Prison and university: a tale of two institutions?

For many years prisons have had a reputation as universities of crime providing novice criminals with opportunities to learn from more experienced criminals. Over the last 20 years, as prison populations have grown there has been a simultaneous expansion of university places and of courses specialising in studying crime. Academic criminology has experienced rapid growth with some suggesting that there are more students studying criminology now than sociology. There have never been more criminology courses on offer, or institutions offering them. Amidst this growth, there are indications that there are significant numbers of criminologists with more personal experiences of both crime and prison, combining experience of the Academy and its poorer relation at the opposite end of the social structure. What accompanies the transition from crime and prison to criminology and university? The instrumental relationships between prisons and criminology are notorious, long-standing and controversial, but rarely examined at the personal level. In this paper the author reflects on such an experience of prison, conducting research, studying and teaching criminology. The intention is to foster a reflexive exploration of relations, both institutional and structural as well as personal, between prison and university

Criminology in the professions: turning academic benchmarks into employability skills

This report reflects on a case study example of teaching a dedicated employability module in an undergraduate criminology curriculum. The report uses various sets of data collected from students, criminology alumni, a sample of employers and university academic and support staff, to reflect on pertinent issues relating to graduate employability. Findings suggest that understanding the links between critical academic theory, technical knowledge and generic skills, are empowering both for staff and students, and such a framework represents a creative way of addressing the QAA criminology employability benchmarks. Whilst staff are unable to change the national context relating to graduate employability, understanding the pertinent issues and contradictions within the area helps in counteracting potential ‘bad news’ and also enables students to be more aware of what they need, beyond their degree, to be successful in gaining appropriate employment. Apart from the research detailed below, outcomes include a DVD entitled ‘Life after Criminology’ which features contributions from criminology alumni, academic and careers staff and students, and also a Mahara portfolio including materials used for a criminology information day held in July 2010

Convict Criminology and the Struggle for Inclusion

Convict Criminology (CC) began in the early 1990s as a reaction to the then current state of academic criminology that did not adequately reflect the voices of convicted felons. Since its beginnings, CC has attempted to draw attention to a range of problems created by the criminal justice apparatus and defenders of the status quo. Dr. Joanne Belknap’s 2014 ASC presidential address and subsequent article presented an argument that stressed the importance of activism to be considered as part of criminological research. In the process, she reviewed her career and then criticized the field of Critical Criminology, in particular Convict Criminology. The article, however, ignored the numerous efforts that CC has engaged in to build an inclusive group school, movement, organization and network that includes the diverse voices of Ph.D. educated convicts and excons, and overall reflected a superficial understanding of the history and intent of Convict Criminology. This article attempts to explain the shortcomings of Belknap’s article and clarifies misunderstandings

Republican Monsters: The Cultural Construction of American Positivist Criminology, 1767-1920

This dissertation examines the history of and cultural influences on positivist criminology in the United States. From Benjamin Rush to the present day, the U.S. has produced an extensive corpus of empirical and theoretical studies that seeks to discern an objective, scientifically-grounded basis for criminal behavior. American positivist criminology has drawn on numerous subfields and theories, including rational choice / economic theory, biology, and psychology, but in all cases, maintains that a purely scientific explanation of offending is possible. This study proceeds from the perspective that divisions between scientific and non-scientific thought are untenable. Drawing on scholarship in literary criticism and sociology, I argue that positivist criminology confronts an inherent contradiction in purporting to develop a purely scientific account of phenomena that are defined by the moral and cultural sentiments of a society. I thus hypothesize that positivist criminology is in fact reliant on the irrational and fictive cultural tropes and images of crime that it claims to exorcize. The dissertation proceeds by reviewing the literature on the history of criminology, developing a set of functional types or tropes for character analysis, and then examining four separate periods in the development of scientific criminology: eighteenth century studies of rational action, nineteenth century studies of defective reasoning, early twentieth century studies of race and crime, and the development of scientifically informed criminalistics programs. Each of these cases captures a different period and focus in the development of scientific criminology. In threading continuity between these cases, I show how criminological positivism is consistently reliant on culturally informed tropes and characters to render itself sensible and coherent

Cultural Criminology: The Time is Now

Cultural criminology understandscrime and its control asproductsofmeaning. It exploressimultaneously the macro-, meso-and micro-levels of social life, sensitive tothe operation of power, in order to produce critical analyses that are politically potent and germane to contemporary circumstances. The cultural criminological project is broad and inclusive, but focused and urgent. It relishes coalition and collaboration, clarity of thought and purpose,praxis and intervention. In its relatively short history,it has carved out a distinctive identity whilst contributing something to the development of a host of other perspectives. This article begins by offeringa contemporary definition of cultural criminology, including some reflection on its antecedentsand theresponses that have recently been addressed toits critics. This is followed by a discussion of the concerns cultural criminology shares with a variety of complementary perspectives and how it can be used to address malign structures and discourses. Finally, the relationship thatthe sub-discipline might form with transformative politicsisexploredbriefly. As truth and meaning have become the theatresof struggle between fundamentally opposed political positionspromising radically different visions of crime, criminalisation, criminal justice and everyday life,never has cultural criminology been more prescient and necessary. Thetime for cultural criminology is now

Anti-Nirvana: crime, culture and instrumentalism in the age of insecurity

‘Anti-Nirvana’ explores the relationship between consumer culture, media and criminal motivations. It has appeared consistently on the list of the top-ten most-read articles in this award-winning international journal, and it mounts a serious neo-Freudian challenge to the predominant naturalistic notion of ‘resistance’ at the heart of liberal criminology and media studies. It is also cited in the Oxford Handbook of Criminology and other criminology texts as a persuasive argument in support of the theory that criminality amongst young people is strongly linked to the acquisitive values of consumerism and the images of possessive individualism that dominate mass media

Prison(er) auto/biography, 'true crime', and teaching, learning, and research in criminology

The main aim of this essay is to explore prisoner life writing within the specific, richly and multiply dependent context of teaching and learning undergraduate criminology at an English university, from the authorial viewpoint of a teacher and her students as budding criminologists and co-authors. This article seeks to redress a continuing resistance to life history approaches in the teaching of criminology, despite the discipline being formally devoted to the understanding of the meaning and experience of imprisonment in all its forms and consequences. What follows is a trucated narrative of what students had to say on the fascinating subjects of prisoner auto/biography and its place in popular and expert discourses on crime, criminality, and punishment, contextualised within the academic discipline of criminology

Subject interest group case study: criminology in the professions

In 2009 Jill Jameson; Kate Strudwick; Sue Bond- Taylor (Senior lecturers in Criminology at the University of Lincoln) worked with Mandy Jones, Head of Opportunities at Lincoln University, to develop a curriculum based level two employability module entitled ‘Criminology in the Professions’ for Criminology and Criminology and forensic Investigation students. The module ran in Semester B of the academic year (January to May 2010). The main aim was to explore the issue of employability through introducing a dedicated module into the curriculum rather than this being a separate skills module. The learning outcomes included: • Exploring professional opportunities, recruitment and selection methods related to criminological study and understanding how methodological and academic skills can support this exploration; • Enabling an understanding of how a theoretical, political and practical reflection is useful in personal professional development and enabling the students to work independently, and in a group situation, to develop knowledge and techniques that can be applied to future recruitment opportunities. • Enabling students to reflect critically upon their own research skills and academic development. The overriding aim of the module was to adopt an academic approach to teaching skills and employability and careers planning within the curriculum

Exploring the criminology curriculum

There are calls across Higher Education to address deep structural inequalities withspecific concerns that the marginalisation of certain voices (female, colonised, nonwestern and LGBTQ+) has influenced and distorted the production of knowledge inrelation to key criminological topics and issues (Agozino, 2003; Cunneen and Rowe,2015; Connell, 2007).This article presents initial findings from a pilot study exploring the curriculum of anew criminology Bachelor of Arts degree programme at a post-92 English University.It provides a timely starting point, given the proliferation of HE criminology courses inthe UK, and suggests there is both increasing pressures to develop course materialand over-familiarisation and acceptance of dominant narratives in criminology. Thispaper serves as a call to action to critically engage with the sources used: in sodoing we put forward a simple ‘inclusivity matrix’ that can be used both whendesigning curricula and for teaching critical information literacy

Deborah's law:The effects of naming and shaming on sex offenders n Australia

Arts, Education & Law Group, School of Criminology and Criminal JusticeNo Full Tex