which seem unrelated to the central thesis, lacking evidential backing or coherent argument.  His argument throughout, that the prison emerged partly as a response to middle-class fears of this new class of 'masterless men', the threatening working-classes, is coherently constructed however, and provides the depth of social context lacking from a purely Marxist interpretation, such as the work of Rusche and Kirchheimer, for example. Ignatieff's comprehensive overview of the period is absorbing and adds welcome historical details to the phenomenon, details which were largely omitted by Foucault; rather, 'A Just Measure of Pain' provides an awareness of the importance of the distinct factors which prompted the emergence of the prison.

This month's blog was written by Lynsey Black.

The views expressed herein are those of the author's alone.

A Just Measure of Pain

The March book club choice is the classic text on the history of the prison, Michael Ignatieff's A Just Measure of Pain. Part of that pantheon of greats on the formation of the prison in its historical and social context, Ignatieff takes a look at the development of the institution from 1750 to 1850.

Where: Mulligan's, Pool Beg Street, Dublin 2 - in the back room
When: 6pm Wednesday 27th March

'Uppity Civilians' and 'Cyber Vigilantes': The Role of the General Public in Policing Cyber Crime

The month The Differential Association looked at an article from Laura Huey, Johnny Nhan and Ryan Broll, which explored the topic of cyber crime. The tantalisingly new frontier of the world wide web has delivered, Janus-like, both a communications and technological marvel of our time, as well as an unwieldy virtual space in which crime flourishes unchecked and unpoliced. For example, the article cites figures that only one in 6,500 online crimes are reported to the police, with most minor frauds drawing negligible actions from the authorities.

The costs of cyber crime are notoriously difficult to precisely state, as a recent University of Cambridge study has suggested. Previous estimates ranging in the tens of billions have been criticised as wildly inflated. The Cambridge research concluded that the costs of a state's antivirus software can often impose a greater financial burden on the nation's individuals than the direct costs of fraudulent internet schemes.

Huey et al argue that these costs of policing the internet impose onerous burdens on law enforcement, further suggesting that the forms which traditional policing takes are unsuited to a frontier which has no geography and to which we have yet to fully adapt. Traditional policing is built on a framework of geography, they write that forces are organised by divisions, by local policing areas, and by the individual's 'beat', and that such a framework struggles to cope with virtual space. They argue that the time and resources required for thorough policing of the Internet are beyond the scope of budgetary limits.

One of the most emotively charged areas of cyber crime, as well as the area that most often attracts resources, is that of child pornography and online grooming. This has been an area of persistent concern in recent decades. Rapid sophistication of our everyday technology has created uncertainty and anxiety as we run to get to grips with how our world has changed. Measures to combat child sex abuse have proliferated, such as the 2002 Sex Offenders Act, England and Wales, which explicitly criminalised for the first time the act of grooming a young person via internet communications. The Metropolitan Police in London, for example, have a covert Internet surveillance unit comprising over 50 investigators. Officers pose online as young children and a crime triggers an instant response from the team. This team was founded after the realisation by the Met that they would have to change how they operated, embracing pro-active targeting.

In this article, Huey et al have explored the work of "voluntary associations of citizens engaged in proactive policing on the Internet". These include online communities targeting various chat forums and websites, using their computer skills and time to identify and track criminal offenders. The article looks, in particular, at volunteer communities established to disrupt and deter the online activity of paedophiles. Members pose as children on chat forums, in an attempt to retrieve and pass identifying information along to the police. This kind of activity has been defined as 'civilian policing'.

The DA expressed wonder at the varying levels of evidence such activity would provide. The article tells us that many of these volunteers participate in training to ensure any evidence collected is legally admissible. While such training is crucial and without it the volunteers’ activity would be self-defeating, members wondered about how legally robust this training is. One group referred to in the article had a record of dozens of arrests and a 100 per cent conviction rate. However, once again acknowledging the transnational nature of the Internet, it would be interesting to have some idea of how this system worked across different legal jurisdictions.

The DA wondered whether such 'civilian policing' collectives were akin to David Garland’s concept of adaptive approaches to crime, described in Culture of Control as “usually developed by means of cumulative, low-visibility administrative decisions, rather than as announced policies subject to political or public debate”.

Garland's responsibilization strategy is defined as “an enhanced network of a more or less directed, more or less informal crime control, complementing and extending the formal controls of the criminal justice state”.  The police seek to build alliances with citizens to instil a sense of responsibility for crime-fighting, and to diffuse the onus of policing, such strategies include the now ubiquitous Neighbourhood Watch schemes. The difficulty emerges in trying to instil a sense of responsibility for something always previously assumed to be a solely state-activated activity. Responsibilization, according to Garland, is the shedding of state sovereignty, and an attempt at what Foucault called ‘governmentality’, which involves the shaping and enlisting of others to suit and work towards government policies.

The research methodology used by Huey et al incorporates nodal governance theory, this is an elaboration of network theory which looks at how a variety of actors interact to govern the systems they inhabit. It is a way of capturing the complex process of governance by incorporating all of the relevant actors. In this article, the four sets of actors are collectively referred to as nodal clusters: government, law enforcement, private industry and the general public.

The authors collected responses from over 200 volunteers engaged in 'civilian policing'; we were disappointed that there was only one full-length interview conducted with these volunteers, and it is suggested that further interviews would provide greater insight. However, four police officers were interviewed which adds a particularly welcome viewpoint on the issue.

The survey asked volunteers to provide their motive for involvement. The most common motive cited was television or the media, many of which were linked to the US television show 'To Catch a Predator'. This was usually accompanied with a desire to help others and reasons under the general category of 'justice', while a smaller minority reported that either they or someone they knew had previously been a victim of abuse.

The authors cite one response as typical: "Combating online predators takes HOURS of sitting at a computer screen.  There just isn’t enough manpower Colonel.  There are specialized units out there, but it’s still a number’s game.  Hundreds of law enforcement versus thousands of predators". This language seemed indicative of a personal narrative of heroism, a black and white crusade, draped in language of North American law enforcement culture and pop culture. Yet another example likened the internet chat scene to the Wild West.

The monsterisation of sex offenders was also very evident, for example among parents who expressed fears for their children, "I went and looked at my 13 year-old daughter peacefully sleeping and decided I needed to do something to stop these demons". Some websites also choose to herald their role in the apprehension of an offender with announcements such as the following: "We are very happy that these two subhuman individuals…". The demonisation of sex offenders, especially those who offend against children, is a component of the late-modern escalation of concern about the issue, previously referred to. In an article by Lieb et al, about post-conviction controls for sex offenders, they cite research which suggests that in the US at least five murders have occurred as a result of persons convicted of sex offences being found and tracked via the use of an online register.

The DA has previously discussed an article by Huey, which explored the appeal of exhibits of the macabre. In Crime Behind the Glass Huey looked at the popular appeal of cultural fixtures, such as the Jack the Ripper walking tour in London, or the Kriminalmuseum in Vienna which she looked at in some detail, and posed questions about the appeal of such cultural phenomena. The DA suggested that there is an overlap with the current article in relation to the appeal of the horrific. The television show mentioned, 'To Catch a Predator', is one example of popular entertained structured around the premise that the public are fascinated by and want to watch entertainment shows based on crime. The step of going further, and actively participating in the apprehension of a criminal chimes perfectly with the voyeurism that Huey previously identified as comprising an inevitable component of our natures.

The 'civilian policing' volunteers in the article comprise a surprising number of highly-skilled members. The organisations too often have a rigid structure and vetting procedure for members, and the most highly valued roles of decoy and verifier are difficult to attain. Regular contact is mandatory, and some of the groups use Facebook ‘clean-up’ operations as a tool to prove a member's mettle. Estimates suggest that such activity has resulted in the removal of 13,000 profiles of known sex offenders from Facebook. The DA wondered whether this was a self-defeating move with negative impacts on both offender reintegration and rehabilitation, as well as encouraging the creation of profiles which provided false information of identity. We also found ourselves drawn into a discussion of the responsibilities of companies who run social-networking websites.

The inclusion of police interviews really enriched the data. The attitudes of the police were fascinating, ranging from positive and hopeful about engagement in structured partnerships to the departments which refused to work with the groups. Many of these police departments remained fearful for members' safety, and aware of the problematic legal issues, while some felt the work was something they could do themselves. In reference to this last point, the authors mention the well-researched police subculture which can include lack of trust in outsiders. Many of the dubious police departments simply want tips and information and many of the larger 'civilian policing' groups hand over all information without any expectations of involvement, this 'Information First' police is in great contrast to those groups who have co-operated in sting operations targeted at persons met online.

The authors suggest that the greatest resources the members have are time and commitment. They write that 'civilian policing' seems to be aimed at creating ‘digitally defensible spaces’, transforming virtual spaces into spaces that more closely resemble physical spaces in an attempt to increase the accountability of the virtual world, something which requires members to ‘buy in’ as security stakeholders. Nhan and Huey have previously written that “structural and cultural limitations upon traditional policing agencies have resulted in a security deficit in the online world”. They argue that improving this situation does not involve recruiting more specialised police or resources, rather it requires a collaborative effort, due to the distributive nature of the internet. They recommend the greater utilisation of the nodal cluster of the general public, contending that this is a resource which can effectively be used to tackle cyber crime. They also recommend enhanced legal liability training for such groups, as well as the more widespread use of 'Information First' schemes which see all information passed along to law enforcement agencies.

This article provides a fascinating glimpse into the activities of citizens who take it upon themselves to dedicate time to 'civilian policing'. While this was an area of which the DA had known very little before, Huey et al’s article certainly provided for some engaging and intriguing debate. It will be most interesting to watch the progress of research in this area.

This month's blog was written by Colette Barry and Lynsey Black.

The views expressed herein are those of the authors' alone. 

Cyber Vigilantes

The next meeting of the Differential Association will take place on Wednesday 20th February.

We will be discussing the work of online communities in policing internet activity, known as 'civilian policing'. This topic has been dealt with in an article by Laura Huey, Johnny Nhan and Ryan Broll , who present their research as part of a longer-term project which seeks to explore the relationship between civilian policing online and law enforcement agencies. It poses the question of how traditional policing should approach the security issues raised by the internet and argues that as the internet is of such a collaborative nature, it requires a vastly different approach to security.

Related to this, and particularly to Huey et al's close analysis of one online community which attempts to provide information on paedophiles to law enforcement, we will also be looking at the growth of post-conviction restrictions on sex offenders in the US and UK. This has been explored in an article by Lieb at al which will form the basis of our discussion.

When: Wednesday 20th February

Time: 6pm

Where: Mulligan's of Poolbeg Street, back room

CCTV: What is it good for?

It was the book club's last meeting of 2012, the Xmas Xtravaganza, and we decided to do something different and set an open topic: CCTV. Unrestricted by the concerns of a single article, people brought to the table a variety of questions and perspectives on the topic: Has the advent of CCTV heralded Foucault’s predictions of a panopticon society? Is it a legitimate tool of modern security and a by-product of increased desire for order in a consumer society? Does the rise in CCTV increase feelings of safety or personal anxiety? Why has it become so widely accepted?

The topic of CCTV provided scope for an emotive turn in our DA discussion, with some people discovering a previously hidden libertarian! CCTV acts like a probing eye, invading the most mundane of our day-to-day moments, contravening our civil liberties. Conversely, others did not see CCTV as an evolution of something sinister, rather a sidebar in the technological age; a commodity which is perhaps less widespread and effective than realised (see for example the varying levels of competence with which CCTV is actually used).

The primary concern of DA members opposed to security cameras related to privacy.  Everyone is familiar with embarrassing images of anonymous strangers captured on CCTV which wind-up immortalised on a CCTV show-reel amusing audiences on YouTube or late night TV; what if that was to happen to you? Given the prevalence of these images it is no a wonder that feelings of invasion and humiliation are so closely linked to CCTV. However, surely the device to capture people’s embarrassing moments in this manner is less likely to be peering down from a city corner, and much more likely to be resting innocuously in people’s pockets? The proliferation of the smartphone enables users to capture images and videos of anyone around and within an instant upload it up onto the internet. Moreover, people have few qualms uploading photos from their own life, their own embarrassing moments and nights out on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Flickr and any other social website you care to mention. These sites generally don’t just contain images, comments, dates and details of other people, but also personal information like date of birth, relationship status and even current location. Is it duplicitous to be so vehemently opposed to CCTV while giving out more personal data than a security camera could ever capture? Viewed this way, is the sting taken out of the idea of CCTV as personal invasion?

The voluntary nature of people's usage of these sites is of course the counter-argument. Perhaps it is because great swathes of people now have so much control over their image that it feels like an even greater impropriety when it is taken out of their hands.

It was suggested that the idea of privacy of movement and action in a public space is a paradox worthy of Catch-22, however. In the end some people proposed that rather than right to privacy, the use of CCTV images could be restrained by stringent data protection laws, making company’s liable for the uploading of images on the internet. For those of us DA members who viewed the CCTV threat as something shadowy, unproven and verging on the mythic, are we blithely ignoring the realities? In order for CCTV images to remain private, there is a long chain of actors, each of whom must conform to various conditions, complying with guidelines and regulations each in their turn. It is a succession of 'ifs'. The difference, too, between a surveillance network controlled by the state, and those under private control, are pertinent. The reduced options for redress when the operator of the CCTV system is a private company make the use of corporate and private CCTV and the storage of data a pressing issue. The state is taking tentative steps to address the issue of privately-operated CCTV by re-examining the provisions of the 2006 Privacy Bill. In light of the expansion of private surveillance, Minister for Justice Alan Shatter has pledged a review of the Bill in order to safeguard the privacy of individuals (for a discussion of the issue see here).

It may be insightful to tease out some of the popular and opposing feelings about CCTV, those with more apathetic responses as well as the visceral sense of wrong felt by others. Are the more apathetic among us simply more accepting of the new ‘criminologies of everyday life’? Is it naïve to not see this as something more insidious, the responsbilization of civil society; the wider acceptance of the criminal as a rational opportunist? Does this position ignore or underplay the serious risk of destabilising social cohesion and increase state-scepticism in favour of mass individualisation and devolution of crime prevention? Popular ideas of CCTV are often connected to Orwellian prophesies of oppressive state power, yet if the above is the case then the growth of CCTV is actually connected to weakening state control and the awareness that the state on its own is inadequate to tackle the challenge of crime.

Contrastingly, there are those who are affronted by CCTV. Is it possible that some people are not used to the 24-hour glare of surveillance; being made to feel like a potential threat? Perhaps for some the spread of CCTV uncomfortably blurs the line between us and them, the suspect population. Is it that many people in fact don’t want CCTV to fall out of use, but instead have it focused on those who are seen as deviant? Or does the use of CCTV create the deviant population? as such, could the increased use of security surveillance in certain space entail a deepening of the trenches between various social groups? Outside the urban and commercial settings, it would be illuminating to know what the use of CCTV in residential areas represents to the people in these communities. Do they feel their privacy is undermined, or does the use of cameras increase a sense of safety? Interestingly, some commentators have suggested that widespread use of CCTV actually tends to undermine natural surveillance, thereby perhaps scoring an own goal for crime prevention.

No one happened across any research which explored these questions (of course that doesn’t mean such research doesn’t exist!). We felt there was a strong case for greater analytical focus to be spent exploring the increased use of surveillance technology. Perhaps, criminologically, the focus on CCTV is more spread out, it is only one node along a widening continuum of technologies of security. Furthermore, among some scholars the increased use of everyday security is considered one of the indices of changing modes of governance and an acceptance that the state has a limited capacity to address crime. As such, CCTV doesn't get, or maybe need its own solo analytical outing.

Several DA members were impressed by the work of Goold et al, which off-loaded some of the emotional and moral weight of this topic exploring the rise of security devices through a sociology of consumption framework. They describe CCTV as a common-place good, something uncontroversial and ubiquitous. Interviewing buyers of security goods, as well as those who work in the security business, the initial findings suggest that rather than people gaining a sense of order, power and safety, buying security feels less like an act of fulfilment and more like a ‘de facto taxation’; a nuisance and an irritant.

There was some evidence that CCTV does have an impact on criminal activity. For example, the Campbell Collaboration in 2008 reported that CCTV did have a 'modest but significant desirable effect.' However, it was most effective when used in very specific circumstances, namely as a means of reducing car crime in car-parks. The results supported the continued use of CCTV, but in a narrow, more targeted, fashion. Considering that CCTV is the single most heavily funded crime prevention method employed in the United Kingdom (where the study was carried out), such advice would seem to herald a chance for money-saving opportunities. However, there seems to be no sign of innovating the recommended targeted use of the technology.

Yet the promise of CCTV and the political gain attendant on this remains a political given. As such the rise of surveillance seems set to continue for the foreseeable future. Perhaps it is simply the case that CCTV is more for fear of crime than crime itself. Does the presence of CCTV itself act as a cause of anxiety? This was one of the keenest questions posed by the DA and one to which we could find no answer. CCTV acts as an external sign of action, politicians can be seen to be doing something. This was held as one of the most immediate causes of the number of cameras on our streets, this combined with a general lack of understanding on the scope of what such methods can actually achieve.

In practical terms CCTV appears to be quite specious at best. However, we found this topic to have more depth than it appears, and like all good debates we didn’t all quite agree in the end about what the rising use of CCTV means and what its practical and symbolic functions were. To understand its rise and subsequent acceptance it is best understood in wider political or cultural framework.

This month's blog was written by Louise Brangan and Lynsey Black.

The views expressed herein are those of the authors' alone.