Coercive Confinement

Coercive Confinement in Post-Independence Ireland is hot-off the printing presses and already appears to be making ripples outside the niche criminological audience, as evidenced by a recent review in the Irish Times which states that the book deserves a wide readership, and Fintan O'Toole describing it as 'a very important book'. So The DA were delighted that the authors, Eoin O’Sullivan and Ian O’Donnell, were able to join us to discuss the book. Decamping from our normal snug in Mulligan's on Poolbeg Street, the impressive and austere surroundings of the panopticon of Kilmainham Gaol provided the perfect setting to discuss issues of social control, coercive confinement and Irish social history.

The idea for the book began life as an article that O’Sullivan and O’Donnell produced for Punishment and Society in 2007 in which they presented an alternative framework to analyse the ‘custodial landscape’. They decentralise aggregate prison numbers as the main strand of evidence upon which to draw conclusions about levels of punitiveness or tolerance. Instead they locate the prison on a wider spectrum of detention and chart it across a longer time frame. Using ‘coercive confinement’ as an alternative mode of analysis the authors bring together previously ignored institutions of social control, such as psychiatric hospitals, Mother and Baby Homes, Magdalen Laundries, reformatory and industrial schools as well as prisons.

The authors noted that upon the publications of the Ryan and Fern Reports there has been a collective denial of institutions of coercive confinement; ‘if only we’d known…’ has become something of a collective anthem.  As the authors told us, with a staggering 1% of the population being held against their will at one time, it affected so many families that widespread denial of their existence is utterly implausible. Both said they were moved by a John Banville article in the New York Times in which he speaks frankly about the tacit and widespread awareness of the institutionalisation which faced the poorer boys in his class when it came to post-primary. He is also honest about the silence that pervaded Irish society on this issue, ‘Everyone knew, but no one said’.

Challenging this convention, Eoin and Ian decided to use contemporary articles written in national publications about these institutions to expose the reality that this was not a covert practice. The book is divided into three sections: Part I – Patients, paupers and unmarried mothers; Part II – Prisoners; Part III – Troubled and troublesome children. Therein a wide range of source material, such as government reports, Irish Times investigative pieces and periodical articles show us, in the voices of the day, how these institutions were understood and being discussed.

These contemporaneous articles gave a vivid sense of many of the pervasive concerns of the day. One DA member noted the persistent anxiety surrounding Anglicanism and the fears of proselytising by this group, a fear which was repeatedly expressed by those within the Catholic Church and which provided an impetus to attempt to care for all unwanted babies, lest they find their way into heretical hands. Yet another thread which wound through many of the extracts was the continual comparisons to England, mention was repeatedly made to policy or legal innovations across the water, or indeed to the lamentable lapses in morality occasioned by their disintegrating social fabric.

Linking the network of institutions of confinement throughout Ireland with the development of penal welfarism in Ireland, the issue arose as to what extent the concept of rehabilitation had been 'farmed out' to sites such as the Mother and Baby Home, and the industrial school. For example, the industrial schools were originated with a clearly rehabilitationist ethos underpinning the 19th century legislation which established them.  Certainly, benign intentions were evident behind the inception of many of the institutions, despite subsequent neglect and failure. In this vein, one of the intended rehabilitating features of places such as the Mother and Baby Homes, namely their discretionary nature which was viewed as less stigmatising and therefore of more benefit to women resuming lives after confinement, was actually a factor which went on to contribute to the abuses as limited State intervention and considerable autonomy saw these sites operate without check for decades.

The authors' more expansive framework of coercive confinement combined with the rich first-hand accounts of these institutions and the reports looking at conditions within them makes for sobering and sad reading. For those who like to look back upon the sepia-toned good old days of low crime and low imprisonment rates this books brings into sharp focus the hidden reality of Irish society. It was noted by someone in attendance that it is for this reason that O’Sullivan and O’Donnell’s publication is also a wonderful probing piece of social history.

Popular accounts of Irish social history on the topic of institutionalisation commonly lay the full weight of blame at the feet of the Church and the State; however O’Sullivan and O’Donnell’s research shows how these explanations are incomplete. Many institutions of coercive confinement – Magdalen Laundries, Mother and Baby Homes, orphanages and industrial schools – existed before the creation of the Irish Free State. The authors remind us that the Catholic Church wasn’t actively seeking people to confine, rather the continuing support and active participation of that most sacred institution, the family, was ultimately necessary.

What factors underpinned and drove the use of coercive confinement in Ireland? Their sophisticated analysis illuminates the fundamental role of the rural economy in sustaining high levels of coercive confinement in Ireland. This is a tricky and sensitive topic, and the authors handle it in a fair and considerate manner. 

Life had an economic calculation, for those in poverty institutions of confinement were a valuable resource, a sort of safety valve. The small farmer class also used the network of institutions as a repository for surplus family members. Further, these surplus family members, excluded from inheritance or unlucky in the marriage market, themselves often joined religious orders, thereby completing a closed system which sustained the network of institutions. While Ireland was certainly a conservative and puritanical society it was the cold calculus of economics that often drove the high numbers of those coercively confined rather than simply oppressive morality. It was only as rural Ireland began to abate that the use of coercive confinement declined; the shift away from rural fundamentalism meant the need for institutions of confinement were no longer a necessity.

The authors were asked what lessons could be gleaned from their work about the prospect of prison reduction. They pointed out that the structures that underpinned coercive confinement in Ireland took a long time to dismantle, and the captive population reduced only slowly; change happened over about 30 years. In a similar vein, even when the structures that underpin the use of mass imprisonment begin to dissolve it will take a long time for the numbers to dwindle; it is not likely to be an overnight process.

Other points were raised about the idea of transcarceration, which the authors define as the redistribution of people across the various sites of confinement. While there is some evidence of this process in Ireland, and the prison population has increased in Ireland since the end of the twentieth century – becoming the primary site of custody in Ireland – the  prison only absorbed  a tiny fraction of those in other institutions. What happened to the surplus population who didn’t move into prison? The development of the Irish welfare state certainly provided some sort of net which hadn’t been there previously. Also, as Eoin pointed out, there were less surplus members of the family as the country went through a process of modernisation and urbanisation, which created new avenues of employment. Therefore the book paints a less bleak, or dystopian picture of the current state of affairs which seems to permeate much criminology, and arguments which accentuate that we are living in the worst age of confinement look tenuous in light of O'Sullivan and O'Donnell's findings. Some people in attendance described a sharp punitive up-swing in Ireland, the authors argued, however, that by taking a historical turn it is clear that penal history has been marked by decarceration, particularly in the case of women and children.

It was suggested that this concept of transcarceration could be a useful explanatory tool for American mass imprisonment. Could the massive over-representation of minority populations in American prisons be the result, in part, of people moving from captive world of slavery to more legitimate forms of incarceration? And what about the much lauded historically low imprisonment rates in the Nordic countries, could focus on these be eclipsing a dramatic story of widespread incarceration in a traditionally welfarist-orientated region?

It is exactly these questions and this type of analysis the authors hope their work will stimulate in other jurisdictions. Perhaps there were similarly high levels of coercive confinement, and if there were perhaps they have different explanatory factors. Movie images and popular discourse would give one a sense that this is a particular Irish phenomenon; however, carceral institutions were employed across the Western world. By widening the parameters of the study of punishment from imprisonment to coercive confinement and tracking these patterns longitudinally the current character of penal regimes and the nature of penal change can be given a new clarity.

Returning to an issue we dealt with in our workshop at the North/South Criminology Conference, the perhaps less grandiose nature of Irish criminological academia also emerged. For example, there were jokes that should such a study be contemplated  in other Anglophone countries such as the UK or America (or even just a handful of American states!) it would be titled simply Coercive Confinement and there would be no recourse to an explanatory sub-title which situated the work in the specific country. The DA hope that the particularistic presentation of criminological studies based in Ireland does not diminish the quality of reception for the research and does not locate it within a small sub-group of 'local interest'.

Certainly this book carries lessons of importance for Irish society and criminology, and it is something of a refreshing antidote, challenging standards and strongly held positions both academically and socially. Criminological theories which espouse an age of punitive peril would be refreshed by shifting the view from imprisonment to the more expansive and historically sensitive vantage point of coercive confinement. O’Sullivan and O’Donnell show that by focusing solely on recent increases in prison populations that the full story of social control and incarceration is obscured from view. Secondly, the book also challenges the comfy narratives of Church and State which are quickly becoming the catch-all explanations for how over 1% of the Irish population came to be detained in the web of institutional confinement. Rather than being held hostage by the Church and the State, the authors convincingly argue that the role of the family and rural economy were fundamental in maintaining the existence of these institutions. We may have become wilfully myopic, but using contemporary rather than reflective writings the authors give us a genuine insight into how prevalent and sweeping the carceral landscape was.

This blog was written by Louise Brangan and Lynsey Black.

The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone

The next meeting of The Differential Association will cover Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett's so-called 'theory of everything', The Spirit Level.

The thesis of the work, which has garnered huge worldwide interest and been subject to a sustained campaign of nay-sayers, argues that those countries with the widest disparity between the top and bottom income tiers have worse measures of practically any criterion of social ill that you can measure. A controversial and far-reaching work, so we're hoping for a robust bit of debate!

Location: Mulligan's back room, on Poolbeg Street
Date: Thursday 18th October
Time: 6pm

Discipline and Punish

Foucault, Michael (1977) Discipline and Punish, New York: Pantheon.

With so much already written about this seminal work, The Differential Association felt the time was come to tackle yet another classic in the criminological world. Discipline and Punish, a theoretical giant in the field, also comes inevitably with a legacy of polarity.

David Garland’s exposition and critique of the work (published in the 1986 American Bar Foundation Research Journal) presents the dichotomy evident in views on Foucault, do we ascribe to him celebrity or notoriety? Indeed, what is Foucault: historian, philosopher, cultural commentator? So mould-breaking was his methodology that his Chair at the Collège de France was in Systems of Thought. The changes wrought by his writings originated the term Foucauldian to assign coherence to the subsequent academics who pursued their own scholarship utilising his approaches. This testament to his influence can be seen in the now ubiquitous use of his concepts, archaeology of knowledge and a ‘history of the present’.  Michael Roth, writing in History and Theory in 1981, explicates the process that “Writing a history of the present means writing a history in the present; self-consciously writing in a field of power relations and political struggle”. A seemingly paradoxical phrase, Foucault attempted to explain contemporaneous phenomena by tracing historical roots.

Involved in penal reform and prisoners’ rights, it seemed natural perhaps that Foucault’s interest should turn to the institution of the prison itself. Coming as part of a revisionist history movement in the 1970s, Foucault attempted to trace the origins of prisons, and locate it with a political understanding, using his key concepts of power and knowledge to trace its lineage.

Discipline and Punish is renowned as having one of the most memorable openings of any book within academia - infamously opening with a visceral and disturbing description of the 1757 torture and execution of the regicide Damiens, in Paris, Foucault’s prose is literary and evocative. Contrasting the physicality and spectacle of the torture, Foucault juxtaposes this passage with a timetable for the House of Young Prisoners in Paris, representing a precise chopping-up of prisoners’ days into segments of meaningful and productive activity. Why this radical shift, accomplished in 80 years, in how we punish?

Foucault asserts that punishment gradually shifted from the body to the mind, with the penitentiary emerging in the early decades of the 19^th century as the primary method of punishing offenders, morphing from its previous incarnation as a transitory location prior to trial or punishment, or as a means of confining debtors.

Foucault asserts that prison itself learned the lessons demonstrated by the military, the convent and the school in employing the concept of discipline to achieve control, he traces the extension of the disciplinary gaze to criminals as a means of creating docile bodies, necessary for the emerging modernist economy. Stressing the importance of political economy, or the cost it takes to achieve political objectives, Foucault writes that scaffold riots in the late 18^th century, and the precarious mood of the mob at executions, rendered them too costly a means of punishing individuals. The public spectacle of execution and torture no longer worked as a visible reactivation of sovereign power, rather it had become a liability which undermined this power.

The concentration on the mind, or the soul, came at a time when the disciplines were emerging and experts were lining up to pronounce, to categories and to treat, society. The 19^th century also saw the emergence of the asylum system in many countries, led by the construction of a string of public asylums in England which revolutionised the care of insane persons and were themselves the result of changing perceptions of madness and the mind. Elaine Showalter writes in The Female Malady that “The substitution of surveillance for physical restraint may well have imposed a perhaps more absolute kind of restraint on the insane which implicated their whole being” (at page 49) – these were contemporaneous concerns, showing that Foucauldian critiques were common much earlier. It was dehumanising in a different but equally effective way to restraints.

Nicola Lacey too writes of changes that chime perfectly with Foucault’s thesis of shifting focus from the body to the mind. In her book From Moll Flanders to Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Lacey writes that in criminal justice, responsibility-attribution in criminal trials went from a purely exterior consideration of ‘did the defendant commit this act’ to questions which focused on the interior, on the soul, asking questions about intention, capacity and motivations.

Historians have reacted with ambivalence towards Foucault, distancing themselves from his method and claiming that his work is rife with cafeteria history, rifling from the sources to select only those which support his thesis. Garland elaborates on many of the key historians who cite the errors in Discipline and Punish, including Speirenburg, Langbein, Beattie, Rothman and Ignatieff who claim that his chronology is flawed, for example that torture began declining from the 1600s was already well on its way out by the mid- to late-18^th century. His views that many reformers did not in fact want prison is undermined by the strenuous works of penal reformers who worked extensively within prisons, attempting to make them rehabilitative sites. The decline in violence too over the period, acknowledged by Foucault, is held as an equally persuasive explanation for the change in punishment, occasioned by societal shifts related to state formation.

Garland himself writes that practical realities are also just as likely to underlie the state of things, such as the end of transportation due to the emerging independence of the Australian and American states. The very architecture itself may have meant that once built, prison systems were hard to gainsay, representing an enormous expense it was unlikely they would be jettisoned, especially as other alternatives did not readily present themselves. Lucia Zedner provides an example of the immutability of architecture too in her work Women, Crime and Custody in Victorian England, writing that despite growing concerns on the effect the separate system was having on prisoners, the physical space of prisons could not be easily altered, and so it persisted. Going on to criticise Foucault’s chronology, Zedner writes that when he speaks of the ‘the prison’ he refers only to those model penitentiaries such as Pentonville, as the majority of prisons in the 19^th century were far removed from this idealised type, operating within economic restraints, and immediate situational concerns. 

The nebulous concept of power in Discipline and Punish, not conceived of as Marxist, but relational and dispersed throughout society, poses a problem for some. Foucault’s dismissal or refusal to engage with the agents or sources of power renders the political dimension hollow, apolitical and unrealistic. While this is one of the revolutionary works which linked punishment and state power, work from other researchers, such as Savelsberg and Barker, show us that within the political realm there are institutionalised power relations and political dynamics which complicate political processes. As such, to describe political power in monolithic terms can stunt more probing avenues of research. In the same problematic vein, political will is seamlessly translated into reality with no mention of political opposition or grassroot resistance to certain modes of power and control.

However, despite the seeming dystopian panorama painted by Foucault, he does not conceive of power and control as evil, rather he acknowledges them as essentially productive, hence the beneficial application of it to education, health, the economy and justice. 

Other motivations in punishment, beyond those of power and control, include the Durkheimian notion that societies have a desire to punish transgressions. Garland lists many other emotions underlying the process of punishing, such as justice, forgiveness, and vengeance. An analysis which excludes these necessarily omits many realistic and human drives and is perhaps, incomplete.

So we leave you with more questions, wondering how we can use Foucault’s framework to interpret power and social control today. To what extent can we identify Foucault’s disciplinary gaze in contemporary society? Does the advent of CCTV, Neighbourhood Watch schemes and so on represent the realisation of the Panopticon society, wherein the dispersal of disciplinary techniques renders us all self-regulating bodies?

Is Discipline and Punish relevant to Ireland? Does it ably describe the development of an Irish prison system? Ireland had a vast ‘carceral archipeligo’, with an unfathomable number of the population being held in a web of institutions after the establishment of the Irish Free State. Today there are over 4,000 people prison, however between 1926 and 1951 there was over 30,000 men women and children coercively confined in Ireland. Does this show that instead there has been a dramatic loosening of social control and that state power is less invasive? Many critics have claimed that Foucault’s analysis applies to a limited number of countries, most perfectly matching France in the 1830s and 1840s and perhaps falling down as a more general description.

As previously mentioned, Foucault’s writing illustrates an ability to bring to life horrors; he writes unflinchingly and devastatingly about the torture of Damiens, and this elevation of punishment practices from the academic to the alarmingly present is a necessary tool that can sometimes appear lacking in contemporary writings on prisons. That writing can conjure compelling images of punishment should be borne in mind. The work of former Mountjoy Governor John Lonergan illustrates the benefit of openness in prison policy, which can dispel myths and educate a public conditioned to dismiss human rights concerns with statements about holiday camps.

This blog was written by Lynsey Black and Louise Brangan.

Upcoming Event: Coercive Confinement in Post-Independence Ireland

The DA are delighted that Ian O'Donnell and Eoin O'Sullivan have kindly agreed to join us to discuss their new book:

Ian O'Donnell and Eoin O'Sullivan recently launched their newest publication: Cocercive Confinement in Post-Independence Ireland. The book takes a broader and more diachronic reading of punitiveness and imprisonment, looking at previously under-researched institutions of confinement.The book also crosses many academic thresholds, and would be of interest to students and teachers of history, sociology and criminology alike. Indeed, such is the nature of the work that it has garnered wider attention than many academic texts are used to, evidenced by this welcome review in The Irish Times.

Everyone is welcome to come along for some wine, chat and nibbles and join in what is sure to be a lively discussion in a fantastic venue. Drop an email to Lynsey at blalygamal@gmail.com to book.

Date: Wednesday 12th of September
Time: 6.30-8.00pm
Venue: Kilmainham Gaol

The DA at the North South Criminology Conference, and what we did there...

The Differential Association are fresh from our excitement of presenting a workshop at the recent North South Criminology Conference on the topic of Irish criminology, what it is, what it can offer, and where we are:

• Is criminology still the ‘absentee discipline’ in Ireland?
•  Has Ireland demonstrated a distinctive criminal justice landscape?
• If so, can it offer insights to wider criminological scholarship?
• What are the barriers to criminology in Ireland – anti-intellectualism, political apathy, statistical vacuum?

Since the inception of The Differential Association over 18 months ago, we have been intrigued and delighted to read a diverse variety of criminological texts, from classics such as David Garland’s “The Culture of Control” to the emerging theories such as Robert Agnew’s conception of environmental change and its potential impact on crime. In all our discussions we seek to consistently pose certain questions of the texts, namely; can this be applied to the Irish context? The more we asked this question, the more purchase it gained, which ultimately led to the bright idea to discuss this with a wider group in a workshop.

Additionally, we wanted to evaluate the current state of the Irish criminological enterprise. The name of the workshop was a loose play on the recent Loader and Sparks book, Public Criminology? (2011). Our criminological neighbours in Britain often seem to reflect on their discipline – asking what role does criminology have? How can a more influential and productive discipline be encouraged? What is the value of criminology? Contrastingly, in Ireland, when we undertake a similar type of scan it tends to result in lamenting about criminology being Ireland’s ‘absentee discipline’.

We had a genuinely insightful discussion, and were honoured to be joined by such luminaries as Prof. Ian O’Donnell of UCD, Prof. Richard Wright of University of Missouri-St.Louis, Prof. Shadd Maruna of Queen’s University Belfast, Dr. Claire Hamilton, Senator Ivana Bacik and our own stellar DA members and supporters.

In light of the myriad fascinating comments made at the workshop, we decided we would share some of the key issues which cropped up:

Throughout the two-day conference various issues were echoed by a large number of speakers, several of which had previously arisen at DA meet-ups, and seemed to be recurring issues. For example, the lack of statistical data, rendering policy formation something of a grope in the dark.

The feature of localism and the specific social context of a highly integrated society also emerged.  With strong rural networks, Dr. KirstyHudson elaborated the consultation processes to date along with the possible ramifications of sex offender registration and notification in Northern Ireland.  Kirsty emphasised the necessarily differential application of such a scheme to Northern Ireland, changing the template somewhat from that applied in England and Wales.  It was urged that this high degree of connectivity in the community should be utilised to implement a culturally specific and appropriate procedure which played localism as a strength.

On the same panel, Geraldine O’Hare of the Probation Board of Northern Ireland again addressed a recurring issue within Irish criminology, namely the lack of statistical data.  Speaking about the risk assessment of sex offenders, Geraldine informed us that in previous years Ireland and Northern Ireland had lacked their own statistical information on sex offender recidivism rates and comparisons with risk assessment outcomes.  However the implementation of an Ireland-wide ‘stable and acute’ assessment framework is now reducing a reliance on figures from other, often non-comparable jurisdictions, and providing a sound empirical knowledge base from which to plan interventions and responses. In his own presentation, The Differential Association member Martin Quigley, also emphasised the almost whole-sale policy transfer of the Sex Offenders Act 2001 from England and Wales, articulating yet another influencing factor in the Irish criminal justice policy making process.

Turning to culturally specific contexts and how political styles emerge from within, Ian O’Donnell spoke at the launch of his new work with Eoin O’Sullivan, CoerciveConfinement in Ireland, of the impact of ruralism in Ireland, which may have enabled the confinement of the many men, women and children who were deemed of little use to the practical agricultural industry of Ireland historically.  Taking this forward, does this ruralism contribute to a certain and noticeable anti-intellectualism within Irish politics and reflected in society generally?

As has been noted, there is a very short-term focus on pragmatism within policy-making in Ireland, as evidenced in economic decisions for the economic times with no reference to wider ideology.  Does such pragmatism spring from a society concerned with practical problems and eschewing more lofty matters?

Historical context and ripples from it could also be found in the formation of the Irish state and the effect of this on our current criminal justice landscape, such as whether the Irish focus was generally on a front-end conception of the system.  As a state formed with an eye to security issues and which was forced to confront these throughout much of its history, the strengthened powers of the police and the courts were often the key considerations as opposed to back-end issues such as prisons.  What exactly is to be done with security threats once they have been processed through the various organs, found guilty and incarcerated?

Throughout much of the general DA discussion on policy-making too we have repeatedly spoken of the importance of local actors, and of the quicksilver effect that one person with vision or momentum can have, notable examples including the influence of Charles Haughey on the Department of Justice during his time there in the 1960s and the equally driven and energetic work of Michael McDowell during his time in the Department in the 2000s.  We often ask ourselves is it a case of Irish exceptionalism to be particularly susceptible to policy entrepreneurship – and if so why?  We feel this focus on the personalities of policy-creation is a lens which can illuminate much that would otherwise appear, perhaps, natural and explicable through reference to grand international trends.

Working with such questions in mind, Mary Rogan’s new book Prison Policy in Ireland not only illuminates the political, historical and social forces behind Irish prison policy, it is also an insightful contribution to broader penological scholarship and points to new methods of analysing penal change in other jurisdictions.

Another question which arose during the workshop was the power of the lobby and how this directed matters of criminal justice law-making.  Are the various industrial groups another impetus of policy in Ireland, taking into consideration the influence of such groups as the Garda Officers’ Associations and the Prison Officers’ Association.

Other matters of note that were raised at The Differential Association workshop was the distinction of the European tradition versus the US tradition of the location of criminology within universities, which led to the question how does criminological character differ whether criminology as a field is located under the umbrella of law versus sociology, reflecting European and US traditions respectively.  

The positive manoeuvrings in Irish criminal justice at the moment were warmly acknowledged, and bright lights, such as the excellent and sustained work of the Irish Penal Reform Trust.  Turning a possible negative into a definite positive, the point was raised that while Irish criminology may still be underdeveloped, we have at least avoided certain pitfalls by virtue of our nascent character, such as being thrall to administrative concerns and answering only questions posed by Government, as well as the danger of making itself irrelevant.

Criminology may no longer be absentee in Ireland – the regular meetings of the DA, new publications and journals concerned with Irish criminal justice matters, along with the annual Irish Criminology Conference all point to the range and scale of criminological activity.  More practically however, the lack of positions for newly qualified criminology students, and the traditional path of Irish emigration were highlighted as a major concern.  Overall the tone was positive and optimistic, though.  Irish criminology is out of the tracks and is developing in an interesting and possibly distinct way; Irish criminal justice patterns and events – both contemporary and historical – are still in need of much excavation and analysis.  Under these conditions the one thing we are certain of is that Irish criminology can only continue to expand.

This blog was written by Lynsey Black, Louise Brangan and Martin Quigley.

The views expressed are the authors’ alone.

Crime Behind the Glass by Laura Huey

Huey, Laura (2011) Crime behind the glass:Exploring the sublime in crime at the Vienna Kriminalmuseum, Theoretical Criminology, 15(4)

The lure of the macabre has significant purchase in contemporary culture; in her recent article on the subject of the appeal of tales of gruesome crimes, Laura Huey draws from wider research to present an analysis of our fascination with the gritty underbelly of humanity.

As a group with a definite and previously expressed interest cultural criminology The Differential Association this week eagerly fell on Huey’s article as an attempt to get to grips with the enduring attraction with the darker elements of humanity.

Taking the specific case study of the Kriminalmuseum in Vienna, Huey attempts to ask why consumers make a choice to patronise sites and activities which revolve around violent crimes, citing examples such as the Jack the Ripper walking tour in London and Madame Tussauds’ Chamber of Horrors. An interesting question asked is how museum curators select exhibits, and gauge whether sufficient interest exists to launch new works and shows. However, the question of the exchange relationship between museums and museum visitors is not explored in any real depth, and the DA felt that it would have been illuminating to know the professed reasons for visiting such attractions, and survey use for the purpose of the article could have enhanced and added to a discussion which felt like it was missing a key component.  Huey herself expresses a willingness to know more about the ‘intended audience’ of the Kriminalmuseum, and it was disappointing not to hear directly from this intended audience. In a following sentence Huey herself answers this question from assumption rather than empirical investigation; the visitors are there to see the exhibits in precisely that context framed by the curator – as an educational experience of the dark side of humanity. Assuming the intentions for creating an exhibit to be the rationale for attending an exhibit ignores the conscious choice of actual patrons.

The article covers ground quoting many writers who firmly claim the interest in the macabre as a contemporary phenomenon, many seeing it emerge from the post-modern age. This struck us as remarkably myopic, considering that the history of societal engagement with the horrific as entertainment extends for centuries into our past. The considerable crowds which attended public executions, the Penny Dreadful, and the tripping of the well-heeled through the corridors of historic lunatic asylums stand as startling markers of a trait that cannot be said to have emerged in our more recent past. Indeed, the dark elements of folk tales and pre-sanitised fairy stories speak to a desire to identify and express our fears of the unknown in a safe environment.

Huey later states that, ‘we cannot confidently say that fascination with crime, or the exploitation of this fascination, are the result of modern anxieties’. This admission appears to only partly reject the assertions that the phenomenon is recent, despite many of Huey’s own examples coming from much earlier times. This reticence to express her views is noticeable in the article. Huey seems reluctant to make firm statements and accept ownership of any point of view. As this article would appear to be the offshoot of a much larger project, this is somewhat disappointing, and the group felt that conclusions drawn from this work would have been welcomed.

The concentration on philosophical concepts, while appropriate when discussing the macabre as the sublime, rendered this article somewhat more philosophy than criminology. However we were intrigued by the philosophical definition of ‘sublime’ and felt her use of the concept added much to our understanding of the appeal of crime stories and representations – the pleasure of viewing something horrific while knowing we are safe from it.

Huey presents an interesting literature review but seems unsure, at the close, of what she has accomplished, and whether she feels she has answered her questions. The central question is ‘why crime holds an enduring appeal for so many spectators?’

Huey posits the concept of ‘riskless risk’, of crime behind the glass. However, in the ensuing paragraph Huey’s question again shifts to return the focus back to the museum curators and their selection of pieces, and why museums present such exhibitions. Huey seems unsure of her question, which perhaps explains the unfocused nature of her answers.

The article also lingers more than it need on a descriptive walk-through account of the Kriminalmuseum which, while interesting, is not directly relevant to the substance of the article. The introduction of visual elements as well is perhaps an irrelevance, and one of the images in particularly ironic fashion seems to ‘do’ that which it explores, namely the exploitation of interest in violence.

Of course, it was inevitable that the article prompted the DA to ask ourselves why we gathered every month to discuss thoughts on crimes and punishment! When confronted with the deeper question of what exactly consumers of the macabre achieve in the exchange the answer lay very much in the concept of the ‘riskless risk’ that Huey elucidates. The prospect of experiencing horrors, in a safe environment, that we reserve for our private nightmares. The sedentary nature and relative safety of our lifestyles in Western society may demand that we take other steps to introduce adrenaline, take the prevalence of extreme sports for example! The ‘civilisation’ of Western society, towards an avowed disgust of physical violence, either privately or State-sanctioned, renders much of our past history as seemingly barbaric. Yet do we feel we have lost the thrill of true danger?


This month's blog was written by Lynsey Black.


The views expressed are the author's alone.

An Irish Criminology? at the 8th North South Criminology Conference

The Differential Association will be presenting a workshop at the forthcoming North South Criminology Conference, held this year at University College Dublin, on 28th and 29th of June. We will be exploring the question of Irish criminology as laid out in our abstract below.

The Differential Association presents: An Irish Criminology?

For how much longer can we classify criminology as the ‘absentee’ discipline of Ireland, and what exactly needs to happen before we can officially announce its presence?  The state of criminology within Ireland has been much lamented by academics, its slow development and patchwork nature have been unfavourably compared to the position of the discipline internationally, notably in those countries where it is established to a high degree.  Are these comparisons justified?  Does proximity and shared history with the United Kingdom, for example, give Irish practitioners and academics unrealistic expectations of exactly how advanced our consolidation of the field should be?  Are we downplaying the significant gains made in Ireland and are we, in fact, in the process of developing something intrinsically Irish?  The Differential Association, a network of academics and practitioners, have spent the last year delving into criminological writings, discussing emerging theories and classic texts, always with an eye towards gaining a greater understanding of our own national criminological identity.  Join us for a discussion which will touch on the question of whether we are a nation characterised by apathy, would a more assertive political will to change have led the charge on criminology research or should our academic research culture be lighting the way forward.  In response to recent questions on the nature of public criminology, we will be asking how academics can influence and contribute to evidence-led policy in a culture that appears resistant.

The workshop is provisionally scheduled for 10.30-12.00 on 29th June. Due to the informal and dynamic nature of the workshop we will be restricting numbers to facilitate better discussion! We hope to see you there!