 was convicted in March 2009, and evidence was presented that, following a previous arrest for a similar offence, he had been released with no action taken15. But then Worboys ticks many of the boxes that research has suggested are often central to crime reporting: a sexual deviant, or ‘monster’ – he had even been a male stripper; victims who are vulnerable girls and young women; and a serial nature to his offending. These, of course, are not just issues that agitate the contemporary media: London had its ‘Monster’ in the 1790s; Frédéric Chauvaud has noted the use of terms like ‘monster’ in the late nineteenth-century French media to describe particularly brutal offenders, and so forth. Murders of, and assaults upon women and girls have often become the focus of large-scale media campaigns; the name ‘Jack the Ripper’ was invented by the media, not by the murderer who stalked a restricted area of East London in the autumn of 1888 – always assuming that it was a single murderer16.
A significant development in recent years has been the way in which historians of crime have moved from looking at newspapers for evidence of crime to looking at newspapers for evidence of what kinds of offences were selected to fill what is termed ‘newshole’ and how criminals, and their victims, were constructed for readers17. There have been similar moves among criminologists and sociologists, generally picking up on the extent to which the media has contributed to the growth and persistence of our contemporary, punitive democracy18. It is difficult to know exactly how it might be measured for effect, but it is interesting to contrast the tiny type-face used to report police court proceedings in a nineteenth- or early twentieth-century newspaper with the massive headlines, dramatic colour images of today and the repetition of harrowing events (if caught on CCTV) such as the kidnap of the toddler James Bulger and seeing him being led away by the two ten-year-old boys who were shortly to murder him.
18 See, for example, Jewkes, 2004.
There was a comfortable assumption and narrative among liberal elites (and in many instances this assumption continues) that only authoritarian regimes are oppressive and punitive. You do not have to be a disciple of Foucault to query this. And I do not think it provocative to remark that the two countries that gave the concepts of modern, western democracy to the world were among the last western states to abolish public executions – France and the United States. In the southern states of America lynching was bound up with issues of race, but after the Second World War and into the 1960s, lynching was sometimes justified as popular justice enforced by the sovereign people19.
19 Waldrep, 2002.
Nick Davies has forcefully argued that the modern media has been taken over by those that he terms ‘grocers’ whose sole aim is to make money from their product. The grocers have reduced the number of journalists, but the demand for 24/7 news has put these fewer journalists under greater pressure to produce stories. At the same time the media has been forced to work with reduced sources of information, largely as a result of the disappearance of local press offices and newspapers. This has put an increasing reliance on press releases from public relations bodies – not necessarily the most impartial sources of information. One of the consequences of this is that, in England and Wales, crime reporting is now confined almost entirely to London and almost entirely to major offences with an emphasis on violence and sex; and in the current climate a celebrity makes a story even more appealing and worthy of ‘newshole’20.
20 Davies, 2008.
The problem for politicians is that this is the understanding of crime to which they have to respond. Sadly, in recent years they have chosen to respond, not with a recognition and explanation of the issues, but with a wave of populist initiatives and laws. The Minister of Justice recently put it to the Commons: One man’s populism is another man’s or woman’s democracy…. Why should we as Members of Parliament, Justice Secretaries or the probation service think that we know best and the public know least?21. Following the logic of this through we might have a referendum on capital punishment within a week, and restore it within a month.
All of this poses problems for academics who work on crime. Our research can point to the relative rarity of stranger on stranger killing and to the predominance of petty theft as the principle form of property crime, often committed by young people who will, quite literally, grow out of it. We are commonly called upon for media sound-bites, but it is usually for sound bites following a major crime or scandal. We respond; we can rarely initiate. We can also be edited or cut; 24-hour news wants sound bites.
There is an additional problem, much more I think for the criminologist/sociologist rather than the simple historian. Crimprev has been extremely fortunate in its funding and in the encouragement that it has received from its scientific officers and others in the EU to continue the network. In Britain it seems most unlikely that any historian would be able to tap Home Office coffers for a research project yet, in the last quarter of a century or so the Home Office has been extremely generous in funding criminological research. Early criminology sold itself, at least partly, by promising explanations and solutions for contemporary problems. In late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Italy most notably, men like Salvatori Ottolenghi ran courses for all kinds of criminal justice practitioner illustrating their lectures with real convicts brought into their lecture theatres from a neighbouring prison. I am uncertain about how many contemporary criminologists believe that they can find a magic bullet that will deal with crime, but it does appear that some politicians believe that the only kind of research that is worth funding, is research that will show measureable results, add to the economy or solve immediate problems, preferably with a profit to UK plc. Nearly a quarter of a century ago warnings were being given about the potential danger of the commodification of criminology22 (warnings that might apply to any academic subject). In Britain the New Labour government came to power insisting that it wanted to be able to develop policies that were ‘evidence based.’ In the event, however, as UK Crimprev partners can testify, that evidence seems more often to be cherry-picked to suit instant policies prepared in response to media outrage, rather than the underpinning of new, carefully-considered policies23. And, to follow Nick Davies, it appears that, sadly, few journalists have the time to read the evidence collected by criminologists (assuming that the government have not buried it) and opt for the carefully structured précis prepared for the press release. Well might we complain, but the protests by academics tend to end up as ephemeral; as one British Prime Minister famously said: A week is a long time in politics. Moreover, by the very nature of their position, a politician remains a public figure with the ear of the media well beyond a week.
22 Bottoms, 1987; Hood (August 1987).
All of this is shaping up to provide problems for the role of the academic criminologist, especially for the criminologist in a punitive democracy within which crime reporting is so selective and slanted.
What is to be done? Through the efforts of our teaching we have the opportunity to raise the awareness of our students, but in Britain at least we have to resist the notion that appears to be growing in central government that tertiary education should be focused on a vocation or ultimate economic profit. People with Criminology degrees might make better criminal justice practitioners but I consider myself, first and foremost a historian and have never taught in a Criminology Department. I am not sure what ‘vocation’ my students as a group might be said to have. More importantly, however, I do not believe that it is not just ‘pie in the sky’ to suggest that a well-educated and aware electorate is central to a healthy democracy. Clearly much of our research and writing is done for our peers, but we ought to make greater efforts to ensure that our work accessible beyond the academy. In Britain, perhaps, the opportunities for this are increasingly restricted by the often uncertain demands of Treasury-prompted research assessments and the accompanying vagaries of how research ‘impacts’ might be calculated.
I retire at the end of September 2009, so I would like to think that I do not have to worry about this any more. Like Voltaire’s Candide, I can go and tend my garden – unfortunately a garden is not necessarily a safe place.
Bondeson J., The London Monster: Terror on the Streets in 1790, London, Free Association, 2000.
Bottoms A.E., Reflections on the Criminological Enterprise, Cambridge Law Journal, 1987, 46, 2, 240-263.
Chauvaud F., Les figures du monstre dans la seconde moitié du XIXe siècle, Ethnologie française, 1991, 21, 3, 243-253.
Davies N., Flat Earth News, London, Chatto & Windus, 2008.
Emsley C., The Great British Bobby: A History of Policing in Britain from the 18th Century to the Present, London, Quercus, 2009.
Great Britain, Parliamentary Papers, 1833 (627) XIII, Report from the Select Committee on the Petition of Frederick Young and Others.
Hood R.G., Some Reflections on the Role of Criminology in Public Policy, Criminal Law Review, (August 1987) 527-538.
Hope T., Walters R., Critical thinking about the uses of research, available online from [www.crimeandjustice.org.uk].
Jewkes Y., Media