EUROPEAN GROUP FOR THE STUDY OF
DEVIANCE AND SOCIAL CONTROL
ESTABLISHED 1973
Coordinator: Emma Bell
Secretary: Monish Bhatia
Stan Cohen 1942-2013
AUTUMN NEWSLETTER I
Special 40 Anniversary Edition
th
Website Administrator: Kirsty Ellis
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I European Group 40th
Anniversary Conference
Conference Report
Report on research discussion group by Jackie Kerr
Podcasts
II Articles dedicated to
Stan Cohen
David Scott: A disobedient visionary with an enquiring mind:
An essay on the contribution of Stan Cohen
Alana Barton and Howard Davis: The Politics of Crime and
the Crimes of Politics: Where Does Criminology Stand in the
‘War on the Poor’?
Gary Potter: Stan Cohen: Critical Criminology’s Theoretical
Curmudgeon
Bill Munro: On Words and the Logic of Things: Some Notes
on Stan Cohen's Visions of Social Control
Ragnhild Feyling: ‘Folk devils’ and release from prison
III European Group
News
Barbara Hudson
New national representatives
New web administrator
Working groups
Members’ Publications
IV News from Europe
and around the world
France
Germany
Greece
Switzerland
The Netherlands
UK
USA
1973-2013 CELEBRATING 40 YEARS …
I European Group Conference
Conference Report by Emma Bell
The European Group’s 40th anniversary conference was a truly memorable experience thanks
to the efforts of all the conference organisers who have worked tirelessly over the past year to
ensure it was a success: Ragnhild Sollund, Per Jørgen Ystehede, Linda Gulli, May-Len
Skilbrei and all the many students who helped out.
It was great to be able to commemorate the Group’s 40th anniversary with some of those who
were present at the Group’s very first conference back in Florence in 1973 as well as with
many new faces. This was the biggest conference since 1975 with almost 230 delegates in
attendance from across the globe, from North and South America to Australia. Over 100
papers were delivered, divided across seven streams: prison; the theoretical heritage of Stan
Cohen and critical criminology; green criminology and political activism; challenging
traditions; globalisation; considering deviance, discipline and control; confining and
constructing crime. Solo violinist, Mari Birgitte Halvorsen, opened the conference in style.
The first main speaker was Nils Christie from the University of Oslo, who has long been a
member of the European Group. He began by paying tribute to Stan Cohen and holding a
minute’s silence before going on to deliver a thought-provoking and challenging talk entitled
‘Beyond the Obvious’. He was followed by a panel discussion bringing together Katja Franko
Aas, Simon Hallsworth, Thomas Mathiesen and Maeve McMahon to discuss the conference
theme of ‘critical criminology in a changing world’. On the third day, a plenary session was
planned with Jock Young. Jock unfortunately had to pull out at the last minute due to illness
but Vincenzo Ruggiero kindly stepped in and provided a fascinating talk on the past, present
and future of critical criminology. These talks were highly stimulating and the source of
much debate and discussion in the following days.
Outside the conference sessions, a number of excellent social events were organised. On the
first evening, there was a wine reception at the Museum of Cultural History, with guided
tours to the different exhibitions of the museum. On the second day, the conference sessions
were followed by three different social events: a visit to the Centre for Studies of Holocaust
and Religious Minorities; a meeting with Blitz, an autonomous youth house dedicated to
political activism and underground culture; and a meeting with KROM, one of the very first
radical penal pressure groups (established 1968 by Thomas Mathiesen) which seeks to bring
together prisoners, activists and academics to work together towards penal transformation.
This latter meeting ended with drinks in a community centre and bar accompanied by live
music from Ohnesorg (Without Sorrow). On the final evening, delegates were treated to some
great food and a beautiful live performance by Vilde Haga Sollund and Sofie Akse Bjørneng
at the conference dinner.
On Sunday 1st September, following some fascinating parallel sessions, Maria Rosvoll gave a
thorough account of the demonisation of the Roma people. This was followed by an appeal
from a representative from the worldwide network, Universities Against the Death Penalty, to
academics to apply the moral and intellectual weight and voice of universities to the
1973-2013 CELEBRATING 40 YEARS …
international
campaign
against
the
death
penalty.
www.uio.no/english/about/collaboration/universities-against-death-penalty).
See:
Finally, the AGM was held. It was announced that Vicky Canning from Liverpool John
Moores University will take over from David Scott as coordinator of the new working group
on prisons, detention and punishment which was launched in Liverpool in March this year.
Agnieszka Martynowicz from the University of Ulster will be helping out as secretary. The
working group’s manifesto was adopted in April and will soon be available on the website. It
is a working manifesto and can evolve and change to take into account the opinions and
suggestions of members.
It was proposed that another working group on policing and security will be established.
Georgios Papanicolaou and Joanna Gilmore have volunteered to look after this group and
have already drawn up a provisional statement of purpose:
1. to create a network of academics, activists and organisations capable of generating a record
of police activity from below, capturing the widest possible range of experiences of
policing and border control
2. to record, expose and analyse the developing practices of contemporary security
apparatuses and their international and transnational linkages
3. to contribute to a public sociology of the police capable of informing social movement
practice as well as progressive policy interventions
A further working group on crimes of the powerful has also been proposed by Steve Tombs,
Dave Whyte and Sam Fletcher.
The aim of the working groups is to get members (including academics, activists and
professionals) from across Europe and elsewhere working together on specific themes
throughout the year. They may produce working documents, organise seminars and working
days and provide support to those who need it. The prisons, punishment and detention
working group has already been able to provide some assistance to local asylum charities. We
have deliberately not set out any specific remit for the groups, hoping that they will evolve
organically in the way their members wish them to.
The newsletter was also discussed at the AGM. Those present were reminded that their
contribution is welcome, by sending in information from their respective countries and
writing short articles. Information may be about local activism, local penal news,
job/conference announcements etc. Information that is not in English does not need to be
translated – it is asked only that a few words in English preceding a link to the information be
provided. These links are of great use to activists and researchers working in countries across
Europe.
It was also suggested that members send in references to their new publications. These can
initially be published in the newsletter and then on the website with the long-term aim being
to build up a directory of EG members’ work.
1973-2013 CELEBRATING 40 YEARS …
Members present at the AGM were also reminded that the European Group anthology,
entitled Critique and Dissent, edited by Joanna Gilmore, John Moore and David Scott and
dedicated to Lidia Zubler, will be published on 30th September. Orders can be placed with the
European Group coordinator.
It was proposed that the European Group should renew its efforts to publish its own journal.
This is a publication that would aim to publish critical work and disseminate it as widely as
possible. It would seek only to publish with a radical publishing house sharing the values of
the European Group and articles would be peer reviewed only by members of the Group. A
proposal is currently being drawn up and will soon be circulated to members of the steering
group.
European Group business cards have now been printed. Many of these were distributed
during the conference. If national reps who were not present at the AGM would like to have
some of these cards to distribute, please contact the Group coordinator.
The European Group is now a registered charity. Its funds have been placed with the
cooperative Banque Populaire in France. Those seeking to make donations to the Group may
transfer money into this account. Please contact the Group coordinator who will send out the
banking details. For future funding, it was agreed that an additional 10€ may be added on to
the full conference fee. This will hopefully generate funds for the group but, should the
conference make a loss, this fund may be used as a kind of insurance for conference
organisers. The idea will be piloted at the Liverpool conference next year.
The AGM agreed that efforts should continue to collate a history of the European Group.
Thomas Mathiesen has agreed to record his experiences of the Group. These will hopefully
be recorded soon and published on our youtube site. It is hoped that in years to come, we will
be able to build on this.
Discussion took places about possible future conference destinations. As you all know, next
year’s conference will be held in Liverpool next year from 3rd-6th September. The call for
papers will soon be available on the website. Any queries should be addressed to the
conference organiser, Vicky Cooper at V.F.Cooper@ljmu.ac.uk
Possible future conferences for 2015 and 2016 may be Brussels and Rhodes. Discussion with
members in those countries will continue throughout the coming year.
Andrea Beckman addressed the AGM about the conference entitled ‘Penal Law,
Abolitionism and Anarchism’ hosted by the British/Irish section of the European Group
for the Study of Deviance and Social Control and the Hulsman Foundation to be held from
Saturday 26th – Sunday 27th April 2014 at Shire Hall, Nottingham. Further details are
available in the ‘news from Europe’ section of the newsletter.
Volunteers were asked to come forward to look after the website as Gilles Christoph has
decided to step down. Thanks to him for his hard work over the past year. Kirsty Ellis kindly
came forward to volunteer as our new website administrator. Inquiries about the website can
be addressed to Kirsty at kirst.ellis@yahoo.co.uk
1973-2013 CELEBRATING 40 YEARS …
Finally, Steve Tombs and Joe Sim proposed a resolution to be passed by the AGM. This was
modified slightly following comments made at the AGM and circulated shortly after the
conference. It reads as follows:
This conference unequivocally condemns the criminalisation and persecution of
those who seek to disseminate the truth about the extent of state abuse of power,
mass surveillance and infringement of the right to privacy by governments across
the globe. We call for their immediate release from prison and for the
dismantlement of mass surveillance technologies. We urge not only that
academics and activists support this motion, but also that they desist from any
activities that aid, abet and justify the state's anti-democratic, illegal interventions
into private life.
Ragnhild Sollund then brought the conference to a close.
Yet again, the conference was a great opportunity to exchange ideas and meet up with old
and new friends. Looking forward to seeing you all in Liverpool next year!
Research Discussion Group Report by Jackie Kerr
The first meeting of the Research Discussion Group at the 41st European Group Conference
in Oslo was well attended by academics, researchers and activists. A number of key themes
emerged from the session, namely:
- The issue of academic freedom and the limitation of financial assistance for attending
conferences and carrying out field research; the role of the state – state oppression at EU
level, the politics of trans nationality, and the monitoring and policing of research.
- Concerns around conducting research: protecting access and how to organise as colleagues;
conducting state research; the employment of methodologies; the management of archival
research; the dissemination of materials; and, the contradiction of accepting state funding
whilst trying to tell the story of those subjected to/challenging state power. It is hoped that
research will be facilitated by the new working groups.
-The subject of stress and the intimidation of researchers and their families. It was agreed that
the group could offer emotional, practical and political support to its members.
- The challenges establishing a career in research – the female experience of academia, the
PhD journey and the possible routes for community activists to engage with research groups.
- The difficulties associated with publishing critical work and the opportunity for seasoned
members of the European Group to act as mentors to less experienced colleagues.
- The setting up of an intranet web page to facilitate the exchange of information between
members seeking advice on any aspect of conducting research.
- The valuable opportunity the European Group newsletter presents as a source for
information about funding/job opportunities and as a channel to publish short articles.
In closing, I would like to thank everyone who attended the session particularly Ann
Singleton and Tony Bunyan and extend a special thanks to Phil Scraton for his continued
support and commitment.
1973-2013 CELEBRATING 40 YEARS …
Attendees:
Ann Singleton
Phil Scraton
Marte Rua
Touny Bunyan
Deborah Drake
Justin Piche
Rune Ellefsen
Georgios Papanicolaou
Joanna Gilmore
Maeve McMahon
Emma Bell
Ioannis Papageorgiou
Feargal Mac Ionnrachtaigh
Jackie Kerr
Ann.Singleton@bristol.ac.uk
p.scraton@qub.ac.uk
marte.rua@jus.uio.no
tony@statewatch.org
Deborah.drake@open.ac.uk
Justin.piche@ottawa.ca
rune.ellefsen@jus.vio.no
g.papanicolaou@tees.ac.uk
joanna.gilmore@york.ac.uk
Maeve.McMahon@carlton.ca
bell.emma@neuf.fr
I.papageorgiou@ rhodesproject.gr
Fearghalennght@hotmail.com
kerr-j13@email.ulster.ac.uk
Podcasts
Many papers delivered at the Oslo conference will soon be available to listen to as podcasts.
More details will be available in our next newsletter.
II Articles dedicated to the life, work and influence of Stan Cohen
Along with Mario Simondi and Karl Schuman, Stan helped to organise the very first
European Group conference in Florence in 1973. We thought it would be a fitting tribute to
Stan to publish articles reflecting his life and work in a special edition of our newsletter
celebrating the Group’s fortieth anniversary.
PLEASE SEE NEXT PAGE
Comment and analysis
1973-2013 CELEBRATING 40 YEARS …
David Scott: A disobedient visionary with an enquiring mind –
An essay on the contribution of Stan Cohen
Stan Cohen died on the 7th January 2013. He was a sociologist and moralist whose work
epitomised the ‘sociological imagination’.1 Ultimately his writings were characterised by
political commitments to social and transformative justice. His work was relevant,
interventionist and filled with theoretical insights. Five of his most important works over the
last four decades are Folk Devils and Moral Panics (1972), Psychological Survival (with
Laurie Taylor, 1973), Visions of Social Control (1985), Anti-Criminology (1988) and States
of Denial (2000).
In reading these books we are, in effect, reading the history and
contemporary scope of criminology in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, for many of the
axiomatic assumptions, research questions, concepts and problematisations in the discipline
of criminology today originate from these texts or in the papers which they bring together.
Stan Cohen was a founder rather than a follower. The sociology of deviance and criminology
has walked in his ‘footsteps in the sand’. To talk about criminology today without reference
to Stan Cohen is like talking about ethics without reference to Kant. He had those rarest of
skills – which have been rightly compared to those of the great socialist thinkers Noam
Chomsky and George Orwell – to write to a number of different audiences at the same time
and yet deliver a multi-layered analysis carrying the greatest of insights that could be
appreciated by all.
In some way it is hard to describe his contribution to criminology because quite frankly it is
so enormous - his work is of such significance that, perhaps more than any other thinker in
the last four decades, it has come to shape and define the discipline of criminology itself.
This is quite a remarkable achievement, not least because he was an anti-criminologist – that
is it was his explicit aim to challenge the ‘positivist’ or scientific study of crime which
dominated the subject in the United Kingdom when he started his career. And yet it would be
wrong to say that his contribution or influence is restricted merely to ‘critical criminologies’
– teachers and researchers from various criminological perspectives and indeed academics,
practitioners and activists outside of criminology entirely, have found his work valuable and
important. Alongside his friends and colleagues at the New Deviancy Conferences in the
late 1960, Stan Cohen challenged the dominant administrative criminology which closely
followed government agendas and rooted its analysis largely in quantitative data, and firmly
embedded in the academy a more sophisticated, theoretical and sociologically informed
approach to the study of ‘crime’, deviance and social control. What is taught on
undergraduate and postgraduate ‘criminology’ degrees today would be very different had not
Stan Cohen, alongside Jock Young and others, so influentially introduced the sociology of
deviancy to the United Kingdom.
1
Mills, Sociological Imagination 1959
1973-2013 CELEBRATING 40 YEARS …
Though criminology and its key themes have evolved in the last four decades, the writings of
Stan Cohen have remained as relevant and inspirational as ever. His work not only
profoundly influenced his peers but also has had an impact on every generation and cohort of
criminologists that have emerged since the 1960s. As academic criminology developed in the
1970s his writings on moral panic and the sociology of deviance shaped not only the
criminology curriculum in universities but also the key questions posed and addressed in the
criminological literature. In Folk Devils and Moral Panics Stan Cohen developed the
concept of moral panic to explore how certain people, because of certain characteristics,
behaviours or social backgrounds, were first defined as a threat to society and then presented
as such to the rest of society by the mass media. Drawing upon the insights of Emile
Durkheim and Howard Becker, and using the case study of ‘Mod’s and Rockers’, he revealed
how moral entrepreneurs subsequently diagnosed and offered crime control solutions that
could contain this new apparent threat. An exercise in setting moral boundaries and
articulating social anxieties about youth and affluence, for Stan Cohen “the devil has to be
given a particular shape to know which virtue is being asserted”.2 The focus on moral panics
set forth two key ideas that were to run through his many writings in the coming years – first,
why in some places at some times, are certain actions either underplayed or overplayed by
the media? and second, what is the role of the media in shaping reactions by the social
audience? Both of these questions were to be revisited at length in his book States of Denial.
In his broader application of the sociology of deviance, Stan Cohen raised consciousness
regarding the problems of radical differentiation and the classification of deviants. Rather
than classify or differentiate, which could result in the construction of false hierarchies, he
was firmly committed to acknowledging our ‘common humanity’, albeit with its vast and
wonderful diversity. Once again, classification and differentiation would be issues that
would be reflected in his research agenda for the next four decades, most notably in Visions
of Social Control. He wanted to know what were the processes involved in the definitions of
deviance and what, perhaps even more significantly, were their consequences. His concern,
like that of his American sociology of deviancy counterparts Howard Becker and Edwin
Lemert, and the enigmatic French social theorist Michel Foucault, was how social control
could play a part in creating deviancy. This insight instilled within him a strong intellectual
scepticism of both formal and informal mechanisms of social control and its net-widening
capacities. His interest in the workings of social control, and especially those organised
responses to deviance that are conceived and defined as ‘social controls’ by those who deploy
them, was only to increase as the dark clouds of Thatcherism and neo-liberalism cast their
deadly shade across the land.
As the criminology curriculum developed in the 1980s to encapsulate both criminology and
criminal justice, his Orwellian inspired book Visions of Social Control, what many today
consider his magnum opus, once again shaped the discipline. Drawing upon a wide range of
theorists – Michel Foucault, Colin Ward, Emile Durkheim, David Rothman and Marxist
political economists, Stan Cohen delivered his majestic overview of formal and informal
control apparatuses in the later stages of the twentieth century. Cohen perceptively warned
us that those with the best of intentions could end up promoting policies that had the worst of
2
Cohen, Folk Devils and Moral Panics 1972:57
1973-2013 CELEBRATING 40 YEARS …
consequences – and this was a message not just for politicians and practitioners, but also a
stark lesson that need to headed by criminologists of all persuasions, especially critical
theorists and abolitionists. Yet despite such scepticism a clear message of hope is retained in
his vision – radical activists could also explore the contradictions, unintended consequences
and inconsistencies of State practices and policies. Whatever the difficulties and
complexities of real life, we must continue to try and ‘do-good’ when and where we possibly
can. This once again was a theme that characterised his perspective.
Visions of Social Control is a thoughtful book raising crucial questions regarding
contemporary developments in criminal processes and informal interventions devised to
address problematic behaviour. Wide-ranging in scope, there is little doubt that one of the
primary intentions of the book was to question the moral legitimacy of the current workings
of the penal machine. Stan Cohen identified how developments in the 1980s saw a deepening
in the intensity of the control mechanisms of the Capitalist State - his warnings about
privatisation and the role of volunteers as State agents proving to be particularly prophetic.
In moving debates in criminal justice away from a dry and legalistic analysis, Visions of
Social Control inspired a generation. Drawing upon and synthesising complex and abstract
theory, the book delivered an understandable and straightforward analysis and yet at the same
was so deeply insightful that it set the agenda for the study of social control for the next
twenty and more years. Paradoxically, for the man who so importantly and successfully
critiqued classification in criminal process, one of his most important contributions was his
ability to classify complex arguments and to draw out their hidden connections. As a critical
thinker he was also to use such skills to make clear problems and contradictions of the penal
apparatus of the Capitalist State. Visions of Social Control indentified the early impact of
risk assessments and the possible dangers of community interventions, issues that were to
dominate the penological literature throughout the 1990s. He foretold of the shift in
bureaucratic interests of universities away from scholarship and revealed the growing
strength of an ‘evaluation’ culture that had supplanted the search for the ‘cause’ of ‘crime’
and was strangling humane and socially just responses to individual and social problems.
Throughout his career Stan Cohen engaged with one of the most profound tensions within
criminology – the relationship between idealism and realism / utopia and immediate
humanitarian reforms. One of the most powerful metaphors that Stan Cohen drew upon to
explore this tension is the ‘tale of the fisherman’ by Saul Alinsky in Visions of Social
Control:
A man is walking by the riverside when he notices a body floating down
stream. A fisherman leaps into the river, pulls the body ashore, gives
mouth to mouth resuscitation, saving the man’s life. A few minutes later
the same thing happens, then again, and again. Eventually yet another body
floats by. This time the fisherman completely ignores the drowning man
and starts running up stream along the bank. The observer asks the
fisherman what on earth is he doing? Why is he not trying to rescue this
drowning body? ‘This time’, replies the fisherman, ‘I’m going up stream to
see who is pushing these poor folk into the water’ ... but Alinsky had a
twist to his story – while the fisherman was so busy running along the bank
1973-2013 CELEBRATING 40 YEARS …
to find the ultimate source of the problem, who was going to help those
poor wretches who continued to float down the river.3
In Visions of Social Control he highlights the centrality of idealist utopias and romantic /
sentimentalist anarchist literature in providing the vision we need to create radical socialist
transformations of society. Such anarchism, idealism, new deviancy theory and anticriminology led him to an interest in ‘penal abolitionism’ – an ethical perspective which
challenges the moral legitimacy of punishment. Most penal abolitionists are not ‘absolutists’
that argue that we should never punish anyone under any possible circumstance, but rather
that we should, as Nils Christie puts it, punish with great sadness, regret and a sense of
mourning. Rather than feel good about punishment we should punish as little as possible and
with a bad conscience because punishment has no moral legitimacy.
Stan Cohen wrote
extensively about abolitionism in his book Against Criminology, edited a special edition of
Contemporary Crises in 1986 on abolitionism, attended the International Conference of
Penal Abolition (ICOPA) in the mid 1980s and was a leading member of the abolitionist
pressure group Radical Alternatives to Prison in the 1970s, where he published the important
pamphlets Prison Secrets in 1977 (with Laurie Taylor) and Crime and Punishment in 1979.
But Stan Cohen (1985) was always the ‘cautious abolitionist’ and though he found the penal
abolitionist argument very persuasive he worried about their problems regarding blame
allocation and moral responsibility. Always wise and politically astute, he committed to
only a guarded and careful appraisal of the position. At the same he never forgot his social
work roots and reminded us of the desperate need for humanitarian interventions in the here
and now. I think this tension between trying to change the world so that it is more socially
just but at the same time helping those most in need right now runs through nearly all of his
work, and indeed perhaps defines it. For Stan Cohen (1990) penal abolitionists must be
prepared to honestly answer the question what can we do right now to mitigate the
humanitarian crises confronting contemporary penal practices without abandoning the
broader obligation to promote radically alternative responses to troublesome human conduct.
Stan Cohen (1995) clearly favoured the language of human rights. For him human rights
could bridge the realism / idealism divide. Human rights, when codified as legal rights, could
provide immediate aid and ease human suffering. They could the act as ‘shield’ in times of
regressive civilisation. But they could also act as a ‘sword’ – human rights could be bearers
of latent utopian ideals and carry with them the ideals of social justice.
Stan Cohen was also concerned about how ‘alternatives to punishment’ could become even
more insidious than the prison. This critique, now one his most famous, has been popularised
in his phrase ‘net widening’, a term he first used in Folk Devils and Moral Panics. In Visions
of Social Control he used the metaphor of ‘fishing nets’ to explain how more and more
people, who have generally committed petty offences, were being sucked into the criminal
‘justice’ system. As ever, the work of Stan Cohen captivated a number of different
audiences. The book connected with radicals working within the State machine, social
workers and radical activists, and so once again his influence stretched well beyond the walls
of the academy.
3
Cohen, Visions of Social Control, 1985: 236-7
1973-2013 CELEBRATING 40 YEARS …
As criminology evolved to take a more detailed and analytical approach to ‘crimes’ of power
and State crime his final single authored book, States of Denial: knowing about suffering and
atrocities, once more led the way. Stan Cohen never lost sight of the importance of drawing
our attention to ‘unwelcome knowledges’ such as human rights abuses and atrocities. In
States of Denial he asked us some of the most profound questions of the day : why is there so
much suffering yet such little effort to alleviate it? how do people respond to knowledge
about the suffering of other humans? and, why do some people help? By asking his reader
these questions Stan Cohen highlighted both the general and the particular. In general, the
book leads the reader to recognise that ‘denial’ is something that characterises human life,
and in certain personal circumstances may even have a positive impact. In particular, the
book is so profound and is written in such an open and honest manner that inevitably the
reader will recognise the use of ‘techniques of denial’ in their own daily lives. His main
focus was upon political denial and the failure to act when we have knowledge, whether in
terms of personal experiences or via other media. The book was therefore not only a brilliant
intellectual overview but also direct intervention attempting to breach denials. His final
book, then, is one great courage, honest reflections of the problems and possibilities of our
times, and more than anything else a great endorsement of humanity despite its limitations –
for I think he grasped better than most its frailty, beauty and diversity. There was a
difference between passivity and moral indifference. We may, as he put it, care intensely and
yet still fail to act. It is this insight into the human condition which I think made him such a
unique and important contributor to criminology and the social sciences more broadly. It will
be this insight which ensures that his work will be of continued benefit to the coming
generation of scholars in criminology and related fields.
Indeed, every new generation of academics and students in criminology over the last few
decades have engaged with the work of Stan Cohen and the issues he brought to prominence.
Not only has he set the criminological curriculum, raised the most pertinent questions, made
the most complex of issues understandable through his scholarship, but he also provided the
theoretical vocabulary by which the discipline of criminology today engages with its subject
matter. Criminology uses his language to explore the problems of today and, I think, also of
tomorrow. Where would criminology be today without the common language of ‘social
control talk’, ‘net widening’, ‘denial and acknowledgement’ and so on and so forth.
Despite his enormous influence I think there is still much that criminology (and related
disciplines where his work is of considerable influence) can learn from Stan Cohen. He was
never a dedicated follower of academic fashion. We must remember that criminology is a
discipline that draws upon a number of different subjects. Stan Cohen was both a sociologist
and a moralist and both should be central to the future of criminology, critical or otherwise.
His focus on the ‘moral’ was not just restricted to ‘moral panics’. His moralism, which he
referred to as 'moral pragmatism’, is outlined in his book Visions of Social Control. In this
text he wrote about the importance of clarifying our cherished moral values – in other words
what do we think are most important, what is it in life that we must protect – what are our key
priorities. Among these cherished values for him were social justice and human rights. It is
absolutely crucial that criminology continues to focus upon justice, both in its formulation
and breach, rather than become obsessed once again with the government set agenda
1973-2013 CELEBRATING 40 YEARS …
reflecting the interests of the powerful, evaluation studies or securing State funding (Cohen,
1985). But his moralism also goes to the very heart of what it is to be a criminologist as a
professional vocation today. Stan Cohen recognised that your academic life and who you are
as a human being are indistinguishable. In other words the criminologists biography is
important – what you write and talk about should be reflected in who you are. Given his
writings then, it should come as no surprise that the man Stan Cohen was widely recognised
as being gentle, kind and understanding.
He also led the way on his scholarship – he would have read literally everything written on
the topic that was available and then carefully present this to the reader. How often in his
books do we see the phrase ‘I have read thirty books on this topic and they all pretty much
say this ...’ No stone was left un-turned and as a result his research was exemplary. The
message for criminologists is that we ensure that our research and theoretical models are
accessible and relevant – the value to cherish is that we should keep our writing style simple
– as he put it ‘it is always better to adopt the simplest approach’. Further, and at least as
equally important, if not more so, we should continue to be critical and raise those questions
that need to be answered by those in power. Stan Cohen was a disobedient visionary with an
enquiring mind. He told truth to power, and more. He also told truth to the powerless. He
did more than most in supporting a view from below. Perhaps here also inspired by Michel
Foucault, he encouraged Walter Probyn, a prisoner he had befriended whilst doing the
Durham E Wing Research for Psychological Survival, to write his autobiography Angel Face.
He wrote the introduction and a commentary/ postscript for the book.4
For Stan Cohen criminologists should explore human suffering, in its very many
manifestations, which have been denied or where there is only limited political action aiming
to address such personal troubles. Academics should intervene. They should make their
voices heard. In States of Denial Stan Cohen makes the case very strongly, and correctly,
that academic indifference or silence is not acceptable.
Intellectuals who keep silent about what they know, who ignore the crimes
that matter by moral standards, are even more morally culpable when their
society is free and open. They can speak freely, but choose not to.5
We live and work in different social and economic times to when Stan Cohen started his
academic career. Many universities today, at least in the UK, are run like businesses looking
to deliver employability skills rather than focus on education as an end in itself. Outside of
the academy the same government orientated agendas that Stan Cohen objected to in the
1960s continue to offer the promise of prestigious careers to ambitious academics, whilst
within the academy research careers are increasingly made or broken depending upon the
individuals willingness to adhere to the new ‘rules of the game’ and meet the demands of
income generation above all other considerations. Stan Cohen’s work has helped us
understand the profound changes in that have taken place since this the late 1960s, but the
values he cherished then should also be the values cherished by criminologists today.
4
5
See Cohen, 1977a, 1977b.
Cohen, States of Denial 2000: 286
1973-2013 CELEBRATING 40 YEARS …
Holding such an approach in academia today can, in the end, mean ‘not playing the game’: at
a time when the economic rational trumps those moral and political commitments,
criminologists should bear in mind that it is not the research grant which is important, but the
scholarship and quality of the research undertaken. Scholarship for Stan Cohen was a
cherished value and the credibility of criminology as a discipline in the future will ultimately
depend on how closely it continues to adhere to this value.
References
Cohen, S. (1972) Folk Devils and Moral Panics London: Routledge
Cohen, S. (1977a) “Introduction” in Probyn, W. (1977) Angel Face London: George Allen
and Unwin
Cohen, S. (1977b) “Commentary (by Stan Cohen): Notes on the reformation of a criminal” in
Probyn, W. (1977) Angel Face London: George Allen and Unwin
Cohen, S. (1979) Crime and Punishment London: Radical Alternatives to Prison
Cohen, S. (1980) “Introduction” in Dronfield, L. (1980) Outside Chance London: Newham
Project
Cohen, S. (1981) “Footprints in the sand” in Fitzgerald, M. et al (1981) Crime and Society:
Readings in history and theory Milton Keynes: Open University Press
Cohen, S. (1985) Visions of Social Control: Crime, Punishment and Classification
Cambridge: Polity Press
Cohen, S. (ed) (1986) “Abolitionism” in Contemporary Crises [special edition on
abolitionism]
Cohen (1988) Against Criminology Cambridge: Polity Press
Cohen, S. (1990) “Intellectual scepticism and political commitment: the case of radical
criminology” pp 98-129 in Walton, P. & Young, J. (eds) (1998) The New Criminology
Revisited London: MacMillan
Cohen, S. (1995) “Social control and the politics of reconstruction” in Nelken, D. (ed) (1995)
The Future of Crime Control London: Sage
Cohen, S. (2000) States of Denial: Knowing about suffering and atrocities Cambridge: Polity
Press
Cohen, S. & Taylor, L. (1973/1981) Psychological Survival Harmondsworth: Penguin
Cohen, S. & Taylor, L. (1977) Prison Secrets London: National Council for Civil Liberties
and Radical Alternatives to Prison
Mills, C.W. ( 1959) The Sociological Imagination Oxford: Oxford University Press
Probyn, W. (1977) Angel Face London: George Allen and Unwin
Author Biography
David Scott is senior lecturer in Criminology at Liverpool John Moores University. David
has published widely on prisons, punishment and critical criminology. Recent and
forthcoming books include Critique and Dissent; Beyond Criminal Justice; Prisons and
Punishment: The Essentials and Why Prison? He is currently completing a book entitled The
Caretakers of Punishment: Power , Legitimacy and the Prison Officer. David is a former
coordinator of the European Group and is an associate editor of the Howard Journal of
Criminal Justice. Email: d.g.scott@ljmu.ac.uk
1973-2013 CELEBRATING 40 YEARS …
Alana Barton and Howard Davis The Politics of Crime
and the Crimes of Politics: Where Does Criminology Stand in the
‘War on the Poor’?
Exc
‘Crime’, most undergraduate criminology students could readily assert, is socially
constructed and is used politically. Politics of crime, ‘law and order’ some might reasonably
understand, find frequent expression through everyday newsworthiness and exaggeration,
and, more sporadically – with dutiful reference to Stan Cohen - in moral panics and the
demonization of folk devils and monsters. The ubiquitous appeal of these concepts, and their
misuse and overuse, carries with it the danger of cliché. Many students fail to appreciate that
not every heightening of public concern is a moral panic and not every person convicted of a
crime is a folk-devil.
The familiarity of the 'usual suspects' in historical galleries of folk devilry makes it easy to
lose sight of the structural roots of mass mediated denigration and its potential ferocity.
Cohen (2002: xxi) himself noted the prominence of '“welfare cheats”, “social security frauds”
and “dole scroungers” as fairly traditional folk devils'. The Philpott case, it is suggested
below, provides an urgent and salutary reminder of depths dredged in what has become a
thinly disguised war on the poor. Following the US model, neo-liberal restructuring combines
the withdrawal of welfare, the 'rolling out of the police-and-prison dragnet and their knitting
together into a carceral assistantial lattice...' (Wacquant, L., 2009: 304). It:
...coalesces around the shrill re-assertion of penal fortitude, the
pornographic exhibition of the taming of moral and criminal deviancy and
the punitive containment and disciplinary supervision of the problem
populations dwelling at the margins of the class and cultural order'
(ibid:xx).
This assault has been given dramatic extra impetus by the politics of financial and economic
disaster. Elites, plunged into a crisis of their own making, have offloaded, through the
secondary disaster of 'austerity', responsibility for, and the consequences of, their greed and
incompetence. These are not ‘politics of crime’. They are crimes of politics: a scathing,
remorseless infliction of social, psychological and economic harm on society’s most
vulnerable. The barely disguised vindictiveness of this assault demands urgent reflexive
debate on the position of criminology.
April 2013 represented a high water mark in poor-hate. As benefits were cut for the disabled
and benefits claimants with a spare bedroom, as taxes were increased for the many and cut
for those earning above £150,000 per year, Mick Philpott was imprisoned for the
manslaughter of six of his children. His plot had been to set fire to his home, ‘rescue’ the
children and frame a partner who had dared to leave him. Bereft, according to the judge, of
‘moral compass, Philpott had terrorised women for decades. In 1978, whilst in the army, he
had attempted to murder his then girlfriend who suffered multiple stabbing.
Chancellor George Osborne placed the crime ‘in context’. Conservative discourse on crime is
generally suspicious of ‘context’, wary of diluting individual responsibility or allowing any
1973-2013 CELEBRATING 40 YEARS …
opportunity for mitigation or excuse. Osborne, however, was not thinking in these terms. Nor
was he thinking of the contextualising the case in terms of domestic violence, or for that
matter, the brutalisation of military training. Rather, he trumpeted the one ‘causal story’ that
the Right is eager to proclaim: that of parasitic ‘skivers’ subverting the economy and morality
of austerity Britain. The debate society needed, Osborne told viewers, was about ‘the
taxpayers who pay for the welfare state subsidising lifestyles like [Philpott’s]’ (Sky News,
April 4th, 2013). The Daily Mail (3rd April, 2013) had already screamed the issue from its
front page: Philpott was the ‘vile product of welfare UK’, a ‘man who bred 17 babies by five
women to milk benefits system.’ The ‘debate’, quickly became a series of attacks on benefit
claimants as an underclass. For Allison Pearson in the Daily Telegraph (April 3rd, 2013),
‘Mick Philpott [was] a good reason to cut benefits.’ For The Times ‘Philpott’s desire to milk
the system was the proximate cause of the fire that killed six of his 17 children’ (April 3rd,
2012, emphasis added).
This attack, it should be clear, had nothing to do with logic, evidence or rigour. Killings,
whose ‘proximate cause’ is greed over inheritance, do not raise calls to cut sums that can be
inherited. Homicide born of greed for profit does not raise the shires in outrage at the evils of
the profit motive. It was rather, straightforward incitement. Had it been aimed at groups
identified by ethnicity rather than poverty, it may have been less gleefully supported by
government’s media partners. On the other hand it may not. But as incitement, it was a clear
manifestation of a systematic attack on the poor. Of academic criminologists, its shameless
concatenation of the most tragic crimes with ‘welfare UK’ demands, with a raw urgency, an
answer to the question ‘whose side are we on?’
Poverty forms a central element of neoliberal prescription. The proportion of households
falling below minimum standards has doubled since 1983. Five million more people live in
inadequate housing now than did in the 1990s and the percentage of households unable to
heat their homes adequately has almost quadrupled since 1999 (PSE, 2013). But inequality is
about the rich as well as the poor. This is important to remember, given the attacks on the
‘unfairness’ to 'hard working families' of welfare scrounging. Attacks on the poor take to a
new and shriller level the familiar diversion from, and legitimation of, enclosure and
appropriation by the rich and the super–rich. In the four decades before the financial disaster
of 2008, the income of the wealthiest 0.1% rose by 694% (Dorling, 2012). The bottom 90%
by contrast, saw their incomes grow – from a far lower base – by 48%. Even the ‘good years’
were profoundly unequal. But as economic circumstances have become worse there has been
no reversal of this unfairness. That is to say, the rich have not lost in the same
disproportionate way they gained. Wealth inequality has grown fivefold since 2006 (Shaheen,
2012). The burdens of neoliberal failure have been dumped on the poor. Whilst the top 1% of
households now each hold average financial and physical assets of £22m, for the bottom 1%
this value is minus £10,000. Poverty cannot be seen in isolation from obscene wealth. The top
1% of households own more than the other 99% put together. Rather than wealth ‘trickling
down’, it has been seized from above.
These events have seriously undermined standard justifications for widening inequality. We
are not all becoming better-off. The economy has not grown faster. Widening inequality has
not made economic sense. Moreover, the rich are exposed by evidence that it was precisely
extreme inequality which led to the financial disaster of 2008 (Lysandrou, 2011) (in 2008,
income share of the top 1% in the USA reached a level it had achieved only once in the
previous century – just before the Wall Street Crash). Driving the global economy over a cliff
was, comprehensively an elite debacle and it presented the very real risk of a dramatic defrocking of neoliberalism's financial and political high priests. This risk, alongside the
1973-2013 CELEBRATING 40 YEARS …
enormous political opportunities that crisis presented, has since lent extraordinary energy to
the re-writing of history. Socialised, the public costs of what was a private sector disaster are
now used to justify the ‘necessity’ of austerity and privatisation. The poor now pay for the
greed of the rich.
Sim (2010: 592) writes that those in power:
…valorize[] punitive expediency with regard to criminal justice and social
welfare policies for the poor and reproduce[] a heartless set of social
arrangements that appear to have no moral compass (sic) or boundaries in
terms of human waste and destruction generated.
It is at the heart of this struggle that criminology now finds itself. It is a fundamental problem
for all criminologists, not only those whose research is directed at the crimes of the powerful.
As state-corporate oligopoly, reinforced by a brutal popular culture, turns on the poor – in
terms of welfare, lifestyle, surveillance, policing and punishment – how morally sustainable
is it, how ‘ethical’, to use the fashionable term – for criminologists to politely service these
agendas? It is false to claim, in focussing on the ‘management’ of the cast-out and the
precarious, that ‘positive’ micro-level ‘improvements’ somehow outweigh complicity with,
and reinforcement of, the dominant downward gaze. Meanwhile, the continuing neglect of
crimes and harms of power becomes a matter of professional shame and political abdication.
Once-upon-a-time, critical criminologists were criticised for their ostensibly naïve,
romanticised ‘Robin Hood’ view of property crime. As ‘high-net-worth-individuals’
increasingly resemble feudal robber barons, one might be forgiven for the surreal belief that
Prince John and the Sherriff of Nottingham have time-slipped their way into Downing Street.
References
Cohen, S. (2002) Folk-Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of The Mods and Rockers.
Abingdon: Routledge
Dorling, D. (2012) ‘Inequality constitutes a particular place’, Social and Cultural Geography,
13 (1): 1-9.
Lysandrou, P. (2011) ‘Global Inequality as one of the root causes of the financial crisis: a
suggested explanation’, Economy and Society, 40(3): 323-344.
PSE (2013) ‘Going backwards: 1983 – 2012’, Poverty and Social Exclusion,
http://www.poverty.ac.uk/pse-research/2-going-backwards-1983-2012 (accessed 16
April, 2013)
Shaheen, F. (2013) ‘Why Nick Clegg’s one-off wealth tax does not go far enough’, New
Economics
Foundation,
http://www.neweconomics.org/blog/2012/08/29/whyclegg%E2%80%99s-one-off-wealth-tax-does-not-go-far-enough (accessed 16 April,
2013)
Sim, J. (2010) ‘Punishment in a Hard Land’, British Journal of Criminology, 50 (3): 589-593.
Wacquant, L. (2009) Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity.
Durham: Duke University Press.
Author biographies
Dr Alana Barton is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Edge Hill University, Ormskirk,
Lancashire.
Dr Howard Davis is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Edge Hill University, Ormskirk,
Lancashire.
1973-2013 CELEBRATING 40 YEARS …
GaryessPotter
of Punishmen
Stan Cohen: Critiical Criminology’s Theoretical Curmudgeon
Stan Cohen: Critical Criminology’s Theoretical Curmudgeon
It is an understatement that I, among many others, owe an enormous debt to Stanley Cohen.
Vic Kappeler and I would never have written The Mythology of Crime and Criminal Justice
or Constructing Crime without the template for understanding crime and deviance as a social
construction that Cohen created.
Stan Cohen’s pioneering descriptions of “moral panics” and “folk devils” were the seminal
concepts that directed research and inquiry. The definition of moral panics as events where “a
condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to
societal values and interests” was the cornerstone in understanding the concept of social
construction. Cohen’s emphasis on the role of the media gave impetus to a generation of new
research:
More moral panics will be generated and other, as yet nameless folk devils
will be created. This is not because such developments have an inexorable
inner logic, but because our society as presently structured will continue to
generate problems for some of its members…and then condemn whatever
solution these groups find. (Cohen, 2002)
It was Cohen who pointed to the stylized stereotypes promulgated by the media, politicians,
moral entrepreneurs and academic ‘experts’:
Societies appear to be subject, every now and then, to periods of moral panic.
A condition, episode, a person or group of persons emerges to become defined
as a threat to societal values and interests; its nature is presented in a stylized
and stereotypical fashion by the mass media; the moral barricades are manned
by editors, bishops, politicians and other right-thinking people; socially
accredited experts pronounce their diagnoses and solutions; ways of coping
are evolved or (more often) resorted to; the condition then disappears,
submerges or deteriorates and becomes more visible. Sometimes the object of
the panic is quite novel and at other times it is something which has been in
existence long enough, but suddenly appears in the limelight. Sometimes the
panic passes over and is forgotten, except in folklore and collective memory;
at other times it has more serious and long-lasting repercussions and might
produce such changes as those in legal and social policy or even in the way the
society conceives itself (Cohen, 2002).
Equally important was Cohen’s introduction of the concept of “deviance amplification” and
societal reaction:
Much of this study will be devoted to understanding the role of the mass
media in creating moral panics and folk devils. A potentially useful link
between these two notions—and one that places central stress on the mass
1973-2013 CELEBRATING 40 YEARS …
media—is the process of deviation amplification as described by Wilkins. The
key variable in this attempt to understand how the societal reaction may in fact
increase rather than decrease or keep in check the amount of deviance, is the
nature of the information about deviance. As I pointed out earlier, this
information characteristically is not received at first; it tends to be in such a
form that the action or actors concerned are pictured in a highly stereotypical
way. We react to an episode of, say, sexual deviance, drug taking or violence
in terms of our information about that particular class of phenomenon (how
typical is it), our tolerance level for that type of behaviour and our direct
experience—which in a segregated urban society is often nil. Wilkins
describes—in highly mechanistic language derived from cybernetic theory—a
typical reaction sequence which might take place at this point, one which has a
spiraling or snowballing effect (Cohen, 2002)
Cohen’s critique advanced labeling theory and formed the foundation for the new directions
in criminology that followed: critical and radical criminology, social constructionism, new
deviancy and cultural criminology. It also profoundly broke with the state-bound legalisms of
criminological positivism.
But, despite the groundbreaking importance of these concepts and the framework of analysis
they created for subsequent work, it is my opinion that they were not Stan Cohen’s most
important contributions to the study of deviance and criminology. Cohen’s greatest
contribution can be found in his restiveness, his discomfort, his constant critique of any and
all orthodoxies, even his own. Stan Cohen was the ultimate critical criminologist. He was the
annoying, intelligent, provocateur that critical and radical criminology so badly needed. Stan
Cohen was the ultimate theoretical curmudgeon. And it is in this role that I find his greatest
contribution to my work and thought.
In his classic collection of essays, Against Criminology (1988), Cohen mercilessly critiqued
sociological and criminological dogmatism. Of course, he lambasted the restrictive
methodological and theoretical assumptions of traditional positivist criminology. He also
posed salient and pointed questions about the “new” criminologies which had emerged in
opposition to the old hegemony. To his credit, Cohen also wondered aloud about many of the
propositions he himself had formulated.
The importance of those critiques cannot be understated. Stan Cohen understood that critical
and radical paradigms were absolutely dependent upon constant questioning and criticism.
The attacks on mainstream criminological theory were in need of continual refinement and
challenges if they were to keep their critical focus. The last thing Stan Cohen would abide is
the reification of new theories into old dogmas.
In Against Criminology, Cohen raises many of these issues. For example, he questions the
dualities of revolution and reform. He points to the “critical irony” in the new criminologies
which fail to resolve the ambiguities between reform and substantial structural social change
(Cohen, 1988: 203). Are we to advance the causes of decriminalization, humane treatment of
prisoners, restraints on policing? Can we “reform” social systems which undermine those
1973-2013 CELEBRATING 40 YEARS …
very reforms at every opportunity? Or should we simply admit that nothing changes until
everything changes (Cohen, 1988:109)?
Similarly, Cohen examines the often romanticized treatments of deviant subcultures and
criminal actors in the ethnographic research, situating deviants in natural settings and
contrasting those depictions with broader perspectives on the political economy of crime and
deviance. Despite the fact that he raised many of these important issues, Cohen was worried
about a romanticized sociology of crime and deviance. He comments that “… we can
understand without being too respectful” (Cohen, 1988: 166). But, like Gramsci, Cohen
argued forcefully that we cannot embrace a critical or radical criminology that is not
grounded in and fully integrated in the daily experience of work, life and community.
In Against Criminology, Cohen addresses the development and evolution of critical theory in
his comments on left realism. He recognizes and praises the role of left realism in bringing
critical theory back to the realities of victimization. But he also admonishes us that care must
be taken to prevent a replication of the dichotomies between criminal/noncriminal and
deviant/nondeviant found in positivism. He warns against any critical theory which "comes
close to denying any relevance to the whole historical and theoretical project of exposing and
relativizing the terms of the dominant discourse" (Cohen, 1988: 28).
In making these observations, Cohen was not simply being cantankerous. He was making the
same argument he had started with many years before. Understanding deviance and crime
requires an understanding of culture, history, political power, and criminal justice policy.
Very much in keeping with Taylor, Walton and Young (1973), Cohen was arguing that
theory had be both inclusive and eclectic to be relevant.
The breadth and scope of Stan Cohen’s work tells us that we are not done. He details where
we have diverged from the traditional models of crime and deviance and admonishes us to
continue that struggle. He makes clear that we must break with the hegemonic concerns of
the state and expose the politics of crime and the nature of power in defining crime and
deviance (Cohen, 1988: 68). He grounds our inquiries in the understanding that crime and
deviance are socially constructed concepts created by political and economic power and the
initiatives of moral entrepreneurs and the media. But, he also reminds us that understanding
crime and deviance is equally dependent on exploring deviant subcultures, victims and
criminals themselves critically and completely.
In the end, Stan Cohen was absolutely correct. The process of understanding, integrating new
meanings, appreciating super-structural processes and evaluating outcomes is ongoing. It is
what keeps critical criminology critical.
References
Cohen, S. 1988. Against Criminology. Transaction Books.
Cohen, S. 2002. Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and the Rockers.
Psychology Press.
Taylor, I.. P. Walton and J. Young. 1973. The New Criminology: For a Social Theory of
Deviance. Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Author biography
Gary W. Potter is Professor of Justice Studies, Eastern Kentucky University
1973-2013 CELEBRATING 40 YEARS …
Bill Munro
On Words and the Logic of Things: Some Notes on Stan Cohen’s
Visions of Social Control
‘The segregated and insulated institution made the actual business of deviancy control
invisible, but it did make its boundaries obvious enough. Whether prisons were built in the
middle of cities, out in the remote countryside or on deserted islands, they had clear spatial
boundaries to mark off the normal from the deviant. These spatial boundaries were
reinforced by ceremonies of social exclusion. Those outside could wonder what went on
behind the walls, those inside could think about the ‘outside world’. Inside/outside,
guilty/innocent, freedom/captivity, imprisoned/released – these were all meaningful
distinctions’ (Cohen, 1979, 401)
‘Representational spaces – walls, enclosures and façades serve to define both a scene (where
something takes place) and an obscene area to which everything that cannot or may not
happen on the scene is relegated: whatever is inadmissible, be it malefic of forbidden, thus
has its own hidden space on the near or the far side of a frontier’ (Lefebvre, 1991:36)
Visions of Social Control (1985) is an important but unconventional work within British
criminology. Its academic unconventionality is perhaps most clearly displayed in the
reflexive guide to intellectual activism in the final chapter: ‘What is to be Done?’. However,
the unconventional strangeness of the work is deeper than the unusualness of structure. The
incongruity of Visions of Social Control lies in an antagonism between the books aims, its
ideal if you like, and its definitive narrative. This antagonism, alongside the work’s
unconventional structure, is, I would argue, a strength of the book as a whole and not a
limitation, as it provides a means of reading the work against its grain and in relation to
Cohen’s invisible partners.
In The Punitive City: Notes on the Dispersal of Social Control Stan Cohen (1979) asks two
questions which he intends to answer in that work and in his later work Visions of Social
Control (1985). The first asks whether the new forms of community intervention can be
clearly distinguished from the old institutions and whether they merely reproduce in the
community the very same coercive features of the system they were designed to replace. The
second asks whether social science can provide a more effective theoretical understanding of
the institutions of social control in relation to their location in the social and physical space of
the city. In both The Punitive City and Visions of Social Control Cohen provides a compelling
answer to the first question. However, when Cohen writes about ‘blurring the boundaries’ it
is not only the blurring of the once clear spatial boundaries of the prison – the spatial logic of
an institution as thing or object – to the unclear and ambiguous limits of community
corrections, he writes also about the ambiguity and ingenuity of language, and the blurring of
meaning in relation to the processes of social control. This slippage from a real place to that
of a semiotic, or signifying space is what makes The Punitive City and Visions of Social
Control so unique – in the sense that space and the social use of space is conceptualised as a
problem of syntax it also leads Cohen away from answering his central question: Can social
1973-2013 CELEBRATING 40 YEARS …
science provide a more effective theoretical understanding of the institutions of social control
in relation to their location in the social and physical space of the city?
In this sense the role of language in the blurring of boundaries is mirrored in Stan Cohen’s
own work when he blurs the social and physical space of the city into representational space
and imaginary space. The slippage from real space to that of a semiotic or signifying space is
carried out in chapter six in his discussion of Utopia.
Cities have never been just places, almost as soon as they were invented, they
spawned a phantom version of themselves; an imaginative doppleganger that lived an
independent life in the imagination of the human species at large. In other words, they
stood for something. In the ancient world and then again with the re-emergence of city
life in the later middle ages, the city tended to be conceived as a metaphor of order.
The patterning of the city, its spatial arrangements, hierarchies, functional specifics,
served as a mirror image of what the wider social reality could and should be like
(Cohen, 1985: 206).
Cohen is writing not only about the influence of language and syntax in how we structure the
world but how there is a functional unity between a system of signs and human experience
situated on an empirical and historical terrain. In other words, spaces of representation are
mental inventions (codes, signs, ‘spatial discourses’, utopian plans, imaginary landscapes,
and even material constructs such as symbolic spaces, particular built environments,
paintings, museums) that imagine new meanings or possibilities for spatial practices. In this
way he anticipates not only the later work of David Harvey (see Harvey, 1990), but also that
of Michel Foucault (see Foucault 1986). Like Foucault, Cohen sees that the semiotic effects,
the meaning-constructions of imaginary representations of the city, are anchored in the
coercive realities of a concrete historical society itself. The opposite of Utopia then is not
dystopia (as the rest of Vision of Social Control seems to suggest) but another form of Utopia.
The Utopia of community corrections, that of social stability, the fulfilment of private life,
law and order is opposed by what Foucault terms heterotopia, and which Cohen leaves unnamed in his text.
Heterotopias, according to Foucault, are the spaces in which we live and in which the erosion
of our lives, our history occurs. Unlike the totalising Utopias of social stability and law and
order, heterotopias are heterogeneous spaces; in other words, spaces which are irreducible to
one another and not fully superimposable on to one another. Unlike the law and order Utopia
these spaces are messy, ill-constructed, disorganised and chaotic yet also provide the context
where the dominant fantasies can be resisted and remodelled according to different patterns
of action and forms of construction. It is this trace of an un-named hope in chapter six of
Visions of Social Control that uncovers the Utopian moment of the work. It is perhaps ironic
for a work that is so often read as pessimistic to provide the possibility of an antidote to the
nightmarish vision which takes up the majority of the text.
References
Foucault, M. (1986) ‘Of Other Spaces’, Diacritics Vol. 16, No 1, pp. 22-27.
Harvey, D. (1990) The Condition of Postmodernity Oxford: Blackwell
Lefebvre, H. (1991) The Production of Space Oxford: Blackwell
Author Biography: William Munro is a lecturer in criminology at the University of Sterling.
1973-2013 CELEBRATING 40 YEARS …
Radnhild Feyling
‘Folk devlis’ and release from prison: How the work of Stan Cohen
helps us to understand post-prison reintegration
Stanley Cohen and Laurie Taylor’s book, Psychological Survival (1981), was based on a
study of prisoners serving long-term prison sentences. These prisoners were labelled as the
worst and the most evil of men. But they were actively seeking to build their own identity.
Cohen and Taylor wanted to give them power and agency. They were convinced that
ideology and confrontation was important for constructing identity and meaning and
lessening the pains of imprisonment. They did not find political ideologies among these men,
not even among the black prisoners. But more than looking for an overall encompassing
ideology, they looked at ‘ideological traits’ informing the prisoners’ behavior, defining
ideology as ‘a causal string upon which to thread a variety of apparently related actions’
(Cohen and Taylor 1981, p.168). They did this, they said, however disgusting acts the
prisoners had committed, because as a general rule for survival in a difficult situation, it is
important to “understand what is happening to you” (Ibid, p. 148). Cohen and Taylor saw
ideologies as an aid not only to preserve personal identity while in prison, but also as a
meaningful framework to bridge the transfer back to society. But when they tried to talk with
the men about life after prison, they found little response. For most of the inmates this would
not be a reality for many years to come, and occasional talk about the future only led to
reactions of great anxiety. Prison release seemed to be problematic.
In later books, Vision of Social Control (1985/1995) and Folk Devils & Moral Panics (1987),
Stanley Cohen looks at how people increasingly are given a social identity as a way of
controlling them. A ’folk devil’ is seen as an enemy of society whether that person has
committed any criminal act or not. Constructing folk devils is an overreaction with strong
emotional overtones. The aim is to distract attention from more difficult problems
threatening society and to unite people in opposition to a common enemy. Cohen follows the
tradition of Erikson’s Wayward Puritans in seeing deviants as created by society as part of
society’s social control process6. So do Helgi Gunnlaugsson and John F Galliher in their
book Wayward Icelanders (2000). They saw moral panic in Iceland as caused by great
structural changes threatening inner stability, whilst at the same time external borders were
threatened by international tourism. The Icelanders then found new social cohesion in a war
on drugs and an increase in arrests of substance abusers.
But once these folk devils are created and placed behind bars, how are they reintegrated into
society? Some years ago I interviewed some substance abusers who upon release felt great
anxiety at the thought of having to face strong prejudices and hostile attitudes. Facing society
was more difficult than suffering imprisonment, one of them said. An Icelander I interviewed
6
Cohen refers to Wayward Puritans (1987, s 15).
1973-2013 CELEBRATING 40 YEARS …
was released at the end of the 1990s, the years described by Gunnlaugsson and Galliher as a
time of moral panic. As an ex-prisoner and a substance abuser, he did not believe he had any
future in Icelandic society. He said he was seen as half human (halv-menneske). He decided
to ‘flee’, as he said, to Denmark after release. But after also having failed abroad, he came
back some years later. He then wanted to change his life style and found his way into
Icelandic society through Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) as a sustaining ideology. AA gave
him a frame of ideological existence as well as a way into society through members who
were already established. But a sustaining ideology does not suffice to alleviate harms of
imprisonment or bring about a new social identity.
Research has shown that prisoners are in varying degrees mentally, psychologically and
emotionally harmed by their imprisonment, and enter society with a reduced social status and
less social capital than before (Liebling and Maruna 2005, Travis 2005). These are burdens
shared by most prisoners, whether serving sentences for situational crimes or for participation
in political struggles. The European Group annual conference held in Belfast in 2005 focused
on the Irish struggles and former paramilitary prisoners. One of them said at a meeting that
release had not been difficult as they had kept in contact with outside society during
imprisonment and were released as heroes. But another person who had followed them
closely told me there were also negative effects of the imprisonments. Not surprisingly, due
to long separation from families and serving prison sentences under harsh conditions 7.
Jamieson and Grounds (2005) studied the effects of imprisonment on Irish political prisoners
and prisoners released after having been wrongly imprisoned, as well as regular prisoners.
For all three groups they found negative effects of the imprisonment itself.
Moral panic can lead to mass incarcerations. But as Jeremy Travis (2005) reminds us in the
title of his book about this in the USA8, they all come back: mass incarcerations will
inevitably be followed by mass releases. He shows how social problems increase because of
mass incarcerations and subsequent releases, affecting the prisoners and their close relations
as well as the wider society in many negative ways 9. It is then in the interest of society to
assist the successful reintegration of ex-prisoners.
As identity as a folk devil is a social construct, a new identity also has to be constructed
socially. Following strong processes of othering, the difference us/them has to be overcome.
In traditional court procedures the cleft might only deepen as deliberations are limited to the
criminal acts and the parties don’t talk with each other, but are represented by experts in law.
If the perpetrator then is put in prison, he is removed from further contact until he reappears
at the time of release, still seen as a folk devil. An innovation of Travis is reentry courts that
at the time of printing of his book in 2005 had been tried in some places in USA. In a reentry
7
Some of the Irish political prisoners served under harsher prison conditions than regular criminals as a
consequence of protesting against not being recognized as political prisoners within the prison system
(McKeown 2001).
8
Travis (2005) sees the increase in incarcerations as explained by multiple causes: by a war on drugs, but also
by longer sentences and a reduction in prereleases.
9
Travis (2005) describes problems like weakened family structures, increased bad health with spread of
communicable diseases and weakened local communities where a high percentage of the inhabitants are
imprisoned.
1973-2013 CELEBRATING 40 YEARS …
court the authority of the judge is used to oversee the integration process. Meetings with
offender, victims and representatives of society should lead to proclamation of the offender
having paid his debt. He/she thus gets a new identity, and the gap us/them is overcome. This
would partially be based on recognition of the released person’s good behavior (involving a
control aspect). But there would also be a control of society in the sense that social benefits
needed for reintegration not were not held back. The process thus included elements of
restorative justice. In a study of transitional justice in deeply divided societies where the other
party tends to be seen as a folk devil, Nevin T Aiken (2013) points to a process of social
learning to see each other differently: 1. contact between the parties (instrumental learning);
2. recognizing who are victims and perpetrators, and agreeing upon a new narrative
(socioemotional learning); 3. adjusting structural and material inequalities (distributive
learning). All three parts would be important to overcome the split between us and them.
Deviants being social constructs, these are social means of construction of a new social
identity. Though Cohen in Visions of Social Control envisioned a further development in
construction of deviants, he also envisioned a society free to make other choices and turn
from exclusionary to inclusionary measures.
References
Aiken, Nevin T (2013): Identity, reconciliation and transitional justice. England: Routledge.
Cohen Stanley and Laurie Taylor (1981): Psychological Survival. England: Penguin Books.
Cohen, Stanley (1987): Folk Devils & Moral Panics. England: Basil Blackwell Ltd .
Cohen, Stanley (1995): Visions of Social Control. England: Polity Press.
Crewe, Ben and Alison Liebling (2012): ”Are liberal-humanitarian penal values and practices
exceptional?” I: Penal exceptionalism? Thomas Ugelvik and Jane Dullum (red.)
London and New York: Routledge.
Gunnlaugsson, Helgi og John F Galliher (2000). Wayward Icelanders. Wisconsin: The
University of Wisconson Press.
Jamieson, Ruth og Adrian Grounds (2005): ”Release and adjustment: Perspectives from
studies of wrongly convicted and politically motivated prisoners.” In: The Effects of
Imprisonment. Allison Liebling og Shadd Maruna (red.) London og New York:
Routledge.
Liebling, Alison og Shadd Maruna editors (2005): The Effects of Imprisonment. London and
New York: Routledge.
McKeown, Laurence (2001): Out of time. Belfast: Beyond the Pale
Travis, Jerermy (2005). But They All Come Back. Washington D.C: The Urban Institute
press.
Author biography
Ragnhild Feyling is a criminologist from the University of Oslo. She is also a theologian and
works as prison chaplain in a maximum security prison in Norway. Mail:
ragnhild.feyling@jus.uio.no
1973-2013 CELEBRATING 40 YEARS …
III European Group News
Barbara Hudson
Barbara Hudson died on Monday 9th September. Barbara was a longstanding member
of the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control who not only
cherished, but lived, its principles and values. She was an internationalist who felt
passionately about Europe and the need for strong commitments to human rights and
social justice. Barbara was an enormous personal and intellectual influence and
inspiration for our members in the last three decades. Indeed, the appeal of Barbara
and her work stretched across boundaries and cultures. For a number of years Barbara
was a visiting lecturer at universities in Brazil, a place and people she held very dear,
and she often spoke very fondly of her times as a visiting professor in many countries
around the world, especially times spent with colleagues in Berkeley, Toronto and Oslo.
A PhD student of Stan Cohen in the early 1980s, Barbara wrote on social control, the
sociology of punishment and penal abolitionism. Her most well known books include
Justice Through Punishment (1987); Penal Policy and Social Justice (1993);
Understanding Justice (1996); and Justice in the Risk Society (2003). Known for her
integrity, scholarship and humanity, Barbara’s focus was primarily on the meaning of
‘justice’ – exploring the failure of punishment to achieve justice; the importance of doing
justice to difference / diversity; and in recent times playing a key role in the
development and application of the idea of ‘cosmopolitan justice’. An innovative and
ground-breaking thinker, Barbara opened new avenues of study when writing about
justice, drawing upon not only sociological / criminological / penological studies but
also evidencing her arguments with work derived from moral and political philosophy
and legal jurisprudence.
Throughout her career Barbara constantly grappled with the difficult association
between state and societal responses to ‘crime’ and economic and social inequalities she was a very proud representative of the tradition known as ‘critical criminology’ and
her work was deeply embedded in the inter-relationships between ‘race’, class and
gender. The ethics of Kant and his notion of ‘equal respect’ and the Levinas / Bauman
notion of ‘responsibility for the other’ shaped her work in the last decade of her life, and
she had recently talked of drawing upon her recent papers to write one final book on
justice. That Barbara took such work seriously could be seen in how these principles
influenced her non-hierarchical relationships with others and her ability to relate to
people from different social backgrounds, for Barbara possessed not only a remarkable
intellect but also a wonderful sense of compassion and understanding for others. She
will be greatly missed by very many people.
The European Group would welcome personal reflections and memories from our
members on the life and work of Barbara Hudson. We will then share these with her
family prior to the funeral and then with all members in a future European Group
Newsletter.
David Scott
Members who would like to send condolences directly to Barbara’s family please
contact in the first instance:
Emma Bell europeangroupcoordinator@gmail.com
David Scott d.g.scott@ljmu.ac.uk
1973-2013 CELEBRATING 40 YEARS …
We have two new national representatives
Colombia : David Rodríguez Goyes david3087@gmail.com
France: Gilles Chantraine gilleschantraine@gmail.com
Thanks to them for agreeing to take on this role.
We also have a new web administrator: Kirsty Ellis kirst.ellis@yahoo.co.uk
Thanks to her for volunteering. Thanks also to Gilles Christoph for looking after the website
over the past year.
N.B. The website is currently being transferred to a new host. Please be patient whilst this is
taking place. The website will be updated as soon as possible.
Resolution: The following resolution was passed at this year’s AGM:
This conference unequivocally condemns the criminalisation and persecution of
those who seek to disseminate the truth about the extent of state abuse of power,
mass surveillance and infringement of the right to privacy by governments across
the globe. We call for their immediate release from prison and for the
dismantlement of mass surveillance technologies. We urge not only that
academics and activists support this motion, but also that they desist from any
activities that aid, abet and justify the state's anti-democratic, illegal interventions
into private life.
Publications:
N.B. The Group would like to encourage members to send references for their new
publications to the Group coordinator. These will be published in the newsletter and then will
appear on the website. The aim is to build up a directory of members’ work over the coming
years.
European Group AnthologyII European Group News
Critique and Dissent, published by Red Quill, edited by Joanna Gilmore, John Moore and
David Scott and dedicated to Lidia Zubler, brings together 20 different papers delivered at
EG conferences over the past 40 years. It will be released on 30th September.
If you wish to order a copy of the book and are living outside the Eurozone or the UK
please order the book directly from RedQuill after 30th September.
For those living within the UK, could you please send a cheque for £22 (incl. P&P) directly
to John Moore at 17 Atlantic Road, Weston-super-Mare, BS23 2DG. Please make it payable
to John Moore. He will then transfer the funds directly into the Group account.
For orders within the Eurozone, please contact Emma Bell who will send you out the
Group's bank details so you can make payment (29€ incl.P&P).
When ordering please make clear what address you want the anthology delivered to.
Recent publications by group members
Atkinson, Rowland (ed.) Shades of Deviance A Primer on Crime, Deviance and Social Harm,
Oxon, Routledge, 2013.
Bédard, Jean and Chantraine, Gilles, Bastille Nation: French Penal Politics and the Punitive
Turn, Red Quill Books, Ottawa, 2013.
1973-2013 CELEBRATING 40 YEARS …
Bell, Emma, ‘Normalising the Exceptional: British Policing Cultures Come Home’, Les
Cahiers du MIMMOC, 10 | 2013 : Cultures coloniales et postcoloniales et decolonisation.
See : http://mimmoc.revues.org/1286
Fischer, N., ‘Bodies at the border: the medical protection of immigrants in a French
immigration detention centre’, Ethnic and Racial Studies 36(07): Special Issue: The
Language of Inclusion and Exclusion): 1162 - 1179.
Franko Aas, Katja and Bosworth, Mary (eds.), The Borders of Punishment: Migration,
Citizenship and Social Exclusion, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013.
Franko Aas, Katja, Globalisation and Crime, Sage, 2013.
Hallsworth, Simon, The Gang and Beyond: Interpreting Violent Street Worlds, Basingstoke,
Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
Hudson, Barbara and Ugelvik, Justice and Security in the 21st Century: Risk, Rights and the
Rule of Law, Oxon, Routledge, 2013.
Malloch, Margaret and Munro, Bill (eds.), Crime, Critique and Utopia, Basingstoke,
Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
Mathiesen, Thomas, Towards a Surveillant Society: The Rise of Surveillance Systems in
Europe, Waterside Press, 2013.
Ruggiero, Vincenzo, The Crimes of the Economy: A Criminological Analysis of Economic
Thought, Oxon, Routledge, 2013.
Ruggiero, Vincenzo and Ryan, Mick, Punishment in Europe: A Critical Anatomy of Penal
Systems, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.
Scott, David (ed.), Why Prison?, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Interesting new open access journal publishing critical research about challenges confronting
criminal justice systems around the world. Available here:
https://www.crimejusticejournal.com/
IV News from Europe and around the world
France
Conference
Terrferme Conference “Confinement viewed through the prism of the social sciences:
Contrasting facilities, confronting approaches”, 16th-19th October, Bordeaux. Please sign up
before the 16th October. See
http://terrferme13.sciencesconf.org/resource/page?id=7Wednesday&lang=en
Germany
Call for Papers
IMPRS REMEP Conference 'On Mediation' 2014 – Conference Call (Events, 04/12/2013).
From 4 to 8 February 2014 the international conference "On Mediation" will take place.
1973-2013 CELEBRATING 40 YEARS …
Conference Call Abstract submission / deadline: 30 September 2013. Venue: Max Planck
Institute for European Legal History, Frankfurt/M, Germany. Contact: Prof. Dr. Karl Härter |
Dr. Carolin F. Hillemanns – International Max Planck Research School on Retaliation,
Mediation and Punishment (IMPRS REMEP) – for further information visit:
http://www.mpicc.de/ww/en/pub/aktuelles.cfm?fuseaction_pre=detail&prid=292&
Conference Report from the Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Criminal Law
in Freiburg i. Br., Germany: Max-Planck-Institut für ausländisches und internationales
Strafrecht in Freiburg) organised Vom 28. bis 30. Juni 2012 fand am Report from a
conference held in June 2012 concerning the (academic) situation of criminology in Germany
and suggesting 10 theses how to improve the situation of criminology in Germany. Must
read!
Masters programmes
Schwerpunktheft Nr. 2/3 (April/Juni) 2013 der Monatsschrift für Kriminologie und
Strafrechtsreform introduces an annotated list of Master-Studies of Criminology in Germanspeaking Countries
Publications
Issue 2/2013 of the online journal eucrim now available (Publications, 08/13/2013). eucrim is
an online journal that offers a Europe-wide platform for European criminal law and invites
both practitioners and academics to engage in discussion. The current issue 2/2013 can be
downloaded
free
of
charge
by
clicking
on
the
following
link:
http://www.mpicc.de/eucrim/archiv/eucrim_13-02.pdf
The ongoing series "Reports on Research in Criminology," vol. K 161 edited by Gunda
Wößner, Roland Hefendehl and Hans-Jörg Albrecht has recently been published. The volume
is in German and entitled "Sexuelle Gewalt und Sozialtherapie – Bisherige Daten und
Analysen zur Längsschnittstudie 'Sexualstraftäter in den sozialtherapeutischen Abteilungen
des Freistaates Sachsen.'"
The publication can be ordered from the Institute by clicking on the following link:
http://www.mpicc.de/ww/de/pub/forschung/publikationen/krim/k_161.htm
Statistics
Number of children held in custody in Germany - Press release Destatis Nr. 260, 07.08.2013
Greece
News
Cheliotis, L. K. (2013, 29 August). "Immigration detention and state denial in Greece." Open
Democracy. Retrieved 03 September, 2013, from http://www.opendemocracy.net/caneurope-make-it/leonidas-kcheliotis/immigration-detention-and-state-denial-in-greece.
Marchetos, Spyros, “The new untouchables” – good article on Greece’s and Europe’s
treatment of migrants from The New Statesman 27 August available here:
http://www.newstatesman.com/austerity-and-its-discontents/2013/08/new-untouchables
Salles, A. (2013, 19 August). "A Visit to the 'Greek Guantanamo'." Le Monde/ WorldCrunch.
Retrieved 19 August, 2013, from http://www.worldcrunch.com/culture-society/a-visit-to-thequot-greek-guantanamo-quot-/immigration-asylum-detention-camp/c3s13092/.
Switzerland
Conference
1973-2013 CELEBRATING 40 YEARS …
13th Conference of the "Kriminologische Gesellschaft", 26th-28th September, Fribourg
(Switzerland) highlights the topics of "Security, Risk, and Criminal Policy"
http://www.unifr.ch/ius/krimg2013/home
The Netherlands
Seminar
Conference to be held on environmental crime in Tilburg, 11th and 12th November, 2013.
See: http://www.environmentalcrimeseminar.com/home.html
United Kingdom
Activism
The National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns (NCADC) will be holding its AGM
in London on 5th October. It is open to all. See http://us4.campaignarchive2.com/?u=9175e7ebdf93b7e5581be2c51&id=2f08563fc1&e=f69f2e4297
At the end of November, we shall see the 20th anniversary of the opening of Campsfield
immigration detention centre near Oxford in central England. Over the years Campsfield has
been a major focus of resistance to detention from inside by detainees and from outside by
the Campaign to Close Campsfield and others. We wish to celebrate this resistance and plan
for more resistance by a number of events over the weekend of the 20th anniversary
demonstration on 30 November. We are specially interested in inviting those in struggle
against detention across the UK and Europe. So we are contacting you to ask if you would be
interested in travelling to Oxford to join the demonstration and other events. Please contact
Bill MacKeith (bmackeith@gmail.com<mailto:bmackeith@gmail.com)
Call for papers
‘Penal Law, Abolitionism and Anarchism’, a conference hosted by the British/Irish section
of the European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control and the Hulsman
Foundation will take place from Saturday 26th – Sunday 27th April 2014 at Shire Hall,
Nottingham. Can we imagine law without the state? Could what we now call ‘crime’ be dealt
with by means other than criminal law and punishment? This conference seeks to explore
interrelationships and tensions that exist between the philosophies and practices associated
with penal law, abolitionism and anarchism. It aims to provide a space for the
interdisciplinary exploration of complex critiques of state law and legality, criminalization
and other forms of state and corporate power in neoliberal contexts. The rich and complex
European tradition of abolition recently explored in great detail by Vincenzo Ruggiero, to
which Louk Hulsman made such a creative contribution, provides important intellectual
resources to challenge neoliberal penal and social [well/war –fare] politics and policies and to
expose their harms and underlying power-dynamics. Joe Sim underlined the continued
importance of Angela Davis’ concept of ‘abolitionist alternatives’ as well as of forms of a
renewed penal activism. These and other abolitionist or minimalist approaches to criminal
justice challenge existing hegemonic belief systems that continue to legitimate the generation
of harms via the operations of law, psychology, criminology, the media and frequently shape
public opinion. For some critical criminologists such reflections might imply promoting an
Anarchist Criminology, while for others this might involve the use of courts to challenge
decisions made by ministers. The direct action taken by the Occupy movement and similar
movements (e.g. UK Uncut) can of course also be linked to a diversity of philosophies and
principles of anarchism as well as to contemporary media movements and digital activism
that are of crucial relevance in the current context. Deadline for abstracts: 30th November
1973-2013 CELEBRATING 40 YEARS …
2013. For further details please contact Andrea Beckmann [abeckmann@lincoln.ac.uk] or
Tony Ward [A.Ward@hull.ac.uk]
‘Reflections on Foreign National Prisoners’ is a one-day seminar to be held at the Centre
for Criminology, University of Oxford, United Kingdom on 24th March 2014. See
http://bordercriminologies.law.ox.ac.uk/seminars/fnp_seminar/ Proposals should be sent by
email to the convenors by Monday 30th September 2013 and consist of a title, abstract (250
words) and the name(s) and affiliation(s) of the author(s). Accepted authors are expected to
submit their draft papers to the convenors by the 28th February 2014. The seminar will take
place in Oxford (UK) on the 24th March 2014.
The Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics, and Ethics at the University of Brighton will be
hosting a conference entitled ‘Conflict, Revolt and Democracy in the Neoliberal World’ from
Thursday 7th to Friday 8th of November, 2013. Wendy Brown will be a keynote speaker.
See: http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/research/cappe/conferences,-seminars,events/calendar/conflict,-revolt-and-democracy-in-the-neoliberal-world2
‘Undocumented Migrants, Ethnic Enclaves and Networks: Opportunities, traps or class-based
constructs’, UndocNet, London, Friday 6 December 2013. The UndocNet research team
welcomes contributions focusing on the following topics in the national or comparative
perspective addressing irregular migration: policy intersections; status and status mobility;
family networks and social capital; irregular migrants and work. UndocNet encourages both
established and new researchers to submit abstracts for the paper sessions. Deadline for
abstracts: Monday 23 September 2013. See: http://www.undocnet.org/
Conferences/seminars/discussion
Tony Platt will be giving a lecture at the Centre for Law & Society, School of Law,
University of Edinburgh, Thursday 19 September, 16.15-18.00, entitled ‘If We Know, Then
We Must Fight: Legacies of 1970s Radical Criminology in the United States’. See
The Howard League will be hosting a two-day international conference from 1–2 October
2013, Keble College, Oxford to generate debate to contest the conventional role of the penal
system and explore ideas for a new, achievable paradigm to deliver a reduced role for the
penal system, fewer victims of crime and safer communities. Speakers will include Vanessa
Barker, Steve Tombs and Monika Platek from the European Group.
http://www.howardleague.org/what-is-justice-events/
Bill Rolston will be giving a talk at Liverpool John Moores University on 3rd October from
6:30-8:30pm entitled ‘Drawing Support: The murals of the North of Ireland - An Illustrated
Talk’
as
part
of
the
Writing
on
the
Wall
festival.
See
http://www.writingonthewall.org.uk/wow-news/194-drawing-support.html
Feargal Mac Ionnrachtaigh and Phil Scraton will be giving a talk on 17th October in
Liverpool as part of the Writing on the Wall festival entitled ‘Language, Resistance and
Revival: From Prison to Community’. See:
http://www.writingonthewall.org.uk/component/ohanah/language-resistance-and-revivalfrom-prison-to-community.html?Itemid=153
The Reclaim Justice Network will be hosting discussions in Manchester and London to
examine the opportunities for radical alternatives to criminal justice. The London event will
be held on Tuesday 22/10/13, 6pm – 8.30pm, at the CCJS, 2 Langley Lane, Vauxhall,
1973-2013 CELEBRATING 40 YEARS …
London, SW8 1GB. The Manchester event will be held on Thursday 24/10/13, 5pm, at
Manchester Metropolitan University. See:
http://downsizingcriminaljustice.wordpress.com/2013/08/21/event-what-will-it-take-to-havea-shrinking-criminal-justice-system/
Angela Davis will be giving the annual lecture at the the School of Law, Birkbeck, University
of London on 25th October, 6pm-9pm: ‘Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Closures and
Continuities’. See: http://www.bbk.ac.uk/events-calendar/annual-law-lecture-freedom-is-aconstant-struggle-closures-and-continuities
Publication
Issue 8 of INQUIRY: The Quarterly Newsletter of the Innocence Network Uk (INUK) is now
avaliable at: http://www.innocencenetwork.org.uk/inquiry
United States
News
Dinan, S. (2013, 23 August). "New Obama policy warns agents not to detain illegal
immigrant parents." Washington Times. Retrieved 25 August, 2013, from
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/aug/23/new-obama-policy-warns-agents-notdetain-illegal-i/.
Espinoza, M. (2013, 31 August). "Deportation looms for undocumented immigrants despite
Obama pledge." The Press Democrat. Retrieved 03 September, 2013, from
http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20130831/articles/130839917?title=Deportationlooms-for-undocumented-immigrants-despite-Obama-pledge#page=0.
Kirkham, C. (2013, 23 August). "War On Undocumented Immigrants Threatens To Swell
U.S. Prison Population." The Huffington Post. Retrieved 25 August, 2013, from
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/23/undocumented-immigrantsprison_n_3792187.html.
Noorani, A. (2013, 22 August). "Detention Costs Convey Immigration Reform's Urgency."
The Huffington Post. Retrieved 25 August, 2013, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alinoorani/detention-costs-immigration-reform_b_3792497.html.
Pringle, A. (2013, 28 August). "The Winners in Immigration Control: Private Prisons." The
Atlantic. Retrieved 29 August, 2013, from
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/08/the-winners-in-immigration-controlprivate-prisons/279128/.
1973-2013 CELEBRATING 40 YEARS …
A BIG THANKS to all the European Group
members for making this newsletter successful..
Please feel free to contribute to this newsletter
by sending any information that you think
might be of interest to the Group to
Emma/Monish at :
europeangroupcoordinator@gmail.com
Please try to send it in before the 25th of each
month if you wish to have it included in the
following month’s newsletter. Please provide a
web link (wherever possible).
1973-2013 CELEBRATING 40 YEARS …