Democratising Punishment by Julian V Roberts and Jan de Keijser

Julian V Roberts and Jan W de Keijser (2014) ‘Democratising Punishment: Sentencing, Community Views and Values’, Punishment and Society, 16(4), 474-498

How far should public involvement in punishing criminal wrongdoing be facilitated? A recent movement towards greater participation from the ‘lay’ public has suggested that these voices are lacking in the criminal justice system as it is currently conceptualised. Those in favour of this movement towards ‘Democratising Punishment’ have argued that a crisis of legitimacy is impending as decision-making in criminal justice matters becomes ever more divorced from ‘common-sense’.

In light of this, one of the key rationales put forward by the democratising punishment scholars, the notion of ‘common-sense’, presents itself for examination. It is hard not to think of Gramsci’s view of common-sense as ‘a reservoir of historically discontinuous and disjointed ideas that functions as the philosophy of non-philosophers’ which suggested that it was hardly the wise arbiter it often purported to be (In Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci 1971).

In their forcibly articulated argument Roberts and de Keijser critique, and in turn, criticise the models of participation and rationales proposed by advocates of the democracy in punishment movement.

As Lon Fuller articulated, through the person of Justice Handy, in ‘The Case of the Speluncean Explorers’, the place of public opinion in justice has been a recurring question in legal circles:

‘I have never been able to make my brothers see that government is a human affair, and that men are ruled, not by words on paper or by abstract theories, but by other men. They are ruled well when their rulers understand the feelings and conceptions of the masses. They are ruled badly when that understanding is lacking.

‘Of all branches of the government, the judiciary is the most likely to lose contact with the common man.’

Fuller presented Justice Handy as entirely swayed by the ‘common-sensical’ views of the public, as revealed to him through opinion polls in newspapers; Handy used this evidence to solve the difficult case at hand, namely the saving of four men accused of murder (the case is worth a read, and it makes great dinner party/pub banter).

Interestingly, given the concerns of democratising punishment advocates about the apparent disconnect between the people and the courts, Ireland’s highly discretionary system would surely provide acute cause for concern. It ensures that there is even less input from democratically elected persons, while tools such as sentencing guidelines, for example, are not a feature of this jurisdiction.

Advocates of democratising punishment extol the virtues of community involvement. One issue not explored at length in Roberts and de Keijser’s article however is the assumed homogeneity of ‘community’ which must necessarily underpin these treatises. The concept of the ‘community’ in each of the models of participatory justice is presented without nuance or discussion of what this nebulous term actually consists. Using a vague term such as 'community' also serves to glorify and romanticise the idea of lay participation, in a manner which becomes difficult to sustain when subjected to scrutiny. The direct participation of ‘community’ in this abstract form would inevitably incorporate the discrimination and inequity of society; currently within a professionalised criminal justice system there is the veneer of equality and neutrality. This is allied to the dangers of a reduction in transparency and accountability, as laypersons would not be held accountable to the same extent as professionals acting within carefully determined parameters. The entire debate suggests that a key question must be answered - is dispassionate deliberation a desired trait in decision-making? If this is not agreed on, then proportionality and principled sentencing make way for emotive and expressive justice. The argument put forth by 'Democratising Punishment' advocates that sentencing is ‘dysfunctional’ is interesting in this vein. ‘Dysfunctional’ how? In reality, this appears to mean lenient. Therefore, public participation in sentencing poses a risk of increasing punitiveness in the form of longer sentences, with the resultant rise in prison populations and expense.

Following on from the uncertain concept of 'community', even juries in many jurisdictions, including Ireland (see the Law Reform Commission report on this), are rarely representative, inevitably showcasing a selection of society skewed towards certain sub-groups. The small proportion of criminal cases which end in a jury trial is also regularly glossed over in the fiction of the jury trial as the cornerstone of the legal system. The valorising of the jury trial also sits uneasily with calls for greater expert juries or calls for a complete absence of jurors, for example in sexual offence cases or in cases of financial complexity deemed particularly specialised.

The question of how public reactions are to be gauged is also problematic. The equation of a media with a public reaction raises issues of causation. To what extent can a media reaction be viewed as reflective of a public reaction? In Ireland, an intense media reaction to the Lavinia Kerwick case in the early 1990s led to the Criminal Justice Act 1993 in which victims were given an opportunity, through the use of victim impact statements, to express in court how the crime had impacted them. However, the untangling of genuine public disquiet from media noise is difficult to quantify and assuming that media reactions are a proxy for public opinion can have the paradoxical effect of shutting the public out of debate.

Ultimately, the democratising punishment argument appears to locate the citizen as consumer, and to prioritise concerns of getting value for ‘your’ money; a sleek criminal justice system, incorporating Points of View-style feedback, is envisaged. The question of how great the want is among the public to assume their starring role in the administration of justice is debatable, for example the record low turn-out at the elections for Police Commissioners in England and Wales, which suggested a tokenistic exercise in devolving power to a people who had little interest. Over the previous two centuries, civil society gradually gave up its role in the punishment of offenders, it is questionable to what extent it has the desire and capacity to participate in a meaningful way.

Ultimately, The Differential Association suggested that education and information campaigns targeted at the public may offer a more feasible means of incorporating public acceptance of criminal justice processes. Those present discussed the possibility of televising trials, for example The Murder Trial (aired by Channel 4) and the blanket coverage of the Oscar Pistorius homicide trial, both presented opportunities to assess how such a proposal could work in practice. However, inevitably, the entertainment imperatives and the danger of misleading editing presents issues of ethics, exploitation and sensationalism.

What is lost in the literature calling for greater democratisation is the idea that professionals in the criminal justice system are citizens; they are merely citizens that have been tasked with acting impartially and to the best of their ability according to pre-set parameters. Further, judges are already to an extent influenced by public opinion in sentencing. Arguably, the use of restorative justice practices are already an attempt to introduce the community into the criminal justice process, as is community policing.

Finally, justice cannot be devolved as a discrete area which operates without reference to other areas of policy-making. The criminal justice system comprises one part of a symbiotic relationship with other areas of policy and politics such as welfare and education. Should public participation extend to these diverse other areas? To consider criminal justice policy in isolation merely perpetuates the use of its institutions and agencies as a catch-all for failures elsewhere in society.

Roberts and de Keijser have presented a sharp critique of the main arguments for 'democratising punishment'; the article is written in an informal and colloquial style, and the arguments are concisely and convincingly stated.

'Policing Sexting' by Lara Karaian

The law is continually called upon to address emerging issues of concern arising from technological advances. The increasingly ubiquitous use and ownership of smartphones has presented its own novel catchment area of behaviours, including the neologism of ‘sexting’, the taking and sending of sexual images electronically. This year saw a high-profile news story in which the hacked, stolen and leaked images of celebrities, mostly women, were published online. This news story helped publicise some of the issues around ‘sexting’ and has brought the practice to general public consciousness. In England and Wales recently, so-called ‘revenge porn’, the distribution of explicit images without the consent of the subject, is to be enshrined as a criminal offence, carrying a maximum penalty of two years in prison. In the brave new world of smartphones therefore, law enforcement and legislators are grappling with issues of security and privacy. However, the rise of the smartphone has also ushered in child protection fears.

Lara Karaian, in a recent article for Theoretical Criminology, explores the discourses around ‘sexting’ and teen online safety. Using the real-world example of a Canadian public service campaign designed to educate teenagers on the harms of the internet and ‘sexting’ in particular, she sets out her task: ‘to expose how antisexting initiatives that reify and mobilize a culture of sexual shame in order to responsibilize certain girls for their own, and others’, safety constitute meaning-making projects that reproduce and reify gendered, racialized, classed and hetero-normative ideas of sexual value, propriety, privilege and blameworthiness.’ (284)

Since the advent of the internet as an everyday tool for many people, accessible to greater numbers of households worldwide, a rumbling about its pernicious effects on children has been palpable. Hanna Rosin, in a recent article in The Atlantic, highlights the difficulty in pitching a response to the teen behaviour of sexting, and documents attempts, of varying degrees of success, to develop responses. The concerns about children and the dangers of internet usage can be added to the legacy of ‘respectable fears’ outlined by Pearson (1983).

In her article, Karaian draws on Garland’s (1996) theory of responsibilization, put forward in ‘The Limits of the Sovereign State’, to suggest that teenage girls are being made responsible for their own sexual safety, and for the criminalisation of their peers who may redistribute images. Karaian locates the Canadian campaign within an identified tendency to blame women for their own victimisation; Karaian quotes one US police officer who rationalises the decision to focus on female behaviour with regard to ‘sexting’, to the effect that, ‘without her [the girl] there would be no crime’ and provides further contemporary relevance by citing the discourse evident during the ‘Steubenville Rape Trial’ which concentrated on the blighted futures of promising young men rather than the wrong they had perpetrated.

The Canadian ‘anti-sexting’ campaign was targeted particularly at teenage girls and appeared to tap into the informal social control mechanism of shame. The focus on teenage girls underlined a societal emphasis on the purity and virginity of this group; innocence was therefore understood as an identifiable form of social capital for a teenage girl. Karaian notes the tension inherent around this form of ‘privileged’ sexuality; teenage girls are unintelligible as sexual beings while also suffering fetishisation as sexual objects. The ‘framing’ of the Canadian campaign, explored by Karaian, once again prioritised this privileged yet unintelligible sexuality and further reified sexual double standards and the concept of the 'ideal' victim.

However, Karaian contends that teenage girls were not accorded universal concern in the campaign. Fears were concentrated in a specific sub-grouping of white, middle-class and feminine teenage girls; which effectively presented the ‘good girl’ in opposition to the ‘Other’, in this context the ‘Other’ as a racialized, queer or differently classed teenage girl.

Karaian presented statistics which suggested that teenage boys are more likely to redistribute images, and contrasts this with the message of the campaign which targets instead the consenting ‘image creator’, framed as a girl. This leads inevitably to questions of why the campaign did not direct more of its focus towards this cohort of teenage boys, who distribute images without consent. However, the fears underlying disquiet about ‘sexting’ centre specifically on the sexualisation of teenage girls. The opprobrium could be more accurately located on the act of taking pictures in the first place, and less on the issue of distribution (which, as per victim-blaming, is then often understood as a natural consequence of a girl’s initial ‘mistake’).

The Differential Association cited some recent campaigns, aimed at locating responsibility for sexual assaults with the perpetrator. Are small but significant shifts evident in public awareness? A recent White House campaign, ‘It’s On Us’, and the ‘Don’t Be That Guy’ campaign have been developed to raise awareness among males, in contrast to many public safety campaigns which exhort to potential victims. (Interestingly, the Irish Examiner article above refers to the campaign targeting 'potential sex offenders' – which tends to make it sound like 'potential sex offenders' are an identifiable category of persons, easily spotted by their shifty eyes).

The Differential Association segued into a discussion on the well-worn chestnut, the 'sexualisation of youth', understood inevitably as the sexualisation of teenage girls. Presumably, 'sexting' is viewed by many as another indicator of sexualised youth. Is 'sexting' merely an expression of sexual autonomy? Or is it an adverse impact of the 'pornification of society'? A post-feminist argument might counter that the radical feminist position further condemns girls for breaking the boundaries of convention by displaying themselves as sexual beings. However, is it purely coincidental that expressing sexuality often implicitly implies expressing 'raunch' sexuality (Levy 2005). The received societal wisdom on 'sexuality' often appears monolithic, and uniform, framed from a 'male gaze' perspective. This presents a very problematic balancing act for teenage girls, as their sexuality has tended to exist as a binary, the concealed sexuality of the 'respectable' and the overt sexuality of the 'Other'. Expressive/excessive sexuality can become a marker of shame. Teenage girls seemingly cannot legitimately include sex as part of their identity and not have it become a transformative, often degrading, aspect in this identity.

Karaian’s article presents a fascinating exploration of how visual cues can be read. It also provides an interesting example of the increasing prominence of images within criminology as a further means of explicating how understandings of crime and deviance are constructed. The theoretical underpinning is rigorous and is drawn together and used to explicate a tangible case study. The Differential Association did note, however, that the arguments made in the article could have been illustrated with the images described therein, to reinforce the interpretations and findings made throughout.

Xmas DA - Sentencing!

This December, The Differential Association will get together to have a festive chin-wag about sentencing (what makes it festive, you say, the port and the woolly jumpers!). The reading material is a recent article by Julian V Roberts and Jan W de Keijser which explores the question of who is qualified or entitled to pass sentence, and the role of the public in decision-making:

This essay explores and critiques a theory of criminal justice which privileges the role of public intuitions about punishment over more traditional influences on sentencing principles and practice. This movement may be termed ‘Democratising Punishment’ and it has important consequences for sentencing in all jurisdictions. Several recent books advocate reforms such as deriving sentencing principles from public opinion research or sentencing by juries rather than legal professionals. In the essay we critique this perspective and note the threats to principled sentencing arising from greater public involvement in the sentencing of offenders.

When: Wednesday 3rd December at 6pm

Where: Mulligan's Back Room, Poolbeg Street, Dublin 2

Policing 'Sexting'

The issue of 'sexting', or the sending of explicit images via smartphone, has received a considerable volume of publicity in 2014. The very real concerns this matter poses for the criminal justice system, and for civic organisations such as schools and colleges, has therefore been subject to considerable debate.

In an article written for Theoretical Criminology, Lara Karaian has explored the issue of policing 'sexting', from a critical perspective which incorporates elements of race, gender, feminist and queer theory. The article addresses the questions of blame which can attach to young persons, especially girls, who engage in 'sexting', and asks the question whether teenage girls are being 'responsibilised' for preventing the harms which can flow from 'sexting'.

Where: Mulligan's Pub on Poolbeg Street, Dublin 2 - back room
When: Wednesday 29 October at 6pm

Orange is the New Black

Through the summer, The Differential Association took to Netflix in a big way, abandoning well-worn pathways created by a lifetime of experiencing television as a platform that demanded audiences kneel to its schedule. Our decision to watch Orange is the New Black was borne from the wealth of media commentary on the show, as well as our own interest in how women's imprisonment would be interpreted. Can a show be so successful, and yet retain integrity of representation?

OITNB inevitably prompted a lot of discussion about women’s bodies. Watching the pilot episode suggested it was pitching in the realm of the prison sexploitation genre without the bad dialogue. The hoary truism that sex sells was writ large across the small-screen, and as a pilot episode it was duty-bound to bring the goods, namely, sex and female flesh.

The show is also a blatantly middle-class perspective of a prison regime, a regime which is itself anomalous across the US estate. Our POV, entry-level character is Piper Chapman, the analogue of Piper Kerman. The privilege of telling other people’s stories is essential to an understanding of intersectionality and power in the show. Those without power, or capital, are vulnerable to representation by others. It was the account written by the more privileged, atypical, white inmate which gave her experience a voice and communicated her story in a language which could be understood and disseminated for our cultural delectation.

Laureen Snider’s 2003 article argued that feminist criminology and feminism had created self-aware subjects of women in prison; in her assessment of the impact of feminist criminology she remarked that it had replaced innocence with resilience and awareness. It is debatable to what extent such self-awareness and resilience has penetrated women's prisons. In the show, this kind of self-awareness is exercised by a minority of the characters. The character of Piper speaks with a rights-based discourse for example, but few share this language with her. Yasmin Nair has written that the white, middle-class characters in the show are possessed of greater agency and awareness and were more able to agitate for change and appreciate their situation. Perhaps, considering the widespread success of OITNB, it has the capacity to be consciousness-raising, and to effect actual change in the punishment of women in the US?

Dawn Cecil has written on the newspaper representation of Martha Stewart, and the prison regime, during Stewart's time spent in Alderson, Virginia. She argued that the media coverage focused on sex, violence and motherhood. Media coverage on ‘Camp Cupcake’, as it was dubbed, provided a misleading view of Martha Stewart’s incarceration experience as a normalised experience, and gave the impression that women were not punished in prison. She concluded that the press and media had failed to grasp the inherent opportunity, namely, to highlight the realities and inadequacies of the prison system. This demonstrates the power and the corresponding responsibility of the media to offer a representation of a hidden population. In Ireland, when Kathleen McMahon resigned as governor of the Dóchas Centre she highlighted the irresponsible reporting of women prisoners as one factor which made prison more difficult. A glance at the newspaper accounts of women in the Dóchas Centre support her criticism. Reports are often sensationalised accounts of sex behind bars and commentary on the appearance of the female prisoners.

The sex in OITNB is overwhelmingly portrayed in positive terms, the show presents sexual relationships in prison as generally unproblematic and consensual. This obscures the issue of sexual assault within prisons, which has recently been raised by the Howard League for Penal Reform in England and Wales (despite an uncooperative Minister for Justice barring the possibility of research being conducted with serving prisoners). The issue of sexual assault in US prisons has been acknowledged by the Prison Rape Elimination Act 2003 - and to its credit OITNB does reference this piece of legislation. Kristen Bahler has written on the implementation of this Act, especially with regard to transgender persons in prison in the US. Bahler writes that the Act started to take effect late in 2013, when specially trained staff were required to provide respectfully conducted searches of transgender individuals, and accommodation for safe housing, which would be assessed on a case-by-case. Certain jurisdictions have made the news for incorporating initiative for the non-discrimination of transgender prisoners. One issue tackled in the show is the access to healthcare, particularly access to hormone therapy. The Prison Rape Elimination Act provides no requirements about the provision of this treatment, despite recommendations otherwise from various professional medical bodies. Bahler quotes a figure from the National Center for Transgender Equality which suggested that about 47% of black transgender people had been incarcerated at some stage in their lives. This would make the provision of hormone therapy an issue of huge importance which touches simultaneously on issues of marginalisation, race and punishment. While OITNB tackles this question, it resolves this issue quickly and neatly.

Another issue raised is the care of older prisoners. The ageing prisoner population presents a particular concern for contemporary justice agencies as prisoner demographics show a cohort of prisoners ageing within prison, which prompts questions about the most suitable form of care. Issues such as dealing with degenerative illnesses in prison, and the provision of hospice care, and whether this should be available within the prison estate, or beyond it, are all pressing questions (which have been tackled by some academics, for example Azrini Wahidin). The show's portrayal of age is another of its strengths. In season two particularly, the prominence of the older characters is emphasised. This creates a further aspect of diversity of representation, as 'the Greys' become integrated in plot developments. Intriguingly, within the show, the identifier of age seemed to supersede the identifier of race, certainly as illustrated by 'the Greys'. These characters were also painfully aware of their invisible and marginalised place within the prison hierarchy. 

One of the central themes running through the show is the importance of food - as a means of asserting oneself, as a focus for individual characters who are deprived of autonomy over their diet, and as a point of communal exchange and interaction. This preoccupation highlights the mundane quotidian fact of prison life and research into the importance of food within prison is currently being undertaken by academics such as Alicia Crowther. The topic of food does much to highlight the informal barter economy of prison. Other issues which arise with regularity are themes of privacy and the importance of appearance in preserving identity.

The show has sparked a considerable amount of commentary. One article by Noah Berlatsky carried the clickbait headline ‘Orange is the New Black’s Irresponsible Portrayal of Men’. Berlatsky wrote:

‘Of course Orange is the New Black is under no obligation to accurately represent prison demographics, and just because they’re a minority in prison doesn’t mean that women’s stories there aren’t important. The problem is that the ways in which OITNB focuses on women rather than men seem to be linked to stereotypically gendered ideas about who can be a victim and who can’t.’

While the criticism that characters were presented as victimised has validity, the article seemed to fail in its recognition that women's stories were as important as men's stories, despite its above disclaimer. Season one also received criticism based on the perceived differentiation of flesh based on class and race. Middle-class white breasts were artfully draped by discreet folds of fabric while minority and working-class breasts were exposed to the full glare of objectification (see Yasmin Nair's article on this). Yasmin Nair has also written on race and class in the context of the use of heroin. Heroin, in season two, is the all-consuming evil. Nair writes that season two determinedly shows pathologised white women being given heroin by dangerous black women; this racialized difference is epitomised in the comparison between Red and Vee, and Nair concludes that the show cannot sustain an out-and-out, irredeemable character like Vee so must destroy her. Nair concludes further that the show fails to identify systemic prison industrial complex issues, focusing instead on individual weaknesses.

There are very few female-centred television shows, fewer with large female casts, and fewer again that have prominent minority women as characters (plural, beyond the token), or LGBT women in prominent roles and which present a nuanced array of femininities and masculinities. The writing is good, and the performances are superb. OITNB may be fronted by a white, middle-class archetype, but the show itself is something of an outlier. Its presentation of many of the deprivations of prison - from the mundane to the painful - as well as its role as a forum for women's voices, has led to a wider discussion about women's imprisonment which has been a welcome development.

This blog was written by Lynsey Black.

The views expressed herein are those of the author alone.

Orange is the New Black

Telly is the new books!

In August The Differential Association will be meeting up to discuss the Netflix hit TV show, Orange is the New Black. This hugely successful TV show offers an opportunity to discuss myriad issues including women in prison, the representation of punishment and women prisoners, as well as issues of race and sexuality which provide an opportunity to discuss intersectionality in justice.

When: Thursday 7th August at 6pm
Where: Mulligan's Back Room, Poolbeg Street

Mass Shootings in America: Moving Beyond Newtown

In this month's article, James Alan Fox and Monica J DeLateur present an overview of the most commonly held myths surrounding the issue of mass shootings. James Alan Fox has been speaking and researching in this area for some time, and is a well-known figure in the US, this article presents a restatement of some of his previous work in light of the school shooting at Newtown.

The authors outline some of the reasons why the issue of mass killings has not proved a popular area of research within academic criminology - suggesting that it may be more properly located within psychiatry, or perhaps that mass shootings were an aberration or could be explained using the same crimimological processes used for other killings.

The myths outlined by Fox and DeLateur are:

·        The perpetrator ‘snaps’

·        Mass shooting incidents are increasing

·        The body count is getting higher

·        Violent entertainment is often a cause

·        If greater attention were given to warning signs it could prevent many of these attacks

·        If mental health services were widened it would provide a healthy outlet

·        Enhanced background checks for firearms could prevent attacks

·        Restore the federal ban on assault weapons

·        Expand ‘right to carry’ provisions so that perpetrators are met with armed opposition

·        Enhanced physical security

·        Installing armed guards at every school would act as a deterrent and a means of stopping perpetrators

The article provides an interesting overview of many of the facts and figures on the issue, however there is little analysis of mass shooting beyond a refutation of the stated myths (the issue of US violence and gun control in the US have been tackled well elsewhere and from a variety of disciplines, for example in Garland's criminological account of the death penalty, Peculiar Institution (2012), or in a recent article by O'Brien et al (2013) on gun control issues and symbolic racism).

The authors also make contentious comments regarding violent video games. They claim that the alleged rise in the amount of solitary time spent by teenagers playing such games suggests poor parental discipline. This throwaway line carried with it a pejorative diagnosis of modern society, as simultaneously they brand the fears expressed regarding such games as over-hyped. Further, the authors look beyond violent entertainment as a possible cause and instead suggest weakening social institutions such as the church and the family. This quite conservative viewpoint perhaps unintentionally casts mass shootings as symptomatic of a deteriorating society.

The language used throughout the article is reminiscent of a feature piece for a news magazine. Indeed the content of the article has been published substantially elsewhere (see here and here), and this may go some way to explain it. Language such as ‘He may even welcome the chance to shoot it out with the principal at high noon in cafeteria’, and recurrent use of the term ‘war zone’ is somewhat jarring in an academic journal article.

In the conclusion, the authors refer to a ‘spike’, despite earlier claims that talk of a spike was misleading.

The article focuses largely on individual-level factors at the expense of structural factors. Issues such as mental health, the media effects thesis, as well as a crime prevention outlook which considers physical security and arming persons in schools, is the focus of the discussion. The absence of an appreciation of structural factors, and the cultural factors, ensures that the article cannot fully tackle the larger questions of why. Instead it is an exercise in assessing the fire-fighting measures which have been suggested in the wake of shootings. The article attracted huge interest in the US media, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, its findings have also been seized upon by some groups with pro-gun views.

This blog was written by Lynsey Black.

The views expressed herein are those of the author alone.

Garland's The Limits of the Sovereign State

This June The Differential Association will be reading David Garland's 1996 British Journal of Criminology article 'The Limits of the Sovereign State'. This is one of the articles in which Garland rehearses his arguments which would later appear as 'The Culture of Control' and as such provides an opportunity explore the early thoughts on a hugely influential thesis.

When: Thursday 19 June at 6pm
Where: Mulligan's Poolbeg Street, Dublin 2, the back room

Mass Shootings in America: Moving Beyond Newtown

In April, The Differential Association will be reading 'Mass Shootings in America: Moving Beyond Newtown' by Fox and DeLateur.

Fox and DeLateur discuss the debate on gun ownership, particularly in the wake of the Newtown school shooting. They explore the myths which have grown around mass shootings in America and the figure of the gunman, and attempt to deconstruct and debunk some of these accounts.

Details
When: Monday 28th April at 6pm
Where: Mulligan's on Poolbeg Street, Dublin 2

'Adjusting the Police Occupational Landscape: The Case of An Garda Síochána'

This month The Differential Association found itself on the cutting edge of topicality with its chosen reading material, ‘Adjusting the Police Occupational Landscape: The Case of An Garda Síochána’ by Sarah Charman and Donal P Corcoran.

Ireland’s police service, An Garda Síochána, has had a less than ideal year so far. Amid allegations that penalty points were removed from certain favoured citizens, as well as the further burden of an organisation struggling with the concept of whistle-blowing, further development went on to suggest that the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission offices had been bugged. This last matter is currently the subject of an inquiry. However, throughout, questions have emerged on the reactions to the revelations, as much as the substance themselves. The Minister for Justice, and the Garda Commissioner reacted negatively both to the whistle-blowing as well as the suggestion that the organisation was a natural suspect in the bugging debacle. This week the Garda Commissioner resigned in the wake of yet more revelations that certain garda stations were recording incoming and out-going telephone calls, something which has a potential knock-on effect for criminal trials.

The article by Charman and Corcoran therefore presented an opportunity to engage with research that had lately taken the temperature of the organisation. In their article, Charman and Corcoran seek to explore ‘the culture of a police force under organisational reform’.

Their methodology takes the form of 38 interviews with garda who were street-level garda and not above the rank of sergeant, this range was selected to avoid possible ‘management-speak'. The interviews are conducted by Corcoran, as practitioner/researcher: ‘it was felt that this might enhance the extent to which respondents would state actual opinions and might mitigate the occasional formality of the interview process’ (7). This is an interview methodology with interesting ethical and methodological considerations, while participants may be more willing to open up, the status of the researcher as an 'insider' poses challenging questions about independence and the effect of researcher bias.

The authors argue that the persistent interest in ethnographies of police culture suggests the area has hit saturation point and they claim that the term ‘police culture’ now stands in as short-hand for a set of stereotypes.

One of these stereotypes, for example, is that there is a gap between formal rules and informal practices. The authors also cite other common understandings of police culture, including a focus on action and adventure, the glamorisation of violence, an ‘us versus them’ mentality, as well as institutional sexism and racism, and a conservative, suspicious, black and white view of the world. These findings stem from socialisation as police officers learn how to navigate their roles within their institutions.

Charman and Corcoran contend that this script is so well-worn that there is a danger that information which does not fit may be disregarded or simply not seen. Surely, they argue, some progress has been made since police ethnographies first revealed these findings? Their article is a response to Peter Manning’s (2012) contention that An Garda Síochána is resistant to change and that any change which has occurred has been superficial.

The authors seek to examine attitudes to the reforms implemented following the Morris Tribunal during which worrying levels of misconduct, unlawful activity and ‘closing of the ranks’ was noted. While the authors remark that ‘culture’ was not a term used explicitly by Morris his belief that those specific guards he investigated were not aberrant suggests a cultural issue (for a comprehensive account of this period see Vicky Conway’s ‘The Blue Wall of Silence’).

The reforms included Joint Policing Committees (to tie gardaí back into local concerns), recruitment reforms, Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission as an independent body to investigate complaints about gardaí.

The participants welcomed the new recruiting practices which sought to ensure a representative organisation. Arguably though, this means of questioning may tell us little about the problems of institutional discrimination.

Regarding the ‘blue wall of silence’ many of the interviewees reported that there was no shame in ‘grassing’ a colleague, but only when directly asked. The authors highlight that there was no discussion of personal responsibility and that it seemed this would play no part in volunteering information on the misconduct of another officer. The participants pointed to the role GSOC arguing that its establishment had meant covering for a colleague was no longer worth it.

When asked if whistle-blowing was an acceptable practice the most common answer seemed to be ‘it depends’. The factors involved in decision-making were the seriousness of the misconduct, the politics of the division and the potential consequences. The authors conclude that this suggests value-judgements on a colleague’s behaviour could lead to bad behaviour becoming normalised.

The authors conclude that their research revealed ‘significant changes as well as limited continuities’ (14). Overall they argue that the adaptability of police officers has been underestimated, and they conclude further that the cultural shift called for by the Morris Tribunal report is evident within the rank-and-file members of An Garda Síochána. The key issue flagged was solidarity and the continuing negative view of the practice of whistle-blowing. This would appear to have been confirmed by the recent unfolding news stories, as questions are asked again about solidarity versus personal responsibility.

This month’s blog was written by Lynsey Black.

The views expressed herein are those of the author alone.

Charman and Corcoran, Adjusting the Police Occupational Cultural Landscape: The Case of An Garda Síochána

This month The Differential Association will be reading Sarah Charman and Donal Corcoran's recent Policing and Society article, 'Adjusting the Police Occupational Cultural Landscape: the case of An Garda Síochána.

The article was written in response to Manning's (2012) findings that the organisation remained resistant to change and provides a more positive outlook on the ability of Gardaí to adapt. Using semi-structured interviews, the authors sought to explore how reform has been dealt with within the organisation. It makes for particularly apt reading considering the current questions over GSOC and related issues.

When: Tuesday 25th March at 6pm
Where: Mulligan's of Poolbeg Street, Dublin 2, in the back room

Eamonn Carrabine's 'Just Images'

In his Radzinowicz Prize-winning article ‘Just Images’ Eamonn Carrabine explores the issue of ethics in relation to images of atrocity and violence, especially pertinent given the increasing use of images within criminology, associated particularly with the growth of cultural criminology. Quoting Ferrell and Van de Voorde’s work which posited that we have now reached a ‘decisive moment’ (2010) where the representation of crime and crime control can no longer be meaningfully separated from the fact of crime, Carrabine provides a thorough review of the literature on the topic, presenting a foundation stone to the question of how we should use images in criminology.

The title of his article is taken from Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida (1980). Barthes sought a ‘just image’ of his mother following her death and used this to explore the nature of photographical representation. The difficulty of finding an image which accurately captured something of the intangible was Barthes’ key question. Barthes himself posited the idea of an image possessing two qualities, the stadium, that which is connoted by the image, and the punctum, more difficult to quantify but something that ‘punctured’ the viewer.

Carrabine also draws on Susan Sontag’s (1977) On Photography which contends that horrific images may absorb us, yet they simultaneously neutralise us. However Sontag later scaled down her view of the harm, and wrote in 2004 that these alarmist predictions were merely a further iteration in the cycle of fears relating to modern life.

Carrabine draws on a wide range of thinkers to illustrate his question. He contrasts the views of Howard Becker and Pierre Bourdieu, suggesting opposing theoretical frameworks for an understanding of ‘art’ and photography. Howard Becker’s approach revolves around social organisation and can be summarised as essentially moralistic, things that deserve the moniker of art versus those which do not, a concept related to finding consensus. Bourdieu’s theory stated that the value of a piece of artwork is not intrinsic and suggests that ‘hierarchies of difference’ are utilised to create value, with judgements within this stratified system used to denote taste and class.

Part of the ethical dilemma posed by images of violence and suffering is outlined by Alison Young: ‘we find the body of the spectator registering sensations relating to what she/he is seeing without undergoing or having undergone that which is depicted and seeing sensation become sense (meaning)’ (Young, 2010, in The Scene of the Crime’: 18). This shows the voyeuristic, entertainment-value which can derive from witnessing such scenes in a mediated manner, either through film or photograph. For example, one reaction to the recent feature film ‘12 Years A Slave’ may be revulsion and horror, yet if this is mingled with an awareness of the aesthetic beauty of the film is this an appropriate juxtaposition? Do ethical issues only present when a human subject is present in the image? HrairSarkissian for example uses images without subjects, providing stark images of places of execution early in the morning while they are deserted.

In a response to Carrabine’s article, Katherine Biber has suggested a ‘jurisprudence of sensitivity’ as a means of delineating those uses to which difficult images can and cannot be put. This article comes at a time when many criminologists are considering the use and issues surrounding troubling images (see for example Seal, 2012 on the effects of unearthing disturbing images in the archive and Brown and Rafter, 2013 on the possible uses of genocide films as a tool of public criminology).

If, as Carrabine has suggested, we are blasé about mediated images of suffering then why have many become such vividly remembered cultural touchstones (from his own work on Abu Ghraib, to images of Vietnam, the liberation of the concentration camps during WWII, Rwanda and so on)? Does this suggest that the use can outweigh the harm? For example, Cindy Sherman has used photography to advance awareness of a gendered perspective; while, as Carrabine shows in his article, Ingrid Pollard utilises the image as a comment on race by photographing herself in the countryside, providing a counterpoint of topics and creating tension. Further, in this new Kodak age of digital photography, can there be a blurring of object and subject through the proliferation of ‘selfies’ and self-recorded footage, for example the increasing prominence of the place of citizen journalists (as outlined by Greer andMcLaughlin in their writing on the G20 protests in London).

Sontag, in 1977 speculated that photography was avowedly anti-intervention, one who records cannot intervene and one who intervenes cannot record. However, is recording not an act of intervention in itself, changing meaning of that event, giving longevity to issues. For example, the recording on the ground during protests which occurred during the ‘Arab Spring’ provided a perspective unavailable otherwise. The ethical issue around this stems from our understandings of empathy and imagination, which is based on awareness of difference between us and others, thereby sparking concepts of individuality and the self. The utilisation of images of others within this can be a powerful tool. However, the purity of the image is always inherently contested, most recently demonstrated by the controversy surrounding Narciso Contreras.

While the depth of scholarship and cultural theory outlined in ‘Just Images’ belies any notion that the ethics of visual representation is a new phenomenon, Carrabine has taken the step of definitively bringing it within the bounds of criminology. He has posed a necessary and timely question for the discipline.

This blog was written by Lynsey Black.

The views expressed herein are those of the author alone.

Valentine's DA

The Differential Association kicks off its 2014 ponderings on Friday 14th February, Valentine's Day. In lieu of finding an article which accurately matches the intent of the day (romantic graffiti carved on trees?), we're reading Eamonn Carrabine's article 'Just Images' which was awarded the Radzinowicz Prize in 2012.

Carrabine writes on the power of the image, and whether the use of photography to depict images of harm is appropriate. He delves into the ethical considerations around the representation of violent images, something criminology is now considering as it laps up the cultural criminological goodness. It should provide for a fascinating discussion, presenting as it does an issue with no seeming right or wrong and endless possibilities for nuance.

When: Friday 14th February at 5pm (earlier than usual!)

Where: Mulligan's Back Room, Poolbeg Street, Dublin 2