Routledge Handbook of Critical Criminology [2 ed.] 9781138656192, 9781315622040

Citation preview

Routledge Handbook of Critical Criminology

The main objective of the second edition of the Routledge Handbook of Critical Criminology is twofold: (1) to provide original chapters that cover contemporary critical criminological theoretical offerings generated over the past five years and (2) to provide chapters on important new substantive topics that are currently being studied and theorized by progressive criminologists. Special attention is devoted to new theoretical directions in the field, such as southern criminology, queer criminology, and green criminology. The diverse chapters cover not only cutting-edge theories, but also the variety of research methods used by leading scholars in the field and the rich data generated by their rigorous empirical work. In addition, some of the chapters suggest innovative and realistic short- and long-term policy proposals that are typically ignored by mainstream criminology. These progressive strategies address some of the most pressing social problems facing contemporary society today, which generate much pain and suffering for socially and economically disenfranchised people. The new edition of the Handbook is a major work in redefining areas within the context of international multidisciplinary critical research, and in highlighting emerging areas, such as human trafficking, Internet pornography and image-based sexual abuse. It is specifically designed to be a comprehensive resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students, researchers and policymakers. Walter S. DeKeseredy is Anna Deane Carlson Endowed Chair of Social Sciences, Director of the Research Centre on Violence, and Professor of Sociology at West Virginia University. He has published 23 books, 95 scientific journal articles and 76 scholarly book chapters on violence against women and other social problems. Molly Dragiewicz is Associate Professor in the School of Justice, Faculty of Law at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia. She launched QUT’s first domestic violence elective unit in 2015 and developed and serves as Course Coordinator for the Graduate Certificate in Domestic Violence since 2016.

Routledge Handbook of Critical Criminology Second Edition

Edited by Walter S. DeKeseredy and Molly Dragiewicz

Second edition published 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 selection and editorial matter, Walter S. DeKeseredy and Molly Dragiewicz; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Walter S. DeKeseredy and Molly Dragiewicz to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. First edition published by Routledge 2011 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-1-138-65619-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-62204-0 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

List of illustrations List of contributors Acknowledgments Introduction: critical criminology: past, present, and future Walter S. DeKeseredy and Molly Dragiewicz

ix x xxiv 1

PART I

Beyond critique: theoretical perspectives

13

1 Critical political economy, crime and justice Robert Reiner

19

2 Left realism: a new look Walter S. DeKeseredy and Martin D. Schwartz

30

3 Ultra-realism Steve Hall and Simon Winlow

43

4 Southern criminology Kerry Carrington, Russell Hogg and Máximo Sozzo

57

5 Feminist perspectives Claire M. Renzetti

74

6 Masculinities and crime James W. Messerschmidt and Stephen Tomsen

83

7 Queer criminology Carrie L. Buist, Emily Lenning, and Matthew Ball

96

v

Contents

8 Cultural criminology Stephen L. Muzzatti and Emma M. Smith

107

9 Critical green criminology Rob White

120

10 Green cultural criminology Avi Brisman and Nigel South

132

11 Convict criminology Stephen C. Richards, Jeffrey Ian Ross, Greg Newbold, Michael Lenza, and Robert S. Grigsby

143

12 Postmodern criminology Dragan Milovanovic

156

PART II

Select topics in critical criminology

165

13 A critical interpretation of animal exploitation Bonnie Berry

169

14 Crimes of the powerful: an agenda for a twenty-first-century criminology Dawn L. Rothe and David O. Friedrichs

180

15 State violence, women, and gender Victoria E. Collins

190

16 Criminology, war and the violence(s) of militarism Ross McGarry and Sandra Walklate

201

17 Terrorism: the problem with radicalization: overlooking the elephants in the room Sandra Walklate and Gabe Mythen

213

18 Militarizing American police: an overview Peter B. Kraska

222

19 Hate crime James J. Nolan, Lee Thorpe Jr. and Andrea DeKeseredy

234

20 Neoliberalism and the politics of imprisonment Sappho Xenakis and Leonidas K. Cheliotis

249

vi

Contents

21 Private prisons, the criminal justice–industrial complex and bodies destined for profitable punishment Paul Leighton and Donna Selman 22 Power and accountability: life after death row in the United States Kimberly J. Cook and Saundra D. Westervelt 23 Thinking critically about contemporary adult pornography and woman abuse Walter S. DeKeseredy and Amanda Hall-Sanchez

260

269

280

24 Critical issues in intimate partner violence against women Shana L. Maier and Raquel Kennedy Bergen

295

25 Image-based sexual abuse Anastasia Powell, Nicola Henry, and Asher Flynn

305

26 Child sexual abuse Michael Salter

316

27 Antifeminism and backlash: a critical criminological imperative Molly Dragiewicz

334

28 A critical examination of girls’ violence and juvenile justice Lisa Pasko and Meda Chesney-Lind

348

29 Girls and women in conflict with the law Katherine Irwin, Lisa Pasko, and Janet T. Davidson

358

30 Critical criminology and drugs Henry H. Brownstein

369

31 Critical perspectives on urban street gangs Simon Hallsworth

378

32 The future of a critical rural criminology Joseph F. Donnermeyer

387

33 Media and crime: interrogating the violence of representation Eamonn Carrabine

398

34 Research on human trafficking: critical perspectives and thoughts on new directions Emily Troshynski and Olivia Tuttle

411

vii

Contents

PART III

Policy issues

427

35 Curbing state crime by challenging the U.S. empire Ronald C. Kramer

431

36 Violence and social policy Elliott Currie

444

37 Confronting adult pornography Walter S. DeKeseredy

455

38 Confronting state oppression: the role of music David Kauzlarich and Clay Michael Awsumb

465

39 Regulating fair play in sport Kathryn Henne

477

40 The role of critical criminology in confronting the “war on immigration” Daniel E. Martínez

486

Index

501

viii

Illustrations

Figures 18.1 18.2 19.1

Assessing police militarization using continuums Sniper on APC during Ferguson protest Seeing acts of hate

224 230 240

Tables 19.1 19.2 22.1 25.1 25.2

Hate crime reporting by state, 2015 Expanding the hate crime frame Biographical details of participants Lifetime prevalence of image-based sexual abuse, by victim gender Perpetrator characteristics by gender

237 242 278 308 309

ix

Contributors

Clay Michael Awsumb is a PhD student in Sociology at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. His scholarship focuses on the dynamics of power and politics as they are mediated and articulated in practice through the cultural. Matthew Ball is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Justice, and a researcher in the Crime and

Justice Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology, Australia. His research focuses on the intersections between sexuality, gender, and criminal justice. Matthew has established an international research profile in the field of Queer Criminology, having written and edited three foundational books in the field: Criminology and Queer Theory: Dangerous Bedfellows?, Queering Criminology (co-edited with Angela Dwyer and Thomas Crofts), and a special issue of Critical Criminology (co-edited with Carrie L. Buist and Jordan Blair Woods). He is also the co-author of Justice in Society (with Belinda Carpenter) and edited Crime, Justice, and Social Democracy: International Perspectives (with Kerry Carrington, Erin O’Brien, and Juan Tauri), and Queering Paradigms II: Interrogating Agendas (with Bee Scherer). His work has also previously been published in Critical Criminology, Law and Critique, and the Journal of Australian Studies. Bonnie Berry, PhD in Sociology, is the Director of the Social Problems Research Group and for-

merly university faculty. Her areas of research interest include appearance bias, animal rights, academic misconduct, and a range of social problems topics. She is the author of Social Rage: Emotion and Cultural Conflict, Beauty Bias: Discrimination and Social Power, The Power of Looks: Social Stratification of Physical Appearance, and numerous research articles on a range of social inequality measures. Her forthcoming book, with Cambridge University Press, is Physical Appearance and Crime: How Appearance Affects Crime and the Crime Control Process. Among other awards, she is the recipient of the Inconvenient Woman of the Year Award (Division of Women and Crime, American Society of Criminology) and the Herbert Bloch Award (American Society of Criminology). Avi Brisman (MFA, JD, PhD) is an Associate Professor in the School of Justice Studies at Eastern Kentucky University (Richmond, KY, USA), an Adjunct Associate Professor in the School of Justice at Queensland University of Technology (Brisbane, Queensland, Australia), and a Conjoint Associate Professor at Newcastle Law School at the University of Newcastle (Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia). His books include Environmental Crime in Latin America: The Theft of Nature and the Poisoning of the Land (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), co-edited with David Rodríguez Goyes, Hanneke Mol, and Nigel South; The Routledge Companion to Criminological Theory and Concepts (2017), co-edited with Eamonn Carrabine and Nigel South; Geometries of Crime: How Young People Perceive Crime and Justice (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016); Environmental Crime and Social Conflict: Contemporary and Emerging Issues (Ashgate, 2015), co-edited with Nigel South and Rob White; Green x

Contributors

Cultural Criminology: Constructions of Environmental Harm, Consumerism, and Resistance to Ecocide (Routledge, 2014), co-authored with Nigel South; and the Routledge International Handbook of Green Criminology (2013), co-edited with Nigel South. In 2015, he received the Critical Criminologist of the Year Award from the American Society of Criminology, Division on Critical Criminology. Henry H. Brownstein, PhD, has been the Associate Dean for Research in the Wilder School for

Government and Public Affairs at Virginia Commonwealth University. Previously he was Senior Vice President at NORC at the University of Chicago and Director of the NORC Division of Substance Abuse, Mental Health, and Criminal Justice Studies. Other positions include: Director of the Drugs and Crime Division at the National Institute of Justice, Professor and Director of the Graduate Program in Criminal Justice at the University of Baltimore, Chief of Statistical Services for the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services, and Principal Investigator at Narcotic and Drug Research, Inc. For over 30 years he has conducted research on drug policy, illicit drug markets, and drugs with crime and violence. He is the author and editor of several books and the author of numerous scholarly articles, essays, and book chapters on these subjects. Carrie L. Buist is an Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at Grand Valley State University. She has publications in Critical Criminology: An International Journal, the Journal of Culture, Health & Sexuality, and the Journal of Crime and Justice. Dr Buist has also published several book chapters on topics from white collar crime to the social construction of gender, and LGBTQ issues. Most recently, her book, Queer Criminology, co-authored with Dr Emily Lenning, calls for a more inclusive criminology exploring the experiences of the LGBTQ population as victims, offenders, and criminal legal personnel. Queer Criminology was recognized by the American Society of Criminology’s Division on Critical Criminology as the 2016 Book of the Year. Dr Buist was named New Scholar of the Year by the Division on Women and Crime in 2015. Eamonn Carrabine is a Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Essex. His books include Crime in Modern Britain (co-authored, 2002); Power, Discourse and Resistance: A Genealogy of the Strangeways Prison Riot (2004); Crime, Culture and the Media (2008); and Crime and Social Theory (2017). He has published widely on media criminology, the sociology of punishment and cultural theory. The textbook he co-authors with colleagues from the University of Essex, Criminology: A Sociological Introduction, is now in its third edition. He currently holds a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship to research his project “The Iconography of Punishment: From Renaissance to Modernity,” which will be published as a book. Since 2015 he has been co-editing the journal Crime, Media, Culture with Michele Brown (University of Tennessee) and they have recently edited the Routledge International Handbook of Visual Criminology (2017). With Avi Brisman (Eastern Kentucky University) and Nigel South (University of Essex) he has also co-edited the Routledge Companion to Criminological Theory and Concepts (2017). Kerry Carrington is Professor and Head of the School of Justice in the Faculty of Law at

Queensland University of Technology. She has been the Vice-President of the Division of Critical Criminology from 2012 to 2014, Pacific Rim Editor of Critical Criminology, Editorial Board Member of Feminist Criminology and co-editor of International Journal for Crime Justice and Social Democracy. She is the author of Feminism and Global Justice (2015) and co-author of Offending Youth (2009), Policing the Rural Crisis (2006) and Critical Criminology (2002) and another 100 or so publications. She is co-editor of the Palgrave Handbook in Criminology and the Global South and Routledge series editor for Victims, Culture and Society. In 2014 she received an American Society of Criminology Lifetime Achievement award from the Division of Critical xi

Contributors

Criminology and in 2013 she was awarded the Distinguished Scholar Award, from the Division of Women and Crime. Leonidas K. Cheliotis is an Associate Professor of Criminology at the Department of Social Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science. He is also Co-Director of LSE’s Mannheim Centre for Criminology, as well as an Editor and Book Review Editor of the British Journal of Criminology. His research, teaching, and public engagement are primarily focused on the political economy and social psychology of punishment, as well as on the operations and consequences of penal and cognate policies. In recognition of his research, he has received the 2016 Adam Podgòrecki Prize by the International Sociological Association’s Research Committee on Sociology of Law, the 2015 Outstanding Critical Criminal Justice Scholar Award by the Critical Criminal Justice Section of the American Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, and the 2013 Critical Criminologist of the Year Award by the Division on Critical Criminology of the American Society of Criminology. Meda Chesney-Lind, PhD, teaches Women’s Studies at the University of Hawaii, USA. Nationally recognized for her work on women and crime, her testimony before Congress resulted in national support of gender responsive programming for girls in the juvenile justice system. Her book on girls’ use of violence, Fighting for Girls (co-edited with Nikki Jones), won an award from the National Council on Crime and Delinquency for “focusing America’s attention on the complex problems of the criminal and juvenile justice systems.” Victoria E. Collins is an Associate Professor in the School of Justice Studies at Eastern Kentucky University. Victoria’s research and teaching interests include state crime, victimology, white collar crime, transnational crime, and violence against women. Victoria has just published a book with Routledge (Taylor Francis) titled State Crime, Women and Gender. Some of Victoria’s recent publications have appeared in journals such as Social Justice, the International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice, International Criminal Law Review, Critical Criminology, Contemporary Justice Review, and The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology. Kimberly J. Cook lives in Wilmington, NC. She is a Professor of Sociology and Criminology at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. With Saundra Westervelt, she is co-author of Life After Death Row: Exonerees’ Search for Community and Identity (Rutgers University Press 2012). Her earlier work includes Divided Passions: Public Opinions on Abortion and the Death Penalty (Northeastern University Press, 1998). Her areas of interest include various aspects of capital punishment, restorative justice, wrongful convictions, and violence against women, on which she has published numerous research articles and book chapters. Cook is also a restorative justice practitioner, and serves on the Board of Directors of the non-profit organization, Healing Justice, founded by Jennifer Thompson. Elliott Currie is Professor of Criminology, Law and Society at the University of California,

Irvine, USA, and Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Law, School of Justice, Queensland University of Technology, Australia. He is the author of many works on crime, delinquency, drug abuse, and social policy, including Confronting Crime: An American Challenge, Dope and Trouble: Portraits of Delinquent Youth, Reckoning: Drugs, the Cities, and the American Future, The Road to Whatever: Middle Class Culture and the Crisis of Adolescence, and The Roots of Danger: Violent Crime in Global Perspective. His book Crime and Punishment in America, revised and expanded in 2013, was

xii

Contributors

a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction in 1999. He is a co-author of Whitewashing Race: The Myth of a Colorblind Society, winner of the 2004 Book Award from the Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change and a finalist for the C. Wright Mills Award of the Society for the Study of Social Problems. He is a graduate of Roosevelt University in Chicago, and received his PhD in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley. Janet T. Davidson, PhD, is Associate Provost for Academic Affairs and Professor of Criminol-

ogy and Criminal Justice at Chaminade University of Honolulu. Her research interests include recidivism, community corrections, risk and need assessment instruments, and gender and crime. Her work has appeared in Feminist Criminology, Critical Criminology, Women, Crime & Justice, and Federal Probation. She is the author of a book Female Offenders and Risk Assessment: Hidden in Plain Sight. She has been active in applied research on Hawaii’s correctional system for the past 15 years, including work with the Department of Public Safety, Hawaii Paroling Authority, Hawaii State Judiciary (Adult Probation), and Girls Court Hawaii. Andrea DeKeseredy is a graduate student completing her MSW at West Virginia University. Her research interests include sexual assault, hate crime and corrections. Walter S. DeKeseredy is Anna Deane Carlson Endowed Chair of Social Sciences, Director of the Research Center on Violence, and Professor of Sociology at West Virginia University. He has published 23 books, 95 scientific journal articles and 76 scholarly book chapters on violence against women and other social problems. In 2008, the Institute on Violence, Abuse and Trauma gave him the Linda Saltzman Memorial Intimate Partner Violence Researcher Award. He also jointly received the 2004 Distinguished Scholar Award from the American Society of Criminology’s (ASC) Division on Women and Crime and the 2007 inaugural UOIT Research Excellence Award. In 1995, he received the Critical Criminologist of the Year Award from the ASC’s Division on Critical Criminology (DCC) and in 2008 the DCC gave him the Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2014, he received the Critical Criminal Justice Scholar Award from the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences’ (ACJS) Section on Critical Criminal Justice and in 2015, he received the Career Achievement Award from the ASC’s Division on Victimology. In 2017, he received the Impact Award from the ACJS’s section on Victimology. Joseph F. Donnermeyer is a Professor Emeritus in the School of Environment and Natural

Resources at The Ohio State University and an adjunct professor at the Center on Research on Violence at West Virginia University. Dr Donnermeyer’s specialization is rural criminology. He is the author/co-author of over 100 peer reviewed publications issues related to rural crime and rural societies. He was the editor of Routledge International Handbook of Rural Criminology (2016), is currently preparing the Criminology of Food and Agriculture (a monograph for Routledge), and was recently selected as editor of the Routledge Series in Rural Criminology. Dr Donnermeyer received The Ohio State University Alumni Association Award for Distinguished Teaching in 2004, and the North Central Regional Teaching Award from The Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities in 2011. From 2005 to 2010, he served as Chair of the Executive Council for the OSU Academy of Teaching. Molly Dragiewicz is Associate Professor in the School of Justice, Faculty of Law at Queensland

University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia. She launched QUT’s first domestic violence elective unit in 2015 and developed and serves as Course Coordinator for the Graduate

xiii

Contributors

Certificate in Domestic Violence since 2016. Dragiewicz is author of Abusive Endings: Separation and Divorce Violence Against Women with Walter S. DeKeseredy and Martin D. Schwartz (2017); Equality with a Vengeance: Men’s Rights Groups, Battered Women, and Antifeminist Backlash (2011), editor of Global Human Trafficking: Critical Issues and Contexts (2015), co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Critical Criminology (2012), and The Routledge Major Works Collection: Critical Criminology (2014) with Walter DeKeseredy. Dragiewicz received the QUT Vice Chancellor’s Performance Award in 2016, Critical Criminologist of the Year Award from the American Society of Criminology Division on Critical Criminology in 2012, and the New Scholar Award from the American Society of Criminology Division on Women and Crime in 2009. Asher Flynn is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology within the School of Social Sciences at Monash University (Australia) and a Research Fellow in the Criminal Justice Centre at the University of Warwick (United Kingdom). Asher’s research utilises a socio-legal framework to understand, critique and transform legal policy and practice, with a particular focus on gendered violence. Informed by national and international context, her research examines how accessing justice is negotiated. Asher is co-Investigator on an Australian Research Council Discovery Project, “Revenge pornography: the prevalence and nature of non-consensual imagery and the implications for law reform” and an Australian Criminology Research Council Grant, “Responding to revenge pornography: the scope, nature and impact of Australian Criminal Laws.” She is also lead Chief Investigator on an Australian Criminology Research Council Grant, “Negotiated guilty pleas: an empirical analysis.” David O. Friedrichs is Distinguished Professor of Sociology, Criminal Justice and Criminol-

ogy at the University of Scranton, Pennsylvania, USA. He is author of Trusted Criminals: White Collar Crime in Contemporary Society, 4th edn (Cengage 2010), Law in Our Lives: An Introduction, 3rd edn (Oxford University Press 2012), co-author (with Dawn L. Rothe) of Crimes of Globalization (Routledge 2015), and editor of State Crime (Ashgate 1998). His current project is a coauthored book on Edwin H. Sutherland for Routledge’s Key Thinkers in Criminology series. He served as President of the White-Collar Crime Research Consortium (2002–2004), and received its Outstanding Publication Award in 2011. In 2005 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Division on Critical Criminology of the American Society of Criminology. He has been a Visiting Professor at a number of universities, including the University of South Africa, Flinders University (Australia), the University of Western Australia and Stockholm University. Robert S. Grigsby is an independent researcher and policy analyst. He is an exceptional lecturer

and facilitator of workshops and seminars on contemporary issues of crime and criminology. He is also the web administrator for the Convict Criminology group and has co-authored a number of articles and book chapters with the group. Steve Hall is Professor of Criminology at Teesside University and co-founder of the Teesside Centre for Realist Criminology. Steve and his writing partner Simon Winlow have been described as the “most important criminologists working in Britain today.” His book Criminal Identities and Consumer Culture (Willan 2008, with Simon Winlow and Craig Ancrum) has been described as “an important landmark in criminology” and his book Theorizing Crime and Deviance (Sage 2012) has been lauded as “a remarkable intellectual achievement” that “rocks the foundations of the discipline.” He is also co-author of Violent Night (Berg 2006, with Simon Winlow), Rethinking Social Exclusion (Sage 2013, with Simon Winlow), Riots and Political Protest (Routledge 2015, with Simon Winlow, James Treadwell and Daniel Briggs), Revitalizing Criminological xiv

Contributors

Theory (Routledge 2015, with Simon Winlow) and The Rise of the Right (Policy Press, 2016, with Simon Winlow and James Treadwell). He is co-editor of New Directions in Criminological Theory (Routledge 2012, with Simon Winlow). Amanda Hall-Sanchez, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice in the Department

of Social Sciences at Fairmont State University, Fairmont, WV. She earned a BA in Sociology/Psychology from Muskingum University, an MA in Sociology/Criminology from Ohio University, and a PhD in Sociology with a specialization in Criminology/Women’s Studies from the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. Her teaching and research interests include violence against women, sexual assault on college campuses, dating and intimate violence, victimology and trauma, feminist, critical, and rural criminologies, masculinities/femininities, sexualities/ LGBTQ+, deviance, inequalities, sociological and criminological theory, and women’s experiences of incarceration. Her current research focuses on sexual assault on college campuses, the rational and active decision-making processes of women navigating intimate violent relationships in rural locations, and women’s experiences of incarceration in federal correctional facilities, all within an intersectional framework. Simon Hallsworth is Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the Faculty of Arts, Business and Applied Social

Science at University of Suffolk. His work crosses the boundaries between sociology, social policy, political economy and political theory. Simon has written extensively on street violence and urban street gangs. He has also researched and written extensively about penal change in modern societies. His most recent book The Gang and Beyond: Interpreting Violent Street Worlds was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2013. Kathryn Henne is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and Legal Studies at the University of Waterloo, where she holds the Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) in Biogovernance, Law and Society. She is also an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Research Fellow at RegNet, the School of Regulation and Global Governance at the Australian National University. Her work situated at the intersections between critical criminology, feminist studies, and regulatory studies and has been published in wide range of journals, including Theoretical Criminology, Law & Policy and Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. She is the author of Testing for Athlete Citizenship: Regulating Doping and Sex in Sport (Rutgers University Press, 2015). Nicola Henry is Associate Professor and Vice-Chancellor’s Principal Research Fellow in Social and Global Studies at RMIT University (Melbourne, Australia). Her research focuses on the prevalence, nature and impacts of sexual violence, including the legal and non-legal responses to these harms in Australian and international contexts. Her current research is focused on technology-facilitated sexual violence, and image-based sexual abuse. Nicola has published widely in the sexual violence field, including the following books: War and Rape: Law, Memory and Justice (Routledge 2011), Preventing Sexual Violence: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Overcoming a Rape Culture (Palgrave Macmillan 2014), Rape Justice: Beyond the Criminal Law (Palgrave Macmillan 2015), and Sexual Violence in a Digital Era (Palgrave Macmillan 2017). Russell Hogg has taught criminology at several Australian universities and is Adjunct Professor in the School of Law, Queensland University of Technology. He is the co-author or editor of seven books on various aspects of crime and criminal justice, including Policing the Rural Crisis (Federation Press 2006). xv

Contributors

Katherine Irwin, PhD, is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Hawaii. Her research areas include youth culture, women and drug use, youth violence, girls in the juvenile justice system, and delinquency prevention programming. She is the co-author, with Meda Chesney-Lind, of Beyond Bad Girls: Gender, Violence, and Hype. Her most recent book with Karen Umemoto is titled Jacked Up and Unjust: Pacific Islander Teens Confront Violent Legacies. Her ethnographic work has been published in a number of journals such as Symbolic Interaction, Qualitative Sociology, Critical Criminology, Feminist Criminology, and Race and Justice among other venues. David Kauzlarich is Professor and Department Head of Sociology at the University of North

Carolina at Greensboro. His scholarly work and interests range from critical criminology, victimology, and social justice to the sociology of music and theory. Raquel Kennedy Bergen is a Professor of Sociology at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She is the author or co-author of numerous scholarly publications and nine books on violence against women including, Wife Rape: Understanding the Response of Survivors and Service Providers and Issues in Intimate Violence. With Claire Renzetti and Jeff Edleson she edited Sourcebook on Violence Against Women and Violence Against Women: Classic Statements. She co-edited Violence Against Women: Readings from Social Problems with Claire Renzetti. She is the current Chair of Gender Studies at Saint Joseph’s and the faculty moderator for the Rape Education Prevention Program. Her area of expertise is sexual violence in intimate partnerships and she regularly provides workshops around the country to domestic violence and rape crisis programs to address this form of violence. She has volunteered as an advocate for battered women and sexual assault survivors for the past 30 years. Her current research continues in the field of violence against women – analysing the intersection of women’s experiences of physical, sexual and emotional violence with their partners during pregnancy. Ronald C. Kramer is Professor of Sociology at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan. His books include Crimes of the American Nuclear State: At Home and Abroad (with Dave Kauzlarich), State-Corporate Crime: Wrongdoing at the Intersection of Business and Government (with Raymond Michalowski) and State Crime in the Global Age (edited with William J. Chambliss and Raymond Michalowski). His most recent research focuses on climate change as state–corporate crime. Dr Kramer is a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Division of Critical Criminology of the American Society of Criminology. Pete Kraska is a professor in the School of Justice Studies at Eastern Kentucky University. He

has distinguished himself as a leading scholar in the areas of police and criminal justice militarization, criminal justice theory, and mixed methods research. He has published seven books including Militarizing The American Criminal Justice System: The Changing Roles of the Armed Forces and Police. Dr. Kraska is frequently asked to present his research and findings to academic and policy audiences, including most recently testifying for the U.S. Senate on police militarization. His work has also been featured in media outlets such as 60 Minutes, The Economist, Washington Post, BBC, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, National Public Radio, and PBS News Hour. Paul Leighton is a Professor in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Criminol-

ogy at Eastern Michigan University. He is the co-author, with Jeffrey Reiman, of The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison, 11th edn. He is also the co-author of a book on private prisons, Punishment for Sale: Private Prisons, Big Business and the Incarceration Binge. Leighton is working on xvi

Contributors

a fifth edition of his co-authored book, Class, Race, Gender & Crime. His current interests are in whistleblowing, wage theft and a next-generation, high-tech Japanese rehabilitation centre. He has been President of the board of SafeHouse, a domestic violence shelter and sexual assault crisis intervention centre. Many of his presentations and talks are archived at PaulsJusticeBlog.com, and links to his writing are available through PaulsJusticePage.com. Emily Lenning is Professor of Criminal Justice at Fayetteville State University. She is a critical

Queer criminologist, whose publications cover a diverse range of topics, from state-sanctioned violence against LGBTQ folks to creative advances in pedagogy. She is co-author (with Dr Carrie L. Buist) of the book Queer Criminology, which recently earned the honour of the 2016 Book Award from the American Society of Criminology Division on Critical Criminology & Social Justice. Dr Lenning’s accomplishments in and out of the classroom have been recognized by several awards, including the 2017 University of North Carolina Board of Governor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching and the American Society of Criminology Division on Women & Crime’s New Scholar Award. Michael Lenza is an Associate Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at the University

of Wisconsin – Oshkosh. Dr Lenza’s research and applied interests include Convict Criminology, Death Penalty, Criminological Theory, Research Methods, Medical Marijuana, and Restorative Justice. Ross McGarry is Senior Lecturer in criminology within the Department of Sociology, Social

Policy and Criminology at the University of Liverpool, UK. He has written widely in international journals and edited collections on criminology, victimology and critical military studies. He is currently working on the forthcoming monograph Criminology and the Military, for Routledge’s New Directions in Critical Criminology series. He is the co-editor (with Sandra Walklate) of Criminology and War: Transgressing the Borders (Routledge, 2015) and The Palgrave Handbook of Criminology and War (2016). He is also the co-author (with Sandra Walklate) of Victims: Trauma, Testimony and Justice (Routledge, 2015) and A Criminology of War, which is currently under production for the New Horizons series by Policy Press. Shana L. Maier is an Associate Professor in the Department of Criminal Justice at Widener

University, Chester, PA. Her research interests include violence against women, the treatment of rape victims by the criminal justice system, the experiences and struggles of rape victim advocates and Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners, and marijuana legalization. Dr Maier is the author of the book Rape, Victims, and Investigations (Routledge) and articles appearing in Violence Against Women, Women & Criminal Justice, Journal of Ethnicity in Criminal Justice, Feminist Criminology, Journal of Forensic Nursing, and Journal of Interpersonal Violence. Daniel E. Martínez is an Assistant Professor in the School of Sociology at the University of Arizona. Before joining the faculty at the University of Arizona, Martínez served as an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and as the Associate Director of the Cisneros Hispanic Leadership Institute at George Washington University. He received a PhD from the School of Sociology at the University of Arizona in May of 2013, and holds an MA in Sociology and MS in Mexican American Studies, also from the University of Arizona. Martínez’s research interests include criminology, juvenile delinquency, race and ethnicity, and unauthorized immigration. He is one of three co-principal investigators of the Migrant Border Crossing Study, a Ford Foundation-funded research project that surveys recently deported unauthorized migrants about xvii

Contributors

their experiences crossing the US–Mexico border and residing in the United States. Martínez also does research on undocumented border-crosser deaths along the US–Mexico border. James W. Messerschmidt is Professor of Sociology and Chair of the Criminology Department

at the University of Southern Maine. Since the early 1990s he has published widely on the sociology of masculinities and masculinities and crime. His most recent book is Masculinities in the Making: From the Local to the Global (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016). His current research involves a book manuscript on hegemonic masculinities, a paper on the masculinity of Osama bin Laden, and a 25-year anniversary edition of his book, Masculinties and Crime. Dragan Milovanovic received his PhD from SUNY at Albany. He is Brommel Distinguished

Research Professor at Northeastern Illinois University. He has published over 25 books and numerous articles in criminology, law, and justice studies. His work is in postmodern and quantum holographic theory. His most recent book is Quantum Holographic Criminology: Paradigm Shift in Criminology, Law and Transformative Justice (Carolina Academic Press, 2014). He has been previous editor of International Journal for the Semiotics of Law and of Humanity and Society. Stephen L. Muzzatti is Associate Professor of Sociology at Ryerson University in Toronto,

Canada, specializing in the areas of inequality, crime and culture. He has published work on consumerism and violence, state crime and crimes of globalization, the news media, working class identities, advertising, risk-taking and motorcycle culture. Dr Muzzatti is a former executive officer of the Division of Critical Criminology and currently serves as a departmental representative to the Canadian Sociological Association. Gabe Mythen is Professor of Criminology in the Department of Sociology, Social Policy and

Criminology at the University of Liverpool. He is also Regional Director of the ESRC North West Doctoral Training Partnership and President of the International Sociological Association Sociology of Risk and Uncertainty Group. His current research interests include critical studies of terrorism, counter radicalization policy and the sociology of non-knowledge. Greg Newbold is Professor of Sociology at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. A former prison inmate who served a seven-and-a-half-year sentence for selling heroin in the 1970s, he has written nine books and over 100 book chapters and articles. As one of New Zealand’s leading criminologists, he is regularly consulted by government agencies on policy matters related to crime and criminal justice. James J. Nolan, PhD, is a Professor of Sociology at West Virginia University where he teaches courses on the topic of deviance and hate crime. His research currently focuses on community policing, intergroup relations, and the measurement of hate crimes and other crimes that are reported to the police. Lisa Pasko is Associate Professor of Sociology and Criminology and affiliated faculty in Gender and Women’s Studies Program at the University of Denver. In addition to numerous articles, book chapters, and technical reports, she is co-author of The Female Offender: Girls, Women, and Crime and Girls, Women, and Crime: Selected Readings (Sage Publications, 2013). Professor Pasko’s research examines the intersectionality of race, gender, and sexualities in the lives of

xviii

Contributors

justice-involved girls. She recently finished an Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention grant entitled, “Characteristics and Predictors of Juvenile Diversion Program Success for Girls: A Focus on the Latina First-Time Offender.” Anastasia Powell is Associate Professor in Criminology & Justice Studies at RMIT Univer-

sity, specialising in policy responses, legal reform and primary prevention of sexual and family violence against women. Anastasia has published widely in these fields, including five books, the most recent of which is Sexual Violence in a Digital Age (with Dr Nicola Henry, Palgrave Macmillan 2017). Anastasia has been a chief investigator on several projects funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC) and Criminology Research Council including “Technologyfacilitated sexual violence and harassment” and “Responding to revenge pornography.” Anastasia has also contributed to policy specific research on violence against women for the Victorian State and Australian Commonwealth Governments, most notably, the Australian National Community Attitudes Survey on Violence Against Women. Robert Reiner is Emeritus Professor of Criminology, Law Dept., LSE. His most recent books are

Law and Order: An Honest Citizen’s Guide to Crime and Control (Polity Press 2007), The Politics of the Police, 4th edn (Oxford University Press 2010), Policing, Popular Culture, and Political Economy: Towards a Social Democratic Criminology (Ashgate 2011) and Crime: The Mystery of the CommonSense Concept (Polity Press, 2016). He is co-editor (with Mike Maguire and Rod Morgan) of The Oxford Handbook of Criminology, 5th edn (Oxford University Press 2012). Reiner is currently working on a book on social democratic criminology. Claire M. Renzetti, PhD, is the Judi Conway Patton Endowed Chair in the Center for

Research on Violence Against Women, and Professor and Chair of the Sociology Department at the University of Kentucky. She is founding editor of the international, interdisciplinary journal, Violence Against Women. She also co-edits the Interpersonal Violence book series for Oxford University Press, and edits the Gender and Justice book series for University of California Press. She has authored or edited 24 books as well as numerous book chapters and journal articles. Much of her research focuses on the violent victimization experiences of socially and economically marginalized women. Her current research includes an evaluation of a therapeutic horticulture program at a shelter for battered women, and studies examining the relationship between religiosity and intimate partner violence perpetration and victimization. Stephen C. Richards, PhD, is an ex-convict now Professor Emeritus of Criminal Justice at

the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh. He served a nine-year sentence in federal prison for Conspiracy to Distribute Marijuana. His work, including nearly 100 publications, appears in numerous national and international academic journals. The author of six books (sole or co-authored, edited or co-edited), his most recent books include Behind Bars: Surviving Prison (2002), Convict Criminology (2003), Beyond Bars: Rejoining Society After Prison (with Jeffrey Ian Ross, 2009), and the Marion Experiment: Long-Term Solitary Confinement and the Supermax Movement (2015). Richards is a Soros Senior Justice Fellow and former member of the American Society of Criminology National Policy Committee. In 2012 he was honored as Critical Criminologist of the Year by ASC. He is one of the primary figures in founding the New School of Convict Criminology Theoretical Perspective, which is led by ex-convict criminology professors.

xix

Contributors

Jeffrey Ian Ross, PhD, is a Professor in the School of Criminal Justice, College of Public Affairs, and a Research Fellow of the Center for International and Comparative Law, and the Schaefer Center for Public Policy at the University of Baltimore. Ross is also the chair of the Division on Critical Criminology and Social Justice, of the American Society of Criminology. He has researched, written, and lectured primarily on corrections, policing, political crime, violence, abnormal-extreme criminal behaviour, street culture, and crime and justice in American Indian communities for over two decades. Ross’s work has appeared in many academic journals and books, as well as popular media. He is the author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of several books including the Routledge Handbook of Graffiti and Street Art (Routledge, 2016). Ross is a respected subject matter expert for local, regional, national and international news media. He has made live appearances on CNN, CNBC, Fox News Network, MSNBC, and NBC. Additionally, Ross has written op-eds for The (Baltimore) Sun, the Baltimore Examiner, The (Maryland) Daily Record, The Gazette (weekly community newspapers serving Maryland’s Montgomery, Frederick, Prince Georges and Carroll counties), The Hill, Inside Higher Ed, and the Tampa Tribune. From 1995 to 1998, Ross was a Social Science Analyst with the National Institute of Justice, a Division of the US Department of Justice. In 2003, he was awarded the University of Baltimore’s Distinguished Chair in Research Award. During the early 1980s, Jeff worked for almost four years in a correctional institution. Dawn L. Rothe is a Professor of Criminology at Eastern Kentucky University and Chair of the

School of Justice Studies. She is the Director of the International State Crime Research Centre, formerly housed at Old Dominion University, soon to be re-named The Crimes of the Powerful Centre and has formerly served as Chair of the American Society of Criminology Division of Critical Criminology. Rothe is the author or co-author of eight books, including her most recent titles, Crimes of the Powerful: An Introduction (co-author David Kauzlarich, 2016), Towards a Victimology of State Crime (co-author David Kauzlarich, 2015), Crimes of Globalization (co-author David Friedrichs, 2014), and over seven dozen peer reviewed articles and book chapters, all related to the harms and crimes of the powerful and their victimization. Michael Salter is a Senior Lecturer in criminology at Western Sydney University, where he leads the violence strand of the Sexualities and Genders Research initiative. He is published widely on violence against children and women, with a focus on complex forms of abuse and trauma. He is the author of Organised Sexual Abuse (Routledge, 2013) and Crime, Justice and Social Media (Routledge, 2017). Dr Salter is currently an Associate Editor of Child Abuse Review, and he sits on the Scientific Advisory Committee of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation. He provides advice to state, national and international organisations on the primary prevention of violence against children and women, and the development of policy and practice responses to complex abuse and trauma. Martin D. Schwartz, PhD, is Visiting Professor at George Washington University, Professor Emeritus at Ohio University, and the author, co-author or editor of 16 books and over 150 refereed articles, chapters, essays and reports. The 2008 Fellow of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences (ACJS), he has received distinguished scholar awards from an ACJS section (Critical Criminal Justice) and two divisions of the American Society of Criminology (Women and Crime, and Critical Criminology). He has been a visiting scholar at the US Dept. of Justice (studying rape and police investigation) and the British Home Office, and has taught or lectured across the US, and in Australia, England, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Belgium, and Spain. At

xx

Contributors

Ohio University, he was Graduate Professor of the Year, Best Arts and Sciences Professor, and given the title Presidential Research Scholar. A former co-editor of Criminal Justice, he has served on the editorial boards of 11 other professional journals, while doing hundreds of manuscript reviews for some 65 journals. Donna Selman (Western Michigan University 2005) is a Professor of Multidisciplinary Studies

at Indiana State where she is currently the Associate Dean for Graduate Programs in the College of Graduate and Professional Studies. Dr Selman’s research, teaching and service are grounded in fundamental questions concerned with justice and inequality in society including criminal justice practices, labour issues, access to education and a variety of other human rights issues. Her current research involves examining critical incidents influence on physiologic and perceptual indicators of Corrections Officer’s stress and health. In addition to serving as the Chair of Division on Critical Criminology and Social Justice (2011–2014) Dr Selman continues to be an active member of the Division and serves as a mentor to graduate students and new faculty. Emma M. Smith is a Criminology Instructor at Humber College and a PhD student in Ryerson University’s Communication and Culture programme. Her research interests include documentary representations of female murderers, reality television’s (re)production of crime narratives, prison structures, the commodification of crime in popular culture and Canadian policing systems. Themes of gender, social inequality and cultural identity are infused within her research. Nigel South is a Professor in the Department of Sociology and Director of the Centre for Criminology, University of Essex, and a visiting adjunct Professor at the Crime and Justice Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology. He has published widely on green criminology, drugs use and control, and policing. In 2013 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society of Criminology, Division on Critical Criminology, and in 2014 was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. Recent books include Environmental Crime in Latin America: The Theft of Nature and the Poisoning of the Land (Palgrave). Máximo Sozzo is Full Professor of Sociology and Criminology at the National University of

Litoral (Argentina). He was a Fellow of the Straus Institute for the Advance Study of Law and Justice at the School of Law of New York University (2010/2011). He has been Visiting Professor/Researcher at the Universities of Bologna, Toronto, Barcelona and Hamburg, among others. He is Adjunct Professor of the School of Justice at Queensland University of Technology (Australia). Professor Sozzo has authored and edited ten books and 70 article journals and book chapters, which have been published in Spanish, English, Italian and Portuguese. His most recent books are: Postneoliberalismo y penalidad en América del Sur (Clacso, Buenos Aires, 2016) and Locura y Crimen. Nacimiento de la intersección entre los dispositivos psiquiátrico y penal (Didot, Buenos Aires, 2015). Lee Thorpe Jr. is a Sociology doctoral student in the Department of Sociology and Anthropol-

ogy at West Virginia University. His research interests are: sexualities, social networks, culture, and theory. Lee received his MA in Humanities and Social Thought with a concentration in Gender Politics from New York University, and his BA in Sociology from Stony Brook University. Lee has received an endowment to participate in the 2017 ICPSR Summer Program in Quantitative Methods of Social Research and, in the past, has received a scholarship to attend the 2014 Summer Institute on Sexuality, Culture, and Society at the University of

xxi

Contributors

Amsterdam. Lee’s current dissertation work focuses on homophily and relationship satisfaction in same sex coupling. Stephen Tomsen holds the Chair of Criminology at Western Sydney University. He is a criminologist and sociologist and was a member of Australia’s renowned sociology group at Macquarie University in the 1970s and 1980s. His research interests include violence, gender and sexuality, with particular focus on the masculinity of criminal offending and victimisation. Recent publications include Australian Violence: Crime, Criminal Justice and Beyond (Federation Press, 2016, co-edited with Julie Stubbs) and “Crime and masculinity in popular culture” (2017, with Dick Hobbs) in The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice. Emily Troshynski is an Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Nevada, Las

Vegas. She teaches introductory courses on criminal justice, upper-division courses in women and crime, gender and crime, sociology of law, and a special topics course on surveillance and social control. Olivia Tuttle is a graduate student at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas with research interests

in international affairs, human rights, and human trafficking. Her master’s thesis examines social, economic, and political correlates of international responses to human trafficking. Sandra Walklate is Eleanor Rathbone Chair of Sociology at the University of Liverpool conjoint Chair of Criminology at Monash University in Melbourne where she is working with the gender and family violence focus research team. Her current work includes being the international partner on an ARC funded project on intimate partner homicide with colleagues at Monash and a third book on criminology and war with Ross McGarry at the University of Liverpool and developing ongoing theoretical work with Gabe Mythen. She is currently Editor in Chief of the British Journal of Criminology. Saundra D. Westervelt is a Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina Greens-

boro. Her work focuses broadly on criminology and the sociology of law and more specifically on the impact of a wrongful conviction on death row exonerees and their families. Westervelt and her colleague Kimberly J. Cook have published widely on the aftermath of wrongful convictions. Their book, Life after Death Row: Exonerees’ Search for Community and Identity (Rutgers University Press, 2012), examined the post-exoneration experiences of death row survivors and the obstacles to reintegration so often confronted by exonerees. Westervelt was a long-time board member of Witness to Innocence, the nation’s only organization comprised of and for death row exonerees. She lives in Greensboro, NC, with her husband and son. Rob White is Professor of Criminology in the School of Social Sciences at the University of

Tasmania, Australia. Among his recent books are Environmental Harm: An Eco-Justice Perspective (Policy, 2013), Green Criminology (with Di Heckenberg, Routledge, 2014), Environmental Crime and Collaborative State Intervention (with Grant Pink, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) and Media and Crime (with Katrina Clifford, Oxford University Press, 2017). Simon Winlow is Professor of Criminology at the Teesside Centre for Realist Criminology,

Teesside University, UK. He is the author of Badfellas (Berg, 2001) and co-author of Bouncers (Oxford University Press, 2003), Violent Night (Berg, 2006), Criminal Identities and Consumer Culture (Willan, 2008), Rethinking Social Exclusion (Sage, 2013), Revitalizing Criminological Theory xxii

Contributors

(Routledge, 2015), Riots and Political Protest (Routledge, 2015) and Rise of the Right (Policy, 2017). He is also the co-editor of New Directions in Crime and Deviancy (Routledge, 2012), New Directions in Criminological Theory (Routledge, 2012) and Building Better Societies (Policy, 2017). Sappho Xenakis is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Birkbeck Law School, University of London, where she has also founded and directs the MSc Global Criminology programme. She is also Founding Co-Director of the Birkbeck Centre for Political Economy and Institutional Studies (CPEIS). She is currently a Book Review Editor for Critical Criminology and sits on the editorial board of the British Journal of Criminology. Her research focuses on comparative and domestic trends in state and public punitiveness from a political economy perspective, as well as on the relationship between state power and the international transfer of law enforcement values and practices, especially as regards organised crime and political violence.

xxiii

Acknowledgments

It was, to say the least, an honour to be invited to co-edit the second edition of the Routledge Handbook of Critical Criminology. The first edition was born out of a discussion with our friend and editor Gerhard Boomgaarden at the 2009 annual meetings of the American Society of Criminology in Philadelphia. The second rendition emerged out of another discussion with Gerhard, except that one occurred at the 2015 American Sociological Association conference in Chicago. As those who have worked with Gerhard know, he is incredibly supportive and patient. Alyson Claffey, Senior Editorial Assistant, also played a key role in the completion of this project. So did Editorial Assistant Mihaela Diana Ciobotea. We can’t thank them enough for their kindness, guidance, and assistance. Andrea DeKeseredy also provided invaluable editorial assistance without which this handbook would not have come to fruition. She spent many hours of her life reading each manuscript for grammar/spelling and conforming to the required citation and bibliographic style. What’s more, she co-authored the chapter on hate crime (Chapter 19). On top of contributing chapters to this book, Joseph F. Donnermeyer and Martin D. Schwartz spent considerable time and effort helping us make this book better than it otherwise would have been. Special thanks also go to Michael Salter (another contributor) for his sage advice and other types of support. It may be painfully obvious, but worth stating nonetheless: this book is the product of a collective effort. We would like to give a very special thanks to all our colleagues who took time away from their loved ones and academic schedules to contribute vibrant chapters to this book. It was a pleasure for us to read these cutting-edge offerings and we are sure that readers will be inspired by their insight and suggestions for further progressive empirical, theoretical, and policy work. It is important to note that other colleagues were invited to write chapters, but could not due to many other commitments. We thank them, too, for their intellectual contributions to critical criminology. As Robert K. Merton correctly observed, as scholars, we all stand on the shoulders of giants. Over the years, we have greatly benefitted from the comments, criticisms, lessons, emotional support, and influences of many people included in this book (you know who you are), as well as others, including (while hoping that we have not left too many out): Jay Albanese, Rowland Atkinson, Bernie Auchter, Karen Bachar, Ronet Bachman, Gregg Barak, Ola Barnett, Helene Berman, Brenda Sims Blackwell, Rebecca Block, Jan Breckenridge, Anne Brewster, Liqun Cao, Steve Cake, Gail Caputo, Gary Cassagnol, Susan Caringella, Pat Carlen, Ann Coker, Marilyn Corsianos, Annie Cossins, Terry Cox, Wesley Crichlow, Francis T. Cullen, Kathleen Daly, Juergen Dankwort, Jodie Death, Desmond Ellis, Jeff Ferrell, Bonnie Fisher, William F. Flack Jr., Diane Follingstad, Rus Funk, Rosemary Gido, Alberto Godenzi, Edward Gondolf, Barbara Hart, Ronald Hinch, Sandra Huntzinger, Rita Kanarek, Dorie Klein, Clifford Jansen, Victor Kappeler, Mary Koss, Salley Laskey, Julian Lo, Michael J. Lynch, Brian MacLean, Louise xxiv

Acknowledgments

McOrmond-Plummer, Anne Menard, Raymond Michalowski, Jody Miller, Susan L. Miller, Louise Moyer, Christopher Mullins, Kyle Mulrooney, Darlene Murphy, Heather Nancarrow, Nancy Neylon, Patrik Olsson, Sue Osthoff, Reiko Ozaki, Sandy Ortman, Barbara Owen, Ellen Pence, Ruth Peterson, Lori Post, Gary Potter, Mike Presdee, James Ptacek, Callie Rennison, Robin Robinson, Jill Rosenbaum, Linda Saltzman, Daniel Saunders, Aysan Sev’er, Susan Sharp, Michael D. Smith, Natalie Sokoloff, Betsy Stanko, Cris Sullivan, Thomas Sutton, Kenneth Tunnell, David Wiesenthal, Jock Young, Julia Zafferano, and Joan Zorza. Since many of these people disagree with one another, we accept full responsibility for the information presented in this book. Walter DeKeseredy is especially grateful for the ongoing support of Pat and Andrea DeKeseredy and that of his “fur children” Bennie, Captain, Higgins, Jinksie, Noodle, and Pheobe. He also thanks these members of the West Virginia University (WVU) community for their friendship and for creating a stimulating supportive intellectual environment: Trevor Harris, Melanie Page, M. Cecil Smith, Melanie Page, and folks affiliated with the Research Center on Violence at WVU. Acknowledgements, too, go out to the American Society of Criminology’s Divisions on Critical Criminology, Victimology, and on Women and Crime. Many members of these organizations helped shape the early years of Walter’s career. Molly Dragiewicz would like to thank Matt Benner, Lucy Brenner, Kay Dragiewicz, Judy Dragiewicz, Larry Dragiewicz, and Marc Dragiewicz for their ongoing love and support. She would also like to thank her lovely colleagues in the School of Justice and Faculty of Law at QUT for making it such as positive work environment. She is grateful for the inspiration and advice she gets in real life and online from her involvement with the American Society of Criminology’s Division on Women and Crime and all her DV friends and colleagues. We dedicate this book to the memory of William (Bill) Chambliss, Stan Cohen, Stuart Hall, Barbara Hudson, Geoffrey Pearson, Mike Presdee, Julia Schwendinger, Michael D. Smith, Ian Taylor, and Jock Young. These are “rock stars” of critical criminology and the inspiring music they played will live on forever.

xxv

Introduction Critical criminology Past, present, and future Walter S. DeKeseredy and Molly Dragiewicz

What is critical criminology?1 The most promising future for criminology involves the maturing and spreading of a truly structural and globally engaged work that not only puts the larger developments in world society at the forefront of analysis, but also works to create new and more effective ways of linking that intellectual work with movements for social change – which includes a concerted effort to move out beyond our usual academic and governmental constituencies to build stronger working relationships with people who are trying to make change from the ground up. (Currie, 2016, pp. 20–21)

The above statement makes explicit some of the things that critical criminologists do and that are sorely needed in this current era plagued by what Currie (2016) views as “capitalism with the lid off ” (p. 10). His 5-year old observation (see Currie, 2013) is even more apparent today: we are witnessing the latest devastating consequences of the “slow apocalypse.” This term was coined by Harrington (1989) to describe where capitalism might be heading at the time he wrote his book Socialism: Past and Future. Nostradamus (1503–1566), a French physician and astrologer, is one of the Western world’s most famous predictors of the future. Many people find his prophecies to be chillingly accurate foretellings of major wars and other world events, but he has nothing on Harrington’s. For example, since Donald Trump officially became President of the United States (U.S.) in January 2017, U.S. citizens experienced: attempts to eliminate the Affordable Health Care Act (also known as Obamacare); a major increase in military spending; large tax cuts for the wealthy coupled with equally large cuts in benefits for low-income people; major assaults on environmental regulations and moves to open public lands to private exploitation; wholesale deportation of immigrants living in the U.S. illegally, even if they have been living exemplary lives; the attempt to bar citizens of six primarily Muslim countries from coming to the U.S.; and the elimination of the Obama administration’s August 2016 order to phase out private prisons. These radical transitions constitute just the tip of the iceberg and are major indicators of “unfettered capitalism” (Currie, 2013). An even longer list of brutal symptoms of structured social inequality that span across the globe could be provided here, but we leave it to the contributors to this handbook to describe 1

Introduction

them to you. What you will also learn from reading all the chapters, if you have not done so already, is that “there are as many types of critical criminology as there are writers and teachers in the area” (Schwartz & Hatty, 2003, p. ix). As well, it is well-known within progressive criminological circles that there is no widely accepted definition of critical criminology. Yet, as Friedrichs (2009) observes, “The unequal distribution of power and material resources within contemporary societies provides a point of departure for all strains of critical criminology” (2009, p. 210). If, for convenience, we were to choose a simple definition of critical criminology, it might be good to follow Donnermeyer and DeKeseredy (2014): a polyglot of concepts, theories, and interpretations about crime, deviance, and social control. The various types of critical criminology can be summed up as perspectives that view crime as: rooted in economic, social and political inequalities, along with social class divisions, racism and hate, and other forms of segmented social organization, reinforced and rationalized by culturally derived relativistic definitions of conforming, deviant, and criminal actions, which separate, segregate, and otherwise cause governments at all levels everywhere to differentially and discriminately enforce laws and punish offenders. (Donnermeyer, 2012, p. 289) In other words, critical criminologists view hierarchical social stratification and inequality along class, racial/ethnic, and gender lines as the major sources of crime and the key factors that shape societal reactions to violations of legal and social norms (DeKeseredy & Dragiewicz, 2014a, Young, 1988). Even so, it cannot be emphasized enough that “there is no party line” (Currie, 2008, p. vii). Another common feature critical criminologists share is strong opposition to prisons and other draconian forms of social control too numerous to list here. The main objective is radical cultural change. Yet many, if not most, progressive scholars and activists propose short-term solutions to crime while simultaneously keeping their eyes on the bigger prize (e.g., a transition from an unequal society to a truly egalitarian one). Nevertheless, at the time of writing this chapter, due in large part to widespread popular support for right-wing political agendas, such as those advanced by Trump, “[t]he result is a kind of deep resignation – a profound pessimism, even among many progressive people, about the possibilities of a better society” (Currie, 2013, p. 3). This pessimism is well founded. What, then, is to be done? Are there realistic means of creating a truly equitable social democracy envisioned by critical criminologists? Part III of this handbook provides some viable answers to these questions. Obviously, more than just what is suggested there is necessary. Perhaps we should also consider Winlow, Hall, Treadwell, and Briggs’ (2015) recommendation: It is now incumbent upon the political left to rejuvenate its discourse and transform itself into something that inspires young people to believe that something better can actually be brought into existence. What the left really needs is a realistic utopianism, a utopianism that connects a genuine faith that a better world can be connected to a doggedly realistic understanding and appreciation of just how difficult this task is and the scale of work needed to make it possible. (pp. 204–205, emphasis in original) Criminology attracts many of whom Jock Young (2011) refers to as “datasaurs.” Also coined by Young as “Empiricus Absractus,” the datasaur: 2

Introduction

is a creature with a very small head, a long neck, a huge belly and a little tail. His head has only a smattering of theory, he knows that he must move constantly but is not sure where he is going, he rarely looks at any detail of the actual terrain on which he travels, his neck peers upwards as he moves from grant to grant, from database to database, his belly is huge and distended with the intricate intestine of regression analysis, he eats ravenously but rarely thinks about the actual process of statistical digestion, his tail is small, slight and inconclusive. (p. 15) Datasaurs, too, are partly responsible for perpetuating the myth that critical criminologists are simply ideologues who have no interest in theory development, theory testing, or any type of empirical inquiry. Nothing can be further from the truth. Critical criminologists routinely conduct theoretically informed, path-breaking qualitative and quantitative studies that yield useful data on a legion of social problems, ranging from interpersonal violence, to brutal methods of social control, to state crime. Progressive research on these and other substantive topics is covered throughout this handbook (see Part II). A major difference between critical criminologists who do empirical work and datasaurs and other orthodox criminologists is that progressives have no problem publicly revealing their politics. Critical criminologists rarely hide their disquiet with abstracted empiricism2 (e.g., research divorced from theory) or with scientific inquiry that is divorced from a concern with gender, race, the political economy and social forces. It is conservative criminologists like Wright and DeLisi (2016) who try to disguise their politics by portraying themselves as completely objective and scientific. While criminologists of every political stripe commonly denounce scholarship from other camps and advance their own perspective, one difference is that this is openly done by most critical criminologists, who deny that science can be completely objective and valuefree. What Wright and DeLisi (2016) and many other positivists fail to recognise is that when they do the same thing, they are engaged in a process of ideological activism that attempts to advance their own political agenda (DeKeseredy & Dragiewicz, 2007). They are concerned that academics are making political statements by their choice of topic and methodology but fail to understand that this also applies to themselves. It is as much a political act to leave race, gender, class and economic influences out of your study, as it is to include them (DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 2017). There are, as well, orthodox criminologists who claim that critical criminologists not only abstain from doing rigorous empirical and theoretical work, but that they also concentrate heavily on “throwing stones” at right-wing scholarship and policies. “Throwing stones,” according to University of Wollongong critical criminologist Juan Marcellus Tauri, involves simply criticizing traditional or mainstream variants of criminological thought. Certainly, critical criminology has advanced far beyond critique and Taylor, Walton, and Young’s (1973) ground-breaking The New Criminology. Actually, critical criminology has gone through many theoretical, empirical, and political changes since its birth in the late 1960s and one of the key objectives of the second edition of the Routledge Handbook of Critical Criminology is to outline these transitions. Still, as stated by Young (2013) in his new introduction to the 40th anniversary edition of The New Criminology, “there is much left to do” (p. xlvii). The world is plagued with many ongoing and new crises and critical criminologists need to keep people focused on the struggle for broader social change. Of course, many critical criminologists are interested in the same questions as mainstream criminologists: Why do some people rape, commit robbery, beat up women they are intimate with, and steal cars? Moreover, a few critical criminologists, such as left realists (see Chapter 2), 3

Introduction

borrow some concepts (e.g., relative deprivation and subculture) from mainstream theories like those developed by Cohen (1955) and Merton (1938). An important difference between orthodox and critical criminologists, though, is that the latter focus on the flaws in the fabric of societies that breed, create, and sustain criminality rather than flaws in the makeup of individuals who commit crime. Another key distinction is that critical criminologists provide different answers to the question “Whose side are we on” (Becker, 1967)? Mainstream criminologists advance punishing or treating socially and economically disadvantaged people who commit street crime, while critical criminologists are on the side of the “truly disadvantaged” (Wilson, 1987). Included in this group of “outsiders” (Becker, 1973) are victims of human rights violations, those who lost jobs because major corporations moved operations to developing countries, people lacking adequate social services (e.g., health care and child care), and targets of state terrorism, such as those imprisoned by the U.S. government in Guantanamo. Critical criminologists want to broaden the definition of crime to include these harms, as well as racism, imperialism, and corporate and political wrongdoing (Barak, 2017; Carrington, 2015; Collins, 2016; Elias, 1986; Reiman & Leighton, 2016; Schwendinger & Schwendinger, 1975). Not all critical criminologists are based in universities or colleges. Many are practitioners, work for non-profit organizations, government agencies, and consulting companies. In addition, over the last 36 years, critical criminology, as a discipline, has influenced many international organizations that struggle for social justice (Currie, 2008; DeKeseredy & Dragiewicz, 2014a). For example, the editors of this handbook have a long history of working in the U.S., Canada, and Australia with local and national organizations struggling to end violence against women.

A brief history of critical criminology3 While critical criminology’s roots are widespread, some progressive scholars trace their lineage to Marxism and Marxist thought (see DeKeseredy, 2017). Karl Marx however, said little about crime (Matthews, 2012), and the sociology of law was a secondary interest to him (Milovanovic, 1994). Marx was more involved studying the development of capitalism and its negative effects on social, political, and economic life (Burtch, 1992; DeKeseredy & Dragiewicz, 2014a). Orthodox Marxists (e.g., Hirst, 1975), thus, argue that Marxist theory cannot be applied to the study of crime and law, and there may be some truth to this. Even so, many critical criminologists, especially those who produced theories of crime and its control in the 1970s and early 1980s, relied on Marxist analyses of capitalist society and defined themselves as radical criminologists. Three prime examples are Taylor, Walton and Young, authors of the 1973 book The New Criminology. Perhaps Elliott Currie’s endorsement of the 40th anniversary edition of this work on its back cover is the best way to express the original version’s impact on the field: Forty years ago, three extraordinarily young scholars produced an ambitious and utterly original book that would shape the way we think about crime – and criminology – for decades. The New Criminology has been one of the more respected and influential books in its field and in recent memory. This book, and the writings of Richard Quinney (1974), Frank Pearce (1976) and William Chambliss (1975), are important for their contributions to a sociological understanding of crime and the administration of justice. This is not to suggest that critical scholars no longer apply Marxist perspectives to criminological problems, as evidenced, in part, by those who study the origins and functions of law (e.g., Reiman & Leighton, 2016). 4

Introduction

John Lea (2010) sensitizes us to the fact that Marx and Engels may be long gone but the “general perspective on crime” derived from them “has a particular salience for the present situation” (p. 23). We agree and predict that Marx and Engels’ work will remain relevant within critical criminology considering recent major global economic crises, the rapidly increasing gap between the “haves” and “have nots,” and staggering levels of unemployment among people attempting to enter the workforce. For these and other reasons, critical criminologists are, to various extents, compelled to turn to Marx, “not because he is infallible, but because he is inescapable” (Heilbroner, 1980, p. 15). There were several reasons for replacing the term radical criminology with critical criminology, one of which is that starting in the mid-1980s, a “new wave” of younger or newer criminologists, especially feminists, were also challenging mainstream criminology from perspectives that were not Marxist in orientation (Michalowski, 2012). Many of these academics and activists (mostly those based in North America) ultimately helped create the American Society of Criminology’s Division on Critical Criminology (DCC) in Chicago in 1988. The DCC is now a welcoming “big theoretical tent” for a large cadre of progressives based around the world (who may or may not share the Marxist roots of radical criminology). By no means, however, was the term critical criminology born in Chicago. Arguably, it was formally created in 1975 by Ian Taylor, Paul Walton and Jock Young with the publication of their anthology Critical Criminology. Regardless of when and where the name critical criminology was first crafted, the fact remains that there are numerous variants of critical criminological thought and new types continue to emerge. While the U.S. and the United Kingdom are the birthplaces of contemporary critical criminology (DeKeseredy & Dragiewicz, 2012; Michalowski, 2012; Mooney, 2012), the field is now characterized by much international collaboration and intellectual cross-fertilization. What Schwendinger, Schwendinger, and Lynch (2008) label as “compatible perspectives” are also found in countries such as Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Cuba, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, and Sweden. We are unable to cover every form of critical criminology from around the world in this collection, but progressive work done by scholars and activists not included in this handbook is deemed just as important and influential as the contributions made by the people who authored materials for it. Regardless of where progressive criminologists are based, they continue to be greatly influenced by the British traditions described by Young (2013) and U.S. foundations documented by Michalowski (2012), Platt (1975), and Schwendinger et al. (2008). In our own case, we find that Australian critical criminology is a growing influence on the field and this is due largely to the intellectual cross-fertilization promoted by Kerry Carrington and her colleagues (including Molly Dragiewicz) at Queensland University of Technology’s (QUT) School of Justice located in Brisbane, Australia. Like Carrington and her scholarly peers at QUT, British progressives Steve Hall and Simon Winlow (authors of Chapter 3) are consistently trying to create new international partnerships with critical criminologists around the world and they have taught us some new ways of thinking critically about crime. Cultural criminology, as discussed in Chapter 8 by Stephen Muzzatti and Emma Smith, is one more chief example of intellectual and political crossfertilization because those who work in this tradition are based on both sides of the Atlantic, especially in the U.S. and the United Kingdom (e.g., Ferrell, Hayward, & Young, 2015).4

Critical criminology today5 Many notable elements of critical criminology emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s. One was avoiding “schisms, defections, recriminations, collective boredom, chronic illness, and 5

Introduction

premature burials” (Cohen, 1988, p. 86). This is an incredible achievement because many, if not most, left-wing collectives begin with much energy and excitement only eventually to succumb to “factionalism,” “profound argumentation,” and “self-defeating internal debate” (Winlow & Atkinson, 2013, p. 3). Nonetheless, pioneering critical criminologists were not immune to intense conflict. For example, in the U.S., radicals rarely gained control over an entire university department, and where they did – such as the University of California (UC) at Berkeley – the result was more likely the disbanding of the department than the establishment of a beachhead of progressive theory, research, and praxis (DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 1991, 1996; Schwendinger et al., 2008). Though isolated radicals have often been tolerated if they did not cause much trouble in the U.S., radical criminologists and critical legal scholars have been heavily victimized by “academic McCarthysism” (Friedrichs, 1989). One such person who is repeatedly discussed in the extant critical criminological literature is Tony Platt, author of the widely read and cited 1969 book The Child Savers. In 1974, he was denied tenure at the UC at Berkeley despite meeting the criteria of good teaching and excellent scholarship.6 At that time, the regents of the University of California were conservative elites with major connections to the military industrial complex, and they had the power to veto tenure recommendations (Schwendinger et al., 2008). The UC at Berkeley chancellor was quoted as saying Platt was an “orthodox Marxist” and “biased in his teaching” (cited in Leonard, 1974, p. 1). Even the prestigious American Society of Criminology (ASC) was unkind to critical criminologists. In 1979, some mainstream criminologists attacked radical scholars in a special issue of Criminology (volume 16, number 4, February 1979),7 which is one of two official journals of the ASC.8 As the Schwendingers and Michael J. Lynch (2008) recall, “This edition, devoted to radical criminology, was unprecedented. It was the first time any professional society had published a separate edition of its official journal aimed at discrediting an up-and-coming theoretical and policy perspective in the field” (p. 55). Yet, the ASC could not terminate the international critical criminological project. It is very much alive and well today as documented by chapters included in this handbook. Evidence of the power of critical criminology’s resilience in the face of adversity is that, at the time of writing this introduction in May 2017, the Division on Critical Criminology (DCC) was the largest division in the ASC, a fact that outrages conservative criminologists Wright and DeLisi (2016). The DCC then included nearly 700 members and there were 200 in 1997. Moreover, the ASC has other divisions (e.g., Women and Crime, People of Color and Crime, and Victimology) with numerous members who are critical scholars. Also, several progressive criminology journals are thriving, including Critical Criminology, Contemporary Justice Review, Crime, Law and Social Change, Feminist Criminology, Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, and Social Justice. That this handbook is in its second edition is another powerful statement on the current condition of critical criminology. Furthermore, critical scholars are elected officers in major professional organizations and some have received prestigious awards for their scholarship, pedagogical work, and activism. In sum, then, critical criminology is gaining momentum despite rabid right-wing attacks on progressive ideas, people, and policies in this current era characterized by growing right-wing populism. In the mid-1980s and early 1990s, the criminological world saw the development of what was then four new directions in critical criminology: feminism, left realism, peacemaking, and postmodernism. In response to the emergence of these progressive perspectives, Schwartz (1991) stated that critical criminology “is infused with more energy and exciting alternatives than at any point in the past 20 years” and that “there are so many more avenues and ideas to develop” (p. 123). All critical criminologists echo his words today. There are now at least 12 variants of critical criminological thought and some new types are probably being crafted while you read 6

Introduction

this introduction. Part I of this handbook examines new ways of “thinking critically about crime” (MacLean & Milovanovic, 1997). Another positive sign for critical criminology is the rapid growth of literature in the field. This is one of the key reasons for producing the second edition of The Handbook of Critical Criminology. It is an even bigger challenge today to keep up with all the new empirical, theoretical, and political writings than it was in 2012 when we assembled the first edition, and there are not enough bookshelves in our offices to hold all the progressive books, journal articles, and other written materials published by our colleagues. This collection brings together key scholars to provide a contemporary view of major issues in the field, including recent developments in areas such as green criminology, green/cultural criminology, southern criminology, ultra-realism, and queer criminology. Indeed, this handbook would not have been published had it not been for a large global audience hungry for alternative ways of knowing.

What is next for critical criminology? Critical criminology has reached the point where there is plenty of room for various accounts of its exciting history. Yet, we suspect that an unknown number of readers will criticize our brief account. We have no problem with that. As Michalowski (1996) states in his story of critical criminology, “This is all to the good. I increasingly suspect that we can best arrive at useful truth by telling and hearing multiple versions of the same story” (p. 9). New stories and new voices are always welcome, and to repeat Elliott Currie (2008), “There is no party line” (p. vii). Crime and social control are never ending and ever changing problems. Hence, it is time to move forward and hopefully, this handbook helps achieve this goal. Inclusivity, though, remains a major challenge for critical criminology. In the words of Gilfus et al. (1999), “we should always be conscious of who is not there and that we are not hearing those perspectives” (p. 1207). The critical criminological project is no longer “gender-blind” and now includes a healthy number of female feminist scholars. It is also less heteronormative thanks to the efforts of Carrie Buist, Emily Lenning, and Matthew Ball (see Chapter 7). They and others around the globe are Queer(ing) criminology.9 Queer criminology, as defined by Buist and Lenning (2016), is a theoretical and practical approach that seeks to highlight and draw attention to the stigmatization, the criminalization, and in many ways the rejection of the Queer community, which is to say the LGBTQ (lesbians, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) population, as both victims and offenders, by academe and the criminal legal system. (p. 3) All the same, there is a conspicuous absence of people of color in critical criminological circles and this handbook illustrates this problem. Why is this the case? Critical criminology’s foundational focus on class rather than intersectional forms of social stratification means that much of the work still fails to engage with racism in a meaningful way. As a result, few scholars of color identify as critical criminologists. Yet critical criminology shares common goals with the revolutionary criminology coming out of the ASC Division on People of Color and Crime. Faculty members of color continue to be underrepresented in academic criminology due to persistent discrimination in hiring and promotion practices (Collins & Bilge, 2016; DeKeseredy & Dragiewicz, 2012). Keep in mind, too, that the American Society of Criminology (ASC) elected its first Black president (Ruth Peterson) in 2014, which is another sign of that racism remains powerful even in “progressive” academic circles. Scholars of color are dispro7

Introduction

portionately burdened with service and teaching demands because of their under-representation, requiring strategic prioritization of time and energy. What is more, some scholars feel pressure to take up “mainstream” methods and approaches that can help mitigate perceptions that their work is marginal or “biased” based on attention to, or membership in, non-dominant identity categories (Potter, Higgins, & Gabbidon, 2011; Rockquemore & Laszloffy, 2008). Not only has critical criminology failed to effectively engage with scholars of color, but it has also failed to do so with many members of other groups, such as Indigenous peoples and those based in the global South. Though, things may be changing, as reflected by the publication of Cunneen and Tauri’s (2017) book Indigenous Criminology and the emerging field of southern criminology examined in Chapter 4 by Carrington, Hogg, and Sozzo. These and other critical scholars are working hard to decolonize and democratize criminological knowledge (Hogg, Scott, & Sozzo, 2017). It is beyond the scope of this introduction to provide a longer list of issues critical criminologists need to examine in the future because recommendations for further work are offered throughout this handbook, but we would be remiss if we did not touch on the need to more actively engage with the general public. This has long been a concern for Elliott Currie (2007) and more recently for the contributors to Matthews’s (2016) collection. Doyle and Moore (2011) remind us that, “It is . . . fair to say that critical criminologists are not always the best communicators” (p. 20). Some simple ways of addressing this shortcoming include writing blogs, sharing our work on Facebook and Twitter, and collaborating with progressive community groups. Critical criminologists should also take every opportunity to disseminate their views to the mainstream mass media, creating a situation where they are “seen and heard not after the fact, but proactively” (Renzetti, 1999, p. 1236). Referred to as engaging in “newsmaking criminology,”10 this involves volunteering to appear on radio, television and Internet talk shows, inviting the media to special events, writing press releases, holding book launches, and so on. The publication of critical criminologists’ letters to the editor and op-ed pieces in mainstream press outlets, and the inclusion of some of our colleagues on television, serve as evidence that the popular media do not totally dismiss or ignore struggles for peace, equality, and justice (Carringella-MacDonald & Humphries, 1998; DeKeseredy & Corsianos, 2016). Critical criminologists will always have much more work to do, but it is essential to always remember that most progressive scholarly and political projects are, to quote Elliott Currie (1985, p. vii), “to a much greater extent than is usually recognized, the products of collective effort.” In addition, whatever directions critical criminologists take in the years to come, they will always be standing “on the shoulders of giants” (Merton 1965), such as these pioneers who recently passed away: William Chambliss, Stan Cohen, Stuart Hall, Barbara Hudson, Geoffrey Pearson, Mike Presdee, Julia Schwendinger, Ian Taylor, and Jock Young.

The second edition of the Routledge Handbook of Critical Criminology11 Like the first Routledge Handbook of Critical Criminology, this one is a comprehensive resource for students, instructors, practitioners, researchers, and activists interested in learning more about the exciting field of critical criminology. As our Editor Gerhard Boomgaarden noted, another goal of the handbook is to “set the research agenda for the next five to seven years, to redefine existing areas within the context of international multidisciplinary critical research, and to highlight emerging areas.” This handbook consists of 40 chapters and is divided into three sections: theoretical perspectives; select topics in critical criminology; and policy issues. Readers familiar with the first edition 8

Introduction

will quickly detect that one section is clearly missing. It is the one on the history of critical criminology, which included five chapters. This time, our goal is not to, “in the time-honoured fashion” (Winlow & Atkinson, 2013, p. 17), repeat the history of critical criminology in various nations. Rather, we mainly focus on the most recent, up-to-date or “cutting-edge” work in the field. New chapters are included, while others have been updated. We hasten to mention that the pieces included in this anthology are not superior to those absent from it and the order in which they appear does not reflect a hierarchy of importance. Likewise, we endeavored to be as thorough as possible, but, again, we could not include all topics of central concern to the international critical criminological community for reasons beyond our control. Given the proliferation of scholarly handbooks covered by Routledge and other publishing companies, we know that newer books will cover the equally important critical criminological terrains not explored here. This handbook shows that critical criminology has gone through significant changes since its birth in the late 1960s and the publication of the first edition. More positive transformations are on their way and more people will contribute to the critical criminological project. A few years ago, at an American Society of Criminology conference, David Friedrichs referred to himself and Martin D. Schwartz as “second generation” critical criminologists. If this is the case, and we believe it to be true, then Walter DeKeseredy is part of a third-generation cohort of critical criminologists and Molly Dragiewicz is one of many fourth-generation progressive scholars. We can’t wait to see, read, and hear what the next two generations offer.

Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Parts of this section and the rest of this chapter are based on works published previously by DeKeseredy (2011) and DeKeseredy and Dragiewicz (2012, 2014a). C. Wright Mills (1959) coined this term. This section includes modified portions of work published previously by DeKeseredy (2017), DeKeseredy and Dragiewicz (2012, 2014a) and DeKeseredy and Schwartz (1991, 1996). There are, of course, cultural criminologists in other parts of the world including Canada, where Ryerson University professor Stephen Muzzatti has made several important contributions to the field. This section includes revised versions of work published previously by DeKeseredy (2011) and DeKeseredy and Dragiewicz (2014b). His colleague Herman Schwendinger was also denied tenure at the UC at Berkeley and he was blacklisted for two years because of his Marxist perspective on the social world (Schwendinger et al., 2008). Some of the articles included in this issue were reprinted in James Inciardi’s (1980) controversial anthology Radical Criminology: The Coming Crises. Criminology & Public Policy is the other official journal of the ASC. See, for example, the contributors to Peterson and Panfil’s (2014) collection. Newsmaking criminology is defined here as the “conscious efforts of criminologists and others to participate in the presentation of ‘newsworthy’ items about crime and justice” (Barak, 1988, p. 565). This section includes modified sections of work published earlier by DeKeseredy and Dragiewicz (2012, 2014b).

References Barak, G. (1988). Newsmaking criminology: Reflections on the media, intellectuals, and crime. Justice Quarterly, 5, 565–588. Barak, G. (2017). Unchecked Corporate Power: Why the Crimes of Multinational Corporations are Routinized Away and What We Can Do About It. London: Routledge. Becker, H. S. (1967). Whose side are we on? Social Problems, 14, 239–247. Becker, H. S. (1973). Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. New York: Free Press. Buist, C. L., & Lenning, E. (2016). Queer Criminology. London: Routledge. 9

Introduction

Burtch, B. (1992). The Sociology of Law: Critical Approaches to Social Control. Toronto: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Caringella-MacDonald, S., & Humphries, D. (1998). Guest editors’ introduction. Violence Against Women, 4, 3–9. Carrington, K. (2015). Feminism and Global Justice. London: Routledge. Chambliss, W. (1975). Toward a political economy of crime. Theory and Society (Summer), 167–180. Cohen, A. (1955). Delinquent Boys: The Culture of the Gang. New York, NY: Free Press. Cohen, S. (1988). Against Criminology. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Collins, P. H., & Bilge, S. (2016). Intersectionality. Cambridge, UK: Polity. Collins, V. E. (2016). State Crime, Women and Gender. London: Routledge. Cunneen, C., & Tauri, J. (2017). Indigenous Criminology. Cambridge, UK: Policy Press at the University of Bristol. Currie, E. (1985). Confronting Crime: An American Challenge. New York: Pantheon. Currie, E. (2007). Against marginality: Arguments for a public criminology. Theoretical Criminology, 11, 175–190. Currie, E. (2008). Preface. In K. Carrington & R. Hogg (Eds.), Critical Criminology: Issues, Debates, Challenges (pp. vii–ix). Portland, OR: Willan. Currie, E. (2013). The sustaining society. In K. Carrington, M. Ball, E. O’Brien, & J. Tauri (Eds.), Crime, Justice and Social Democracy: International Perspectives (pp. 3–15). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Currie, E. (2016). The violence divide: Taking “ordinary” crime seriously in a volatile world. In R. Matthews (Ed.), What is to be Done About Crime and Punishment? Towards a ‘Public Criminology’ (pp. 9–30). London: Palgrave Macmillan. DeKeseredy, W. S. (2011). Contemporary Critical Criminology. London: Routledge. DeKeseredy, W. S. (2017). Critical criminology. In A. Brisman, E. Carrabine, & N. South (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to Criminological Theory and Concepts. London: Routledge. DeKeseredy, W. S., & Corsianos, M. (2016). Violence Against Women in Pornography. London: Routledge. DeKeseredy, W. S., & Dragiewicz, M. (2007). Understanding the complexities of feminist perspectives on woman abuse: A commentary on Donald G. Dutton’s Rethinking Domestic Violence: Violence Against Women, 13, 874–884. DeKeseredy, W. S., & Dragiewicz, M. (2012). Introduction: Critical criminology: Past, present, and future. In W. S. DeKeseredy & M. Dragiewicz (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Critical Criminology (pp. 1–8). London: Sage. DeKeseredy, W. S., & Dragiewicz, M. (2014a). Introduction: Moving forward, looking back. In W. S. DeKeseredy & M. Dragiewicz (Eds.), Critical Criminology,Volume 1 (pp. 1–16). London: Routledge. DeKeseredy, W. S., & Dragiewicz, M. (2014b). Introduction: Advances in critical criminological theorizing. In W. S. DeKeseredy & M. Dragiewicz (Eds.), Critical Criminology, Volume 2 (pp. 1–12). London: Routledge. DeKeseredy, W. S., & Schwartz, M. D. (1991). British and U.S. left realism: A critical comparison. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 35, 248–262. DeKeseredy, W. S., & Schwartz, M. D. (1996). Contemporary Criminology. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. DeKeseredy, W. S., & Schwartz, M. D. (2017). Days of whine and poses. British Journal of Criminology, 57, 742–745. Donnermeyer, J. F. (2012). Rural crime and critical criminology. In W. S. DeKeseredy & M. Dragiewicz (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Critical Criminology (pp. 290–301). London: Routledge. Donnermeyer, J. F., & DeKeseredy, W. S. (2014). Rural Criminology. London: Routledge. Doyle, A., & Moore, D. (2011). Introduction: Questions for a new generation of criminologists. In A. Doyle & D. Moore (Eds.), Critical Criminology in Canada: New Voices, New Directions (pp. 1–24). Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. Elias, R. (1986). The Politics of Victimization. New York: Oxford University Press. Ferrell, J., Hayward, K., & Young, J. (2015). Cultural Criminology: An Invitation (2nd ed.). Los Angeles: Sage. Friedrichs, D. O. (1989). Critical criminology and critical legal studies. Critical Criminologist, 1, 7. Friedrichs, D. O. (2009). Critical criminology. In J. M. Miller (Ed.), 21st Century Criminology: A Reference Handbook,Volume 1 (pp. 210–218). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Gilfus, M. E., Fineran, S., Cohan, D. J., Jensen, S. A., Hartwick, L., & Spath. R. (1999). Research on violence against women: Creating survivor-informed collaborations. Violence Against Women, 5, 1194–1212. Harrington, M. (1989). Socialism: Past and Future. New York: Arcade Publishing.

10

Introduction

Hirst, P. (1975). Marx and Engels on law, crime and morality. In I. Taylor, P. Walton, & J. Young (Eds.), Critical Criminology (pp. 203–232). London: Routledge. Hogg, R., Scott, J., & Sozzo, M. (2017). Special issue: Southern criminology: Guest editors’ introduction. Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 6, 1–7. Heilbroner, R. (1980). Marxism, For and Against. New York, NY: Norton. Inciardi, J. A. (Ed.). (1980). Radical Criminology: The Coming Crises. Beverly Hills: Sage. Lea, J. (2010). Karl Marx (1818–83) and Friedrich Engels (1820–95). In K. Hayward, S. Maruna, & J. Mooney (Eds.), Fifty Key Thinkers in Criminology (pp. 18–24). London: Routledge. Leonard, K. (1974). Progressive professors on thin ice here and nationwide. New University, 6, 16. MacLean, B. D., & Milovanovic, D. (Eds.). (1997). Thinking Critically About Crime. Vancouver, BC: Collective Press. Matthews, R. (2012). Marxist criminology. In W. S. DeKeseredy & M. Dragiewicz (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Critical Criminology (pp. 93–104). London: Routledge. Matthews, R. (Ed.). (2016). What is to be Done About Crime and Punishment? Towards a ‘Public Criminology’. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Merton, R. K. (1938). Social structure and anomie. American Sociological Review, 3, 672–682. Merton, R. K. (1965). On the Shoulders of Giants. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Michalowski, R. J. (1996). Critical criminology and the critique of domination: The story of an intellectual movement. Critical Criminology, 1, 9–16. Michalowski, R. J. (2012). The history of critical criminology in the United States. In W. S. DeKeseredy & M. Dragiewicz (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Critical Criminology (pp. 32–45). London: Routledge. Mills, C. W. (1959). The Sociological Imagination. New York: Oxford University Press. Milovanovic, D. (1994). A Primer in the Sociology of Law. New York: Harrow and Heston. Mooney, J. (2012). Finding a political voice: The emergence of critical criminology in Britain. In W. S. DeKeseredy & M. Dragiewicz (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Critical Criminology (pp. 13–31). London: Routledge. Pearce, F. (1976). Crimes of the Powerful: Marxism, Crime and Deviance. London: Pluto Press. Peterson, D., & Panfil, V. (Eds.). (2014). Handbook of LGBT Communities, Crime, and Justice. New York: Springer. Platt, A.M. (1969). The Childsavers. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Platt, T. (1975). Prospects for a radical criminology in the USA. In I. Taylor, P. Walton, & J. Young (Eds.), Critical Criminology (pp. 95–112). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Potter, H., Higgins, G., & Gabbidon, S. (2011). The influence of gender, race/ethnicity, and faculty perceptions on scholarly productivity in Criminology/Criminal Justice. Journal of Criminal Justice Education, 22, 84–101. Quinney, R. (1974). Critique of Legal Order. Boston: Little Brown. Reiman, J., & Leighton, P. (2016). The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison: Ideology, Class, and Criminal Justice (9th ed.). London: Routledge. Renzetti, C. M. (1999). Editor’s introduction. Violence Against Women, 5, 1235–1237. Rockquemore, K. A., & Laszloffy, T. (2008). The Black Academic’s Guide to Winning Tenure Without Losing Your Soul. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Schwartz, M. D. (1991). The future of critical criminology. In B. D. MacLean & D. Milovanovic (Eds.), New Directions in Critical Criminology (pp. 119–124). Vancouver, BC: Collective Press. Schwartz, M. D., & Hatty, S. E. (2003). Introduction. In M. D. Schwartz & S. E. Hatty (Eds.), Controversies in Critical Criminology (pp. ix–xvii). Cincinnati, OH: Anderson. Schwendinger, H., & Schwendinger, J. R. (1975). Defenders of order or guardians of human rights? In I. Taylor, P. Walton, & J. Young (Eds.), Critical Criminology (pp. 113–146). London, UK: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Schwendinger, H., Schwendinger, J. R., & Lynch, M. J. (2008). Critical criminology in the United States: The Berkeley school and theoretical trajectories. In K. Carrington & R. Hogg (Eds.), Critical Criminology: Issues, Debates, Challenges (pp. 41–72). Portland, OR: Willan. Taylor, I., Walton, P., & Young, J. (1973). The New Criminology: For a Social Theory of Deviance. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Taylor, I., Walton, P., & Young, J. (Eds.). (1975). Critical Criminology. London, UK: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Wilson, W. J. (1987). The Truly Disadvantaged: The Inner-City, the Underclass and Public Policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

11

Introduction

Winlow, S., & Atkinson, R. (2013). Introduction. In S. Winlow & R. Atkinson (Eds.), New Directions in Crime and Deviancy (pp. 1–18). London: Routledge. Winlow, S., Hall, S., Treadwell, J., & Briggs, D. (2015). Riots and Political Protest: Notes from the Post-Political Present. London: Routledge. Wright, J. P., & DeLisi, M. (2016). Conservative Criminology: A Call to Restore Balance to the Social Sciences. London: Routledge. Young, J. (1988). Radical criminology in Britain: The emergence of a competing paradigm. British Journal of Criminology, 28, 159–183. Young, J. (2011). The Criminological Imagination. Cambridge, UK: Polity. Young, J. (2013). Introduction to the 40th anniversary edition. In I. Taylor, P. Walton, & J. Young’s The New Criminology: For a Social Theory of Deviance (pp. xi–li). London: Routledge.

12

Part I

Beyond critique Theoretical perspectives Walter S. DeKeseredy and Molly Dragiewicz

Introduction1 So, the increase in the scope of critical criminology, its intrusion across the borderline into other disciplines, brings with it real theoretical gains and insights. But there is much left to do: all that can be stressed is that it is within critical criminology that serious discussions of theory occur. (Young, 2013, p. xlvii)

In 1991, Martin Schwartz made explicit his thoughts on the future of critical criminology and drew three conclusions. One of which is, “critical criminology must define itself, and develop a theory which is something more than exposing the weaknesses of everyone else. . . .” (p. 123). His view was also shared by orthodox criminologists at that time and is still adhered to by most of them in this current era. Schwartz, of course, publicly identifies himself as a progressive, while mainstream criminologists never did (and still don’t) want to have anything to do with critical criminology. Another difference between orthodox scholars and Schwartz was that he was optimistic about the future of critical criminology and stated that, “it is infused with more energy and exciting alternatives than at any point in the past 20 years” (p. 123). The energy Schwartz referred to spawned the creation of what was then four new theoretical directions: left realism, feminism, peacemaking criminology, and postmodern criminology. Now, as stated in the previous section of this handbook, there are at least 12 variants of critical criminological thought and some new types are probably in the works. What Carlen (2007/2008) stated ten years ago still applies today: [P]olitical economy perspectives are now more relevant to a range of global and local harm issues” (p. 3). Robert Reiner expands on this assertion in Chapter 1. In the words of Steve Hall and Simon Winlow (2012) (also contributors to this handbook), Reiner’s work is “an important and – given the turmoil caused by the current global crisis in the capitalist economy – very timely call to criminologists to return to political economy in analyses of crime, policing, and punishment” (p. 10). Unfortunately, political economy has been ignored in the last three decades by a number of intellectual, cultural, and

Part I Introduction

political transitions described in Chapter 1 and in some of Reiner’s other writings.2 We want to help return it to the forefront and that is another reason why it appears in this anthology. The 1987 American Society of Criminology (ASC) conference in Montreal was an exciting event for progressive scholars. The aforementioned four directions in critical criminology were emerging and a large, vibrant cohort of young intellectuals made historical advances at this gathering by offering new ways of thinking critically about crime, law, and social control.3 It was there that Walter DeKeseredy and Martin Schwartz first met and ever since they have coauthored articles and book chapters on left realism. Chapter 2 features their latest contribution, one that provides a “new look” at left realist contributions. Steve Hall and Simon Winlow are, according to Steve Redhead (2015), “outriders of a radically different political economy of our era” (p. 21), and they assert that “critical criminology must avoid political pragmatism and adopt a more critical stance toward consumer culture’s spectacle” (Winlow & Hall, 2016, p. 80). To do this, they contend, criminology must move beyond left realism and critical realism and develop the new ultra-realist perspective they offer in Chapter 3. Ultra-realism is one of the newest directions in critical criminological theory and the same can be said about southern criminology, a perspective articulated by Kerry Carrington, Russell Hogg, and Máximo Sozzo in Chapter 4. Drawing on the work of Connell (2007), these theorists challenge criminology’s Northern colonialism and to quote rural criminologist Joseph F. Donnermeyer (2017), they offer a perspective that is “more capable of considering, both theoretically and empirically, crime and justice in the global South” (p. 121). Claire Renzetti and Kerry Carrington have at least one thing in common – they are both feminists. In Chapter 5, Renzetti outlines major contemporary feminist theoretical developments and reminds us that feminism is more than a set of theories. It is also a social movement informed by theoretical frameworks with the goal of eliminating sexism and promoting gender inequality in all aspects of social life. Readers unfamiliar with feminist inquiry will soon discover that there is no single feminist school of thought. In fact, there are at least 12 variants of feminist criminological theory, but it is impossible to cover them all in one short chapter. Attention to gender in criminology is on the increase due to the efforts of scholars such as Renzetti and Carrington. Like feminist theorists, masculinities scholars put gender at the forefront of their analyses. Pointed out in Chapter 6 by James Messerschmidt and Stephen Tomsen, there are various types of masculinities and there is no simple standard of being a man that guides all male behavior. For many men, crime and violence are viable techniques for performing and validating masculinity. Yet, masculinities scholars observe that the decision to commit certain crimes is affected by class and race relations that structure the resources available to accomplish masculine identity (Messerschmidt, 2005). The bulk of criminology is heteronormative and ignores the realities of the Queer experience. Hence, the need for Queer criminology, which is examined by Carrie Buist, Emily Lenning, and Matthew Ball in Chapter 7. A recent development in critical criminology, Queer criminology is, as defined by two of its founders, Buist and Lenning (2016): a theoretical and practical approach that seeks to highlight and draw attention to the stigmatization, the criminalization, and in many ways the rejection of the Queer community, which is to say the LGBTQ (lesbians, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) population, as both victims and offenders, by academe and the criminal justice system. (p. 1)

14

Part I Introduction

Cultural criminology was born in the mid-1990s (Ferrell, 1994, 1995; Ferrell & Sanders, 1995). In Chapter 8, Stephen Muzzatti and Emma M. Smith trace cultural criminology’s history and its intellectual roots. They also outline some new directions in what they refer to as an “AngloAmerican fusion.” However, cultural criminological work is not only done in the United Kingdom and the United States. It attracts an international cadre of progressive thinkers and Canadian scholars Stephen Muzzatti and Emma M. Smith are prime examples. While U.S. President Donald Trump launches major assaults on environmental regulations and moves to open public lands to private exploitation, the world is experiencing a myriad of environmental harms. Green cultural criminologists Avi Brisman and Nigel South (2013) note that, “For too long, criminology stood on the sideline, leaving the study of environmental crime, harm, law, and regulations to researchers in other fields” (p. 2). Things have definitely changed as described in Chapter 9 by Rob White and in Chapter 10 by Brisman and South. There is now so much critical work being done on green issues that South and Brisman (2013) put together the Routledge International Handbook of Green Criminology. Prisoners and ex-convicts have long been the subjects of criminological examination. Nonetheless, most of the research and theoretical work on these groups is done by criminologists who have little contact with the criminal justice system. Convict criminology involves the use of ethnographic studies of the prison experience to “tell it like it is” (Ross & Richards, 2003, p. 9). The authors of Chapter 11 (Stephen C. Richards, Jeffrey Ian Ross, Greg Newbold, Michael Lenza, and Robert S. Grigsby) belong to a group that includes academic criminologists who have served time in correctional facilities, as well as some progressive scholars who have not been officially designated as criminal or deviant. Given their first-hand experiences with penal institutions, these scholars and other convict criminologists are among a large group of progressives who point to the destructive nature of prisons and their inability to promote peace, reduce crime, and foster social justice. Cultural criminology is influenced, in part, by postmodern criminology, which Dragan Milovanovic examines in Chapter 12. With origins mainly in France and Germany, postmodern thought has had a major impact on many academics, especially those based in university English departments and who specialize in literary criticism (DeKeseredy, 2011). However, it was not until the late 1980s that postmodernism began to influence a number of critical criminologists (Henry & Milovanovic, 2005). Milovanovic is exceptionally well published in this area, and he is “a top spokesman” for this way of thinking critically about crime, law, and social justice (Schwartz & Hatty, 2003). We hasten to mention that the theory chapters selected for this section of the handbook are not superior to those absent from this anthology, and the order in which they appear does not reflect a hierarchy of importance. Given the proliferation of handbooks produced by Routledge and other publishing companies, we know that newer books will cover the equally important critical criminological theoretical terrain not explored here. In the first edition of this handbook, Godfrey (2012) states, “It is . . . important that historians also ensure that the discipline does not become overly preoccupied with academic concerns to the disadvantage of community politics” (p. 218). Godfrey’s recommendations should be taken seriously by all critical criminologists, especially those based in the U.S. Consider the neo-liberal laws and policies proposed by the Trump administration at the time of writing this chapter in spring 2017. Some were briefly discussed in the introduction to this handbook and they are hurtful outcomes of what Currie (2016) calls “capitalism with the lid off ” or “hit the fan” capitalism (p. 10).

15

Part I Introduction

Academic theorizing is important, but it is essential that progressives heed Currie’s (2010) warning, regardless of which critical school of thought informs our analyses of social problems: We can’t afford . . . to simply let the pathologies of neoliberal social policy take their course and grumble impotently from the sidelines. We need to be confident that we indeed have something to say and can offer a way forward where others have patently failed. And we need to both get better at defining that way forward and convincing others that it’s the right one. (p. 124) Many readers may wonder why we have ended this introduction to Part I of this handbook on such a negative note. It is not our intent to depress people or to discourage them from developing new theoretical directions in critical criminology. Rather, we want to celebrate the intellectual achievements of our colleagues while reminding progressives to always be vigilant of the need to engage in practical political struggles and attempts to undermine the importance of critical criminology. On top of doing theoretical work that meets the highest disciplinary standards, useful alternatives to conservative modes of governance and social control should also be provided because “critical discourse divorced from critical practice degenerates into mere literary criticism, the value of which is a purely scholastic question” (Currie, DeKeseredy & MacLean, 1990, p. 50, emphasis in original).

Notes 1

This introduction to Part I includes modified sections of work published previously by DeKeseredy (2011) and DeKeseredy and Dragiewicz (2012, 2014). 2 See, for example, his (2007/2008, 2012) offerings. 3 MacLean and Milovanovic’s (1991) collection of readings New Directions in Critical Criminology includes chapters written by some of the young scholars who attended the 1987 ASC conference and who helped create the ASC’s Division on Critical Criminology.

References Brisman, A. & South, N. (2013). Introduction: Horizons, issues and relationships in green criminology. In N. South & A. Brisman (Eds), Routledge International Handbook of Green Criminology (pp. 1–23). London: Routledge. Buist, C. L. & Lenning, E. (2016). Queer Criminology. London: Routledge. Carlen, P. (2007/2008). Editorial: Politics, economy and crime. Criminal Justice Matters, 70, 3–4. Connell, R. (2007). Southern Theory: The Global Dynamics of Knowledge in Social Science. Sydney, AU: Allen & Unwin. Currie, D. H., DeKeseredy, W. S., & MacLean, B. D. (1990). Reconstituting social order and social control: Police accountability in Canada. Journal of Human Justice, 2, 29–54. Currie, E. (2010). Plain left realism: An appreciation and some thoughts for the future. Crime, Law and Social Change, 54, 111–124. Currie, E. (2016). The violence divide: Taking “ordinary” crime seriously in a volatile world. In R. Matthews (Ed.), What is to be Done About Crime and Punishment? Towards a ‘Public Criminology’ (pp. 9–30). London: Palgrave Macmillan. DeKeseredy, W. S. (2011). Contemporary Critical Criminology. London: Routledge. DeKeseredy, W. S. & Dragiewicz, M. (2012). Part II: Theoretical perspectives. In W. S. DeKeseredy & M. Dragiewicz (Eds), Routledge Handbook of Critical Criminology (pp. 87–92). London: Routledge. DeKeseredy, W. S. & Dragiewicz, M. (2014). Introduction: Advances in critical criminology theorizing. In W. S. DeKeseredy & M. Dragiewicz (Eds), Critical Criminology, Volume 2 (pp. 1–12). London: Routledge. 16

Part I Introduction

Donnermeyer, J. F. (2017). The place of rural in southern criminology. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 6, 120–134. Ferrell, J. (1994). Confronting the agenda of authority: Critical criminology, anarchism and urban graffiti. In G. Barak (Ed.), Varieties of Criminology (pp. 161–178). New York: Praeger. Ferrell, J. (1995). Culture, crime and cultural criminology. Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture, 3, 25–42. Ferrell, J. & Sanders, C. (Eds) (1995). Cultural Criminology. Boston: Northeastern University Press. Godfrey, B. (2012). Critical perspectives on crime. In W. S. DeKeseredy & M. Dragiewicz (Eds), Routledge Handbook of Critical Criminology (pp. 209–221). London: Routledge. Hall, S. & Winlow, S. (2012). Introduction: The need for new directions in criminological theory. In S. Hall & S. Winlow (Eds), New Directions in Criminological Theory (pp. 1–13). London: Routledge. Henry, S. & Milovanovic, D. (2005). Postmodernism and constitutive theories of criminal behavior. In R. A. Wright & J. M. Miller (Eds), Encyclopedia of Criminology, Volume 2 (pp. 1245–1249). New York: Routledge. MacLean, B. D. & Milovanovic, D. (Eds) (1991). New Directions in Critical Criminology. Vancouver, BC: Collective Press. Messerschmidt, J. W. (2005). Men, masculinities and crime. In M. S. Kimmel, J. Hearn, & R. W. Connell (Eds), Handbook of Studies on Men and Masculinities (pp. 196–212). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Redhead, S. (2015). Football and Accelerated Culture: This Modern Sporting Life. London: Routledge. Reiner, R. (2007/2008). It’s the political economy stupid! A neo-Clintonian criminology. Criminal Justice Matters, 70, 7–8. Reiner, R. (2012). Political economy and criminology: The return of the repressed. In S. Hall & S. Winlow (Eds), New Directions in Criminological Theory (pp. 30–51). London: Routledge. Ross, J. I. & Richards, S. C. (2003). Introduction: What is the new school of convict criminology? In J. I. Ross & S. C. Richards (Eds), Convict Criminology (pp. 1–14). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Schwartz, M. D. (1991). The future of critical criminology. In B. D. MacLean & D. Milovanovic (Eds), New Directions in Critical Criminology (pp. 119–124). Vancouver, BC: Collective Press. Schwartz, M. D. & Hatty, S. E. (2003). Introduction. In M. D. Schwartz & S. E. Hatty (Eds), Controversies in Critical Criminology (pp. ix–xvii). Cincinnati, OH: Anderson. South, N. & Brisman, A. (Eds) (2013). Routledge International Handbook of Green Criminology. London: Routledge. Winlow, S. & Hall, S. (2016). Realist criminology and its discontents. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 5, 80–94. Young, J. (2013). Introduction to the 40th anniversary edition. In I. Taylor, P. Walton, & J. Young’s The New Criminology: For a Social Theory of Deviance (pp. xi–li). London: Routledge.

17

1 Critical political economy, crime and justice Robert Reiner

Introduction The term political economy is used in various ways, but usually connotes a macro, whole society analysis of social phenomena. Critical political economy argues that problems of crime and criminal justice are related to injustice in the political economy of a society. The next section will review the meanings of political economy, followed by analysis of its historical influence in criminology. Its value in understanding crime and criminal justice patterns will then be assessed, mainly by probing how far political economy can explain the recent crime decline.

What is (critical) political economy? The most famous work of eighteenth-century political economy, Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, was part of a much broader inquiry into the foundations of society – it was inseparable from moral philosophy (Haakonsen, 2006). Over time it fed into “classical political economy” (Ruggiero, 2013). Marx saw himself as heir to this tradition, and Marxism, in its varying incarnations and influences, remains the prime model of critical political economy. The neo-classical economics that now dominates the academic discipline is very different from its origins in “political economy”. It purports to be an apolitical “scientific” enterprise, deploying mathematical models based on abstract and simplified axioms about human motivation and social organization. Liberal capitalism distinguishes supposedly autonomous fields of “private” and “public”; “civil society” and “state”; “economy” and “polity”; “criminal” and “civil” law, each constituted and studied by an autonomous discipline: political science, sociology, psychology – and indeed criminology (Neocleous, 2000, p. 13–14). Critical “political economy” questions these intellectual and institutional divisions. In criminology this was emphasized by the “fully social theory of deviance” of The New Criminology (Taylor, Walton, & Young, 1973, pp. 268–80), formulated as “a political economy of criminal action, and of the reaction it excites”, together with “a politically informed social psychology of these ongoing social dynamics”. Most research studies inevitably focus more narrowly, but the notion of a “fully social theory” stresses the wider contexts in which acts of deviance and control are embedded. Without the holistic sensibility of political economy it is impossible to explain crime and control. 19

Robert Reiner

Political economy and criminological theory This section briefly reviews the fluctuating influence of political economy in criminology (a more detailed account can be found in Reiner, 2012). The term “criminology” was only coined in the late nineteenth century. Nonetheless, standard histories see criminology’s origins in the “classical” perspective pioneered by Beccaria’s (1764) book Dei Delitti e Delle Pene. This profoundly influenced Enlightenment movements for reform of criminal law and criminal justice, and was embedded in political economy. Beccaria himself held a Chair of “Political Economy and Science of Police”. Political economy was intertwined closely with the “science of police”, a vast body of work that flourished across eighteenth-century Europe (Pasquino, 1978). In England, its leading exponent was the magistrate Patrick Colquhoun. He analysed the ultimate causes of crime in the overall structure of economy and society, but also traced the social and cultural mediations generating criminality and conformity. Overall the analysis of security, order, crime, and policing advanced by the “science of police” was more sensitive to the interplay of politics, law, and justice with criminality than the later positivist nineteenth-century “science of the criminal”. Any apparent gain in “scientific” rigour was bought at a high price, obscuring the political, economic, and ethical dimensions of crime and welfare. The term “positivism” in criminology refers to the project of seeking causal explanations of crime on the methodological model of the natural sciences. As a self-conscious movement, positivist “criminology” was associated with the Lombrosian school of the late nineteenth century, which emphasized individual constitutional factors. In his 1897 book Suicide Durkheim argued that healthy societies required regulation of people’s aspirations. Rapid socio-economic change dislocated cultural controls, producing anomie. Merton (1938) developed this analysis in a brief but seminal article that remains a paradigm for a structural social theory of crime (Lea & Young, 1984, pp. 218–25; Messner & Rosenfeld, 2012). Merton’s structural political economy is often reduced to a social psychology of deviance, a psychic “strain” between aspirations and achievement. This focuses on one aspect of his paper: the argument that cultural encouragement of common material aspirations through a mythology of meritocracy, against a structural reality of unequal opportunities, generates anomic pressures and deviant reactions. Merton’s analysis was only partly directed at explaining individual or subcultural sources of deviance within a society. It was primarily aimed at understanding differences in deviance between societies. A materialistic culture is inherently prone to anomie and crime at all levels, not just among the relatively deprived lower classes. Merton is a paradigm for a political economy of crime, but it is not economically determinist. Inequality and deprivation do not generate anomie and deviance directly, but mediated through their cultural meanings. Until the flowering of radical criminology in the 1960s, little systematic attention was given by the Left to crime. Marx and Engels’ voluminous corpus of work has been read in many highly-contested ways. It is widely stated that in his mature theoretical work Marx did not systematically address issues of crime or criminal justice. Chapter 10 of Capital, however, studies the emergence of the Factory Acts in early nineteenth-century England (Marx, 1867/1976, chap. 10), constituting a pioneering analysis of corporate crime. It is very far from the economic determinism attributed to Marx, demonstrating the dialectical interplay of structure and action (Reiner, 2016, pp. 73–7). Willem Bonger, a Dutch professor, developed the first systematic Marxist analysis of crime. Bonger (1916/1969) saw capitalism as generating crime primarily by stimulating a culture of egoism at all levels of society, with modern marketing methods ensuring that “the cupidity of the crowd is highly excited” (p. 108). The root causes of crime in the larger immorality and injustices of capitalism did not remove the moral accountability of offenders, or the role of individual 20

Critical political economy, crime and justice

psychology and situational factors. Bonger introduced many ideas that were explored in later critical criminology. He recognized that legal conceptions of crime reflected disproportionately the interests of the powerful. Nonetheless, Bonger acknowledged the harm done by much conventional crime, inflicting pain particularly on the least powerful. He was also sensitive to the oppression of women, and to the persecution of gay people and ethnic minorities (Bemmelen, 1960). Another significant contribution by early twentieth-century radical criminology was Rusche and Kircheimer’s (1939/2009) political economy of punishment. Their long-term historical analysis indicated that penal measures were shaped by the mode of production, in particular the supply of and demand for labour power. Although they recognized the role of cultural, political, and other factors, later studies spelled these out in more detail, qualifying the economism of their account (di Giorgi, 2006; Lacey, 2008). Since the mid-1970s, mainstream criminology, especially in the United States, has been increasingly dominated by pragmatic realism, concerned with “what works?” This was initially predicated on an explicit rejection of “root cause” theories that focused on macro-social causes (Wilson, 1975, p. xv). Whilst realism questioned political economy, it has been associated with a resurgence of studies of the economics of crime. It also heralded a revival of neo-classical rational choice perspectives. The “Left Realist” auto-critique that many radical criminologists mounted in the 1980s distanced itself from straightforward economic analyses of crime. Realism postulated an “aetiological crisis”, as the reductions in poverty and unemployment associated with the post-war Keynesian Welfare State had failed to stop crime from rising. Nonetheless, Left Realist analysis of crime causation incorporated earlier political economy perspectives such as relative deprivation and anomie (Lea & Young, 1984). In the 1990s some “Left Realists” returned to macro-analyses of the relationship between crime, criminal justice, and the consumerist culture of late modernity, culminating in a flourishing “ultra-realism” (Currie, 1997; Taylor, 1999; Young, 1999; Hall, Winlow & Ancrum, 2008; Hall & Winlow, 2015).

Critical political economy and contemporary crime Several logically necessary preconditions must be met for a crime to occur: labelling, motive, means, opportunity, and the absence of control (Reiner, 2007). Political economy is crucial in shaping these.

Labelling Apparent shifts in crime rates may be due to changes in criminal law, or in the reporting and recording of incidents, often driven by shifts in political economy. The spread of household insurance with the advent of affluent consumer societies, for instance, induced more victims to report burglaries, sparking a surge of recorded crime greater than increases in actual victimization. Changes in rules for counting offence (e.g. in Britain in 1998 and 2002) affect the police recorded crime rate.

Motivation Detective fiction portrays the motives driving crime as complex and puzzling, which only super-sleuths can unravel. News media focus on unusually serious, pathologically violent, cases. Most offences are committed for readily comprehensible reasons, motivated by widely shared 21

Robert Reiner

desires – money, sex, excitement, intoxication by alcohol, adrenalin or other drugs. Culture and political economy shape the attractions of behaviours labelled as criminal.

Means The commission of crime requires specific personal and technical resources. Changes in political economy, culture and technology expand or contract the means of crime. Cyberspace enables new offences and novel ways of committing old ones: piracy, fraud, identity theft, stalking, sexual offences against children, hacking. Globalization enhances and accelerates travel and communications, facilitating crimes like trafficking (of people, drugs, or arms), money laundering, or terrorism.

Criminal opportunities Criminal opportunities can be expanded by a proliferation of tempting and stealable targets. The spread of car ownership, televisions, videos, DVD players, home PCs, laptops, and more recently, mobile phones, iPods and iPads, provided in turn the hottest items for theft.

Controls Changes in the power and efficacy of formal and informal controls alter the possibility of crime. “Crime is down, blame the police” boasted former NYPD Chief Bratton (1998) and British Conservative Home Secretary Michael Howard declared “prison works” although the evidence supporting these claims is debatable. The thesis that informal controls – family, school, socialization, community – are the fundamental basis of order has a long pedigree. As critical criminologists have pointed out, however, social capital depends on material resources (Currie, 1997).

Rising crime 1955–1995 Recorded crime generally grew from the late 1950s until the mid-1990s. Coinciding with growing, broadly shared “affluence”, this has been said to falsify economic explanations, but it only refutes the crudest economism that attributes offending straightforwardly to poverty or unemployment. A plausible narrative can be constructed explaining the crime rise, showing how political economy affected the five elements of crime (Reiner, 2007, 2016). The initial rise in recorded crime was mainly a product of the new mass consumer society itself, which reshaped the labelling of crime, enhanced motives, means and opportunities, and weakened internalized and formal controls. Early victimization surveys in Britain suggest that the recorded increase up to the early 1980s was largely due to victims reporting more, a plausible process in a newly “affluent” society as high value consumer goods became more widespread, and increasingly insured. The culture of mass consumerism also generated higher offending levels, as tempting targets proliferated: cars, radios, televisions etc. Unemployment and inequality were at an historic low point, and general living standards rising, but the stimulation of the desirability of must-have consumer products for all through advertising enhanced Mertonian anomie and motives to steal. The beginnings of youth culture and desubordination reduced internalized restraints against offending. Rising recorded crime increased pressures on the police, leading to lower clear-up rates and hence a decline in the deterrence and incapacitation effects of criminal justice. In sum, from the late 1950s, a variety of inter-linked consequences of mass consumerism fed rising crime rates 22

Critical political economy, crime and justice

by increasing the labelling of crime, opportunities and motivations for offending, and weakening both informal and formal controls. In the 1980s and early 1990s crime rates reached record heights. Victimization surveys in most Western countries confirmed that this crime explosion was a rise in offending, not labelling, due to massive shifts in motivation and internalized controls. The key driver was the brutal displacement of the Keynesian, welfare state policies of the post-war consensus decades by neoliberal monetarist policies. The result was de-industrialization and mass unemployment – indeed never-employment – for many young men, especially amongst ethnic minorities. Inequality sharpened into a yawning chasm between the top and bottom of the economic hierarchy, reversing a long historical process of increasing social inclusion. Informal social controls of all kinds were eroded as whole communities lost the material basis of settled life. It was neo-liberalism that undermined stable family life and “morality”, not the “permissiveness” the right railed against, as moral laissez-faire followed economic laissez-faire. A culture of egoism, the “me society”, was stimulated under the guise of an ethic of individual responsibility. “Greed is good” was the infamous watchword of a new Gilded Age.

Critical political economy and the mystery of the disappearing crimes The fall in recorded crime since the mid-1990s presents a profound puzzle for all criminological perspectives. Popular culture accounts of the crime drop focus heavily on the New York “miracle”, supposedly brought about by NYPD Chief Bratton and/or Mayor Guiliani through “zero tolerance” policing. Academic analyses also showed New York/United States focus until recently, when US commentators came to recognize that the crime drop is a Western (but not a global) phenomenon (Tonry, 2014). Two recent studies comprehensively evaluate the common explanations of the crime fall (Farrell, Tilley & Tseloni, 2014, pp. 437–9; Roeder, Eisen, & Bowling, 2015). These hypotheses fall into three distinct categories: Criminal Justice Policies; Economic Factors; Social and Environmental Factors.

Criminal justice hypotheses Claims that innovative police tactics (e.g. zero tolerance, information-led smarter policing – quintessentially the NYPD’s “CompStat” – or community policing) were the key source of the crime decline have been challenged by comparative analysis. Many police departments never adopted any of these tactical changes and yet experienced substantial crime decline. The resurgence of confidence that more police and/or new tactics can reduce crime challenges a previous research orthodoxy that neither have much impact on crime levels (Reiner 2010, pp. 147–59). There remain good reasons, however, for scepticism about police and crime control. At any feasible staffing level police resources are so stretched between vast quantities of targets for crime that more officers are unlikely to make any appreciable difference to preventive cover. It is plausible that smarter tactics can impact crime levels, by targeting scarce resources where they are most needed. But whilst policing improvements may have played a part in the crime fall, it remains the case that the policing changes are not a major factor overall. Most obviously because differences in strategies between police forces in the United States itself, not to speak of the wider western world, mean policing explanations are challenged by cross-national comparison. The adoption of reforms also does not fit the timing of the crime decline (Bowling, 1999; Karmen, 2000). These arguments apply a fortiori to other criminal justice system explanations, such as increased imprisonment, capital punishment, or gun control laws. The latter three hypotheses clearly are restricted to the United States, and fail the cross-national test. Increased imprisonment has occurred in 23

Robert Reiner

some other western countries, notably England and Wales, but not in others, although all have had falling crime. Even in the United States itself, the massive rise in imprisonment may have had a short-term incapacitation impact in the 1990s, but has since had diminishing returns (Roeder et al., 2015, pp. 15–41).

Social and environmental hypotheses Explanations of falling crime invoke a miscellany of social factors, including: changing demographics (fewer youth in the most crime prone groups); reduced lead poisoning; legalization of abortion; declining hard-drug markets; the internet; and the “civilizing process”. A decline in the proportion of young people would be expected to be associated with less crime. However, during the 2000s the proportion of young people levelled out in the United States, yet crime continued to fall (Roeder et al., 2015, pp. 56–80). The decline in lead poisoning (which damages the brains of young people in particular), and the legalization of abortion in the US in 1973, both about twenty years before the crime drop, are the two hypotheses that grabbed most headlines. Environmental controls proliferated from the 1970s, so the cohort that benefitted first from lead free petrol reached the most crime prone age groups as the crime fall began. Yet, the lead poisoning theory doesn’t explain why crime continued to fall in cohorts reaching their late teens since then. The abortion argument does not work cross-nationally, as legalization occurred at different times in different countries. Declining hard drug markets as a precipitant of the crime drop has support from research on both the United States (Bowling, 1999) and the United Kingdom (Morgan, 2014), the former focussing on crack cocaine, the latter on heroin. But why did hard drug markets decline? It is also not a pattern found in all western countries. The spread of the internet has given rise to speculation about its impact on the crime fall. One argument is that young people’s life-styles increasingly revolve around staying at home, replacing physical with virtual social interaction. This reduces the opportunity for several forms of standard measurable crime, notably violence. But it creates opportunities for new offences that are scarcely measured by the official statistics, such as cyber-bullying, and grooming for underage or other illicit sex. Timing is also problematic for the internet thesis. The crime drop generally began before the usage of the internet was sufficiently pervasive to alter life-styles. Several attempts to explain the drop in violent crime invoke Norbert Elias’ classic study of “the civilizing process” (Elias, 1935/1969; Eisner, 2014; Pinker, 2011). Elias traced in detail the transformation of habits of everyday life in Europe from the Middle Ages. Increasing control of manners affected the expression of bodily processes and interaction, including violence. Selfrestraint, regulated by internalized shame and guilt, became idealized as “civilized” behaviour. Eisner’s meticulous historical work, charting the long-term decline of homicide and violence since the Middle Ages, brought Elias’ “civilizing process” into the heart of criminology. The increase in violence represented by World War II, and the later rise in everyday criminal violence, challenged Elias’ perspective, but the crime decline has been hailed by Eisner and Pinker as a return to the long-term civilizing trajectory. The problem is that apart from the fall in violence and crime itself, there is little evidence of a general civilizing trend since the 1990s. Pinker deploys an intimate knowledge of 1960s culture to stress the dark side of its liberalism (Pinker 2011, pp. 129–38), but his interpretations are questionable. The only mention of 1960s racial conflicts is a reference to Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver celebrating rape as a revolutionary act (pp. 136–7). Martin Luther King and other martyrs of the predominantly peaceful struggle for justice are overlooked. 24

Critical political economy, crime and justice

Pinker’s treatment of the 1960s is a one-sided caricature, unfailingly accentuating the negative. Conversely, his treatment of post-1990s youth culture does the opposite. For example, citing the apparent contradiction of his recivilizing thesis represented by gangsta rap and the extreme, explicit, amoral violence in many video games, movies and television shows, Pinker dismisses this as “media-savvy, ironic, postmodern” (pp. 153–4). There is no evidence that this isn’t enhanced de-civilization rather than re-civilization, apart from the fall in crime and violence itself, a circular argument.

Economic hypotheses The crime drop literature considers the role of some economic factors, but less meticulously than their analysis of criminal justice and social hypotheses. High consumer confidence in the 1990s and early 2000s has been linked with the crime drop (Rosenfeld & Messner, 2009). After the 2007/8 financial crash this was supplanted by another economic explanation: falling inflation eroding the stolen goods market (Rosenfeld, 2014). However, the timing of the fall in inflation does not fit the crime drop (Farrell et al., 2014, pp. 449–50). The apparently strong economy and low unemployment of the mid-1990s to 2000s had been seen as a partial explanation of the crime drop, but the continuing decline of crime after the economic crash makes these claims suspect (Roeder et al., 2015, pp. 48–9). Entirely absent from the mainstream crime fall literature is any consideration of poverty or inequality. Arguably this is because as both increased during the period of falling crime they are not viable explanations of it. However, precisely for that reason they do add to the mystery, and are surely relevant issues. There has been little systematic criminological consideration of the major economic shift after the 2007/8 financial crisis, or how this reflects on the criminogenic nature of capitalism itself. Conventional attempts to explain the crime drop look at economic factors in isolation, if at all. They also use indicators of economic variables like unemployment that are not sensitive to their varying meaning in different conjunctures. In a flourishing economy, with plentiful good jobs, unemployment is mostly transitional. Longterm never employment, however, signifies exclusion from normal consumption standards, and from the disciplining effects of work – a toxic criminogenic brew. On the other hand, if employment means pay below the living wage, and irregular “zero hours” contracts, the insulation work often provides from the temptations of crime is enfeebled. Fluctuations in recorded employment statistics are thus a poor proxy for changes in the seductions of crime. Trends in crime cannot be understood without recognizing the overall qualitative shifts in political economy, social relations and culture not as separable factors, but as interlocking influences (Lynch, 2013). The rise and fall of crime must be interpreted as aspects of three distinct grand shifts in political economy since World War II: the post-war consensus period of the Keynesian/welfarist boom; its displacement by a neo-liberal blitzkrieg from the early 1970s; the crisis in the neo-liberal model precipitated by the 2007/8 financial crash. The reverberations of these are still working themselves out (indicated for example by the continuing agonies in Greece and the Eurozone, and the seismic political shocks of 2016, notably the UK vote on Brexit and the US election of Donald Trump). A political economy approach contextualizes the one hypothesis that survives the strict tests applied by the reviews cited earlier. This is the “security hypothesis . . . that change in the quantity and quality of security was a significant driver of declining crime” (Farrell et al., 2014, p. 459). The decline in property crime (especially burglary and car theft) fits the proliferation of effective security techniques in timing and spatial distribution. The security hypothesis is problematic in relation to violent crime, however. Farrell et al.’s routine property crimes are 25

Robert Reiner

often debuts in criminal careers that end up including violence, but can this explain the large drops in homicide? The rational choice and routine activities theories underlying the security hypothesis deny that crime has “root causes” as analyzed by political economy; at best they offer ways to hold the lid down on social problems. This turns criminology into liddology: the design of better dustbin lids. Being tough or smart only on crime events, but not on the causes of crime, stores up tensions and troubles. The next section applies to the crime drop the framework of five necessary conditions of crime set out earlier.

Labelling Is the explanation of the crime drop that it hasn’t actually happened? To what extent might the fall in crime result from shifts in the propensity to label offences rather than changes in the rate at which they are committed? In Britain the rigorous monitoring of performance measures made police record lower proportions of crime reported by victims (Reiner, 2007/2016). Similar manipulations have been found in the NYPD (Eterno & Silverman, 2012). Despite these issues, there is little doubt that the drop throughout the Western world in the crimes recorded by official statistics maps a real change in offending within the categories that they measure. However, this refers primarily to street property offences, committed mainly by and against the poor. Many legally defined crimes are scarcely recorded. Beyond this, there are a plethora of serious harms and wrongful acts against property and people committed by the powerful, by corporations and states that are immune from criminal sanctions. They are sheltered by legal and social norms of privacy, the corporate form, and protection of state secrets. Although there cannot be precise measurement of the trends, it likely that elite crimes have been increasing considerably (Reiner, 2016). It is also possible that more crimes are being committed within the conventionally recorded legal categories, but displaced to cyberspace because of better security against street crime. The Crime Survey for England and Wales has recently begun to incorporate questions tracking cybercrime victimization, and these indicate that much of the crime drop disappears if internet victimization is included. It has also been established recently that crimes of domestic violence are seriously under-measured by the British Home Office’s crime surveys, and have increased due to the 2008–9 economic crash (Walby, Towers & Francis, 2016). Nonetheless, the kinds of offences recorded by conventional criminal statistics have fallen for some twenty years or more. Why?

Motivation The crime drop is puzzling because what have traditionally been seen as the main drivers of crime have not diminished. The standard measure of income inequality, the Gini coefficient, increased sharply from 1979 to the early 1990s (as did wealth inequality), the era of “crime explosion”. The initial years of falling crime were linked to some attenuation of the galloping increase of inequality. However, the continuing fall in crime since the crash is difficult to explain by any reduction of relative deprivation, unless one considers that perhaps expectations may have fallen along with prosperity (Lynch, 2013).

Opportunity The proliferation of attractive targets has long been seen as a key factor increasing theft. During most of the crime fall, however, highly portable and valuable consumer goods became more available (laptops, mobile phones, iPods). 26

Critical political economy, crime and justice

Means The spread of more effective security implies that the standard means used for burglary, car thefts, and other common property offences have become less effective. However, techniques for committing other forms of crime have proliferated, notably through the internet.

Absence of control Did a “bigger, smarter, and more effective” Leviathan play a part in reducing crime (Pinker, 2011, p. 145)? Imprisonment has long shown diminishing returns, and its part in the early crime drop is also questionable. Police numbers have decreased in many jurisdictions since the 2008 recession. In Britain dramatic police cuts have been accompanied by continued drops in crime. Recent falls in crime cannot be credited to a larger Leviathan, and the demands for enhanced smartness are becoming superhuman. The heart of the re-civilization thesis is that “the Great Crime Decline of the 1990s was part of a change in sensibilities” (Pinker, 2011, pp. 149–50). As argued earlier, a major problem with this interpretation is that the only solid evidence of re-civilization is the decline of violence itself. Eisner does try to find quantitative evidence of broader culture change by tracing the frequency of certain words in the Google books database NGRAM (Eisner, 2014, pp. 117–22). He shows that the frequency of the words “sex”, “drugs” and “narcissism” increased in the 1970s and 1980s, paralleling the crime rise, but then fell from the late 1990s as crime dropped. However, the frequency of words like shame, politeness, honesty, conscientiousness and anger management increased since 2000, indicating a stronger “moral muscle of self-control” (Eisner, 2014, p. 121). There are problems with this interpretation, most obviously the non-representativeness of the Google database. Also, the sexual explicitness, focus on violence, and drug-orientation of popular culture has increased dramatically since the late 1990s, especially in newer media – videos, pop music, games, the Internet. As indicated earlier, Pinker excuses, indeed celebrates, the hyperexplicit sex and violence of Generation X pop culture as “a sign that they live in a society that is so civilized that they don’t have to fear being harassed or assaulted” (Pinker, 2011, pp. 153–4). Conversely he focuses exclusively on the dark side of 1960s counter-culture. There is no hint of what many would see as its dominant aspects, a search for peace and justice which was rapidly co-opted or corrupted by commercialism and consumerism. “Make love, not war” became “make love and war and money”. The key problem with the “re-civilizing process” argument is its neglect of the epochal changes in political economy, looking at cultural change in isolation from it. The post-war reconstruction based on a social democratic, welfarist model, deploying Keynesian economic management techniques was the culmination of a long-term march towards increasing social inclusion and equality. This long-term democratization project went hand in hand with the pacification charted by historical studies of declining violence. It is the macro-level base for the “civilizing process”. Pacification and incorporation into citizenship not only occurred slowly and unevenly, but was of course never anything like complete. Even at its apex, before being set into reverse by neo-liberalism, inequality remained large, and violence was in many ways hidden or suppressed, a “pseudo-pacification” process (Hall & Winlow, 2015, pp. 115–19). Whilst much turns on different political and ethical viewpoints, it seems hard to discern in contemporary trends in political economy and culture any consistent move to greater civility. Western societies have seen: a massive increase in economic inequality; wars of choice by democratically elected governments that have inflicted death and destruction on countless – more precisely, uncounted – innocent victims; rampant crimes by powerful economic elites; evisceration 27

Robert Reiner

of economies around the world in the name of financial rectitude that benefits only the wealthy; demonization of people receiving welfare, whether or not they are “hard-working” families and/ or disabled; increasing castigation of immigrants, foreigners, a reborn rampant nationalism. The culmination is the victory of Brexit in the UK, the rise of the Right in other European counties, and the Trump victory in the 2016 US Presidential election. Within this toxic collateral cultural damage flowing from the “shock doctrine” of neo-liberal “disaster capitalism” (Klein, 2008), contradictory nuggets of ethical progress can be discerned, against the tide of growing egoistic individualism: some greater justice for women, minority ethnic, and gay people. These victories for fairness and tolerance, however, are clearly rooted in the 1960s, the “civilized” society boasted of by Home Secretary Roy Jenkins but castigated as “permissiveness” by the “re-civilization” theorists. And all are under threat from the growth of right-wing populism.

Conclusion: political economy or policing? There is much evidence that there are “root causes” in political economy shaping crime and penal trends. Social democracies are associated with less homicide, violence and serious crime, and less punitive penal policies (Cavadino and Dignan, 2006; Reiner, 2007: 95–116; Lacey, 2008; Hall & McLean, 2009). This relates to cultural differences in the moral quality of individualism. Social democracies reflect and encourage reciprocal individualism, in which there is mutual concern for the welfare of all, as distinct from the competitive individualism of neo-liberalism, a Darwinian struggle in which only the strongest flourish. The huge expansion in the use and efficacy of technical crime prevention techniques held the lid down on a continuing underlying increase in “criminality”, the tendency of society to produce criminals (Currie, 2000). But the key Department for tackling crime is the Treasury, not the Home Office or Department of Justice. It is necessary not only to be tough on crime but on its underlying causes in the political economy, way beyond the controls of codes, cops, courts and corrections. Recent trends do more to encourage pessimism of the intellect than optimism of the will. Nonetheless, “To be truly radical is to make hope possible, rather than despair convincing” (Williams, 1989, p. 118). A political economy that is just and effective is the precondition for less criminal victimization and more humane reactions to crime.

References Bemmelen, J.M. (1960) ‘Willem Adrian Bonger’ in H. Mannheim (ed.) Pioneers in Criminology, London: Stevens. Bonger, W. (1916/1969) Criminality and Economic Conditions, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Bowling, B. (1999) ‘The Rise and Fall of New York Murder’ British Journal of Criminology, 39(4): 531–54. Bratton, W. (1998) ‘Crime is Down, Blame the Police’ in N. Dennis (ed.) Zero Tolerance, 2nd edition, London: Institute of Economic Affairs. Cavadino, M. and Dignan, J. (2006) Penal Systems: A Comparative Approach, London: Sage. Currie, E. (1997) ‘Market, Crime and Community: Toward a Mid-range Theory of Post-industrial Violence’, Theoretical Criminology, 1: 147–72. Currie, E. (2000) ‘Reflections on Crime and Criminology at the Millenium’, Western Criminology Review, 2(1): 1–15. Di Giorgi (2006) Rethinking the Political Economy of Punishment, Aldershot: Ashgate. Eisner, M. (2014) ‘From Swords to Words: Does Macro-Level Change in Self-Control Predict Long-Term Variation in Levels of Homicide?’ in M. Tonry (ed.) Why Crime Rates Fall and Why They Don’t, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Elias, N. (1935/1969) The Civilizing Process: 1. The History of Manners, Oxford: Blackwell. Eterno, J. and Silverman, E. (2012) The Crime Numbers Game, Boca Raton: CRC Press.

28

Critical political economy, crime and justice

Farrell, G., Tilley, N. and Tseloni, A. (2014) ‘Why the Crime Drop?’ in M. Tonry (ed.) Why Crime Rates Fall and Why They Don’t, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Haakonsen, K. (2006) The Cambridge Companion to Adam Smith, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hall, S. and McLean, C. (2009) ‘A Tale of Two Capitalisms: Preliminary Spatial and Historical Comparisons of Homicide Rates in Western Europe and the USA’, Theoretical Criminology, 13(3): 313–39. Hall, S. and Winlow, S. (2015) Revitalizing Criminological Theory, Abingdon: Routledge. Hall, S., Winlow, S. and Ancrum, C. (2008) Criminal Identities and Consumer Culture, Cullompton: Willan. Karmen, A. (2000) New York Murder Mystery, New York: NY University Press. Klein, N. (2008) The Shock Doctrine, London: Penguin. Lacey, N. (2008) The Prisoners’ Dilemma, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lea, J. and Young, J. (1984) What is To Be Done About Law and Order? London: Penguin. Lynch, M. (2013) ‘Reexamining Political Economy and Crime: Exploring the Crime Expansion and Drop’ Journal of Crime and Justice, 36(2): 250–64. Marx, K. (1867/1976) Capital Vol.1, London: Penguin. Merton, R. (1938) ‘Social Structure and Anomie’, American Sociological Review, 3: 672–82. Messner, S. and Rosenfeld, R. (2012) Crime and the American Dream, 5th edn, Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Morgan, N. (2014) The Heroin Epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s and its Effect on Crime Trends – Then and Now, London: Home Office. Neocleous, M. (2000) The Fabrication of Social Order, London: Pluto. Pasquino, P. (1978) ‘Theatrum Politicum: The Genealogy of Capital—Police and the State of Prosperity’, Ideology and Consciousness, 4: 41–54. Pinker, S. (2011) The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, London: Allen Lane. Reiner, R. (2007) Law and Order: An Honest Citizen’s Guide to Crime and Control, Cambridge: Polity. Reiner, R. (2010) The Politics of the Police, 4th edn, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Reiner, R. (2012) ‘Casino Capital’s Crimes: Political Economy, Crime, and Criminal Justice’ in M. Maguire, R. Morgan and R. Reiner (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Criminology, 5th edn, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Reiner, R. (2016) Crime: The Mystery of the Common-sense Concept, Cambridge: Polity. Roeder, O., Eisen, L-B., and Bowling, J. (2015) What Caused the Crime Decline? New York: Brennan Center for Justice, NYU Law School. Rosenfeld, R. (2014) ‘Crime and Inflation in Cross-National Perspective’ in M. Tonry (ed.) Why Crime Rates Fall and Why They Don’t, Chicago: Chicago: University Press. Rosenfeld, R. and Messner, S. (2009) ‘The Crime Drop in Comparative Perspective: The Impact of the Economy and Imprisonment on American and European Burglary Rates’, British Journal of Sociology, 60(3): 445–71. Ruggiero, V. (2013) The Crimes of the Economy, London: Routledge. Rusche, G. and Kircheimer, O. (1939/2009) Punishment and Social Structure, New Jersey: Transaction. Taylor, I. (1999) Crime in Context, Cambridge: Polity. Taylor, I., Walton, P. and Young, J. (1973) The New Criminology, London: Routledge. Tonry, M. (ed.) (2014) Why Crime Rates Fall and Why They Don’t, Chicago: Chicago University Press. Walby, S., Towers, J. and Francis, B. (2016) ‘Is Violent Crime Increasing or Decreasing? A New Methodology to Measure Repeat Attacks Making Visible the Significance of Gender and Domestic Relations’, British Journal of Criminology, 56(6): 1203–34. Williams, R. (1989) Resources of Hope, London: Verso. Wilson, J. Q. (1975) Thinking About Crime, New York: Basic Books. Young, J. (1999) The Exclusive Society, London: Sage.

29

2 Left realism A new look Walter S. DeKeseredy and Martin D. Schwartz

Introduction1 [A] serious discussion about causes of “ordinary” violence has become all too rare. And that leaves us, in turn, poorly equipped to talk about remedies. You cannot, after all, say much about how to fix a problem you do not agree actually exists. The result is that, in the fact of stubbornly entrenched suffering, we are failing at one of criminology’s most central and necessary tasks; coming up with credible solutions that attack these ills at their root and helping to mobilize the kind of political response that can begin to put those solutions into practice. (Currie, 2016, p. 26, emphasis in original)

The above statement is part of Elliott Currie’s 2016 critique of a “new brand of idealist complacency” (p. 24). He and other left realists worry about the left’s selective inattention to the problem of inner-city violence in the U.S., especially in dispossessed urban African-American communities. This is troubling, given that Chicago reported 762 homicides in 2016, which is this city’s highest number since 1996. There are other U.S. cities that rank among the most violent urban areas in the world, including Oakland and Baltimore (Currie, 2015). What are the consequences of this “stunning silence?” Returning to Currie (2016), “[W]hat is clear is that it results in the ceding of concern about American violence to others whose agendas are usually a lot less progressive, and the implicit tolerance of a level of human suffering and inequality in the likelihood of violent death that no one should accept – least of all the people who purport to be in the business of studying crime” (p. 25). Currie’s observation of dominant critical criminological thinking in the Trump era reminds us of the reasons for the birth of left realism in the early to mid-1980s. Most critical criminologists during that period, many whom Jock Young (1986) labeled left idealists2 when he then publicly identified himself as a left realist,3 focused mainly on crimes of powerful (e.g., corporate crime) and ignored the causes and possible control of black-on-black offenses and crimes committed by members of the working-class against other members of the workingclass. It was almost as if they feared they would lose their credentials as critical criminologists if they studied “street crime.” Certainly, there were, at that time, major exceptions to this sweeping generalization, chief among them being the critical studies of violence against 30

Left realism: a new look

women, children, and members of various ethnic groups. Even so, the failure to acknowledge inner-city crimes committed by socially and economically excluded people, or at best simply romanticizing working-class offenders,4 came at a great price to the left. Currie (2016) has demonstrated that both today and in the 1980s this inattention allowed right-wing politicians in several countries to claim opposition to street crime as their own issue, giving them the room to generate ideological support for harsh “law and order” policies such as lengthy prison terms for relatively minor drug offenses. These policies hurt the powerless and hardly furthered critical criminologists’ goals (Taylor, 1982). Moreover, the left’s failure to take crimes committed by working-class people and racial/ethnic minorities seriously contributes to a situation whereby politicians in North America and elsewhere presume that only conservatives have expertise and knowledge about crime and policing. For Currie (2016), it also involves “colluding in the creation of a ‘story’ about the nature of social life in the twenty-first century that bears little resemblance to reality and that trivializes the suffering of large numbers of our most vulnerable and dispossessed people” (p. 25). From the early to mid-1980s right up to this current era, Currie and his colleagues based in the United Kingdom, the U.S., and Canada created a left realist movement to remedy this problem. One major thing that differentiates this project from many other critical criminological perspectives is the constant attention to short-term, anti-crime policies and practices aimed at alleviating much pain and suffering among inner-city dispossessed social groups. As of the latter part of the last decade, left realists, too, are addressing the plight of rural communities. Major examples of their initiatives are provided further on in this chapter, but first it is necessary to briefly describe the intellectual and political roots of left realism and examine the theoretical and empirical contributions of proponents of this school of thought.

The roots of left realism Again, left realism’s original goal was to fill the left-wing void on predatory street crime. Left realism was born in the mid-1980s in the U.S. and United Kingdom. The roots of left realism are found in the writings of Jock Young (1975, 1979), Tony Platt (1978), and Ian Taylor (1981), but this school of thought was not expressed formally until the publication of John Lea and Jock Young’s (1984) What is to Be Done about Law and Order? Shortly after this seminal work came Elliott Currie’s (1985) Confronting Crime: An American Challenge, which, arguably, marked the official birth of North American left realism and is still, today, one of the most widely read and cited progressive texts of its kind. Left realism captured the attention of a small number of Canadians in the late 1980s and early 1990s thanks in large part to an international conference on this variant of critical criminology organized by John Lowman and Brian MacLean.5 Based now at West Virginia University, to the best of our knowledge, Walter DeKeseredy remains the only Canadian citizen who continues to publicly identify himself as a left realist and to routinely publish materials on this perspective, mainly with U.S. scholars Joseph Donnermeyer and Martin D. Schwartz (e.g., DeKeseredy, 2016; DeKeseredy & Donnermeyer, 2013; DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 2010; Donnermeyer & DeKeseredy, 2014). It should also be noted in passing that several Australian critical criminologists, such as Brown and Hogg (1992a, b), engaged with left realism in the early 1990s, but it did not cause a great sensation “down under,” or around the rest of the world for that matter. Left realism does not have as many adherents as it did when Jock Young was fully immersed in this project. In the latter part of the last decade, he “gravitated towards cultural criminology” (Hayward, 2010, p. 265), which helped reduce the size of the left realist cohort. In the words of Paul Rock (1992), “criminology undergoes a scientific revolution every time Jock Young 31

Walter S. DeKeseredy and Martin D. Schwartz

changes his mind” (p. x., emphasis in original). Though Jock has passed away, there will be many more revolutions in criminology. This is not to say, however, that left realism has gone, or will go, by the wayside. Granted, we are biased, but we could not agree more with Currie’s (2010a) claim that, “Left realism . . . is not only an essential perspective on the problems of crime and justice in the early 21st century, but that it is the perspective that offers the best hope of providing the intellectual underpinning for a genuinely progressive approach to crime around the world” (pp. 112–113). People who embrace left realism may be getting older but they are not clinging to the past and reproducing materials published in major works like those crafted by Lea and Young (1984) and Currie (1985). In the words of pioneering left realist John Lea (2016), and expressed in subsequent sections of this chapter, “Left realism is able to investigate a diversity of situations, embracing crime, other forms of harm, warfare and armed conflict starting out from a single comparative framework” (p. 62).

Left realist theory In the early and mid-1980s, many critical criminologists, especially those heavily influenced by Marxist political thought, “shouted down” liberal mainstream criminologists (Doyle & Moore, 2011). Drawing upon the work of one such scholar, Albert Cohen (1955), Schwartz (1991) observes, “some of us were ‘negativistic’” (p. 119). In fact, in several critical criminological circles it was heretical to speak positively about the writings of strain theorists Merton (1938), Cohen (1955), and Cloward and Ohlin (1960). The criminological theoretical world was then characterized in mainstream criminology texts as divided into two broad, dated, and oppositional categories: consensus and conflict perspectives.6 Furthermore, theoretical integration at that time was primarily an orthodox intellectual enterprise (DeKeseredy, 2015). Left realist theory, in its original form, helped put “an end to the criminological cold war and the facile oppositions of the 1970s and early 1980s” (Rock, 1992, p. xi). Though recognizing the power of capitalism and patriarchy in crime causation, early left realist theory helped liberate numerous progressives from the “ideological constraints of Marxism” (Hayward, 2010, p. 264). What is more, it sensitized critical criminologists to the fact that consensus or middlerange theories that were sharply attacked for ignoring class and gender have useful constructs when combined with critical insight. Lea and Young (1984), for example, borrowed ideas from strain theorists Merton (1938) and Cohen (1955) and were intrigued with the effects of relative deprivation and the formation of subcultures that fostered crime. Lea and Young argued that it is not absolute deprivation but relative deprivation that causes political discontent that leads to crime. They also maintained that people lacking legitimate means of solving the problem of relative deprivation may come into contact with other frustrated, disenfranchised people and form subcultures, which, in turn, encourage and legitimate criminal behaviors. Due in large part to this theory, again turning to Rock (1992), a growing number of critical criminologists “are now more eclectic and open, no longer self-enclosed, no longer refusing ‘bourgeois’ criminology and its works as irredeemably corrupted” (p. xi). Let us also not forget that there would be no critical criminology if it were not for strain and labelling theory. Noted by Young (2013) in his introduction to the 40th anniversary edition of Taylor, Walton, and Young’s (1973) The New Criminology, these “two strands of theory emerged for a time at loggerheads, but which were together to form the basis of critical criminology” (p. viii). Additionally, like Pearce’s (1989) radical interpretation of Emile Durkheim’s writings, left realists showed us that some classical works in criminology help achieve progressive goals. 32

Left realism: a new look

To build Lea and Young’s (1984) early theory back up, DeKeseredy and Schwartz (2010) maintain that criminogenic subcultural development in North America and elsewhere is heavily shaped by the destructive consequences of right-wing Friedman or Chicago School economic policies and marginalized men’s attempts to live up to the principles of hegemonic masculinity. Violence against women, an issue absent from Lea and Young’s (1984) work, is also addressed in DeKeseredy and Schwartz’s contemporary left realist perspective. Gibbs (2010) looks at some of the same problematic as DeKeseredy and Schwartz (2010). Much in the same way as they argue that subcultural groups organize and influence young men who commit street crime, Gibbs argues that left realist theory is also useful in explaining why it is that economically disenfranchised men and women engage in terrorist acts. The influence of terrorist leaning subcultures also helps us understand why terrorism is not better fought with “get tough” policies than is street crime. Dragiewicz (2010) takes on the critique that early left realist theory does not adequately speak to feminist concerns. Though she finds that more recent left realist thought is more valuable to feminists (e.g., DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 2010), there is still more work to be done. Thus, she developed a left realist feminist theory to explain antifeminist fathers’ rights group activism. Fathers’ rights groups claim that women are as violent as men in intimate relationships and that feminists greatly exaggerate rates of woman abuse for political gain and to deny men access to their children (Kimmel, 2013). Fathers’ rights groups also oppose legislation aimed at controlling and preventing violence against women and they are the most ardent opponents of the U.S. Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) (Dragiewicz, 2008, 2011; Rosen, Dragiewicz, & Gibbs, 2009). In the mid-1980s, British left realists offered another theory, one that focused on the negative outcomes of criminalizing incivilities, such as public drunkenness and panhandling in urban communities (Kinsey, Lea, & Young, 1986). The “square of crime” or what Lea (2010) calls “the social relations of crime control” is also a major component of British left realist theoretical work (Young, 1992). The square of crime focuses on four interacting elements: victim, offender, state agencies (e.g., the police), and the public. Some critics may argue that since the square of crime is a dated contribution and that left realism has historically focused mainly on inner-city street crime, it has little, if any, relevance to a critical criminological understanding of current criminal activities and societal reactions to them in rural communities. This is an issue that can only be addressed empirically, given that, at the time of writing this chapter, no one tested hypotheses derived from the square of crime in rural areas and small towns. However, in their attempt to start the development of a rural critical criminology, Donnermeyer and DeKeseredy (2008, 2014) assert that unlike the early and new Chicago School of criminology, the square of crime does not have an intrinsic urban bias and, instead, represents a way to understand the fundamental dimensions of crime at multiple levels. Donnermeyer and DeKeseredy are not the first to call for a rural left realist perspective on crime. In 1990, U.S. criminologist Darryl Wood (1990) claimed that: Not only can left realism provide aid to the study of rural crime, but the study of rural crime can also support the foundations of left realism. That rural areas can also be impacted by working-class crime provided much to the left realist argument that the study of such behavior much go beyond the perspectives which have been fed to scholars for a long time now. And when we consider that the political economic situations of both inner-city citizens and rural citizens are similar, left realism is provided with further justification for trying to provide a socialist response to working-class communities. (p. 14) 33

Walter S. DeKeseredy and Martin D. Schwartz

DeKeseredy and Donnermeyer (2013) argue that developing left realist theories of various types of rural-located crime does not necessarily require ditching concepts included in explanations of crime within urban contexts. For example, the DeKeseredy et al. (2007) rural masculinity crisis/male peer support model of rural separation/divorce sexual assault is heavily influenced by Lea and Young’s (1984) application of the concepts of strain and subculture to the concept of crime. A review of the extant critical criminological literature reveals a dearth of theoretical work on white, middle-class youth, which is a major concern for Elliott Currie (2004). He contends that large numbers of these young people are on a “road to whatever.” “Whatever” is a word that many of the male and female teenagers who participated in his study use to describe how they felt before committing dangerous or self-destructive acts. It is “an emotional place in which they no longer cared about what happened to them and that made trouble not only possible but likely” (p. 14). Currie offers an empirically informed theory of juvenile troubles that emphasizes the role of modern social Darwinist culture. For instance, he argues that the “road to whatever” starts in youths’ families, “which often embody the ‘sink or swim’ ethos of the larger culture – a neglectful and punitive individualism that set adolescents up for feelings of failure, worthlessness, and heedlessness that can erode their capacity to care about themselves” (p. 14). Darwinism also guides techniques helping professionals and teachers to treat troubled middle-class teenagers, and statements made by Currie’s interviewees show that “there is no help out there” for many delinquent youths raised in Darwinian households. In fact, teachers and therapists driven by Darwinian thought exacerbated the interviewees’ problems. Left realism is accused of failing “to take the state seriously” and was criticized in the past for not offering “a coherent theory of the state” (Coleman et al., 2009, p. 7; Menzies, 1992, p. 145). To a certain extent, the square of crime addresses the role of the state, but not in much detail. Matthews’ (2009) refashioned left realism prioritizes the state and views it as one of three “fundamental organizing concepts that provide the conceptual frameworks through which we make sense of the social world” (p. 346). Even so, much more theoretical work on the state is necessary and left realists are not the only critical criminologists who should respond to this call. For instance, following Collins (see Chapter 15 and her 2016 book), we need a richer feminist understanding of the role of the state in preserving the patriarchal nature of societies (DeKeseredy & Dragiewicz, 2013).7 Matthews (2014) is critical of cultural criminology (see Chapter 8), but his assessment is not totally negative and he identifies “points of agreement” that “may provide some foundation for developing a cultural realism” (p. 108). Shortly before he passed away, Jock Young (2013) was very optimistic about such an intellectual and political development. He states, “There is a certain serendipity with regards to a synthesis between left realism and cultural criminology because both fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle: one depicts the form of the social interaction that we call crime, while the second breathes human life into it” (p. xxxiv). Young went on to note that cultural criminology brings to the square of crime “meaning, energy and emotion: it turns its formal structure into a lived reality” (p. xxxviii). If cultural realism comes to fruition, perhaps it will follow in the footsteps of its cultural criminological parents (e.g., Ferrell, Hayward, & Young, 2015), continue to examine popular culture, and address Matthews’ (2014) call to examine social media.8 As he states his critique of cultural criminology: Surprisingly there is relatively little discussion of the new social media and their profound impact upon culture, politics and identities. . . . For a criminology which aspires to be 34

Left realism: a new look

“critical and activist,” this is a strange omission since the new social media are widely responsible for transforming and undermining, as well as challenging established forms of mass media and facilitating so-called cyber activism. (p. 100) In sum, left realism has taken several new theoretical trajectories since its birth and is likely to do so in the future. However, “new blood” is necessary to achieve this goal. Ian Taylor and Jock Young, two pioneers in left realism, are no longer with us. The remaining cohort is getting older and some members are slowly retreating from participating in long-term projects as they move into retirement (DeKeseredy, 2016). Regardless of who “carries the torch,” the growth in membership should not be tantamount to the creation of another “old boys club.” Keep in mind that, except for articles written by Gibbs (2010) and Dragiewicz (2010), the most recent left realist publications were produced by men, albeit two of them – Walter DeKeseredy and Martin Schwartz – are unequivocally feminists. More new directions are suggested later in this chapter.

Left realist research Returning to the early and mid-1980s, it was, within radical academic circles, sacrilegious for critical criminologists to embrace quantitative methods. Through the progressive use of local crime surveys, such as one conducted in the London Borough of Islington (Jones, MacLean, & Young, 1986), left realists make it explicit that any social scientific method is a tool – not an ideology. Consider something as simple as a shovel. One can use it to build a prison or a battered women’s shelter. Obviously, left realists prefer the latter. They also show us that local crime victimization surveys, which contain quantitative and qualitative questions, typically elicit data on harms generally considered irrelevant to the police, conservative politicians, and most middleand upper-class people. These include male-to-female physical and sexual assaults in adult intimate relationships and sexual and verbal harassment of gays, lesbians, and ethnic/racial minorities in public places. Even when governments gather statistics on one or more of these topics, surveys informed by left realist research methods typically elicit higher rates because they define criminal harms more broadly and in ways that more accurately reflect the pain and suffering caused by them (DeKeseredy, 2017). Left realists helped many critical criminologists to recognize that numbers are not entirely bad things. Still, they are adamant about the types of figures required by critical criminology. These are statistics that offer “the counter-voice to neo-liberalism and conservatism” (Young, 2011, p. 217). Additionally, they are, again to quote Young, not purposively “chosen . . . to fit the favored model and the model is finessed and meticulously adjusted to fit the data” (p. 16). And, they are numbers generated by progressive surveys that define and categorize crime publicly, “not as officially processed through official categories” (MacLean, 1991, p. 230). Along with Sandra Walklate (2015), who co-authored two chapters for this handbook (see Chapters 16 and 17), left realists played a pivotal role in the development of a critical victimology, one that is, as she describes, “conceptually informed by feminism in and around violence against women” (p. 182). In sharp contrast to orthodox surveys, such as what was then referred to as the British Crime Survey,9 left realist local crime surveys, together with the work of feminist scholars like Stanko (1990), revealed that women’s fear of crime is not irrational, but rather is “well-founded” (Hanmer & Saunders, 1984). Furthermore, the first wave of the Islington Crime Survey (ICS) (Jones et al., 1986)10 and other left realist surveys compelled progressives to recognize that working-class street crime is a legitimate problem warranting serious critical 35

Walter S. DeKeseredy and Martin D. Schwartz

criminological attention. For the socially and economically disadvantaged, intra-class crime is more than a function of moral panics and the fact that working-class people are victimized from all directions in society (Currie, 2016; Lea & Young, 1984). Left realist theoretical writings are widely read and cited. So is the academic impact of the empirical work reviewed here. Consider that Jones et al.’s (1986) The Islington Crime Survey ranks near the top of the list of the most widely cited critical criminological books in the 1990s (Wright & Friedrichs, 1998). What is more, the ICS heavily influenced local crime surveys in other countries. Indeed, the first Canadian local survey of crime in impoverished public housing communities (see DeKeseredy et al., 2003) would not have generated the quality of data that it did without using some key ICS questions. This study was also guided by theoretical work featured in Jock Young’s (1999) The Exclusive Society. The first wave of the ICS influenced other North American studies, both qualitative and quantitative. For instance, the development of the ICS involved a “preparatory component of qualitative investigation” (MacLean, 1996). This involves, prior to constructing a final survey instrument or semi-structured interview schedule, the research team having meetings, e-mail exchanges, and in-depth telephone conversations with leading researchers in the field, practitioners, local politicians, and others with a vested interest in curbing the pain and suffering uncovered by a research project. Such preparatory research was used in the Canadian national survey of woman abuse in university/college dating (DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 1998), DeKeseredy and Schwartz’s (2009) qualitative study of separation/divorce assault in rural southeast Ohio, and in West Virginia University’s Campus Quality of Life Survey (DeKeseredy, Hall-Sanchez, & Nolan, 2017). Left realist surveys have many exceptional features, but what makes them very much distinct from orthodox projects is that they are not guided by “so what? criminology” (Currie, 2007). This involves conducting a theoretical quantitative research on relatively minor issues and presenting the findings in an unintelligible fashion (Matthews, 2010). Left realist surveys are driven by theory and they occasionally make a difference. For instance, a Canadian local survey of corporate violence against Punjabi farm workers and their children in the early 1990s influenced Kwantlen University College and the British Columbia government to provide suitable and affordable childcare for Punjabi farmworkers (Basran, Gill, & MacLean, 1995).

Left realist policy and practice Left realists never deviate from emphasizing short-term, anti-crime policies and practices. In the United Kingdom, such progressive policy proposals were spawned, in large part, by Jock Young’s local Labour Council approaching him to address street crime in his North London neighborhood. Young told Keith Hayward (2010): I was struck at the most immediate level by the fact that none of my training was geared toward intervening in the crime problem at the practical level – when all of a sudden someone starts asking you about the criminological value of street lighting, it’s something of a challenge. (pp. 263–264) British left realism has been mainly concerned with criminal justice reform and some of their older proposals are highly relevant today. In the U.S., the drift toward military-style policing identified over 30 years ago by Kinsey et al. (1986) has now turned into a tidal wave. Consider the recent deaths of African-American men resulting from police use of deadly force in such places as Ferguson, Missouri, New York City, and Baltimore. Additionally, as shown by Peter 36

Left realism: a new look

Kraska in Chapter 18, police are increasingly using military equipment provided through federal programs. Between 2009 and 2014, the U.S. federal government provided $18 billion for such programs, but training about the proper use of high-powered weaponry is sorely lacking, as documented by a 2014 report published by the Executive Office of the President shortly after the Ferguson shooting in August of that year. Kinsey et al. (1986) provide a compelling left realist alternative to military and “broken windows” styles of policing – “minimal policing.” This is designed to foster democratic accountability of police to local communities and local police authorities. Minimal policing involves strict limits on police powers and is heavily guided by the notion that police should cooperate and respond to the demands and concerns of the community, rather than vice versa. The principles of minimal policing are: maximum public initiation of police action; minimum necessary coercion by the police; minimal police intervention; and maximum public access to the police. Given the recent chain of events in some U.S. urban, disadvantaged communities, achieving these goals would denote a necessary major change in policing. All of society is a system, and too often the criminal justice apparatus is left to clean up the mess left by massive unemployment, cuts in welfare benefits, inadequate schools, and lack of adequate housing (Currie, 1985). North American realists pay careful attention to these problems and call for policies (e.g., higher minimum wage) that target them. North American realists also suggest policies specifically designed to address the broader social forces that motivate men to assault women and that prevent them from experiencing “abusive endings” (DeKeseredy, Dragiewicz, & Schwartz, 2017). For example, DeKeseredy and Schwartz (2009) suggest state subsidization of cars, insurance, and gasoline because public transportation is not an option for battered women in rural communities. Increasing funding for rural service providers is another one of their suggestions. That rural women face many barriers to service is due in large part to the lower levels of funding in rural communities compared to urban areas and to the greater efficiency required of rural service providers in using the limited government funds they receive (DeKeseredy & Donnermeyer, 2013). DeKeseredy and Schwartz (2009) propose several other left realist solutions, including building a more diverse rural economy and building community capacity, which are initiatives that not only help reduce woman abuse, but also lower rates of such crimes as residential burglary and illegal drug dealing (Bull, 2007). Left realists address the positive and negative features of new technologies. Using social media like Facebook to help achieve social justice is a contemporary technique of what Barak (1988) refers to as “newsmaking criminology” that is attracting more and more people each day. So are blogging and other new electronic means of exchanging information. Communication is vital, and if Facebook, Twitter, etc. enable more people to become aware of various injustices, more people will voice their discontent with the prevailing status quo by electing politicians committed to progressive ways of dealing with crime and other major social problems (DeKeseredy, Dragiewicz, & Schwartz, 2017). Contrary to what some critics claim (e.g., Henry, 1999), left realists do not neglect crimes of the powerful, which take many different shapes and forms. For example, satellite and cable companies generate much profit from broadcasting hurtful pornographic images of men and women. Note, too, that worldwide pornography revenues from a variety of sources (e.g., Internet, hotel rooms, etc.) recently topped U.S. $97 billion. This is more than the revenues of these world-renowned technology companies combined: Microsoft, Google, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo!, Apple, Netflix and EarthLink (DeKeseredy & Corsianos, 2016). Formal agents of social control are quick to punitively respond to producers and consumers of “child porn,” but there is no reason to believe that government officials in a capitalist society are going to launch a “war on corporate crime” or adult pornography. We seldom hear cries for “three strikes and you’re out” 37

Walter S. DeKeseredy and Martin D. Schwartz

in relation to corporate crime. In fact, there is evidence that governments around the world are making it easier for corporations to threaten our well-being (Barak, 2017). Profit is a corporation’s “bottom line.” Thus, some left realists call for boycotting products and services offered by criminogenic companies or those that benefit from legal means of causing harm, such as companies that produce and distribute pornographic media (DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 2013). Boycotting has a long history and is not a contemporary left realist approach. Nevertheless, scholars and activists use new means of boycotting. For example, since violent and racist pornography are “normalized, “mainstreamed,” and easily accessible (DeKeseredy & HallSanchez, 2017; Dines, 2010), some feminist men’s groups, such as the Minnesota Men’s Action Network: Alliance to Prevent Sexual and Domestic Violence, participate in the Clean Hotel Initiative. This involves encouraging businesses, government agencies, private companies, and so on to only hold conferences and meetings in hotels that do not offer in-room adult pay-per-view pornography (DeKeseredy & Corsianos, 2016). Such efforts, though, will soon be unnecessary because hotel chains such as Hilton and Marriott are phasing out such media and other chains are likely to follow suit. Pulling adult videos is not primarily a function of political pressure. Rather, it stems from the fact that profits from on-demand video services have significantly declined in recent years because most hotel guests prefer accessing the Internet for their entertainment (Pleasance, 2015). To curb crimes of the powerful, realists also call for policies such as the democratization of corporations (Messerschmidt, 1986), the organization of citizen patrols based on democratic principles and representative of all members of the community to gather information and to study complaints of corporate crime (Michalowski, 1983), and more formal mechanisms to ensure that regulatory laws are strictly enforced (Pearce & Tombs, 1992). Yet, there is no question that left realists need to devote more theoretical, empirical, and political attention to harms caused by “trusted criminals” in corporate and political offices (Friedrichs, 2009).

Left realism tomorrow Currie (2016) sees several distinct futures that seem quite possible in this current era. One is what he calls “the ugly.” This is a society “where the impacts of predatory capitalism get even rougher than they are now – and in which criminology increasingly takes on the role of helpless bystander, or at worst accomplice, in containing the social and personal consequences” (p. 18). To prevent this, Currie (2010a) reminds us that it is essential not to cede the debate on street crime on the right, and to limit ourselves to carping on the sidelines, which is what too many on the left have been doing over the past 35 years (Schwartz & DeKeseredy, 2010). In a constantly evolving and ever changing world, there is always more theoretical and empirical work to do regardless of which theoretical position critical criminologists adhere to. Nevertheless, we agree with Currie’s (2010a) view of left realism as currently offering credible theories of the social and economic sources of interpersonal crime. Yet, realism’s voice is not capturing public attention and the same can be said about other new directions in critical criminology. Keep in mind that James Q. Wilson’s (1985) conservative revised version of Thinking About Crime was published the same year as Currie’s (1985) progressive Confronting Crime, but it was Wilson’s voice that was listened to the most. Even today, there are no major debates between progressives and conservatives in public arenas (Currie, 2016). Unfortunately, Feeley (2010) is still right to point out that, “in almost all areas of social policy, the debate has been largely one-sided about variants of Neo-Conservative ideas” (p. 15). Simultaneously, the conservative model of crime control continues to fail and large amounts of taxpayers’ money are used to fund a disastrous punitive enterprise. What, then, is to be done? Solutions left realists prescribe are practical and are arguably appealing to most citizens of North America, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere. The problem is that 38

Left realism: a new look

left realists and other progressives need to dedicate more time and effort to publicly discussing them in highly intelligible terms (Currie, 2007, 2010b). And, it is essential to constantly and passionately challenge the conservative assertion that there is no money for job creation, a higher minimum wage, state-sponsored childcare, and so on. Indeed, there is plenty of money available. There is money for the wars in the Middle East, money to bail out banks and automobile manufacturers, and money for prisons that warehouse the poor (Currie, 2010b). There are other new directions that left realism should take, such as being more globally engaged (Currie, 2016), focusing on girls and women in conflict with law, paying more attention to indigenous social problems, and engaging with LGBTQ issues (DeKeseredy, 2016). Above all, “good ideas of left realism [can] be translated into meaningful social action” (Currie, 2010a, p. 122). This means doing the work called for by Currie (2016) at the beginning of the introduction to this handbook: “[A] concerted effort to move out beyond our usual academic and governmental constituencies to build stronger working relationships with people who are trying to make change from the ground up” (pp. 20–12).

Notes 1 2 3

4

5 6 7 8

9 10

This chapter includes revised sections of work published previously by DeKeseredy (2011, 2015, 2016) and DeKeseredy and Schwartz (1996, 2012). Currie (2016) contends that today, the term “left idealism” is better captured by Matthews’ (2014) term “liberal realism” or what Currie (1992) coins “liberal minimalism.” Keith Hayward (2010) claims that Jock “retreated from realism” and found a new home in cultural criminology (p. 264). John Lea (2015), his close friend and colleague, strongly asserts, however, that, “Jock certainly never wavered from that project” (p. 176). In some early left idealist scenarios, working-class offenders were viewed as “Robin Hoods” or “protorevolutionaries” trying to fight social, political and economic inequality. Working-class criminals were seen as heroes fighting for their rights under an oppressive system. In this context, working-class crime was deemed to be interclass rather than intraclass in nature (Young, 1986). Through some intellectual sleight of hand, robbing, beating up, and raping other working class people were transformed into acts committed against the rich (DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 1996). See Lowman and MacLean (1992) for the proceedings of this conference. Some more contemporary criminology textbooks still use the term “conflict theories” (e.g., Burke, 2014; Linden, 2012). There are other contemporary critical criminologists who address the state, including Barak (2017), Hallsworth and Lea (2011), and Lea and Hallsworth (2012). Though not a cultural criminologist, Salter (2017) provides a rich analysis of abuse on online social media that frequently involves image-based sexual abuse (also commonly referred to as “revenge porn”) and invasions of privacy. See, too, Lee and McGovern (2014) for an analysis of why police forces have started using social media. It is now called the Crime Survey for England and Wales. The second wave of the ICS was conducted by Crawford et al. (1990).

References Barak, G. (1988). Newsmaking criminology: Reflections on the media, intellectuals, and crime. Justice Quarterly, 5, 565–588. Barak, G. (2017). Unchecked Corporate Power: Why the Crimes of Multinational Corporations are Routinized Away and What We Can Do About It. London: Routledge. Basran, G. S., Gill, C., & MacLean, B. D. (1995). Farmworkers and Their Children. Vancouver: Collective Press. Brown, D., & Hogg, R. (1992a). Law and order politics – left realism and radical criminology: A view from “down under.” In R. Matthews & J. Young (Eds.), Issues in Realist Criminology (pp. 136–176). London Sage. Brown, D., & Hogg, R. (1992b). Essentialism, radical criminology and left realism. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 25, 195–230. 39

Walter S. DeKeseredy and Martin D. Schwartz

Bull, M. (2007). Crime prevention and rural communities. In E. Barclay, J. F. Donnermeyer, J. Scott, & R. Hogg (Eds.), Crime in Rural Australia (pp. 154–166). Annandale, AU: The Federation Press. Burke, R. H. (2014). An Introduction to Criminological Theory (4th ed.). London: Routledge. Cloward, R., & Ohlin, L. (1960). Delinquency and Opportunity: A Theory of Delinquent Gangs. New York: Free Press. Cohen, A. (1955). Delinquent Boys: The Culture of the Gang. New York, NY: Free Press. Coleman, R., Sim, J., Tombs, S., & Whyte, D. (2009). Introduction: State, power, crime. In R. Coleman, J. Sim, S. Tombs, & D. Whyte (Eds.), State, Power, Crime (pp. 1–19). London: Sage. Collins, V. E. (2016). State Crime, Women and Gender. London: Routledge. Crawford, A., Jones, T., Woodhouse, T., & Young, J. (1990). Second Islington Crime Survey. Middlesex, U.K.: Centre for Criminology, Middlesex Polytechnic. Currie, E. (1985). Confronting Crime: An American Challenge. New York: Pantheon. Currie, E. (1992). Retreatism, minimalism, realism: Three styles of reasoning on crime and drugs in the United States. In J. Lowman & B. D. MacLean (Eds.), Realist Criminology: Crime Control and Policing in the 1990s (pp. 88–97). Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Currie, E. (2004). The Road to Whatever: Middle-Class Culture and the Crisis of Adolescence. New York: Metropolitan Books. Currie, E. (2007). Against marginality: Arguments for a public criminology. Theoretical Criminology, 11, 175–190. Currie, E. (2010a). Plain left realism: An appreciation and some thoughts for the future. Crime, Law and Social Change, 54, 111–124. Currie, E. (2010b). On being right, but unhappy. Criminology & Public Policy, 9, 1–10. Currie, E. (2015). The Roots of Danger: Violent Crime in Global Perspective (2nd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. Currie, E. (2016). The violence divide: Taking “ordinary” crime seriously in a volatile world. In R. Matthews (Ed.), What is to be Done About Crime and Punishment? Towards a “Public Criminology” (pp. 9–30). London: Palgrave Macmillan. DeKeseredy, W. S. (2011). Contemporary Critical Criminology. London: Routledge. DeKeseredy, W. S. (2015). Remembering Jock Young: Some sociological and personal reflections. Critical Criminology, 23, 153–163. DeKeseredy, W. S. (2016). Contemporary issues in left realism. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 5, 12–16. DeKeseredy, W. S. (2017). Using crime surveys as tools of critical insight and progressive change. In S. Walklate & M. Hivid Jacobsen (Eds.), Liquid Criminology: Doing Imaginative Criminological Research (pp. 31–48). London: Routledge. DeKeseredy, W. S., Alvi, S. Schwartz, M. D., & Tomaszewski, E. A. (2003). Under Siege: Poverty and Crime in a Public Housing Community. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. DeKeseredy, W. S. & Corsianos, M. (2016). Violence Against Women in Pornography. London: Routledge. DeKeseredy, W. S. & Donnermeyer, J. F. (2013). Thinking critically about rural crime: toward the development of a new left realist perspective. In S. Winlow & R. Atkinson (Eds.), New Directions in Crime and Deviancy (pp. 206–222). London: Routledge. DeKeseredy, W. S., Donnermeyer, J. F., Schwartz, M. D., Tunnell, K. D., & Hall, A. (2007). Thinking critically about rural gender relations: Toward a rural masculinity crisis/male peer support model of separation/ divorce sexual assault. Critical Criminology, 15, 295–311. DeKeseredy, W. S., & Dragiewicz, M. (2013). Gaps in knowledge and emerging areas in gender and crime studies. In C. M. Renzetti, S. L. Miller, & A. R. Gover (Eds.), Routledge International Handbook of Crime and Gender Studies (pp. 297–307). London: Routledge. DeKeseredy, W. S., Dragiewicz, M., & Schwartz, M. D. (2017). Abusive Endings: Separation and Divorce Violence Against Women. Oakland, CA: University of California Press. DeKeseredy, W. S., & Hall-Sanchez, A. (2017). Adult pornography and violence against women in the heartland: Results from a rural southeast Ohio Study. Violence Against Women, 23, 830–849. Dekeseredy, W. S., Hall-Sanchez, A., & Nolan, J. (2017). College campus sexual assault: The contribution of peers’ proabuse informational support and attachments to abusive peers. Violence Against Women. DOI: 10.10.1177/1077801217724920. DeKeseredy, W. S., & Schwartz, M. D. (1996). Contemporary Criminology. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. DeKeseredy, W. S., & Schwartz, M. D. (1998). Woman Abuse on Campus: Results from the Canadian National Survey. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. 40

Left realism: a new look

DeKeseredy, W. S., & Schwartz, M. D. (2009). Dangerous Exits: Escaping Abusive Relationships in Rural America. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. DeKeseredy, W. S., & Schwartz, M. D. (2010). Friedman economic policies, social exclusion, and crime: Toward a gendered left realist subcultural theory. Crime, Law and Social Change, 54, 159–170. DeKeseredy, W. S., & Schwartz, M. D. (2012). Left realism. In W. S. DeKeseredy & M. D. Schwartz (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Critical Criminology (pp. 105–116). London: Routledge. DeKeseredy, W. S., & Schwartz, M. D. (2013). Male Peer Support & Violence Against Women: The History & Verification of a Theory. Boston: Northeastern University Press. Dines, G. (2010). Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality. Boston: Beacon Press. Doyle, A., & Moore, D. (2011). Introduction: Questions for a new generation of criminologists. In A. Doyle & D. Moore (Eds.), Critical Criminology in Canada: New Voices, New Directions (pp. 1–24). Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. Donnermeyer, J. F., & DeKeseredy, W.S. (2008). Toward a rural critical criminology. Southern Rural Sociology, 23, 4–28. Donnermeyer, J. F., & DeKeseredy, W. S. (2014). Rural Criminology. London: Routledge. Dragiewicz, M. (2008). Patriarchy reasserted: Fathers’ rights and anti-VAWA activism. Feminist Criminology, 3, 121–144. Dragiewicz, M. (2010). A left realist approach to antifeminist fathers’ rights groups. Crime, Law and Social Change, 54, 197–212. Dragiewicz, M. (2011). Equality with a Vengeance: Men’s Rights Groups, Battered Women, and Antifeminist Backlash. Boston: Northeastern University Press. Executive Office of the President. (2014). Review: Federal Support for Local Law Enforcement Equipment. Washington, DC: The White House. Feeley, M. M. (2010). Elliott Currie: In tribute to a life devoted to confronting crime. Criminology & Public Policy, 9, 19–28. Ferrell, J., Hayward, K., & Young, J. (2015). Cultural Criminology: An Invitation (2nd ed.). Los Angeles: Sage. Friedrichs, D. O. (2009). Trusted Criminals: White Collar Crime in Contemporary Society (4th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Gibbs, J. C. (2010). Looking at terrorism through left realist lenses. Crime, Law and Social Change, 54, 171–185. Hallsworth, S., & Lea, J. (2011). Reconstructing Leviathan: Emerging contours of the security state. Theoretical Criminology, 15, 141–157. Hanmer, J., & Saunders, S. (1984). Well-Founded Fear: A Community Study of Violence to Women. London: Hutchinson. Hayward, K. J. (2010). Jock Young (1942–). In K.J. Hayward, S. Maruna, & J. Mooney (Eds.), Fifty Key Thinkers in Criminology (pp. 260–266). London: Routledge. Henry, S. (1999). Is left realism useful for addressing the problem of crime? No. In J. R. Fuller & E. W. Hickey (Eds.), Controversial Issues in Criminology (pp. 137–144). Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Jones, T., MacLean, B. D., & Young, J. (1986). The Islington Crime Survey. London: Gower. Kimmel, M. (2013). Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era. New York: Nation Books. Kinsey, R., Lea, J., & Young, J. (1986). Losing the Fight Against Crime. Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Lea, J. (2010). Left realism, community and state building. Crime, Law and Social Change, 54, 141–158. Lea, J. (2015). Jock Young and the development of left realist criminology. Critical Criminology, 23, 165–177. Lea, J. (2016). Left realism: A radical criminology for the current crisis. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 5, 53–65. Lea, J., & Hallsworth, S. (2012). Bringing the state back in: Understanding neoliberal security. In P. Squires & J. Lea (Eds.), Criminalisation and Advanced Marginality: Critically Exploring the Work of Loic Wacquant (pp. 19–40). Bristol, UK: The Policy Press. Lea, J., & Young, J. (1984). What is to be Done About Law and Order? New York: Penguin. Lee, M., & McGovern, A. (2014). Policing and Media: Public Relations, Simulations, and Communications. London: Routledge. Linden, R. (Ed.) (2012). Criminology: A Canadian Perspective. Toronto: Nelson. Lowman, J., & MacLean, B.D. (Eds.) (1992). Realist Criminology: Crime Control and Policing in the 1990s. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. MacLean, B. D. (1991). In partial defense of socialist realism: Some theoretical and methodological concerns of the local crime survey. Crime, Law and Social Change, 15, 213–254. MacLean, B. D. (1996). A program of local crime survey research for Canada. In B. D. MacLean (Ed.), Crime and Society: Readings in Critical Criminology (pp. 73–105). Toronto: Copp Clark. 41

Walter S. DeKeseredy and Martin D. Schwartz

Matthews, R. (2009). Beyond “so what?” criminology. Theoretical Criminology, 13, 341–362. Matthews, R. (2010). The construction of “so what?” criminology: A realist analysis. Crime, Law and Social Change, 54, 125–140. Matthews, R. (2014). Realist Criminology. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Menzies, R. (1992). Beyond realist criminology. In J. Lowman & B. D. MacLean (Eds.), Realist Criminology: Crime Control and Policing in the 1990s (pp. 139–156). Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Merton, R. K. (1938). Social structure and anomie. American Sociological Review, 3, 672–682. Messerschmidt, J. W. (1986). Capitalism, Patriarchy, and Crime: Toward a Socialist Feminist Criminology. Totowa, NJ: Roman & Littlefield. Michalowski, R. J. (1983). Crime control in the 1980s: A progressive agenda. Crime and Social Justice, Summer, 13–23. Pearce, F. (1989). The Radical Durkheim. Boston: Unwin Hyman. Pearce, F., & Tombs, S. (1992). Realism and corporate crime. In R. Matthews & J. Young (Eds.), Issues in Realist Criminology (pp. 70–101). London: Sage. Platt, A. (1978). Street crime: A view from the left. Crime and Social Justice, 9, 26–34. Pleasance, C. (2015, August 19). Hilton to stop selling pay-per-view porn in its hotels – but hints that customers will still be able to access adult movies via WiFi. Daily Mail. Retrieved from www.dailymail. co.uk/news/article-3203861/Hilton-stop-selling-pay-view-porn-hotels-hints-customers-able-accessadult-movies-WiFi.html. Rock, P. (1992). Foreword: The criminology that came in out of the cold. In J. Lowman & B. D. MacLean (Eds.), Realist Criminology: Crime Control and Policing in the 1990s (pp. ix–xii). Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Rosen, L., Dragiewicz, M., & Gibbs, J. C. (2009). Fathers’ rights groups: Demographic correlates and impact on custody policy. Violence Against Women, 5, 513–531. Salter, M. (2017). Crime, Justice and Social Media. London: Routledge. Schwartz, M. D. (1991). The future of critical criminology. In B. D. MacLean & D. Milovanovic (Eds.), New Directions in Critical Criminology (pp. 119–124). Vancouver, BC: Collective Press. Schwartz, M. D. & DeKeseredy, W. S. (2010). The current health of left realist theory. Crime, Law and Social Change, 54, 107–110. Stanko, E. A. (1990). Everyday Violence: How Women and Men Experience Sexual and Physical Danger. London: Pandora. Taylor, I. (1981). Law and Order: Arguments for Socialism. London: Macmillan. Taylor, I. (1982). Against crime and for socialism. Crime and Social Justice, 18, 4–15. Taylor, I., Walton, P., & Young, J. (1973). The New Criminology: For a Social Theory of Deviance. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Walklate, S. (2015). Jock Young, left realism and critical victimology. Critical Criminology, 23, 179–190. Wilson, J. Q. (1985). Thinking About Crime. New York: Vintage. Wood, D. (1990). A Critique of the Urban Focus in Criminology: The Need for a Realist View of Rural Working Class Crime. Burnaby, BC: School of Criminology, Simon Fraser University. Wright, R. A., & Friedrichs, D. O. (1998). The most-cited scholars and works in critical criminology. Journal of Criminal Justice Education, 9, 95–121. Young, J. (1975). Working class criminology. In I. Taylor, P. Walton, & J. Young (Eds.), Critical Criminology (pp. 63–94). London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Young, J. (1979). Left idealism, reformism and beyond: From new criminology to Marxism. In B. Fine, R. Kinsey, J. Lea, S. Piccicotto, & J. Young (Eds.), Capitalism and the Rule of Law (pp. 11–28). London: Hutchinson. Young, J. (1986). The failure of criminology. In R. Matthews & J. Young (Eds.), Confronting Crime (pp. 4–30). London: Sage. Young, J. (1992). Ten points of realism. In J. Young & R. Matthews (Eds.), Rethinking Criminology: The Realist Debate (pp. 24–68). London: Sage. Young, J. (1999). The Exclusive Society. London: Sage. Young, J. (2011). The Criminological Imagination. Cambridge, UK: Polity. Young, J. (2013). Introduction to the 40th anniversary edition. In I. Taylor, P. Walton, & J. Young (Eds.), The New Criminology: For a Social Theory of Deviance (pp. xi–li). London: Routledge.

42

3 Ultra-realism Steve Hall and Simon Winlow

Introduction Ultra-realism is one of the first new western criminological paradigms to emerge in the 21st century. It offers a unique perspective on contemporary subjectivity in its socioeconomic context (see Hall & Winlow, 2015; Ellis, 2015; Raymen, 2015; Smith & Raymen, 2016; Wakeman, 2017). Ultra-realists argue that criminology must return to its fundamental question: why do some individuals and groups risk harm to others as they pursue their instrumental and expressive interests rather than seek solidarity with one another? To answer this question, ultra-realism seeks to conceptualise subjectivity in ways that move beyond existing assumptions of innate selfishness, repressed goodness, social learning, flexible socio-linguistic construction or ideology as positive hegemony. If criminology wishes to retain its status as a respected social scientific discipline it must renew its efforts to dig below empirical description, normative discussions of rules and ‘criminalisation’, and crude social-structural comparisons of relative harms to construct convincing explanations of today’s mutating forms of crime and harm. To do this the discipline requires a new philosophical basis, theoretical framework and research programme. The 20th-century’s intellectual tug of war between left-liberalism (progressivism) and right-liberalism (neoliberalism) – both in their own way hostile to traditional conservative and socialist discourses and successful in rendering them both redundant – is producing few results. Liberalism’s political, cultural and socioeconomic body is dying. The broad liberal project has been palpably unable to control rampant global financial capitalism or organise equitable social relations. The divisive identity politics that now dominates liberalism’s intellectual and political worlds has failed the men and women of the multi-ethnic working class. Ultra-realists claim that it is the liberal left’s failure rather than neoliberalism’s success that has precipitated a dangerous drift to the right and far right across Europe and the United States (Winlow, Hall & Treadwell, 2017). Leaving the well-documented intellectual failures of conservative and neoclassical criminology aside, the theoretical concepts and frameworks leftist criminology commonly uses to explain phenomena, which have been produced by seminal 19th- and 20th-century thinkers, are founded upon the intellectual paradigms that underpin this failed ‘progressive’ political project. Any social scientific discipline that restricts itself to this orthodox thinking risks 43

Steve Hall and Simon Winlow

political irrelevance in what appears to be a very difficult future (Streeck, 2016). Criminology must heed this warning and begin to reconstruct its mode of explanation by rethinking the hitherto crudely polarised ontological and ethical assumptions that underlie its mainstream ways of thinking about essential issues such as authority, freedom, subjectivity, the role of collective politics and the nature and causes of harm. It must also once again open its mind to the possibility that general and wide-ranging theories of crime can be constructed, not as closed explanatory systems but as the suppliers of new concepts and hypotheses for new research programmes. Many traditional thinkers believed that these grand theories are indeed possible, whereas today’s liberal pluralists and postmodernists tend to assume that they are forever inadequate and blind to what they imagine to be the boundless pluralism of western societies. Ultra-realists are happy to admit that we can’t be sure until we try harder and improve our ability to engage with and represent the real world. Even if the postmodernists are right to assume that grand theories fail to capture the social world’s inherent diversity and uncertainty, the exploratory impetus generated by the attempt to develop such theories will certainly reveal hidden experiences and knowledge, and open up a space in which new perspectives, concepts and understandings can be constructed.

Criminological closure Ultra-realism remains on the critical side of the fence but responds to the inadequacy of social constructionism, post-structuralism and intersectionality that over the past 50 years have fragmented criminology into a matrix of closed positions – now commonly derided in broad intellectual life as ‘echo-chambers’ – that are all resistant to criticisms of their fundamental domain assumptions. Such closure and standstill does not require a descent into the strong idealist form of relativism but simply a separatist and defensive form of perspectivism. This does not deny the objective world or our ability to have some knowledge of it but simply resists the possibility that new or even substantially modified perspectives might have something significantly more useful to offer. Ultra-realists argue that criminology must summon up the courage to construct and eventually synthesise new perspectives, but this is not the standard move to replace ‘privileged’ perspectives with ‘suppressed knowledges’. What were once ‘suppressed knowledges’ have already been brought to light to occupy newly ‘privileged’ positions in the sub-dominant liberalprogressive paradigm, which have subsequently become closed and protected from critique (see Hall & Winlow, 2015). The current discipline is a moribund hierarchy in which ‘seminal’ thinkers from the past have been consecrated despite their intellectual failings and time-limited views. In the past, alternative thinkers who were an uncomfortable fit in dominant neoliberal or sub-dominant liberal-progressive perspectives were often rejected for rather nebulous and mysterious reasons, a practice we see continuing today (Hall, 2012a). In this denominational church-like climate too much new theory and research, much of it put forward by younger academics to challenge existing perspectives, is either ignored, misinterpreted or distorted and recuperated. New thinking that directly threatens underlying core assumptions and is potentially fit for purpose in the 21st century is constantly starved of fuel or, should it get its engines started, shot up on the runway by dominant forces. To move forward, criminology must escape the truncated parameters imposed on the intellectual world by dominant right-wing liberalism and sub-dominant left-wing liberalism, political groups that limit criminological thought to their own agendas and degenerative research programmes. Post-war paradigms constructed within these parameters – such as strain theory, labelling theory, sub-cultural theory, radical feminism, risk theory and so on – are of little use to 44

Ultra-realism

us as we try to explain the phenomena and underlying dynamic processes that constitute today’s advanced capitalist world. Today’s criminologists continue to produce excellent and very revealing research, but the discipline’s theoretical dimension is failing to keep up with it and perform its two major functions: 1) to supply researchers with advanced concepts that can inspire new research projects, and 2) provide researchers with satisfactory theoretical frameworks for their findings. This failure leaves research marooned in the superficial empirical dimension and hostage to positivism and its dominant method of mathematical testing. Criminology’s current theoretical frameworks are both separatist and stagnant because they are anchored in various traditional western political philosophies. Each philosophical position is founded on ontological and ethical assumptions about the dynamics of history, the nature of human subjectivity, the role of the state and politics in human life and the nature of harm. The domain assumptions taken by criminological theories from these philosophical positions are complex and varied (see Hall & Winlow, 2015, chap. 5 for a more detailed discussion). However, this complexity is underpinned by a basic tripartite division in the ontology of the subject, between: 1 2 3

The potentially dangerous ‘beast within’ that requires constant repression, guidance and discipline in order to function as a civilised, sociable and cooperative being. The creative, autonomous and moral agent despoiled by repressive forms of institutionalised collective politics and moral authority. The dialectical subject that both responds to and reproduces, either consciously or unconsciously, its material and ideological circumstances and has the potential to overturn them by means of collective politics.

Dominant conservative and neoclassical liberal frameworks accept the first ontological model of the subject. Sub-dominant left-liberal frameworks rely on the second model of the rational, communicative, creative and flexible human being. The third model of the dialectical subject was used by the traditional Marxist and Marxist-Freudian models, whereas traditional Freudian models were more closely related to the conservative position. These three basic ontological positions are informed at an even deeper level by their preferred models of political and social organisation – traditional conservative, liberal-democratic reformist and revolutionary-transformative, which would suggest that they are little more than convenient models of subjectivity constructed to justify preferred political and socioeconomic arrangements. Each position automatically rejects models that contradict its basic assumptions. For ultra-realists, these convenient off-the-peg ontologies of the subject are inadequate. Social science in general and criminology in particular need to key into and contribute to the development of reflexive models of subjectivity, a task that demands the rejection of traditional models of convenience and a move to contemporary explorations of advanced thinking in cognate fields ranging from neuroscience to philosophy. In the post-war period, when politics took flight from failed Leninist revolutions and repressive forms of conservative moral authority, fundamental aspects of the third position were incorporated and neutralised by the first and second positions. In this climate of political catastrophism (Hall, 2012a), which gave rise to capitalist realism (Fisher, 2009) – the ideological first principle that no alternative to liberal-capitalism will ever be possible – the original conservative/socialist dichotomy was truncated in intellectual and political life. The new restricted parameters were represented by the Liberal Progressive Social Administration (LPSA) on the centre-left and the Conservative Classical Liberal Alliance (CCLA) on the centre-right. Neither position is political in any traditional sense of the word but merely a biopolitical mode of managing neoliberal capitalism and its socio-cultural consequences. 45

Steve Hall and Simon Winlow

Both positions came to dominate the social sciences, commissioning empirical studies designed to maintain political parameters and discourage depth thinking (see Hall & Winlow, 2015). Because crime is an important political football – perhaps slightly less so now that the enthusiastic broadcasting of the statistical ‘crime decline’ has maintained a temporary calming effect – criminological research was placed under strict control. Critical thought did occasionally extend beyond these parameters, but it was never allowed to establish credibility in the mainstream discipline. However, the current drift to a right-wing politics that seems to be reaching beyond these safe parameters indicates that many people who occupy a precarious socioeconomic position in the United States and Europe have had enough of the ignorance and contempt the CCLA and LPSA seem to have for their real everyday experiences. They also suspect that these two political groups are concealing truths that exist outside their parameters of approved knowledge. Patience is being worn down by the chronic inability of political institutions to regulate the destructive processual and structural pressures that neoliberalism has brought to bear down on them (Winlow et al., 2017). The voluminous conceptual work of thinkers ignored or marginalised for decades by social science – Jean Baudrillard, Russell Jacoby, Paul Virilio, Luc Boltanski, Eve Chiapello, Nancy Fraser, Slavoj Zˆizˆek, Adrian Johnston, Wolfgang Streeck, Jean-Pierre Dupuy to mention but a few – is now revealing itself to be far more prescient than the work of ‘approved’ liberal thinkers (see Winlow & Hall, 2013). The ultra-realist project is based on a rejection of these narrow political and intellectual parameters. Criminologists must revisit the experiential realities of everyday life with a revisionist enthusiasm which rejects the confirmation bias that sustains current political orthodoxies and their associated theoretical frameworks. Researchers can then reject the intermediary filtering of obsolete theoretical frameworks – with their pre-packaged assumptions of crime as resistance, harmless, masculine, evil or whatever – to begin the process of relocating their ‘data’ in the broad structures and processes of neoliberal capitalism and its attendant culture of consumerism and hyper-individualism. In a climate of free and open enquiry, researchers will also be able to reconsider some concepts and frameworks previously rejected by the dominant conservative and sub-dominant left-liberal positions. To prevent too many babies being thrown out with the bathwater, revived and reformulated extant concepts can be synthesised with new concepts in a thorough revisionist process that will allow criminological theory to renew itself and literally begin from the beginning as it revisits fundamental epistemological, ontological and ethical questions essential to theory construction. This is a huge task. The sooner we get on with it the better. Ultra-realism does not claim to be the theory that fell to earth. It is partially influenced by some previous criminological schools of thought, such as victimology, feminism and left realism, all of which attempted to make significant breaks from existing frameworks and advocated the return to reality. However, whilst ultra-realism retains their spirit it also seeks to break away from their theoretical frameworks. Those they offer are largely restricted to intersectional power relations. Furthermore, we cannot simply theorise perpetrators exclusively through the eyes of victims because the latter – even if they are intimate partners – do not necessarily have a full understanding of the contexts in which the perpetrators’ lives are located. We must look at third parties, biographies, cultures, histories and socioeconomic contexts, which echoes the suggestion from the ‘new criminologists’ (Taylor, Walton & Young, 1973) to explore ‘structure, culture and biography’. However, if we are to make the necessary connections we need to look beyond approved thinkers and frameworks to locate and apply more refined concepts. For instance, the more traditional radical feminist analyses are too restricted to female victimhood in domestic circumstances, and, by their own admission, theoretically unsophisticated (Heidensohn, 2012), constantly falling back on the approved explanation of violent actions as expressions of the patriarchal form of social power. The domestic violence issue is far more 46

Ultra-realism

complex (Dutton & Nichols, 2005), and other forms of street violence more complex still (Ellis, 2015). The same critique can be levelled at all standpoint positions on the criminological spectrum. Criminology cannot simply sit back and watch approvingly as various standpoint positions choose concrete universals in their own inimitably biased and one-dimensional ways to support their own identitarian politics. Nor should the discipline demand that these positions immediately dissolve themselves. The way forward is free and open debate as a principle that must be established throughout the whole process of funding, research, publication and education. Ultra-realists are also keen to apply left realism’s principle of digging underneath discourse and language in the process of theory construction. Crime is not simply a social construct used by right-wing politicians to justify an authoritarian state. It is defined as an act that breaks rules, but, no matter how criminal acts are defined or redefined, they often inflict harm on individuals, their environments and their fragile social systems (Reiner, 2016). There is a pressing need to establish an ongoing zemiological discussion at the core of the discipline, which extends beyond premature typologies and ‘harm indexes’ to revisit the aetiological, ontological and ethical roots of the concept (Yar, 2012). Left realism failed to engage with the concept of harm, relied on legal definitions of crime, produced little qualitative research, ignored subjectivity, aetiology and the concrete universal, and neglected consumer culture as a criminogenic environment. It left too many stones unturned at the fundamental philosophical and theoretical levels for ultra-realists to regard themselves as heirs to its legacy. Ultra-realism seeks to revisit these fundamentals. In its early stages, some of its advocates are exploring the possibilities offered by current forms of Lacanian psychoanalysis updated by the latest neuroscientific research (Hall, 2012a; Winlow, 2014; Wakeman, 2017), but of course ultra-realism is a reflexive project and has no intention of designating this as a protected species. It does demand, however, that any conceptual framework to be adopted and developed must undercut failed idealist/constructivist/linguistic frameworks to deal with dynamics external to the individual and the internal and contextual materiality of subjectivity that underpins its sociosymbolic dimension. Criminology must break free from the restrictive parameters imposed upon its theoretical project by the cynical pragmatism of the CCLA, which dominates in the governmental policy field, and the LPSA, which dominates in academia. The former, driven by a deep fear of the barbarism of disorder, has rejected its traditional conservative social integration programme to pursue deterrence and incapacitation polices that have been temporarily effective but ultimately harmful. The latter, driven by an equally deep fear of the barbarism of order, restricts itself to the ‘avoidance of mistreatment’ (Badiou, 2001), or the maintenance of the individual’s negative liberty. The LPSA, despite its pious proclamation of ‘equality’, has been extremely circumspect about the realisation of positive liberty, or the politically organised conditions in which vital social, psychological and material needs can be met (Winlow, Hall, Treadwell & Briggs, 2015). Such narrow parameters have contributed to political failure, the alienation of populations across Europe and the USA and the recent drift to the far right (Winlow et al., 2017). A criminological project restricted by the systematic exclusion of what these truncated political groups do not like – extreme phenomena, unconscious desires, drives, pessimism, structural analyses, deep political intervention and so on (see Hall and Winlow, 2015) – cannot remain relevant as a genuine producer and disseminator of knowledge in our increasingly unstable future.

The influence of zemiology We know that the term crime is a socio-legal construct that has no ontological basis, but some criminologists are now realising that we cannot restrict our study to acts defined as criminal. Postmodernism was the last in a procession of post-war schools of thought to lead us to an 47

Steve Hall and Simon Winlow

imaginary place as far from reality as possible by insisting that we focus on ‘crime’ as a pure linguistic-idealist act driven by the authoritarian desire to criminalise ‘otherness’. This was part of a general intellectual flight from both reality and the practice of substantive political transformation in the wake of the horrors Stalin and Mao inflicted on their own people (Heath & Potter, 2006; Jacoby, 2007). A powerful wave of liberal intellectuals expanded and narrativised this experiential fear to a general abstract fear of modernity itself, which led some influential figures to reject truth, objectivity and universalism. The result was the normalisation of the principles of extreme relativism and pluralism, and the celebration of each ‘sub-cultural’ group’s supposedly unique norms and values. It is not difficult to see how this led to the intellectual neglect of objective harm, a concept that was virtually criticised out of existence across the social sciences from relativist and autonomist viewpoints. Critical criminology, arguing from a more structural viewpoint, offered a utilitarian calculation and comparative assessment of harms, which produced the cliché that the crimes of the powerful cause more harm that the crimes of the powerless. Liberal-postmodern criminology’s pluralistic relativism and critical criminology’s structural relativism diminished the impact of myriad harms experienced by a variety of victims, which eroded the discipline’s credibility amongst all social groups apart from liberals educated to think in this way. This neglect, disseminated by liberal politics and media, was particularly galling to the working classes across the United States and Europe, who thought that nobody on the left-liberal side of the fence believed them or cared about their everyday experiences. The relativistic disregard of everyday experiential harms and their contexts of insecurity, burgeoning criminal markets and communal decline caused by deindustrialisation was a catastrophic error that backfired and contributed to what every liberal wanted to avoid – the recent drift to the far right (Winlow et al., 2017). Harm is usually defined as an action that leaves whatever it impacts upon in a worse condition. How well legally defined ‘crime’ represents real harm varies, and depends on how well specific rules and laws have been constructed in relation to the incidents they attempt to represent. By developing a core-periphery model of harm (Hall, 2012a) ultra-realism has set out to establish some theoretical principles about the study of the relationships between experiential harm and definitions of crime. By developing an advanced conception of trauma (Winlow, 2014; Ellis, 2015), it also sets out to understand the genesis and reproduction of harmful ‘hardened subjectivities’ (Crank & Jacoby, 2015). In a defensive manoeuvre over the past few years when its credibility was waning, postmodernism, in its ‘affirmative’ variant, acknowledged a thin core of universally harmful crime, but more recent research into contemporary criminality reveals that this allegedly thin core is actually quite thick – at least as thick as the periphery of less harmful crimes (Hall, 2012a). Typologies of harm are of limited use. There is a pressing need for criminology to dig underneath orthodox interpretive theories to understand the external contexts, motivations, causes and consequences of harm, and integrate our findings and understandings in a new theoretical framework. Excellent research on harm’s various contexts – personal, social, environmental and so on – is constantly forthcoming in criminology, but the establishment of such a framework is work yet to be done. The concept of ‘lack of social recognition’ (Honneth, 1996), which comports with Bhaskar’s (1997) claim that absence is causative, presents us with a useful starting point. This hypothetical absence would of course create an ethically deregulated social context in which abuse, neglect and harm on a variety of scales could be practiced and justified by dominant actors without guilt. Honneth (1996) claims that in the traditional Hegelian master–slave relation of imbalanced mutual interdependency such an extreme hypothetical situation was prevented because the master was compelled to grant the slave a minimal degree of recognition and rights, which, hypothetically, can be fully established only in an equal democratic society. 48

Ultra-realism

Ultra-realists argue that neoliberal capitalism has not progressed towards democracy and equality but towards a historically unique situation in which the master–slave relation has been virtually severed. Throughout history the master’s need for the slave’s labour and acquiescence forced the master to at least recognise the slave’s existence, functions, opinions and partial rights. In advanced capitalism, however, where automation and outsourcing in a competitive global market are rendering so many types of labour functionally redundant, we are witnessing the end of such traditional socioeconomic obligations (Winlow & Hall, 2013). This provides dominant actors in any position in the social structure with opportunities to exercise ‘special liberty’ (Hall, 2012a). This is a sense of entitlement felt by individuals as they pursue business, wealth and enjoyment. As capitalist history unfolded the obscene license of special liberty percolated down from aristocratic and bourgeois culture to popular culture, diffusing and normalising the subject’s sense of entitlement to risk harm to others in its attempts to gratify expressive or instrumental desires (Hall, 2012a; Horsley, 2014). It is too easy for ambitious individuals to justify doing what they think is necessary, on or beyond the boundaries of ethics and law, to secure their own acquisitive or expressive interests regardless of the welfare of others. The victims and potential victims of myriad harmful practices neglected or inadequately covered by the existing legal system now have very little bargaining power in relation to their exploiters. In such a rapidly transforming socioeconomic and cultural milieu a criminological discipline restricted to legally defined ‘crime’ as the object of its research and theorisation simply cannot do its job. Ultra-realists use the concept of special liberty in the context of the severed master–slave relation to invert Honneth’s (1996) direction of causality. Harm is not a product of social inequality. Rather, social inequality is a consequence of the willingness of ruthless individuals and groups to perpetrate multiple harms as they out-compete, dispossess and politically disempower others to the extent that the latter can be coerced into a position of permanent insecurity and exploitation. Political and economic inequality is sustained and reproduced not simply by mediated hegemonic naturalisation but by a culture of hardened, domineering and ruthless pseudo-pacified subjectivity that has become normalised and successful throughout the history of the capitalist project. This competitive subjectivity, driven by the libidinal energy of obscene enjoyment into the competitive spaces opened up by the historical proliferation of competitive markets, is not unique to white upper-class males. Their wealth and power are the products of centuries of ruthless and successful accumulation, but competitive subjectivity is active throughout the social structure in a variety of pseudo-pacified micro-relations. Its ubiquitous, rhizomatic presence and enthusiastic adoption by so many opportunistic individuals permanently postpones the establishment of the long-term human solidarity that could restart genuine cultural and political opposition. For the moment we remain confined in the advanced capitalist culture of amour propre (Rousseau, 1990), where the competitive individual gauges her success relative to the downfall and subjugation of others. In this culture too many amongst the subjugated, as John Steinbeck once remarked, do not see themselves as an exploited proletariat but ‘temporarily embarrassed millionaires’. Such competitive individuals dominate in all aspects of culture and politics. They do not seek solidarity or social transformation but increased security, lest some undeserving soul should steal their enjoyment of the permanent dissatisfaction which they have won to keep their desires and energetic striving alive (see McGowan, 2016). However, the harms of securitisation equal or perhaps even outweigh the harms of street crime and white collar crime. Such a proliferation and broad diffusion of harms and hardened yet insecure subjectivities, some of whom now look to a revived far right to solve their problems, demand that criminology revisit its fundamental assumptions with a view to placing itself on a firmer ontological platform. Simply locating domineering parties on the social axes supplied by intersectional identity politics has proven to 49

Steve Hall and Simon Winlow

be inadequate, perhaps even an obstacle to the production of knowledge. In such a competitive and insecure milieu, the motivation and the ability to risk harm to others in acts that further interests of the self is not exclusive to any specific social group, even those who have historically achieved more success in their endeavours. Therefore ultra-realism’s advocates argue that 21st-century criminology should frame its analyses of harm in a coherent critique of the whole advanced capitalist way of life – its economic logic, its competitive-individualistic culture, its hardened subjectivity and its multiple harms. This restless way of life, based on amour-propre and structured in an unstable financialised economic system that devalues labour and sacrifices human lives on the altar of fiscal parsimony and capital accumulation, is becoming ever more zemiogenic. Re-arranging the intersectional deckchairs will make little overall difference to the ship’s eventual fate. As a first step towards theoretical reconstruction criminology must look beyond the slippery socio-legal concept of crime towards the more ontologically grounded concept of harm.

The influence of critical realism Criminology’s left-realist approach developed first in the UK and later in the USA in the 1980s as a response to left idealism’s intellectual and political failings and right realism’s success in influencing government policy. Whereas right realism ignored the crimes of the powerful and overstated and decontextualised the harm caused by street crime, left idealism virtually ignored the latter and passed it off as an ideological construct. Against the backdrop of the ‘crime explosion’ in the United Kingdom and the United States in the 1980s (see Reiner, 2007) the dogmatic left-idealist stance had alienated leftist criminology from governments and the public alike. Left realism’s principal message was to take the more harmful crimes seriously but to reject right realism’s domain assumption of the individual’s eternal propensity for ‘evil’, which justifies policies of repressive securitisation. Left realism was heavily influenced by feminist criminology’s successful attempt to put the individual’s experiential reality of harm back on the political and intellectual agendas. However, as we have seen, feminism pursued a very specific agenda focused on violence against women. Left realism, despite the efforts of some, such as Currie (1985), became bogged down in administrative pragmatism and ended up as an adjunct to ineffective ‘third-way’ politics. Despite these failings, feminism and left realism helped to stir criminology out of left idealism’s social constructionist inertia, which reduced ontology and politics to a language game and reduced sociology and criminology to a branch of media studies. Ensuring progressive momentum was reduced to changing subjectivity through language. Current political events tell us quite clearly that this has failed. A return to empiricism is not enough to reset the programme. If messing around with structures of language has had little effect, revealing truth – if indeed empiricism can be said to perform this function – and speaking it to power has also fallen flat. Power already knows the truth; it just doesn’t care. Ultra-realism’s political agenda is driven by the need to connect the popular will to substantive political and cultural interventions in the deep recesses of the capitalist system. Criminology has become an apologist for capitalist realism (Fisher, 2009), the negative ideological first principle that no alternative is possible. The cultural normalisation of capitalist realism has not simply established the idea of ‘revolution’ as an impossibility in the popular imagination but even what were once regarded as standard social-democratic structural reforms (Winlow & Hall, 2013). Of all the social scientific disciplines, criminology is now the least likely to have an input into the debate on alternative futures, even though the reduction of social hostility and multiple harms sits alongside the fight against poverty, exploitation, insecurity and oligarchic state repression as one of the more powerful motives for genuine transformation. Behind the ultra-realist 50

Ultra-realism

wish to establish a new paradigm is the principle that the pragmatic investigation of what can be done must be replaced by the realistic investigation of what must be done to effect long-term transformation of the system in such a way as to reduce its propensity for multiple harms. However, ultra-realism seeks to avoid right-wing realism, which is not realism at all but the cynical pragmatism of a generalised realpolitik. Ultra-realism is partially influenced by critical realism’s ontological and epistemological model. Critical realists locate an ontological realism below interpretation, moral agency and language in society’s intransitive dimension, what we might call the ‘deep system’ of structures and dynamic processes that produce very real consequences, all of which can be detected and understood as probabilistic tendencies and patterns, not iron laws. For instance, the crime explosion in the UK and USA during the 1980s correlated very strongly with deindustrialisation, depoliticisation and the diffusion of consumer culture. Critical realists argue that it is inadequate to understand meaning and action as autonomous because meaning is influenced and action is controlled and enforced in a gridlocked system of imperatives and interdependencies, a totality of system dynamics, social relations, tendencies, events and experiences. We are free to talk and act, but only in a very limited sphere, not at the deepest level where the power of politics, militarism and investment operate within the confines of an accountant’s abstract logic to decide whether whole communities – and, in some cases, whole regions or nations – are built or destroyed. Here we find the decisions that affect the life chances of millions. Alongside this ontological model, critical realism also offers criminology a sophisticated epistemological schema. There are three layers of reality and variations of our ability to know about it: 1 2 3

Empirical – representative knowledge of events and their patterns. Actual – events and subjective experiences. Real – underlying generative mechanisms that probabilistically cause events.

For critical realists, positivism is descriptive and correlational. It simply cannot reveal enough about the world. Interpretivism is interminably wrapped up in the subjective and cultural construction of meanings that can never be firmly established or regarded as consistently representative of the actual and the real. If we conceptualise crimes as events and their harms as subjective experiences, ultra-realist criminology’s first task is to forge feasible connections between the empirical and actual levels. Of course, because crime carries penalties, most events are concealed, which is why criminologists cannot rely on quantitative methods and need the penetrative ethnographic method practiced by researchers who are capable of revealing selected parts of the ‘dark figure’ of crime. Statistics and surveys are of very limited use and too susceptible to political manipulation by governments, interest groups and both mainstream and new synoptic media. Socioeconomic structures and processes are not simply theoretical concepts but systems of real possibilities and constraints, which are experienced by us in our everyday lives as ‘natural necessities’ that allow or deny thought and action. Structures and processes are generative and degenerative mechanisms, creating and destroying our fundamental conditions of existence and causing sequences of events whose influence is so strong it can be granted a place in the causal chain. This chain links the real with the actual and the way people tend to act – in a way that often bypasses interpretive thought and stretches the boundaries of morality when alternative actions appear impossible or harmful to the self – as they experience these events. By invoking Hegel’s concept of the concrete universal and constructing networks of ethnographic researchers, ultra-realist criminology can produce knowledge of experiential events and human responses that can be linked with real systems of possibilities and constraints, and from this begin a to build a theoretical framework for future research (Hall & Winlow, 2015). 51

Steve Hall and Simon Winlow

For instance, at the broadest and deepest level, the structures and dynamic processes of neoliberalism, for which market logic is the dominant organising principle, have since the 1980s been hollowing out the vital socioeconomic conditions of existence in specific locales and regions. This process has impacted heavily on rates of crime, forms of crime and the growth of criminal markets. For critical realists, absence is also causative, and the specific absences found in these places – of politics, solidarity, investment, employment, hope and so on – are determined by market logic as it controls systems of real restraints and possibilities. It has created spaces of desperation and nihilism in which the criminogenic mentality of special liberty – the individual freed from social obligations and self-permitted to do what is contextually necessary to further personal interests – and its attendant harms can flourish (Hall, 2012a). The experiences of individuals as they have seen industry disappear and criminal markets burgeon in their locales are the historical concrete universals ultra-realists seek to investigate (see Winlow 2001), and events such as the English riots of 2011 represent the contemporary concrete universals that connect subjectivity with today’s unstable service industries and post-political consumer culture (Treadwell, Briggs, Winlow & Hall, 2013).

Transcendental materialism Critical realism offers a useful framework that encourages social scientists to once again dig beneath the empirical and the gestural. However, its conceptualisation of the relationship between nature, the individual and the social is problematic. The core concept of ‘analytic dualism’ separates the individual moral agent from the system’s structures, dynamic processes, events and hegemonic ways of thinking and believing. This fallacy of the existence of the eternal moral agent set in opposition to history’s unfair socioeconomic systems has hampered our thinking for decades (see Winlow et al., 2015). We have discussed this problem at length elsewhere (see Hall 2012a; Winlow & Hall, 2013; Hall & Winlow, 2015), but very basically Bhaskar (1997) failed to apply his own theoretical principle of causative absence to the issue of subjectivity. Transcendental materialism gets down to the task of theorising the emergence and constitution of subjectivity rather than simply assuming it to be an eternal presence separated from the world to inhabit some sort of unadulterated spiritual and ethical dimension. This new philosophical realism moves far beyond biological positivism’s crude ontology and aetiology of genetic traits and transcendental idealism’s notion of ultimate flexibility in the metaphysical realm of ideas and language. Mead’s theory of the formation of the subject is obsolete because it theorises only the subject’s conscious self-image seen through external others, not the formative emergence of the subject through its own unconscious drives, desires, experiences and hunger for coherent symbolism. Post-structuralists, on the other hand, took Lacan’s metaphor literally as an ontological reality and overestimated the flexibility of unconscious desire in relation to symbolism. He said that the unconscious was structured like a language, not that it is a language (see Hall, Winlow & Ancrum, 2008). Lacan reminded us that absence – in this case a symbolic void that drives the subject outwards to find the coherent symbolic order it desperately needs to appease the terror of the Real’s unknown external and internal stimuli and move beyond the juvenile misidentifications of the Imaginary (see Johnston, 2008; Hall, 2012b) – exists as an elemental force at the centre of the emerging subject. For Johnston (2008), humans are hard-wired for plasticity at the material level of drives and desires. Material being is naturally and automatically transcendental. Emerging subjects are thrown outwards into rigid ideological systems that pre-exist them and have become deaptative in the sense that they no longer function to inform subjects and aid survival in the current environment (ibid.). However, whereas past ideological systems have been based 52

Ultra-realism

on positive beliefs, when today’s liberal-postmodern subject emerges to seek a coherent symbolic order it encounters a system founded on the fundamental negative belief that nothing beyond the current system is possible. This negative belief is not hegemonically reproduced solely by the dominant elite but also by the sub-dominant elite who have neutralised any genuine political opposition. The current deaptative ideological order of symbols is based on capitalist realism (Fisher, 2009), the negative principle that we have reached the endpoint of economic history and no alternative to liberal capitalism will ever be possible. Despite the neoliberal economy’s descent into localised social and environmental catastrophes, capitalist realism decrees that any attempt to establish a new socioeconomic order will inevitably and immediately degenerate into brutal totalitarianism (Zˆizˆek, 2001). The west’s dominant ideology, shared by the liberal right and liberal left, instructs us that choice and moral agency must be prohibited at the deepest level of socioeconomic system dynamics. As liberal social scientists have argued for decades, western individuals have all sorts of diverse opinions about positive phenomena in the world (Abercrombie, Hill & Turner, 1980). However, the vast majority now share the politically decisive negative belief that most choices are possible except the collective choice to change the fundamental coordinates of our socioeconomic mode of existence. Neoliberal capitalism’s accompanying consumer culture intensifies the subject’s sense of imminent social insignificance and a return to the terror of the Real (Hall et al., 2008). Therefore it does not appease but over-stimulates the secondary form of objectless anxiety in the subject (Hall, 2012a), which means that the overdriven subject’s will to compete against others and incorporate itself in the social order is resolute. The capitalist Imaginary functions as a powerful ideological context, shaping the desires and dreams that energise consumer culture and accelerate the circulation of commodities, but it systematically disrupts and prevents symbolic connections with social, economic and environmental realities. The dominant negative ideology of capitalist realism has now reached a stage where it is the most potent causative and reproductive cultural force in all dimensions of life. It locks the individual into an active but fetishistically disavowed engagement with the current neoliberal system’s logical imperatives. The individual still has some choice over the specific mode of engagement, but the fatalism and cynicism we have found in our years of research with active criminals involved in volume crime and some forms of expressive violent crime seem to us to be rooted in extreme variants of capitalist realism. If capitalism is the only game in town, and not even the haziest adumbration of a realistic alternative can be seen on the horizon, many individuals choose to play the game in whatever way they can. Under the conditions that exist in economically abandoned, impoverished and hopeless locales – or indeed in the top strata where regulations are lax, tempting opportunities abound and the culture of special liberty (see Hall, 2012a) is normalised – the tendency to involvement in various forms of crime and violence is ratcheted up.

Ultra-realism in the cold light of day The complacent, gentrified world of middle-class liberal media and academia could neither predict nor explain the recent seismic political events across Europe and the USA, some of which are redolent of the political trajectory in 1930s Europe. Huge socioeconomic problems in former manufacturing areas, and working-class subjective responses to them, had been systematically ignored or misunderstood, not only by the dominant neoliberals but also by the sub-dominant liberal left who purport to represent the interests of the disadvantaged. New research by ultrarealist criminologists (see Hall & Antonopoulos, 2016; Kotze & Temple, 2014) is exposing potentially fatal epistemological problems in the ‘international crime-decline’ narrative (see Hall & 53

Steve Hall and Simon Winlow

Winlow, 2015, chap. 7, for details). The statistical industry’s focus on traditional legally-defined crime and its victims has meant that this narrative is the product of ignoring harms and measuring obsolescence rather than researching the current events and subjective experiences that constitute the realm of the ‘actual’. The complacency and misunderstandings that have colonised and enervated liberalism’s political wing are being duplicated in its intellectual wing, and criminology is no exception. Ultra-realism enjoins us to struggle free from paralysing 20th-century paradigms and return to reality and free intellectual enquiry as a matter of political urgency. Ultra-realism is firm in its intent to confront neoliberal capitalism’s worldwide zemiological environment full in the face. There is so much to do here. To mention but a few examples, Parenti (2011) exposes the criminogenic effects of global warming, drought, flash-flooding, neoliberal economic restructuring and cheap arms dumping on the escalation of ethnic tensions, crime, corruption and violence in the tropical convergence zone (see also Wiegratz, 2016). Crank and Jacoby (2015) reveal the process of dual exploitation as global warming, the mechanisation of agriculture and disinvestment in the real sustainable economy have created huge consumer markets of desperate people on all continents needing transport, food, clothes, shelter, medical supplies and other basic goods. In various chaotic regions proliferating criminal networks organise the supply of illicit goods and develop markets in sexual exploitation, slavery and various forms of trafficking. If some sectors of the populations in former manufacturing regions of the old industrial world are becoming increasingly desperate, it is that much worse in the developing world’s megacities. In the 1950s there were only two cities, New York and Tokyo, with more than 10 million inhabitants. Today there are 22, and by 2025 there will probably be 30 (Crank & Jacoby, 2015). These sprawling urban areas are statistical black holes for criminologists. They are rapidly altering the fabric of human life, replacing traditional intimate, grounded human communities with vast, impersonal, fluid urban networks socially structured by huge and increasing divisions in wealth and power. In the context of a culture of competitive individualism and special liberty, but in the absence of stable economies and nurturing states and social systems, these deep processes and structures at the level of the real promote criminality and violence rather than the politics of solidarity. At the actual and empirical levels, we are witnessing the consequences of these processes right now. Anxious populations are supporting governments that promise state hardening, privatism, securitisation, militarisation and strict border controls. Such shifting electoral support is the product of cultural hardening, constituted and reproduced by intensified exclusionary sentiments and subjective hardening as individuals become increasingly competitive and self-interested (Crank & Jacoby, 2015). These cultural currents are beginning to break down the pseudo-pacification process, which means that more individuals are likely to express anger and hostile competitive urges in physical rather than sublimated symbolic forms (Hall, 2012a). These are just a few very brief examples of the criminogenic processes and unfolding events that ultra-realism seeks to investigate and bring to the foreground in criminology. Ultra-realists argue that criminology should encourage theory and research that can open up new or previˆ izˆ ek, 2006). By organising ethnographic ously proscribed and obscured parallax views (see Z networks and encouraging researchers to generate rich and conceptually advanced qualitative data that represent different subjective experiences of individuals and localised populations, views of harmful events from multiple observational positions can be used to displace standard views. These multiple views can then be placed in broader structural and processual contexts, not to confirm existing theoretical frameworks but to overcome their inadequate ontological domain assumptions, interest-group biases and restrictive political parameters in order that we can construct replacements. A multi-dimensional research, theory and educational milieu must be built 54

Ultra-realism

with the intention of conducting research with no intellectual restrictions, no censorship at the point of publication and none of the identitarian demarcations currently maintained by ‘standpoint’ interest-groups. Until we begin to do this, we are not educating young people in today’s realities but simply affirming the soothing fantasies that reproduce the complacent, truncated politics which have quite recently been exposed as ineffective and obsolete in the troubled world of advanced capitalism.

References Abercrombie, N., Hill, S. and Turner, B.S. (1980) The Dominant Ideology Thesis. London: Allen and Unwin. Badiou, A. (2001) Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil. London: Verso. Bhaskar, R. (1997[1975]) A Realist Theory of Science. London: Verso. Crank, J.P. and Jacoby, L.S. (2015) Crime,Violence and Global Warming. New York: Routledge. Currie, E. (1985) Confronting Crime: An American Challenge. London: Pantheon. Dutton, D.G. and Nichols, T.L. (2005) ‘The gender paradigm in domestic violence: research and theory’, Aggression and Violent Behavior, 10: 680–714. Ellis, A. (2015) Men, Masculinities and Violence: An Ethnographic Study. London: Routledge. Fisher, M. (2009) Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? Alresford: Zero Books. Hall, A. and Antonopoulos, G.A. (2016) Fake Meds Online: The Internet and the Illicit Market in Pharmaceuticals. London: Palgrave. Hall, S. (2012a) Theorizing Crime and Deviance: A New Perspective. London: Sage. Hall, S. (2012b) ‘The solicitation of the trap: on transcendence and transcendental materialism in advanced consumer-capitalism’, Human Studies: Special Issue on Transcendence and Transgression, 35(3): 365–381. Hall, S. and Winlow, S. (2015) Revitalizing Criminological Theory: Towards a New Ultra-Realism. London: Routledge. Hall, S., Winlow, S. and Ancrum, C. (2008) Criminal Identities and Consumer Culture: Crime, Exclusion and the New Culture of Narcissism. London: Routledge/Willan. Heath, J. and Potter, A. (2006) The Rebel Sell: How Counterculture Became Consumer Culture. London: Capstone. Heidensohn, F. (2012) ‘The future of feminist criminology’, Crime, Media, Culture: Special Issue: York Deviancy Conference 2011, 8(2): 123–134. Honneth, A. (1996) The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts. Cambridge: Polity Press. Horsley, M. (2014) ‘The “death of deviance” and the stagnation of twentieth century criminology’ in Dellwing, M., Kotarba, J. and Pino, N. (eds.) The Death and Resurrection of Deviance: Current Research and Ideas. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 85–107. Jacoby, R. (2007) Picture Imperfect. New York: Columbia University Press. Johnston, A. (2008) Ž iž ek’s Ontology. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Kotze, J. and Temple, D. (2014) ‘Analyzing the crime decline: news from nowhere’, National Deviancy Conference, Teesside University, June 25–26. McGowan, T. (2016) Capitalism and Desire: The Psychic Cost of Free Markets. New York: Columbia University Press. Parenti, C. (2011) Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence. New York: Nation. Raymen, T. (2015) ‘Designing-in crime by designing-out the social? situational crime prevention and the intensification of harmful subjectivities’, British Journal of Criminology, 56(3): 497–514. Reiner, R. (2007) Law and Order: An Honest Citizen’s Guide to Crime and Control. Cambridge: Polity. Reiner, R. (2016) Crime: The Mystery of the Common-Sense Concept. Cambridge: Polity. Rousseau, J.-J. (1990) Rousseau, Judge of Jean-Jacques. Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College Press. Smith, O. and Raymen, T. (2016) ‘What’s deviance got to do with it? Black Friday sales, violence, and hyperconformity’, British Journal of Criminology, 56(2): 389–405. Streeck, W. (2016) How Will Capitalism End? London: Verso. Taylor, I., Walton, P. and Young, J. (1973) The New Criminology. London: Routledge. Treadwell, J., Briggs, D., Winlow, S. and Hall, S. (2013) ‘Shopocalypse now: consumer culture and the English riots of 2011’, British Journal of Criminology, 53(1): 1–17. Wakeman, S.J. (2017) ‘The “one who knocks” and the “one who waits”: gendered violence in Breaking Bad’, Crime, Media, Culture. doi: 10.1177/1741659016684897. 55

Steve Hall and Simon Winlow

Wiegratz, J. (2016) Neoliberal Moral Economy: Capitalism, Socio-Cultural Change and Fraud in Uganda. London: Rowman and Littlefield. Winlow, S. (2001) Badfellas: Crime, Tradition and New Masculinities. Oxford: Berg. Winlow, S. (2014) ‘Trauma, guilt and the unconscious: some theoretical notes on violent subjectivity’, The Sociological Review, 62(S2): 32–49. Winlow, S. and Hall, S. (2013) Rethinking Social Exclusion: The End of the Social? London: Sage. Winlow, S., Hall, S., Treadwell, J. and Briggs, D. (2015) Riots and Political Protest: Notes from the Post-Political Present. London: Routledge. Winlow, S., Hall, S. and Treadwell, J. (2017) The Rise of the Right: English Nationalism and the Transformation of Working-Class Politics. Bristol: Policy Press. Yar, M. (2012) ‘Critical criminology, critical theory and social harm’, in Hall, S. and Winlow, S. (eds) New Directions in Criminological Theory. London: Routledge, 52–66. Zˇizˇek, S. (2001) Did Somebody Say Totalitarianism? London: Verso. Zˇizˇek, S. (2006). The Parallax View. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

56

4 Southern criminology Kerry Carrington, Russell Hogg and Ma´ximo Sozzo

Introduction In Southern Theory, Raewyn Connell (2007) analysed the impact of global divisions in political, economic, cultural and military power on the production of knowledge. Based on the experience of a small number of societies in the Global North, she argued, social science had succeeded in representing itself, and being widely accepted, as universal, timeless and placeless. Connell was centrally concerned with sociology, but as we will seek to show, her argument applies with equal force to criminology, although we do not wish to construct on overly reductive account of this knowledge/power effect. Accordingly, we outline the case for the development of a more transnational criminology that is inclusive of the experiences and perspectives of the Global South, that adopts methods and concepts that bridge global divides and that embraces the democratization of knowledge production as a political aspiration. Importantly, in making the argument for southern criminology, it is not our purpose to simply add one more candidate to the expanding list of new criminologies and thus contribute to what many regard as the growing fragmentation of the field (Bosworth and Hoyle 2011: 3). Southern criminology is a political project as well as a theoretical and empirical one as we now endeavour to explain. The North/South distinction refers to the divide between the metropolitan states of Western Europe and North America, on the one hand, and the countries of Latin America, Africa, Asia and Oceania, on the other. In the pyramid of global knowledge production, the periphery was initially pressed into service as a ‘data mine’ for metropolitan theory, as examples of ‘primitive’, ‘tribal’ or ‘pre-modern’ societies (Connell 2007: 66).1 Thereafter, the dominant tendency has been for theory generated in the global North to be imported into the periphery (Connell 2015: 51), its essential task being relegated to that of applying the imported theory to local social problems in order to produce empirical findings whose relevance is generally confined to the local setting. This epistemological process bolstered the hegemony of northern theory whilst either ignoring or excluding ideas and theory rooted in the history and experience of societies of the South. ‘Southern’ therefore references geographical divides in the world but is also used as a metaphor for the power relations embedded in ‘periphery – centre relations in the realm of knowledge’ (Connell 2007: viii). The unstated assumption of metropolitan social science was that all societies were bound to follow the lead of modern societies of the global North if they were to successfully 57

Kerry Carrington, Russell Hogg and Máximo Sozzo

modernize. According to this logic, social and criminological phenomena in the peripheral world would be investigated, if at all, from the standpoint of their (imperfect) realization of universal theories and laws of development generated from ‘modern societies’ of the global North. This theoretical strategy, Connell argued, produces ‘readings from the centre’ which make universal knowledge claims yet fails to reflect their geo-political specificity (Connell 2007: 44). The problem, she suggested, is not a lack of ideas from the periphery but ‘a deficit of recognition and circulation’ (Connell 2015: 52). This kind of theory, which Connell calls metropolitan thinking, also fails to conceptualize ‘the bloodshed’, ‘the destruction of social relations’ and the ‘dispossession’ ‘involved in creating the current world in which we live’ (Connell 2007: 215), i.e. the historical reality that conquest and colonization were constitutive of western capitalist modernity from the very beginning. Southern criminology aims to rectify these omissions by adding new and diverse perspectives to criminological research agendas to make them more inclusive and befitting of the world in which we live. Importantly, we do not use Connell’s conception of southern theory uncritically. Simply supplanting metropolitan theory with southern theory risks becoming a reductive exercise that essentializes and caricatures northernness, while romanticizing knowledge production in the global South (McLennan 2013: 121–5). While we take issue with the northernness of criminological assumptions, we attempt to avoid the reductionism that characterizes some sweeping post-colonial critiques of social science by articulating the theoretical foundations of a southern criminology as a redemptive project. In this sense, our purpose is distinguished from the post-colonial project of epistemological and ontological disobedience and insurrection, where redemption is neither a conceptual or political possibility (Mignolo 2008). Rather we employ southern theory in a reflexive way to elucidate the power relations embedded in the hierarchal production of criminological knowledge that privileges theories, assumptions and methods based largely on empirical specificities of the global North. Our purpose is not to dismiss the conceptual and empirical advances that criminology has produced over the last century based largely on readings from the centres of the northern metropole, but to more usefully de-colonize and democratize the toolbox of available criminological concepts, theories and methods.

The theoretical foundations of southern criminology Where criminology has become well established as a field within the social sciences in the global South, it has tended to borrow and adapt metropolitan assumptions (Carrington 2015). Consequently, criminologies of the South have been oriented to vertical integration, accepting their subordinate role in the global organization of knowledge, at the expense of horizontal collaboration. This has stunted the intellectual development and vitality of criminology, both in the South and globally. It has also perpetuated the relative neglect of pressing criminological issues which affect both North and South. In other parts of the South, criminology is not yet well established as a discipline, although it is developing in Asia, with the establishment of the Asian Criminological Society and its journal (Lui 2009). If southern criminology is to flourish in all its potential diversity, it must challenge the epistemological dominance of metropolitan thought. Southern criminology does not offer another form of opposition so much as a series of projects of retrieval. Its purpose is not to denounce but to re-orient, not to oppose but to modify, not to displace but to augment. It is primarily concerned with the careful analysis of networks and interactions linking South and North which have been obscured by the metropolitan hegemony over criminological thought. Metropolitan thinking is a general concept that captures a set of tendencies, rather than a distinct, uniform body of theory. Our purpose below in illustrating how metropolitan thinking has shaped the focus of criminology is to urge critical reflexion on the 58

Southern criminology

colonizing and hegemonic dynamics within criminological theory. The most crucial of metropolitan assumptions include the following. Much research in criminology takes for granted a high level of internal peace within what is assumed to be a stable nation state system. This has led to the obfuscation of the historical role of state violence in nation-building, the expansion of colonialism across the global South and the neglect of contemporary violent phenomena, like armed conflict, drug wars and ethnic cleansing, that are more common in the Global South (Hogg 2002; Braithwaite 2013; Braithwaite and Wardak 2013; Barbaret 2014). As an essentially peace-time endeavour, much criminological research has concentrated on justice as ‘a domestic (national) project, confined to local or national interests’ (Barbaret 2014: 16), overlooking major historical and contemporary forms and trends in criminal justice practice outside the metropolitan centres of the northern hemisphere. These include colonial penal practices (Brown 2014), like the use of penal transportation as an instrument of imperial power (Shaw 1966; Forster 1996), the experiences of crime and victimization in post-colonial contexts of the global South that have led to excessively high rates of Indigenous incarceration and criminalization (Cunneen 2001; Carrington 2015) and the contemporary Islamization of criminal justice occurring across parts of the global South (Khan 2004; MirHosseini 2011; Carrington 2015). The focus on the state has also led to a lack of attention to alternative forms of justice, conflict resolution and punishment beyond the state, such as customary forms of dispute resolution or transitional justice movements that exist in many parts of the global South (see Braithwaite and Wardak 2013; Braithwaite and Gohar 2014). Modernization theories in the social sciences conceived social ills like crime as disorders of the processes of industrialization, and this led to the assumption in criminology that crime was primarily an urban phenomenon. This assumption may capture the impact of 19th century industrialization on social relations in the global North, but it overlooks the impact of industrial capitalism from its earliest days on the reconstruction of the global countryside and marginalizes research into the distinctive character of crime in rural and regional locales (Hogg and Carrington 2006; Barclay et al. 2007; Donnermeyer and DeKeseredy 2013; Harkness et al. 2015), a point to which we return below. The nation state focus of much criminology has led to the relative neglect, until recently, the implications of borderless and transnational crimes such as environmental crimes, e-crimes and cybercrime. There is however a growing tradition of green criminology attempting to correct this neglect (Walters 2013; White 2013; Brisman et al. 2015) and a new interest in researching crimes of cyberspace (Lee et al. 2013; Crofts et al. 2015). Notwithstanding its growing interest in cybercrime and crimes against the environment, criminology as a field devotes little attention to global environmental and corporate harms whose incidence and impacts are greatest in the global South, such as those associated with resource extraction, climate change and economic exploitation (Carrington et al. 2011; Laslett 2014). Where globalization has been a foci of criminological theorizing, it has too readily assumed the simple extension of northern trends (like neo-liberal penality) across the globe, failing to do justice to global diversity in the sources and trajectories of economic, social and penal policy (Connell and Dados 2014; Sozzo in press b; Sozzo 2015c). We expand on this tendency in criminology below in our analysis of the mismatch between the neo-liberal penality thesis and practices of punishment in Latin America. We appreciate that some criminological approaches have sought to grapple with historical, political, ideological, economic, cultural and social specificity—feminist and critical criminology especially. While these approaches go some way toward including the dynamics of globalization and colonization (Aas 2012), even critical perspectives have still tended to concentrate on the problems that crime, violence and criminalization pose for the metropolitan centres of the northern hemisphere. This is not to suggest that these analyses are faulty, simply that they are 59

Kerry Carrington, Russell Hogg and Máximo Sozzo

selective in privileging empirical referents and theoretical concepts derived from the geo-political specificities of the metropolitan centres of the global North. The development of a southern criminology will not suddenly overturn the knowledge/ power relations that have shaped social science in general and criminology in particular, but it may usefully aim to modify them in productive ways. Space constraints prevent us from elaborating the argument at length. Instead, we briefly outline three areas of inquiry that illustrate the potential of southern criminology to transcend the assumptions noted above. First, however, it is necessary to further unpack the North/South distinction.

Global North and global South Our argument is wary of dichotomous categorizations and binary thinking even as it might appear to involve the opposite. The division between North and South has its uses,2 but only as long as we employ this metaphor to uncover what it obscures as much as what it reveals. The southern is also a metaphor for the other, the invisible, the subaltern, the marginal and the excluded. This is what we propose in speaking of something called ‘southern’ criminology. The division of the contemporary world into North and South loosely approximates older (but still common) ways of talking about global divides and global social relations. These familiar binaries all expressly privilege ideas of temporal succession: ‘developed’ and ‘developing’, ‘industrial’ and ‘industrializing’, ‘first’ and ‘second’ worlds and ‘the third world’. In other words, the global North designates the normative benchmark (the developmental destination) to which the rest of the world will naturally aspire. This is symptomatic of general metropolitan thinking. It assumes the linear, panoramic, unifying and modernist standpoint of the global North in which space, and geo-political difference, are erased in the imperial narrative of time. In this world view, North Atlantic global dominance stems not from its conquest of the rest of the world but from historical precedence (Connell 2007: 38). ‘Southern’ may loosely reference a geographical region and otherwise reflect familiar global divides, but the seminal point is that there is no global North that is not also the product of centuries old interactions between regions and cultures spanning the globe (Sen 2006). The modern world dominated by North Atlantic countries was global from the start. It depended, e.g., on the prior globalization of technologies (like printing and gunpowder, both invented in China) and knowledge accumulated from different cultures over many centuries (in mathematics and philosophy, e.g., in which Islamic and Asian achievements were of central importance), not to mention access to land, raw materials, manufacturing techniques and labour (including slave labour) in many parts of the non-western world (see Beckert 2014). Southern criminology seeks to insert these events and relations back into history and contemporary analysis. The missing element here is empire. Of course, empire is acknowledged as a fact but invariably one that plays no part as an organizing principle of analysis. Over the course of several centuries, but rising to its zenith in the 19th century, European imperial states colonized vast swathes of the Americas, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific (Gregory 2004; Beckert 2014). At the height of western imperial power, they controlled as much as nine-tenths of the global land mass, establishing white settler communities in foreign lands, superimposing colonial borders on local ethnic, tribal and other boundaries, extracting raw materials, exploiting labour and opening up trade routes to the West (Gregory 2004; Beckert 2014). In the second half of the 20th century, the global South underwent a wave of de-colonization, but many of these societies continue to wrestle with the legacies of colonialism and continuing western intervention and control. The most intractable violent conflicts in the world today (in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia) belong to this history. 60

Southern criminology

Other societies of the South—the Latin American countries, Australia, New Zealand and Israel—remain as colonial settler states in at least one vital respect. These are post-colonial societies whose claims to national sovereignty and independence are based on the culture and political identity of their European settler populations, not their colonized Indigenous inhabitants. Until the transition to majority rule in the early 1990s, South Africa would also have been included in this list. Like South Africa, these settler societies all have long histories of racial segregation and exclusion (Perry 1996). The contemporary legacies are reflected in the plight of Indigenous peoples: extreme levels of poverty, fractured cultures and communities, high levels of violence and conflict, low life expectancy and massive over-representation in the criminal justice system (World Bank 2011). To complicate this picture further, global North countries like the United States and Canada also share these characteristics as colonial settler societies. The southern plantation economy of the United States was based on slavery until the civil war and on a brutal form of racial segregation for a further century after that. Hence the idea of the South captures the fact that there are enclaves of the South within the North and unresolved North/South tensions within many societies. Of no less significance is that the recent shifting balance of global economic growth and power from North to South, to countries like Brazil, Russia, India, China and others (the so-called BRICS), is lifting millions out of poverty and creating a growing middle class in these countries (United Nations Development Programme [UNDP] 2013), thus reducing inequalities between North and South. The global digital divide is closing even more rapidly, shrinking the world, increasing economic opportunities for many in poor countries and intensifying the scale and speed that capital, ideas, goods, services and people move around the world. Immigration and global travel are also introducing the South into the North on an ever growing scale (UNDP 2013). Yet at a macro level, vast disparities remain between North and South in wealth, income and access to education, health care, adequate food and shelter, effective political institutions and safe and secure living environments (World Population Data Sheet 2014) and inequalities within many societies of the South (as well as the North) are increasing. Grinding poverty is concentrated in the South, with 1.2 billion people still living on $1.25 or less a day (UNDP 2014). Other grave problems—environmental degradation, climate change, human dislocation, resource conflicts, people trafficking, organized crime, corruption, terrorism, financial crisis—have a mutually reinforcing impact on poverty and social conflict in the poorest parts of the world. In a globally connected world, the collateral impacts are felt far and wide. In short, issues of vital criminological research and policy significance abound in the global South, with important implications for South/North relations, and for questions of global security and justice. These issues also have significance for the forms of criminological theorization that might contribute to a better understanding of the challenges of the present and future. In what follows, we consider several of these issues in more depth.

Crimes outside the metropole: the many worlds of violence There is a glaring contrast between the different worlds of violence to be found in North and South that underlines the myopia of so much metropolitan criminology. In addition to poverty and multiple deprivations, organized violence in all its forms and manifestations is also heavily concentrated in the global South. The World Bank (2011: 2) estimates that ‘one in four people on the planet, more than 1.5 billion, live in fragile and conflict-affected states or in countries with very high levels of criminal violence’. Even as the incidence of both inter-state wars and civil wars declined since the 1990s, other forms of large-scale criminal violence and ‘cycles of repeat violence’ (drug wars, political violence and high levels of violent crime) increased. The condition 61

Kerry Carrington, Russell Hogg and Máximo Sozzo

no longer fits comfortably within 20th century paradigms of conflict. It cannot usefully be described as either one of ‘war’ or of ‘peace’ (World Bank 2011: 2). Many countries (including South Africa and the Central American republics) have made progress in relation to political conflict only to continue to be dogged by high levels of criminal violence. Homicide rates in Latin America, e.g., are: ‘the highest in the world (rate 27.5 per 100,000 pop.), over three times greater than those for the European Region . . .’ (Briceno-Leon et al. 2008: 752). Violence and organized crime are intimately related to other problems, of governance, poverty and environmental destruction. Lucrative criminal activities—like drug trafficking—finance political movements and corrupt public officials (as in Mexico: see Morris 2012). Countries experiencing such violence are also much more likely to lag behind others in addressing their high levels of poverty and inequality (World Bank 2010; 2011). Today, as in the past, many of these problems are conditioned not merely by forces from within (the idea that crime is local) but by the pattern of wider relationships within which countries are embedded. In a globally interconnected world, the collateral effects of violence also increasingly flow over national borders, spreading conflict and instability outward to neighbouring and, increasingly, also faraway countries. The dominant traditions within criminology largely eschewed an interest in such forms of violence and conflict. Developed on the foundations of 19th century practical social inquiry, medical science and moral statistics (Levin and Lindesmith 1937), both the individualistic and sociological positivist traditions treated the urban context of metropolitan societies as the natural laboratory of criminological inquiry and theory (Hogg and Carrington 2006: 1–18). A central concern was with the disruptive effects of migration and urbanization on traditional patterns of social control in predominantly agrarian societies. The mass movement of people (both within and across national borders) from rural to urban was seen as a major source of social disorganization, fractured communities, cultural conflict and myriad associated pathologies of urban life (gangs, ghettos, organized crime, drunkenness, sexual promiscuity, suicide and so on), necessitating enlarged criminal justice powers and institutions and measures like organized philanthropy, social work and slum clearance (Baldwin and Bottoms 1976). In these theories and research programmes, the countryside and ‘traditional’ rural worlds were largely seen as a vestigial, naturally cohesive space, the alter ego of the fearful, crime-infested inner cities, although in reality in countries of the North, this was mostly assumed rather than actually researched (Bottoms 1994: 648). The role of patriarchy and coerced social control in the maintenance of cohesive, hierarchical social relations in the countryside was also generally overlooked (Alston 1995; Carrington and Scott 2008). These assumptions of metropolitan thinking were largely accepted uncritically, in both North and South, where criminology managed to set down institutional and academic roots. It was a criminology therefore that presupposed the resolution of the Hobbesian problem of social war according to Hobbes’ own prescription for the institution of sovereign territorial states (with the later supplement of liberal civil and political rights) (Hobbes 1651:1968). Taking a high level of internal peace for granted, as the very condition of its existence, criminology rarely inquired into how those conditions were brought about (or not) in different historical and geo-political settings. How states were made, how their rule (through justice institutions and otherwise) was exerted and how the reach of their power was extended into new worlds were left unexamined. Rather, criminology largely confined its attention to the relatively minor delinquencies that troubled the internal peace of stable liberal states (mostly without seriously threatening them), to the more efficient measurement of these problems (crime statistics, surveys and the like) and to refining the instruments for policing, controlling, punishing and treating those (mostly poor, young and marginal) individuals and groups who transgressed (Garland 2001). 62

Southern criminology

From a southern standpoint, this simply ignored the historical role of states and the actual direction of movement of people, institutions and ideas that were central to shaping societies of the South as they were drawn into the orbit of the European imperial order. In other words, empire was missing from the analysis. It overlooked the fact that European capitalism was engaged from the outset in the transformation of the global countryside in what was often a violent process (Beckert 2014). From the standpoint of the colonial periphery, it was not the domestic urban context that was the primary site of world-shattering social change. The periphery, far from being a vestigial rural arcadia, bears the heavy imprints of a ‘globe-spanning system’ that in different times and places involved (amongst other things): the transportation of African slaves (some 8 million between 1,500 and 1,800) to plantations in the Caribbean, parts of Latin America and the southern states of the United States; the heavy reliance on other forced labour regimes (including convict labour and indentured labour systems such as that involving Pacific Islanders on plantations of north Queensland); the expropriation of the lands of Indigenous peoples; the violent suppression and criminalization of resistance; and the deindustrialization of domestic manufacturing and local moral economies in the South to serve the demands of metropolitan capitalists for raw materials and a mass supply of cheap wage labour (Beckert 2014). The advance of industrial capitalism in the metropole in the 19th century worked hand in glove with the extension and intensification of state-sponsored ‘war capitalism’ (Beckert 2014) in the periphery. Similarly, today the worlds of violence are interconnected by markets in drugs and guns and political intervention in new forms. Latin America’s lethal drug wars, e.g., persist due to Northern demand for illicit drugs and trade with Southern American countries in weapons (Grillo 2014). Metropolitan criminology focussed on the urban context of industrializing countries of the North, but the issue in many colonial settler states (Australia being a classic example) was not primarily one of managing the migration of people from the countryside into fledgling cities, but of how to populate the countryside with white settlers and contend with the resistance of its existing inhabitants to their physical and cultural dispossession (Reynolds 1989; Goodall 1996). The resultant conflicts and tensions are far from being of mere historical interest. The impact of past expropriation, frontier violence, segregation and autocratic administrative controls under supposed ‘protection’ and ‘welfare’ laws, concerted efforts at cultural decimation (breaking up families and removing children), reach into the present, adversely impacting Indigenous health and well-being in myriad ways (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare [AIHW] 2014). They are reflected in the number of Indigenous people and communities, especially in rural and remote Australia, who live with entrenched poverty, extreme levels of familial and communal violence and massive day-to-day contact with the criminal justice system (Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Women’s Task Force on Violence 2000; Cunneen 2001; Al-Yaman et al. 2006). Some researchers have suggested the comparison with ‘failed states’ and ‘third world’ living conditions is far from fanciful. This experience is one variant within a pattern repeated in other settler societies in the Americas and elsewhere (Perry 1996; World Bank 2010). The problems also persist due to the impacts of contemporary global economic and social change on the rural and remote periphery, affecting Non-Indigenous as well as Indigenous people. As the most marginal section of local populations with the strongest ties to place Indigenous communities tend to suffer the most grievous effects, but many of the forces in question are driving demographic change and shrinking economic opportunities and access to health, education and other services that affects everyone in the periphery. The always fragile white presence has become increasingly so. In many places, there are also the exacerbating effects of multiple, inter-related conflicts over title to land (native title claims), over land use and over environmental degradation and the impacts of climate change (Cleary 2014). 63

Kerry Carrington, Russell Hogg and Máximo Sozzo

All these factors have sharpened existing divisions (e.g., around race), brought others to the surface (around gender) and introduced new ones (amongst farmers, miners and environmentalists: White 2013). A growing body of criminological research is being undertaken into the historical and contemporary forces transforming the global countryside. It reveals both high levels of crime (particularly violence) and very different responses to it (Hogg and Carrington 2006; Barclay et al. 2007; Donnermeyer and DeKeseredy 2013). In Australia, rates of violence are on average considerably higher in regional and rural communities than in the cities (Hogg and Carrington 2006). Most of it is blamed on Indigenous people, prompting angry demands for law and order crackdowns. High levels of violence in Indigenous communities is undeniable, but depicting the problem as solely an Indigenous one masks the fact that disproportionately high levels of violence exist in white rural populations (Hogg and Carrington 2006). The temptation to externalize, or other, social problems in order to sustain idealized images of rural cohesion is a recurrent feature of public discourse around crime in many rural communities. Cloaking violence, especially sexual violence and domestic violence, in a culture of denial safeguards such images at the expense of the well-being of victims and their right to live without fear and threat (Hogg and Carrington 2006). The selective popular, official and criminological gaze that settles on the crimes of the socially excluded, overlooks, or normalizes, violence and harm elsewhere. At the present time, the global countryside across both North and South (including in some of the poorest countries in the world like Laos, Mozambique, Papua New Guinea, Peru and Sudan) is being transformed at the hands of a globalized resources sector eager to access natural resources—coal, iron ore, oil and so on—to meet exploding demand caused by the rapid industrialization of China, India and other Asian nations (World Bank 2011). Poor, conflict-ridden countries and regions in the global South with weak political institutions are particularly vulnerable to powerful corporations looking to maximize short-term profits without regard for long-term consequences. Corruption, violence, expropriation of landowners, environmental degradation and diversion of scarce public resources are commonplace and mutually reinforcing in their harmful effects. Instead of their rich resource base delivering benefits to ordinary citizens, poverty, poor health, degraded living conditions and conflict are perpetuated, and often exacerbated (Green and Ward 2004; Ruggerio and South 2013: 13). Even Australia has not managed to escape some of the destructive environmental, social and criminological impacts of the global resource industry’s appetite to tap its rich resource base (Carrington et al. 2010; 2011; Cleary 2014). If stable, prosperous, democratic states cannot avoid corruption, cronyism, economic distortions and other symptoms of the ‘resource curse’, we can only ponder the vulnerability of poor and fragile states confronting the power of global corporations.

Gendered crime and victimization in the global South The development of feminist criminology put gender at the centre and not the periphery of criminological theorizing and research. The default assumptions of feminist criminology, nevertheless, tended to mirror those of the discipline, by elevating and reproducing certain forms of metropolitan thinking (see Carrington 2015). The particular forms of feminist theory which elevated sexual difference as a central homogenizing category of analysis led to a narrowing of the feminist gaze to localized gendered power relations and structures, such as patriarchy. Feminist scholars of colour argued that when women are positioned as a universal category, abstracted from the specificity of women’s diverse experiences across time, class, space, history, religion,

64

Southern criminology

economics, culture and geo-politics, women outside feminist normative constructions become colonized (Mohanty 1984: 335). Like much of criminology, feminist criminologists have tended to confine their critical gaze mostly to domestic issues of criminal justice, at least until recently (Renzetti 2013; Barbaret 2014; Carrington 2015). There were good reasons for this, given that feminist scholars focused their critical attention on the invisibilization of women as victims and their unjust treatment by statebased masculinist justice systems (Gelsthorpe 1989; Naffine 1997). This should be applauded. But a theory based singularly on gender is and always was insufficient to explain how women of colour, rural women, Indigenous women and women from impoverished backgrounds are uniquely susceptible to policing, criminalization and imprisonment (Carlen 1983; Potter 2015). Many of these women are situated outside the metropole. Only by incorporating a tapestry of interconnections encompassing social position, race, ethnicity, location and gender can the chronic over-representation of particular groups of women in the criminal justice systems begin to be understood (Carlen 1999). Intersectionality has been posited as the theoretical antidote to feminism’s metropolitanism. Hence a transnational feminist criminology that adopts an intersectional approach is a significant advance on essentialist feminist frameworks that privileged a unified mono-cultural, transhistorical conception of gender (Henne and Troshynski 2013; Renzetti 2013; Barbaret 2014; Potter 2015). Intersectionality is, as Henne and Toshynski (2013) point out,‘a corrective concept’ (2013: 468). They also warn against emptying it of its post-colonial and geo-political importance. Whilst feminist criminology has come a long way, some argue that it still needs to internationalize and cast its gaze outside the boundaries of the nation state (Barbaret 2014: 16), to examine global inequities and ‘gendered experiences of colonization’ (Renzetti 2013: 96) and ‘to widen its research agendas to include the distinctively different gendered patterns of crime and violence that occur across the globe’ (Carrington 2015: 2). Since the 1960s, the growing internationalization of the economy has seen massive migration of former colonial populations to Europe and America, in pursuit of economic opportunity and to meet the demand for cheap labour (Mohanty 2003: 44). Manufacturing operations have also relocated from North to South in search of cheap labour, often in countries with unstable political regimes, low levels of unionization, weak labour laws and high unemployment. Global demographic change has resulted in the mass incorporation of women from the global South into domestic work, export-processing and labour-intensive industries (Mohanty 2000: 206–7). This is the geo-economic context to one of the largest unsolved crimes (or series of crimes) of femicide of recent times. Between 1993 and 2010, an estimated 878 women were killed in the Mexican city of Juarez (Arsenault 2011). Juarez is a city of around 2.5 million people, perched on the border with the United States. In the 1990s, thousands of factory jobs became available in the factories that located there following the establishment of the North American Free Trade Agreement. For two decades, the Mexican criminal justice system failed to adequately investigate the murders of factory workers, many of native Indian descent who had migrated from poor rural areas of Mexico in search of jobs (Livingston 2004: 60). Their journeys to and from work (often at night) in a city where drug cartels operated with impunity and corruption was rife made them highly vulnerable targets for sexual predators. While globalization opened up opportunities for these impoverished rural women to seek a measure of economic independence (Thayer 2010), it also exposed them to exploitation and violence. They were stigmatized as outsiders, as public women, who drank, worked and socialized like men and aligned with the stigma of prostitution (Wright 2005: 289). The victims were blamed for their own fate, diverting public attention from

65

Kerry Carrington, Russell Hogg and Máximo Sozzo

the corrupt government officials, police dereliction of duty, drug cartels and complicit factory owners (Wright 2005). Over a longer period elsewhere in the global South, a very different pattern of gendered violence was experienced by women. Zina is defined in centuries old Islamic law as sex outside marriage (Mir-Hosseini 2011). Where this particular Islamic law operates, it can result in a sentence of 100 lashes, or even death by stoning if adultery is involved (Khan 2004: 660). These traditional Islamic offences emerged in the 8th century Islamic world to regulate sexuality, promiscuity and prostitution, at a time when the patriarchal rule over women and slaves was a pre-given social reality (Mir-Hosseini 2011). Over the intervening centuries, slavery was abolished and ‘Zina laws . . . became legally obsolete in almost all Muslim countries and communities’ (Mir-Hosseini 2011: 7). That changed in the 1970s. Islamic fundamentalism revived Zina laws across the Muslim majority countries of Libya, Sudan, Aceh in Indonesia, Palestine, Algeria, Somalia, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, Somalia, parts of Syria,Yemen, Afghanistan, Nigeria and Malaysia (Mir-Hosseini 2011: 7). Khan, who undertook a study of women punished for Zina offences in Pakistan, argues that the revival of Zina laws in the 20th century is a transnational feminist issue of significant and global concern (Khan 2003). An emergent feminist scholarship within the Muslim faith has taken issue with interpretations of Islamic law used to justify the revival of Zina offences (Khan 2004; Rahat 2005; Mir-Hosseini 2011). They point out that the revival of Zina offences is based on patriarchal interpretations of Sharia law that have ‘led to regressive gender policies, with devastating consequences for women: compulsory dress codes, gender segregation, and the revival of out-dated patriarchal and tribal models of social relations’ (Mir-Hosseini 2011: 12). They also argue that women punished for Zina are rendered invisible by a cultural relativist acceptance that Zina is a justifiable religious or customary practice (Khan 2004; Ibitissam 2014). Islamic fundamentalism (like other contemporary fundamentalisms) is a modern phenomenon, a reaction to modern conditions, that consciously melds carefully selected elements of the past with present political projects which have nothing traditional about them (Ruthven 2004: 17–8). Hence the specific forms and effects of systemic violence and discrimination experienced by women where oppressive Islamic laws criminalize consensual adult sex outside marriage is an important project for a southern criminology. There is also much that feminists from the global North can learn from the struggles for justice by women in the global South. One example is the development of women-only police stations as an effective, though imperfect, method of combatting violence against women (Hauztinger 2010). Established for the first time in Brazil in 1985 (which now has 475) women-only police stations have spread across Latin America, including Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Peru and Uruguay. They deal exclusively with female victims of sexual and domestic violence. Evaluations have found they enhance women’s willingness to report, increase the likelihood of conviction and enlarge access to a range of other services such as counselling, health, legal, financial and social support (UN Women 2011: 1). Although their effectiveness depends upon a range of local factors (Hauztinger 2010), the overall success has led to their introduction in other parts of the world, including India, the Philippines, Sierra Leone, South Africa and Uganda.

Penality, punishment and southern criminology The trajectories and dynamics of modern penal development have been the focus of a prolific body of criminological scholarship since the 1970s, much of it influenced by the work of Foucault and the revival and revision of classical sociological theorizing around punishment 66

Southern criminology

(Garland 1990). In generalizing from certain experiences in the metropole—the rise of the penitentiary in the 19th century, the contemporary global spread of neo-liberal penal ideas— this scholarship conforms to a familiar (northern) pattern. One notable omission, more striking because of the particular historical focus of this work, relates to the connections between punishment and colonization and how they impact contemporary understanding of penal practice. Empire is once again an important connecting thread in the relationship between penal practices in North and South. Mark Brown has argued that existing conceptions of the penal field need to be broadened if account is to be taken of colonial penal practices (Brown 2014: 192). The broadening he suggests is not just geographical in nature, but must also encompass the complex, shifting and contingent ways in which penal practice was articulated with forms of colonial rule according to local circumstances, in countries like India, e.g., which is the focus of his research. Quite apart from how colonial rule and penal practice were articulated within colonial settings, punishment was itself an instrument for projecting imperial power and culture across the globe. Penal transportation and the founding of convict colonies in the Global South was a critical component of the statecraft of modern imperial powers. It was central to British domestic and colonial penality for more than three centuries until its cessation in the early 20th century. Transportation to the Australian colonies was the most significant of these penal projects but was not the only one. Other European imperial states also used transportation as a penal measure, albeit not on the same scale as Britain (Christopher 2010). Transportation has received little attention in the criminological literature on penal modernism (although see Rusche and Kirchheimer 1939:2003). Ignoring or substantially writing it out of the history of penal modernism overlooks not only its role in shaping the societies founded and/or developed as penal colonies, but the significant impacts it had on metropolitan penal developments. It also severs the genealogy of modern punishment from other experiences and histories that are constitutive of global modernity: colonialism, enclosure and dispossession, migration and forced labour in its manifold forms. In more recent times, restorative justice ideas and practices have been developed in the South, drawing in particular on New Zealand Maori and other Indigenous forms of dispute resolution (Richards 2009). In other parts of the global South, including South Africa, Latin America, Timor Leste, similar (often Indigenous) traditions have informed the building of new justice institutions and processes—truth and reconciliation commissions and other transitional justice mechanisms— to support the transition from colonial domination or military dictatorship to democracy, to address gross human rights abuses of the past and to protect against future outbreaks of violent conflict (Tutu 1999; Liu 2009; Richards 2009; Braithwaite 2013; 2015). These initiatives, often with their roots in the periphery of the periphery, suggest wholly new ways of looking at the world and at how the struggle for justice and democracy might be pursued. Grappling with such questions in war-torn Afghanistan, John Braithwaite has identified some hopeful signs for building peace and democracy in certain extant traditional localized justice practices. He makes the general point that ‘criminologists need to be part of a debate about the path to democracy that starts at the periphery of a society rather than at the centre’ (Braithwaite 2013: 209). Elsewhere he points out that other Asian societies, those in the East, have generally been successful at preventing crime (even as they grappled with the legacies of colonization, the challenges of modernization and combatting widespread poverty) and might therefore offer some relevant lessons for northern societies that manage to produce a lot of criminology but enjoy less success when it comes to crime prevention (Braithwaite 2015). In recent years, the neo-liberal thesis on penality (Lacey 2013) has been a widely accepted way of thinking about the punitive turn in criminal justice. However, this thesis is based on 67

Kerry Carrington, Russell Hogg and Máximo Sozzo

specific experiences of the global North—primarily that of the United States since the 1970s. This narrative describes the contemporary penal field as being heavily colonized by a trend of increasing punitiveness driven by the emergence of neoliberalism—a political project designed and developed by an increasingly transnational elite that has radically transformed the character of the state in the spheres of economic, social and penal interventions. This narrative is embedded most strongly in the work of Wacquant (2009a; 2009b), who argues that what happened to criminal justice initially in the United States spread as the neo-liberal political project with which it is connected reached across the world. He provides examples from the global North, especially from Europe (Britain and France) to support his argument—although acknowledging more complexity in the process in his most recent version (Wacquant 2009b: 243–86). However, this thesis has also been extended to penality in countries of the global South, particularly in Latin America (in relation to Brazil, see Wacquant 2003; 2008; and more generally, see Iturralde 2010a; 2010b; Müller 2012; Iturralde 2012). Neo-liberalism was promoted in South America during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, in different times and contexts and by different government economic and social reforms. Neoliberal reforms occurred under both dictatorial and democratic governments, which followed the lead of international agencies like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Simultaneously, there has also been a punitive turn, as measured by incarceration rates (an imperfect but the only available indicator), as in Colombia and Brazil. However, this does not mean that in such cases, the relationship between the influence of neo-liberalism and this punitive turn can be considered simple or automatic, as the example of Argentina illustrates. At the beginning of the 1990s, neo-liberal reforms under ‘Menemism’(the political alliance around the figure of President Menem who governed Argentina between 1989 and 1999) was combined with a moderate growth of some indicators of punitiveness but also with a certain stability in others. This changed in the second half of the 1990s, when penal populism emerged from a crisis of legitimacy in the context of the strong politicization of crime (Sozzo 2011: 24–43; Sozzo in press a). In the case of Argentina, after a strong trend towards increased punitiveness from the mid-1990s, the incarceration rate continued to increase during the ‘Kirchnerist’ process of political change that began in 2003, but to a much lower degree (Sozzo in press a; in press b; in press c). Something similar has happened in Uruguay since 2005. Furthermore, there are also other national cases in the region in which the simultaneous presence of reforms inspired by neo-liberal principles and a punitive turn are not evident, at least in terms of incarceration rates, as in Venezuela during the 1990s or Bolivia between mid-1990 and mid-2000 (Sozzo in press b). The use of the neo-liberal penality thesis to describe and explain the penal present in this region of the global South is also hampered by another crucial element. In several national contexts from the late 1990s, political change has seen the rise of political alliances and programs which have built their identities around being ‘postneoliberal’, reflecting different levels of radicalism and connections with local traditions of the Left: in Venezuela since 1999, Brazil and Argentina since 2003, Uruguay since 2005, Bolivia since 2006 and Ecuador since 2007. Of course, there is variation between these nation states. But in all of them, there are some important materializations such as the expansion of social policies, strengthening of state intervention in the market, non-alignment with the United States in international relations and nationalization of previously privatized public services. In some of these countries, only more recently has there been a strong punitive turn, at least as measured by the indicator of the rate of imprisonment, as in Bolivia or, even more dramatically, in Venezuela (Hernández and Grajales in press). And in other cases, the growing punitive trend to that was observed in the recent past has continued, such as in Brazil (Azevedo and Cifali in press). It is, therefore, impossible to assume 68

Southern criminology

recent trends toward increased punitiveness in these scenarios are simply the consequence of neo-liberalism and treat them as an integral part of some uniform, transnational political project (Sozzo in press b). The link between these governmental experiences and penality is more complex. These examples draw attention not only to the role of other processes and dynamics that cannot be subsumed under the rubric of neo-liberalism but also highlight the need to approach more critically the notion that neo-liberalism is a transnational political project of a uniform character (O’Malley 2014). This brief exploration of penal trends in the global South, as with our earlier examples, provokes a radical rethink of criminological arguments based on experiences in the global North. Metropolitan criminology has too readily generalized from the impact of neo-liberalism in its own societies to the rest of the world. Globalization is often depicted as westernization or the simple extension of the neo-liberal commitment to free markets, small government and harsh punishment across the globe. Such simplification fails to do justice to global diversity in the sources and trajectories of neo-liberalism (Connell and Dados 2014) and its impacts on penal policies, practices and developments, including diversity within the United States itself.

Conclusion In making the argument for southern criminology, it is not our purpose to add to the growing catalogue of new criminologies. Rather than further fragmenting the field, we see southern criminology as a theoretical, empirical and political project aimed at bridging global divides and democratizing epistemology by levelling the power imbalances that privilege knowledges produced in the metropolitan centres of the global North, particularly those located in the Anglo world. As an empirical project, it seeks to modify the criminological field to make it more inclusive of patterns of crime, justice and security outside the boundaries of the global North (see also Walklate 2015). We elaborated the argument by briefly outlining several possible projects of a southern criminology. Our purpose was twofold. First, to highlight certain distinctive forms and patterns of crime and trends in criminal justice practice in the global South which substantially elude criminological theory that generalizes from Northern experience. Secondly, to show that North and South are globally interconnected in ways and with effects, both historical and contemporary, which warrant inclusion in criminological research, theoretical and policy agendas. Southern criminology is also a theoretical project that seeks to adjust the theoretical lens of interpretation and to recover histories rooted in colonialism to enable it to more usefully account for the divergent patterns of crime, violence and justice that occur outside the metropole and their power effects on everyday life in the global South.

Acknowledgement We are grateful to the two reviewers of the draft for their helpful suggestions for how to improve the argument. This chapter was first published in The British Journal of Criminology, Volume 56, Issue 1, 1 January 2016, Pages 1–20, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azv083. The authors are grateful for permission to re-publish the article.

Notes 1 2

Such as Durkheim did when he used an ethnographic study of the Arrernte people of Australia as the empirical referent for the world’s ‘most primitive and simple religion’ (Durkheim in Connell 2007: 78). North and South at least have the advantage of registering space over time, even if the underlying habits of thought are not always challenged. As loose, ambiguous and contested categories how they 69

Kerry Carrington, Russell Hogg and Máximo Sozzo

are deployed often depends upon the context in which they are used. Asia, barring Japan, has generally been included in the Global South although geographically located in the north. Also many Asian countries (the so-called ‘Asian Tigers’ like Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea) are in economic terms part of the rich world. Former colonies of Britain like Australia and New Zealand are geographically southern but (as high income countries) are usually lumped in with the countries of the global North. The countries of Latin America are generally regarded as part of the global South, although their varied and historically changing economic and political fortunes mean that not all of them would so readily be categorized as such today or in times past. At one time, e.g., it was common to compare Argentina with Australia as countries undergoing a similar development trajectory. That is, the differences amongst countries categorized within the North, or within the South, are every bit as great and salient as any differences between the two categories.

References Aas, F. (2012), ‘“The Earth Is One by the World Is Not”: Criminological Theory and Its Geopolitical Divisions’, Theoretical Criminology, 16: 5–20. Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Women’s Task Force on Violence. (2000), Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Women’s Task Force on Violence Report. Queensland Government. Alston, M. (1995), Women on the Land. University of NSW Press. Al-Yaman, F., Van Doeland, M. and Wallis, M. (2006), Family Violence among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Communities. AIHW. Arsenault, C. (2011), ‘In Juarez, Women Just Disappear: Al Jazeera Visits the Border City Where More Than 800 Women Have Been Murdered in a Wave of Gender Violence’, Aljazeera, 8 March 2011, available online at http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/03/201138142312445430.html (accessed 4 April 2014). Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW). (2014), National Key Performance Indicators for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Primary Health Care: Results from December 2013, Cat. no. IHW 146, AIHW. Azevedo, R. and Cifali, A. C. (in press),‘Seguridad púbica, politica criminal y penalidad en Brazil durante los gobiernos de Lula y Dilma (2003–2014). Cambios y continuidades’ in M. Sozzo, ed., Postneoliberalismo y penalidad en América del Sur. CLACSO. Baldwin, J. and Bottoms, A. (1976), The Urban Criminal. Tavistock. Barbaret, R. (2014), Women, Crime and Criminal Justice. Routledge. Barclay, E., Donnermeyer, J., Scott, J. and Hogg, R. (eds). (2007), Crime in Rural Australia. Federation Press. Beckert, S. (2014), Empire of Cotton – A New History of Global Capitalism. Allen Lane. Bosworth, M. and Hoyle, C. (eds). (2011), What Is Criminology? Oxford University Press. Bottoms, A. (1994), ‘Environmental Criminology’ in M. Maguire, R. Morgan and R. Reiner, eds, The Oxford Handbook of Criminology, 585–656. Oxford University Press. Braithwaite, J. (2013), ‘Truth, Reconciliation and Peacebuilding’, in R. King, V. MacGill and R. Wescombe, eds, Peace in Action: Practices, Perspectives and Policies that Make a Difference. King MacGill Wescombe Publications. ——. (2015), ‘Rethinking Criminology through Radical Diversity in Asian Reconciliation’, Asian Criminology. doi:10.1007/s11417-014-9200-z. Braithwaite, J. and Gohar, A. (2014), ‘Restorative Justice, Policing and Insurgency: Learning from Pakistan’, Law and Society Review, 48: 531–56. Braithwaite, J. and Wardak, A. (2013),‘Crime and War in Afghanistan. Part 1: The Hobbesian Solution’, The British Journal of Criminology, 53: 179–96. Briceno-Leon, R., Villaveces, A. and Concha-Eastman, A. (2008), ‘Understanding the Uneven Distribution of the Incidence of Homicide in Latin America’, International Journal of Epidemiology, 37: 751–7. Brisman, A., South, N. and White, R. (eds). (2015), Environmental Crime and Social Conflict. Ashgate. Brown, M. (2014), Penal Power and Colonial Rule. Routledge. Carlen, P. (1983), Women’s Imprisonment: A Study of Social Control. Routledge. ——. (1999), ‘The Limits to, and Potential of, Feminist and Left Realist Perspectives’, in R. Matthews and J. Young, eds, Issues in Realist Criminology, 51–69. Sage. Carrington, K. (2015), Feminism and Global Justice. Routledge. Carrington, K., Hogg, R. and McIntosh, A. (2011), ‘The Resource Boom’s Underbelly: The Criminological Impact of Mining Development’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 44: 335–54. 70

Southern criminology

Carrington, K., McIntosh, A. and Scott, J. (2010),‘Globalization, Frontier Masculinities and Violence: Booze, Blokes and Brawls’, British Journal of Criminology, 50: 393. Carrington, K. and Scott, J. (2008), ‘Masculinity, Rurality and Violence’, British Journal of Criminology, 48: 641–66. Christopher, E. (2010), A Merciless Place – The Fate of Britain’s Convicts after the American Revolution. Oxford University Press. Cleary, P. (2014), ‘Native Title Contestation in the Pilbara’, International Journal of Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 3: 132–48. Connell, R. (2007), Southern Theory: The Global Dynamics of Knowledge in the Social Science. Allen & Unwin. ——. (2015), ‘Meeting at the Edge of Fear: Theory on a World Scale’, Feminist Theory, 16: 49–66. Connell, R. and Dados, N. (2014), ‘Where in the World Does Neoliberalism Come From? The Market Agenda in Southern Perspective’, Theory and Society, 43: 117–38. Crofts, T., Lee, M., McGovern, A. and Milivojevic, S. (2015), Sexting and Young People. Palgrave Macmillan. Cunneen, C. (2001), Conflict, Politics & Crime, Aboriginal Communities & Police. Allen & Unwin. Donnermeyer, J. and DeKeseredy, W. (2013), Rural Criminology. Routledge. Forster, C. (1996), France and Botany Bay – The Lure of a Penal Colony. Melbourne University Press. Garland, D. (1990), Punishment and Modern Society. University of Chicago Press. ——. (2001), The Culture of Control. Oxford University Press. Gelsthorpe, L. (1989), Sexism and the Female Offender. Gower. Goodall, H. (1996), Invasion to Embassy – Land in Aboriginal Politics in New South Wales 1770–1972. Allen & Unwin. Green, P. and Ward, T. (2004), State Crime: Governments,Violence and Corruption. Pluto Press. Gregory, D. (2004), The Colonial Present. Blackwell Publishing. Grillo, I. (2014), ‘Mexico’s Deadly Narco-Politics’, New York Times, 9 October 2014. Harkness, A., Baker, D. and Harris, B. (eds). (2015) Locating Crime in Context and Place: Regional and Rural Perspectives. Federation Press. Hauztinger, S. (2010),‘Criminalising Male Violence in Brazil’s Women’s Police Stations: From Flawed Essentialism to Imagined Communities’, Journal of Gender Studies, 11: 243–51. Henne, K. and Troshynski, E. (2013) ‘Mapping the Margins of Intersectionality: Criminological Possibilities in a Transnational World’, Theoretical Criminology, 17: 455–73. Hernández, L. and Grajales, M. L. (in press), ‘La cultura penal y el gobierno del Presidente Chavez’, in M. Sozzo, ed., Postneoliberalismo y penalidad en America del Sur. CLACSO. Hobbes, T. (1651:1968), Leviathan 1651, edited with an introduction by CB Macpherson Leviathan. Penguin. Hogg, R. (2002), ‘Criminology beyond the Nation State’, in K. Carrington and R. Hogg, eds, Critical Criminology, 185–217. Willan. Hogg, R. and Carrington, K. (2006), Policing the Rural Crisis. Federation Press. Ibitissam, B. (2014), Women and Islam: Myths, Apologies, and the Limits of Feminist Critique. Lexington Books. Iturralde, M. (2010a), ‘Democracies Without Citizenship: Crime and Punishment in Latin America’, New Criminal Law Review, 13: 309–22. ——. (2010b), ‘Emergency Penality and Authoritarian Liberalism: Recent Trends in Colombian Criminal Policy’, Theoretical Criminology, 12: 377–97. ——. (2012), ‘O governo neoliberal de la inseguranca social na America Latina; semelhanzas e diferencias con o Norte Global’, in V. Malaguti, ed., Loic Wacquant e questao penal no capitalismo neoliberal. Revam Rio de Janeiro. Khan, S. (2003), ‘Zina and the Moral Regulation of Pakistani Women’, Feminist Review, 75: 75–94. ——. (2004), ‘Locating the Feminist Voice: The Debate on the Zina Ordinance’, Feminist Studies, 30: 660–82. Lacey, N. (2013),‘Punishment, (Neo) Liberalism and Social Democracy’, in R. Sparks and J. Simon, eds, The Sage Handbook of Punishment and Society, 260–80. Sage. Laslett, K. (2014), State Crime on the Margins of Empire: Rio Tinto, the War on Bougainville and Resistance to Mining. Pluto Press. Lee, M., Crofts, T., Salter, M., Milivojevic, S. and McGovern, A. (2013), ‘“Let’s Get Sexting”: Risk, Power, Sex and Criminalisation in the Moral Domain’, International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 2: 35–49. Levin, Y. and Lindesmith, A. (1937), ‘English Ecology and Criminology of the Past Century’, Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 27: 801–16. Livingston, J. (2004), ‘Murder in Juarez: Gender, Sexual Violence and the Global Assembly Line’, Frontiers, 25: 59–76. 71

Kerry Carrington, Russell Hogg and Máximo Sozzo

Liu, J. (2009), ‘Asian Criminology – Challenges, Opportunities and Directions’, Asian Journal of Criminology, 4: 1–9. McLennan, G. (2013), ‘Postcolonial Critique: The Necessity of Sociology’, Political Power and Social Theory, 24: 119–44. Mignolo, W. D. (2008), ‘The Geopolitics of Knowledge and the Colonial Difference’, in W. Mignolo, I. Silverblatt and Sonia Saldívar-Hull, eds., Coloniality at Large: Latin America and the Postcolonial Debate, 255–88. Duke University Press. Mir-Hosseini, Z. (2011), ‘Criminalising Sexuality: Zina Laws as Violence Against Women in Muslim Contexts’, Sur International Journal on Human Rights, 8: 7–32. Mohanty, C. (1984), ‘Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses’, Boundary 2, 12: 333–58. ——. (2000), ‘Cartographies of Struggle: Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism’, in P. Essed and D. Goldbrg, eds, Race Critical Theories, 195–219. Blackwell. ——. (2003), Feminism without Borders: Decolonising Theory, Practicing Solidarity. Duke University Press. Morris, S. (2012), ‘Corruption, Drug Trafficking and Violence in Mexico’, Brown Journal of World Affairs, XVIII: 29–44. Müller, M. (2012), ‘The Rise of the Penal State in Latin America’, Contemporary Justice Review, 15: 57–76. Naffine, N. (1997), Feminism & Criminology. Allen & Unwin. O’Malley, P. (2014), ‘Prisons, Neoliberalism and Neo-liberal states. Reading Loïc Wacquant and Prisons of Poverty’, Thesis Eleven, 3: 89–96. Perry, R. (1996), From Time Immemorial – Indigenous Peoples and State Systems. University of Texas Press. Potter, H. (2015), Intersectionality and Criminology: Disrupting and Revolutionizing Studies of Crime. Routledge. Rahat, I. (2005), ‘Legal Injustices: The Zina Hudood Ordinance of Pakistan and Its Implications for Women’, Journal of International Women’s Studies, 7: 78–100. Renzetti, C. (2013), Feminist Criminology. Routledge. Reynolds, H. (1989), Dispossession: Black Australians and White Invaders. Allen & Unwin. Richards, K. (2009), ‘Rewriting and Reclaiming History: An Analysis of the Emergence of Restorative Justice in Western Criminal Justice Systems’, International Journal of Restorative Justice, 5: 104–28. Ruggerio, V. and South, N. (2013),‘Toxic State-Corporate Crimes, Neo-liberalism and Green Criminology: The Hazards and Legacies of Oil, Chemical and Mineral Industries’, International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 2: 12–6. Rusche, G. and Kirchheimer, O. (1939:2003), Punishment and Social Structure. Transaction Publishers. Ruthven, M. (2004), Fundamentalism: The Search for Meaning. Oxford University Press. Sen, A. (2006), Identity and Violence – The Illusion of Identity. Allen Lane. Shaw, A. G. L. (1966), Convicts and the Colonies – A Study of Penal Transportation from Great Britain and Ireland to Australia and Other Parts of the British Empire. Faber and Faber. Sozzo, M. (2011), Transition to Democracy and Penal Policy: The Case of Argentina. Straus Working Paper 03/11, School of Law, New York University. ——. (in press a), ‘Democratization, Politics and Punishment in Argentina’, in Punishment and Society. The International Journal of Penology, Special Issue on Democratization and Punishment. ——. (in press b), ¿Más allá del “punto de vista dominante”?. Cambio político y giro punitivo en América del Sur, in F. Tenorio Tagle, ed., Delito, pena y control social. INACIPE. ——. (in press c), ‘Kirchnerismo y Penalidad en Argentina’, in M. Sozzo, ed., Postneoliberalismo y penalidad en América del Sur. CLACSO. Thayer, M. (2010), Making Transnational Feminism. Routledge. Tutu, D. (1999), No Future without Forgiveness. Rider. UN Women. (2011), Women’s Police Stations in Latin America Case Study: An Entry Point for Stopping Violence and Gaining Access, available online at http://www.endvawnow.org/uploads/browser/files/security_ wps_case_study.pdf. United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). (2013), Human Development Report 2013 – The Rise of the South. United Nations. ——. (2014), Human Development Report 2014 – Sustaining Human Progress: Reducing Vulnerabilities and Building Resilience. United Nations. Wacquant, L. (2003),‘Towards a Dictatorship Over the Poor: Notes on the Penalization of Poverty in Brazil?’ Punishment and Society, 5: 197–205. ——. (2008), ‘The Militarization of Urban Marginality Lessons from Brazilian Metropolis’, International Political Sociology, 1: 56–74. 72

Southern criminology

——. (2009a), Punishing the Poor. Duke University Press. ——. (2009b), Prisons of Poverty. University of Minnesota Press. Walklate, S. (2015), Whither Criminology: Its Global Future(s)? Keynote Presentation to the Asian Criminology Conference, June 2015. Walters, R. (2013), ‘Eco Mafia and Eco Crime’, in K. Carrington, M. Ball, E. O’Brien and J. Tauri, eds, Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 281–94. Palgrave MacMillan. White, R. (2013), ‘Resource Extraction Leaves Something Behind: Environmental Justice and Mining’, International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 2: 50–64. World Bank. (2010), Indigenous Peoples – Still among the Poorest of the Poor, Policy Brief, available online at wwwds.worldbank.org/external/default/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2011/10/03/000386194_20 111003021020/Rendered/PDF/647600BRI0Box30ndigenous 0clean00421.pdf. ——. (2011), ‘World Development Report 2011: Conflict, Security, and Development—Overview’, World Development Report, World Bank Group, available online at http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/ en/2011/01/14281992/world-development-report-2011-conflict-security-development-overview. World Population Data Sheet. (2014), available online at http://www.prb.org/Publications/Datasheets/2014/ 2014-world-population-data-sheet/data-sheet.aspx (accessed 15 April 2015). Wright, M. (2005), ‘Paradoxes, Protests, and the Mujeres de Negro of Northern Mexico’, Gender, Place, and Culture, 12: 177–92.

73

5 Feminist perspectives Claire M. Renzetti

Introduction: what is feminist criminology? Several years ago, when I was interviewing social activists who were working to address the problem of sex trafficking worldwide, I posed the question, “Do you consider yourself a feminist?” The common reply from interviewees went something like this: “No, I wouldn’t say I’m a feminist; I think all people should be treated equally and respectfully.” Before answering the question, “What is feminist criminology?,” then, it would be useful to first answer the question, “What is feminism?,” for there appears to be some confusion as to the meaning of this term. And it is undeniably a label that nowadays is loaded with social and political baggage. The emergence of contemporary feminism is typically dated to be during the 1960s. At that time in the United States, Canada, Britain, and Europe, various social movements developed in response to widespread social injustice, including racial and ethnic inequality, colonialism, and the Vietnam War. Women were active participants in these movements, but quickly (and correctly) perceived that they frequently were not treated as equals by male participants. At the same time, women in what may be considered more mainstream social venues – for example, government, business, and education – grew increasingly dissatisfied with how little genuine equality they enjoyed despite their formal legal rights. Not surprisingly, university campuses were often at the center of this social and political activism, and many academics – mostly, but not solely, women – began to take a careful look at their respective disciplines to learn how these might be actively or implicitly reproducing social inequalities, including gender inequality. Criminology was no exception. From this introspection, a number of different perspectives emerged, all of which may be labeled feminist. There are several core principles, though, that feminist theories share. First, at the heart of feminism is the recognition that gender is a central organizing principle of social life. Gender may be defined as the socially constructed expectations or norms governing female and male behavior and attitudes that are usually organized dichotomously as femininity and masculinity and that are reproduced and transmitted through socialization. Of course, biology influences the development of gender, too, but while feminist perspectives recognize the complex interaction between biology and environment, feminism emphasizes the socially constructed, rather than innately determined, aspects of gender. 74

Feminist perspectives

If gender is constructed dichotomously, then membership in gender categories is exclusive. In other words, a person is either feminine or masculine. Setting aside for the moment the problematic aspects of conceptualizing gender this way, an issue to which we will return later in the chapter, consider first the fact that the genders are not equally valued in the vast majority of societies. A second core principle of feminism, therefore, is that most societies, both on a macro (structural/institutional) level and a micro (interpersonal) level are characterized by sexism, that is, the differential valuing of one gender over the other. In most societies, this sexism is a builtin feature of a patriarchal social system in which men dominate women and what is considered masculine is more highly valued than what is considered feminine. The academic disciplines exist within the patriarchal social system, so it is hardly surprising that women have been systematically excluded from many fields, including criminology, that are not considered “feminine” or appropriate for women. Moreover, women and girls have been systematically excluded from the studies conducted by members of male-dominated fields under the assumption that what women do, think, or say is unimportant or uninteresting (Lorber, 2009). As with other disciplines, beginning in the 1970s feminist criminologists highlighted the gender biases in widely used criminological theories and how women and girls have historically been overlooked in studies of crime and criminal justice (Chesney-Lind, 2006; Jurik, 1999). Consequently, another core principle of feminism is the inclusion of female experiences and perspectives in theorizing and research. This is not to say that male experiences and perspectives should be excluded – after all, men are gendered, too – but rather, feminists emphasize the critical importance of ensuring that female voices are heard, given that they have typically been silenced or simply ignored. A major goal of feminist research and theorizing is to uncover and explain similarities and differences in women’s and men’s behaviors, attitudes and experiences, which arise from their different locations in – and differentially imposed valuing by – the social structure. Although their different social locations constrain their responses or resistance to their relative circumstances, the ways women and men choose to respond or resist – the ways they exercise agency – are, like all other aspects of social life, gendered. The focus on gender, and not solely on women, is a critically important point because many people, as indicated by my interviewees’ responses, think of feminism as “only” about women or “women’s issues.” It is certainly the case that feminist theorists and researchers have prioritized the study of women’s attitudes, behaviors and experiences because these have largely been neglected and excluded. Nevertheless, feminist perspectives include research and theorizing about both masculinities and femininities. Indeed, in studying women’s and men’s lives over the past four decades, feminist researchers have shown that not all groups of men benefit equally or in the same ways from gender privilege. As feminism has developed and matured, therefore, another significant principle to which many feminist theorists adhere is the necessity of analyzing how gender inequality intersects with multiple inequalities, including racism, classism, heterosexism, ageism, and ableism, to form an interlocking system of oppression that impacts women’s and men’s everyday lives, including their risk of criminal victimization and offending and their treatment as “clients” or employees of the criminal justice system (Burgess-Proctor, 2006; Risman, 2004). Unlike other perspectives, feminism is not solely a set of theories; it is also a social movement informed by a theoretical framework with the goal of collective action to eliminate sexism and promote gender equity in all areas of social life. In conducting research and explaining their findings, feminist social scientists, including feminist criminologists, are engaged in what sociologist Joann Miller (2011) called purpose-driven research: research that raises public awareness, in this case, of gendered inequalities, and that produces usable knowledge that contributes to the social reconstruction of gender and gender relations so they are more equitable. Feminist researchers 75

Claire M. Renzetti

strive to acquire scientific knowledge through the research process that empowers individuals and groups to act to change behaviors and conditions that are harmful or oppressive. This goal has important implications for how feminist research is conducted. Examples of feminist research will be discussed throughout this chapter, but suffice it to say here that, in general, feminist researchers reject the traditional model of science “as establishing mastery over subjects, as demanding the absence of feeling, and as enforcing separateness of the knower from the known, all under the guise of ‘objectivity’” (Hess & Ferree, 1987, p. 13; see also Naples, 2003; Reinharz, 1992). Instead, feminist research is often characterized by reciprocity between the researcher and the research participants; rather than establishing relational distance from the research participants, the researcher engages in self-disclosure and may offer resources and helpful information, recognizing that research participants are frequently revealing private, sometimes traumatic aspects of their lives to a stranger and that they may, in fact, need assistance that the researcher can provide. Feminist researchers also try to take an empathic stance toward the participants in their studies; instead of imposing their own ideas or categories of response on their participants, they give participants a more active role in guiding the direction of the research and attempt to understand the phenomena they are studying from the participants’ viewpoints. This approach to research reflects another core principle of feminist perspectives: The research process is dualistic; that is, it has both subjective and objective dimensions. Feminists emphasize that no research is completely unbiased or value-free. No matter how objective researchers like to believe they are, they cannot help but be influenced by values, personal preferences, and aspects of the cultural setting and institutional structures in which they live. That said, research is not totally subjective either. While a researcher may be influenced by values (i.e., judgments or appraisals), her or his goal is the collection of facts (i.e., phenomena that can be observed or empirically verified). Feminists challenge researchers to explicitly acknowledge the assumptions, beliefs, sympathies, and potential biases that may influence their work. They question not only the possibility, but also the desirability, of value-free science; however, while they reject this notion, they do not reject scientific standards in their research (Reinharz, 1992). And although the ideals of reciprocity and an empathic stance imply an emphasis on qualitative methods, such as ethnography and in-depth interviewing, many feminist researchers, including feminist criminologists as we will see shortly, conduct quantitative studies using sophisticated statistical techniques to analyze their data, or mixed approaches that incorporate both quantitative and qualitative methods (see, for example, Campbell, 2011a, b). So to return to the question that opened this chapter, what is feminist criminology? The short answer is that feminist criminology is a paradigm that studies and explains criminal offending and victimization as well as institutionalized responses to these problems as fundamentally gendered and that emphasizes the importance of using the scientific knowledge we acquire from our study of these issues to influence the creation and implementation of public policy that will alleviate oppression and contribute to more equitable social relations and social structures. Like many short answers, however, this one is inadequate and unsatisfying. As was noted at the outset, there is no single, unitary feminist perspective, but rather a diversity of feminist perspectives, each with variations on the core principles presented. Let’s turn, then, to a discussion of some of the major feminist perspectives in criminology.

Feminist criminologies A number of typologies have been offered in an attempt to classify the many feminist perspectives currently being applied to the study of social life (see, for example, Lorber, 2009). Within criminology, it is argued that there are at least 12 distinct feminist theories (Maidment, 2006). 76

Feminist perspectives

Space constraints preclude a review of every theoretical perspective that may be considered feminist, so a select few – what I consider to be the major feminist criminological theories – will be discussed in this chapter. That said, it must be acknowledged that not all feminist criminologists agree on which theories to label “major”; some readers, therefore, will likely disagree with my selection, perhaps considering it too “conventional,” and would choose other theories to highlight instead. Keep in mind, too, that the presentation of these theories is not chronological. Although some theories preceded others temporally and new perspectives built on these initial or early approaches, several theories were being developed and tested simultaneously, as is typically the case in criminology and other disciplines.

Liberal feminist criminology In general, liberal feminism may be described as an “equal rights” approach in that the focus is largely on securing the same legal rights for women that men enjoy. Liberal feminists consider the major cause of gender inequality to be blocked opportunities, so the primary goal of their social activism has been dismantling gender discrimination in employment, education, government, and other social institutions. In addition, since females and males are taught specific – and unequal – gender roles, liberal feminists have sought to change traditional gender socialization practices so that males and females learn to be more alike in terms of their attitudes and behaviors. Liberal feminism influenced several feminist criminological theories, particularly early in the development of feminist criminology. For example, emancipation theories of female offending (Adler, 1975; Simon, 1975) are rooted in liberal feminism. Emancipation theorists sought to explain what they perceived to be dramatic increases in female offending during the late 60s and early 70s. They attributed these changes to newly opened opportunities for women and girls, thanks to the women’s liberation movement. In short, these theories argue that just as legitimate opportunities opened for women and girls, so too did illegitimate or criminal opportunities. And because females were being encouraged to behave more like males, it should be no surprise that this would lead them to do so in less than positive ways as well, such as being more violent and committing more property crimes. The value of any theory, of course, depends on how well it stands up to empirical testing. Emancipation theories were shown to be seriously flawed through research that demonstrated that, in fact, the gender gap in the crime rate was not closing as much as emancipation theorists believed, and that females were not becoming more like males in terms of the types of crimes they were committing. To be sure, women and girls were being arrested and imprisoned more frequently than in the past – and this trend has continued – but to a large extent this change reflected their greater likelihood of committing the property crimes for which they were traditionally charged (e.g., larceny, fraud) and for drug offenses. Some feminist critics of the emancipation perspective have also argued that females’ elevated arrest and incarceration rates are the result of policy and practice changes in the criminal justice system. More specifically, that the “war on crime” essentially became in practice a war on women and racial minorities, especially Black people, and that increases in arrest and incarceration rates of women represent “equality with a vengeance” (Chesney-Lind, 2006). The question of whether females, or some groups of females, are treated more or less leniently by the criminal justice system continues to be debated and researched by feminist criminologists (see, for example, Spohn & Brennan, 2013), but empirical evidence clearly does not support the notion that a “downside” of the women’s liberation movement is that it motivated women and girls to commit more crimes or to act “more like men.” Another liberal feminist theory is power-control theory (Hagan, 1989; McCarthy, Hagan, & Woodward, 1999). Power-control theory looks at how social class, as a mediating factor in gender 77

Claire M. Renzetti

socialization, may result in different rates of female and male offending, especially juvenile delinquency. In families characterized by patriarchal control – that is, families with a traditional gendered division of labor in which the husband/father is in the paid labor force and the wife/ mother remains at home to care for the household and socialize the children – girls are socialized to be like their mothers (domestic, subdued and, therefore, unlikely to take risks), whereas boys have considerably more freedom and more opportunities for risk-taking, including crime. Power-control theory posits that this arrangement is more common among working class families. In families that are more egalitarian or “balanced” in terms of the gendered division of labor, where both husbands/fathers and wives/mothers are in the paid labor force, girls and boys are treated more alike. Mothers in these families are still seen as primarily responsible for the gender socialization of their children and, the theory maintains, they less tightly control their daughters’ opportunities and behavior and increase their control over their sons, such that the girls’ and boys’ behavior is likely to be more similar, including in terms of risk-taking and delinquency. Powercontrol theory sees this arrangement as more common among middle-class families. Empirical support for power-control theory has been mixed at best (see, for example, Heimer & DeCoster, 1999; Morash & Chesney-Lind, 1991). The theory has also been critiqued for its simplistic conceptualization of social class and the gendered division of labor in the home and workplace, and for its lack of attention to racial/ethnic differences in gender socialization and to single-parent families, most of which are headed by women. Another significant weakness in power-control theory is its limited definition of patriarchal control, which is reduced to parental supervision (Chesney-Lind, 1997; Chesney-Lind & Sheldon, 1992). Patriarchal control, however, is far more complex and may take a variety of forms, ranging on a continuum from severe, brutal violence at one extreme, to what has been called “chivalry” or “benevolent sexism” at the other extreme. Let’s consider, then, additional feminist criminological perspectives that recognize the importance and complexity of patriarchy and patriarchal control.

Radical feminist, Marxist feminist, and socialist feminist criminology One theoretical approach that broadens the scope of patriarchal control is radical feminist criminology. Radical feminism maintains that gender inequality or sexism is the most fundamental form of oppression and that it is females who are oppressed. Indeed, radical feminists argue that throughout the world, females are the most oppressed group and that, regardless of race, ethnicity, or social class, men enjoy gender privilege, which includes the subordination and control of women. Patriarchal social structures, including the criminal justice system, serve to preserve male power and ensure female subordination, and one of the primary ways this is accomplished is through the threat or actual use of violence. Radical feminist criminologists, then, have pioneered the study of women as crime victims, particularly as victims of violent crimes perpetrated by men, and the failure of the criminal justice system to protect women from men’s violence. Victimization by violent crime is gendered. Although males are more likely than females to be the victim of a violent crime, research by radical feminist criminologists and others consistently documents the alarming frequency of violence against women throughout the world and the multitude of forms it takes, including sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape, battering, and homicide (see Renzetti, Edleson, & Bergen, 2018). This research also shows that, ironically, while we advise girls not to talk to strangers, they are significantly more likely to be harmed by someone they know; in 64 percent of violent crimes committed against women, the victim knew her assailant, whereas in only 46 percent of violent crimes committed against men did the victim know his assailant (National Institute of Justice, 2016; see also Kruttschnitt, 2001). According to radical feminist criminologists, however, despite these data the police, courts, and criminologists 78

Feminist perspectives

themselves have been preoccupied with male street crime, and the criminal justice system has been overwhelmingly ineffective in keeping women and girls safe, and holding men and boys accountable for the violence they perpetrate against them. Work by radical feminist criminologists laid the foundation for the burgeoning research on violence against women that continues at present. Nevertheless, critics of radical feminist criminology maintain that this perspective still portrays the criminal justice system too negatively. Significant legislative and enforcement reforms have occurred over the past several decades (e.g., changes in rape laws designed to shift the focus of blame from the behavior of the victim to the behavior of the assailant, harsher penalties for batterers). Although some feminist researchers have identified gaps between these laws on paper and how they are actually implemented (e.g., Caringella, 2008), it cannot be denied that many of these legal reforms have been beneficial to women. Another criticism of radical feminist criminology is that it characterizes all men as oppressors, equally likely to harass, rape or abuse women, even though it is the case that the majority of men do not violently victimize women and some profeminist men actively work to prevent and respond to such victimization. Moreover, this perspective overlooks women’s violent offending, a point to which we will return shortly. And finally, by foregrounding gender as the paramount oppression, radical feminist criminologists inaccurately universalize the categories of “female” and “male,” while overlooking the reality that gender inequality intersects with other types of inequality, particularly racism, heterosexism, and social class inequality (Burgess-Proctor, 2006). This last point is especially important when evaluating changes in the criminal justice response to violence against women, since some researchers have argued that the criminal justice system responds more harshly to people of color; the poor; immigrants; and lesbians, gay men, and transgender people (Goodmark, 2018; Richie, 2012). Marxist feminist criminologists differ from radical feminist criminologists in that they prioritize social class inequality over gender inequality. Marxist feminist criminologists maintain that societies with less social class inequality also have less gender inequality, because male dominance, like other types of discrimination, grows largely out of unequal economic conditions, specifically, the exploitative class relations inherent in capitalism. Thus, from this perspective, if capitalism is replaced with a more egalitarian mode of production, this egalitarianism will be reflected in other spheres of social life, including gender relations. But some feminist criminologists see Marxist feminism as making an error similar to radical feminism: one form of inequality does not take precedence over another form of inequality. Oppression is not linear. Instead, in their everyday lives people simultaneously experience the effects of multiple inequalities, just as they also experience different forms and degrees of privilege. Socialist feminist criminology is one theoretical perspective that recognizes the importance of examining how the interaction of gender and social class inequalities influence criminal opportunities, victimization experiences, and responses by the criminal justice system to both offenders and victims. Messerschmidt (1993), for example, argues that the crimes individuals commit reflect both their social class position and their socialized conceptions of masculinity and femininity. Socialist feminist criminologists were also the first to draw attention to the fact that the traditional criminological construction of offenders and victims as two distinct or dichotomous groups is largely inaccurate when gender is also taken into account (Jurik, 1999). Research shows violent victimization, especially during childhood, is often a pathway to subsequent involvement in crime more so for girls than for boys. For instance, Widom and Maxfield (2001) found a significant increase in arrest for violent crime among girls who were neglected and abused compared with girls who had not been neglected and abused, but this relationship did not hold for boys (see also Siegel & Williams, 2003). This pattern is found in studies of adult offenders as well (English, Widom, & Brandford, 2001; Morash, 2006). 79

Claire M. Renzetti

But while socialist feminist criminology attends to the dual importance and interactive effects of sexism and social class inequality, and highlights the salience of victimization in understanding pathways to criminal offending, particularly by women and girls, this perspective has been criticized nevertheless for depicting women and men as relatively homogeneous social categories, distinguishable only by social class differences. More recent feminist theories have drawn attention to the need to examine how race and ethnicity intersect with gender, social class, and other locations of inequality in order to understand both criminal offending and victimization, and the responses of the criminal justice system. It is to these theories that we turn to conclude this chapter.

Contemporary and future directions in feminist criminological perspectives As noted in the chapter introduction, gender is typically conceptualized in dichotomous terms: a person is either feminine or masculine. Recently, however, some feminist criminologists have adopted the reconceptualization of gender as situated action or situated accomplishment (West & Fenstermaker, 1995; West & Zimmerman, 1987); that is, gender is something one does in response to contextualized norms. From this perspective, males and females “do gender” in various situations, and make choices – albeit choices constrained by structural conditions and normative expectations – about how they will establish their masculinity and femininity, respectively. Gender, then, is in flux; it changes over time and from situation to situation, in response to normative demands and an individual’s resources and perceptions of others’ evaluations of him or her. This perspective also takes into account intersecting locations of inequality, such that individuals also simultaneously do race/ethnicity, social class, sexuality, and age thereby producing multiple masculinities and femininities, “each shaped by structural positioning” (Miller, 2002, p. 435). Consequently, some feminist criminologists are theorizing that crime is a means for accomplishing gender in certain contexts, and these efforts to do gender also affect who is victimized. Consider, for instance, the studies of hate crime conducted by Bufkin (1999) and Perry (2001). In their analyses of the characteristics of hate crime perpetrators and their victims, as well as the characteristics of the crimes themselves (e.g., language used by perpetrators, the group nature of most hate crimes, use of alcohol by perpetrators), these feminist criminologists theorize that committing a hate crime is a means of accomplishing a particular type of masculinity, hegemonic masculinity, which is described as white, Christian, able-bodied, and heterosexual. Other feminist criminologists call for even greater attention to the intersection of gender, social class, race/ethnicity, immigration status, sexuality, and other inequalities, emphasizing their interlocking nature in a “matrix of domination” (Collins, 2000). For example, Black feminist criminology builds on both critical race feminist theory and Black feminist theory more generally. This theoretical perspective is often referred to as a “standpoint theory,” in that it focuses on the lived experiences of Black women, recognizing their multiple intersecting identities and analyzing their oppression both within the Black community and in the larger society, as well as their resistance to these forms of oppression. Potter (2006) identifies four themes in Black feminist criminology – social structural oppression, interactions in the Black community, intimate and familial relations, and the Black woman as individual – and applies them in an analysis of intimate partner violence in the lives of Black women to show how Black women’s intertwined racialized and gendered identities produce experiences of intimate partner violence that are different from the experiences of other groups of women and, therefore, require different responses. Similarly, Buist and Lenning (2016) make a strong case for queer criminology, arguing that not only are LGBTQ people at greater risk of becoming crime victims, but also that they are historically 80

Feminist perspectives

and continue to be criminalized because of their sexual orientation and gender identifies. Even more broadly, Burgess-Proctor (2006) challenges feminist criminologists to embrace multiracial feminism in their work, emphasizing the critical importance of considering the interactive rather than additive effects of race, gender, class, age, sexuality, and other social locators on offending, victimization, and criminal justice processes. She offers numerous examples of criminological studies that demonstrate how the intersection of these factors affect the “production of crime,” the relationship between victimization and offending, and criminal justice outcomes such as sentencing disparities. A brief chapter such as this one can hardly do justice to the diversity of feminist perspectives within criminology, and I have overlooked many, such as pragmatic feminism (McDermott, 2002) and postmodern and poststructural feminism (Howe, 2000; Wonders, 1999). Nevertheless, this overview offers perhaps a sampling of some of the most influential and most promising feminist theoretical perspectives in criminology today, broadly categorized. One serious issue with which feminist criminologists continue to grapple, however, is the extent to which feminist criminology has impacted the discipline as a whole, or what is often referred to as “mainstream criminology.” In recent analyses of this question, feminist criminologists provide disappointing evidence of “missed opportunities,” not only by “mainstream” criminologists such as Sutherland, Cohen and Sampson, but also in the work of criminologists who would appear, at first glance, to be feminist criminologists’ natural allies – for example, critical criminologists, cultural criminologists, critical realist criminologists (Cook, 2016; Naegler & Salman, 2016; Renzetti, 2016). It appears that although researchers have documented a significant increase in feminist criminological research, the traditional stratification that has characterized the discipline for decades remains strong, and feminist criminology remains largely marginalized (see, for instance, Chesney-Lind & Chagnon, 2016). Feminist criminologists, though, are undaunted and, I would argue, our work is perhaps even more urgently needed now, during this period of virulent backlash against feminism and all forms of progressivism.

References Adler, F. (1975). Sisters in Crime. New York: McGraw-Hill. Buist, C., & Lenning, E. (2016). Queer Criminology. New York: Routledge. Bufkin, J. (1999). Bias crime as gendered behavior. Social Justice, 26, 155–176. Burgess-Proctor, A. (2006). Intersections of race, class, gender, and crime: Future directions for feminist criminology. Feminist Criminology, 1, 27–47. Campbell, R. (Ed.) (2011a). Special issue: Methodological advances in recruitment and assessment. Violence Against Women, 17(2). Campbell, R. (Ed.) (2011b). Special issue: Methodological advances in analytic techniques for longitudinal designs and evaluations of community interventions. Violence Against Women, 17(3). Caringella, S. (2008). Addressing Rape Reform in Law and Practice. New York: Columbia University Press. Chesney-Lind, M. (1997). The Female Offender. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Chesney-Lind, M. (2006). Patriarchy, crime, and justice: Feminist criminology in an era of backlash. Feminist Criminology, 1, 6–26. Chesney-Lind, M., & Chagnon, N. (2016). Criminology, gender, and race: A case study of privilege in the academy. Feminist Criminology, 11, 311–333. Chesney-Lind, M., & Sheldon, R. G. (1992). Girls’ Delinquency and Juvenile Justice. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole. Collins, P. H. (2000). Black Feminist Thought (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge. Cook, K. J. (2016). Has criminology awakened from its “androcentric slumber”? Feminist Criminology, 11, 334–353. English, D. J., Widom, C. S., & Brandford, C. B. (2001). Childhood Victimization and Delinquency, Adult Criminality, and Violent Criminal Behavior: A Replication and Extension. Final Report. Washington, DC: US Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice. 81

Claire M. Renzetti

Goodmark, L. (2018). Innovative criminal justice responses to intimate partner violence. In C. M. Renzetti, J. L. Edleson, & R. K. Bergen (Eds.), Sourcebook on Violence Against Women (3rd ed.) (pp. 253–270). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Hagan, J. (1989). Structural Criminology. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Heimer, K., & DeCoster, S. (1999). The gendering of violent delinquency. Criminology, 37, 277–318. Hess, B. B., & Ferree, M. M. (1987). Introduction. In B. B. Hess & M. M. Ferree (Eds.), Analyzing Gender (pp. 9–30). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Howe, A. (2000). Postmodern criminology and its feminist discontents. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 33, 221–236. Jurik, N. C. (1999). Socialist feminist criminology and social justice. In B. A. Arrigo (Ed.), Social Justice, Criminal Justice (pp. 30–50). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Kruttschnitt, C. (2001). Gender and violence. In C. M. Renzetti & L. Goodstein (Eds.), Women, Crime and Criminal Justice (pp. 77–92). Los Angeles: Roxbury. Lorber, J. (2009). Gender Inequality: Feminist Theory and Politics. New York: Oxford University Press. Maidment, M. R. (2006). Transgressing boundaries: Feminist perspectives in criminology. In W. S. DeKeseredy & B. Perry (Eds.), Advancing Critical Criminology: Theory and Application (pp. 43–62). Landham, MD: Lexington Books. McCarthy, B., Hagan, J., & Woodward, T. S. (1999). In the company of women: Structure and agency in a revised power-control theory of gender and delinquency. Criminology, 37, 761–788. McDermott, M. J. (2002). On moral enterprises, pragmatism, and feminist criminology. Crime & Delinquency, 48, 283–299. Messerschmidt, J. W. (1993). Masculinities and Crime. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Miller, J. (2002). The strengths and limits of “doing gender” for understanding street crime. Theoretical Criminology, 6, 433–460. Miller, J. A. (2011). Social justice work: Purpose-driven social science. Social Problems, 58, 1–20. Morash, M. (2006). Understanding Gender, Crime and Justice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Morash, M., & Chesney-Lind, M. (1991). A re-formulation and partial test of power-control theory. Justice Quarterly, 8, 347–377. Naegler, L., & Salman, S. (2016). Cultural criminology and gender consciousness: Moving feminist theory from margin to center. Feminist Criminology, 11, 354–374. Naples, N. A. (2003). Feminism and Method. New York: Routledge. National Institute of Justice. (2016). Rates of victimization. Retrieved January 5, 2017 from www.nij.gov/ topics/vicims-victimization/page/rates.aspx. Perry, B. (2001). In the Name of Hate: Understanding Hate Crime. New York: Routledge. Potter, H. (2006). An argument for Black feminist criminology: Understanding African American women’s experiences with intimate partner abuse using an integrated approach. Feminist Criminology, 1, 106–124. Reinharz, S. (1992). Feminist Methods in Social Research. New York: Oxford University Press. Renzetti, C. M. (2016). Critical realism and feminist criminology: Shall the twain ever meet? International Journal for Crime, Justice, and Social Democracy, 5, 41–52. Renzetti, C. M., Edleson, J. L., & Bergen, R. K. (Eds.) (2018). Sourcebook on Violence Against Women (3rd ed.) Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Richie, B. E. (2012). Arrested Justice: Black Women, Violence, and America’s Prison Nation. New York: New York University Press. Risman, B. J. (2004). Gender as social structure. Gender & Society, 18, 429–450. Siegel, J. A., & Williams, L. M. (2003). The relationship between child sexual abuse and female delinquency and crime: A prospective study. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 40, 71–94. Simon, R. J. (1975). Women and Crime. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. Spohn, C., & Brennan, P. K. (2013). Sentencing and punishment. In C. M. Renzetti, S. L. Miller, & A. Gover (Eds.), Routledge International Handbook of Crime and Gender Studies (pp. 213–225). London: Routledge. West, C., & Fenstermaker, S. (1995). Doing difference. Gender & Society, 9, 8–37. West, C., & Zimmerman, D. H. (1987). Doing gender. Gender & Society, 1, 125–151. Widom, C. S., & Maxfield, M. G. (2001). An Update on the “Cycle of Violence”. Washington, DC: US Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice. Wonders, N. A. (1999). Postmodern feminist criminology and social justice. In B. A. Arrigo (Ed.), Social Justice, Criminal Justice (pp. 109–128). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

82

6 Masculinities and crime James W. Messerschmidt and Stephen Tomsen

Introduction Since the early 1990s, scholars have examined the relationship between masculinities and crime, whether in authored books (Messerschmidt, 1993, 1997/2014, 2000, 2004, 2010, 2012; Polk, 1994; Collier, 1998; Winlow, 2001; Mullins, 2006; Tomsen, 2009), edited volumes (Newburn & Stanko, 1994; Bowker, 1998; Tomsen, 2008; Lander, Ravn & Jon, 2016), a special academic-journal issue (Carlen & Jefferson, 1996), or in a growing range of scholarly articles (e.g., Whitehead, 2005; Hearn & Whitehead, 2006; Cohen & Harvey, 2006). This chapter provides an overview of key features of this criminological literature regarding masculinity and crime, as well as some of the more significant empirical studies in this field. It describes the evident strengths of the “masculinities” paradigm in criminology. Yet it also notes the pitfalls of any gender-centric analysis of criminality that could overlook a skewed criminalization process that frequently targets, criminalizes, and punishes men and boys from disadvantaged and marginal social settings. Male offenders commit the great majority of crimes. Arrest, self-report, and victimization data reflect that men and boys perpetrate more conventional crimes—and the more serious of these crimes—than do women and girls. And men have a virtual monopoly on the commission of syndicated, corporate, and political crime (Beirne & Messerschmidt, 2015). Criminologists have consistently advanced gender as the strongest predictor of criminal involvement and, consequently, studying men and boys provides insights into understanding the highly gendered ratio of crime in industrialized societies. Historically, the reasons for this highly gendered ratio of crime have puzzled researchers, officials, and commentators. Although criminal justice agencies focus heavily on detecting, prosecuting and punishing the working-class, poor, and minority male offenders, it is apparent that high levels of recorded and reported offending reflect a real and pervasive social phenomenon of disproportionate male criminality. Since its origins at the end of the 1800s, criminology has experienced difficulty explaining the link between masculinity and crime, and research has often disregarded the link between criminal offending and maleness. Much traditional criminological discourse closely concerned the study and control of “dangerous” forms of masculinity, particularly working-class male delinquency, but did not address the relation between criminality and the socially varied attainment of masculine status and power. Criminologists studied crime from a “male norm” perspective, and never developed a 83

James W. Messerschmidt and Stephen Tomsen

sufficiently critical view of its link to gender, especially to non-pathological and widespread forms of masculine identity that are tied to offending. The result has been a tendency to naturalize male offending and reversion to gender essentialism by explaining male wrongdoing as an inherent and pre-social phenomenon to which men are drawn. The earliest criminologists—such as Edwin Sutherland (1947) and Albert Cohen (1955)— relied ultimately upon an essentialist “sex-role” framework to explain the relationship between masculinity and crime. That is, the presumption was that a “natural” distinction existed between men and women, a distinction that led ineluctably to masculine men and feminine women. Their theoretical frameworks ultimately ascribed to individuals certain innate characteristics that formed the basis of gendered social conditions—the male and female sex roles—that led to specific sexed patterns of crime. In other words, biogenic criteria allegedly established essential differences between men and women, and society culturally elaborated the distinctions through the socialization of sex roles. These sex roles, in turn, determined the types and amounts of crime committed by men and women, and by boys and girls. Thus, for these early criminologists, the body entered criminological theory cryptically as biological differences between men and women (Messerschmidt, 1993, 2012, 2014). Notwithstanding, early criminologists like Sutherland and Cohen can be credited for putting masculinity on the criminological agenda. These scholars perceived the theoretical importance of gender and its relation to crime. However, their conclusions demonstrate the limitations one would expect from any pre-feminist criminological work. This focus on biology by early criminologists also often viewed crime as a reflection of defective male and female bodies/identities (Gould, 1981). And a range of subsequent accounts similarly disregarded the social link between crime and masculinity. These have included Marxist and left accounts that heavily focused on class differences to explain crime, and they either relied on biological sex differences to explain the gendered pattern of most criminal offending or they simply ignored it (Bonger, 2003; Taylor, Walton & Young, 1973). This legacy has been challenged by contemporary research on the social construction of masculinities and the “everyday” qualities of their aggressive and destructive forms. Since the 1980s, this shift has been a response to the wider reflection on gender and identity from social movements including feminism, gay and lesbian activism, and sections of “the men’s movement.” In particular, research on violence against women has stressed the relationship between offending and commonplace, often legitimated constructions of manhood. In the academy, there has been a growth in research on male violence and a general expansion of research on masculinity or “men’s studies” (see Kimmel, 1987; Segal, 1990; Connell, Kimmel & Hearn, 2005).

Masculinity theory This new field also owes much to the theoretical contributions by the well-known sociologist, Raewyn Connell (1987, 1995), who developed a key explanatory model of different forms of masculinity. Connell’s concept of hegemonic masculinity has been defined not as a particular character type, but as an entire complex of historically evolving and varied social practices in societies that either legitimate, or attempt to guarantee, the shoring up of patriarchy and male domination of women. Hegemonic masculinities then are those forms of masculinity in particular social settings that structure gender relations hierarchically between men and women and among men. This relational character is central, in that it embodies a particular form of masculinity in hierarchical relation to a certain form of femininity and to various non-hegemonic masculinities. Arguably, hegemonic masculinity has no meaning outside its relationship to femininity— and non-hegemonic masculinities—or to those forms of femininity that are practiced in a 84

Masculinities and crime

complementary, compliant, and accommodating subordinate relationship with hegemonic masculinity. Any attainment or approximation of this empowered hegemonic form by individual men is highly contingent on the uneven levels of real social power in different men’s lives. In particular, a key marginalized form is “protest masculinity” (Connell, 1995, p. 109). This describes a gender identity that is characteristic of men in a marginal social location with the masculine claim on power contradicted by economic and social weakness. Protest masculinity may be reflected in hypermasculine aggressive display, as well as in anti-social, violent, and criminal behavior. Frequently, it exhibits a juxtaposition of overt misogyny, compulsory heterosexuality, and homophobia. This model of “hegemonic” and other masculinities has been quite influential but also much contested in the social sciences, including criminology. For some liberal critics, this model may seem too closely tied to Marxist ideas about an overarching dominant ideology as a ruling set of oppressive masculine beliefs. Others have suggested this model reflects a degrading view of working-class men as inherently violent and destructive (Hall, 2002), results in a narrow view of masculinity as a set of personal attributes that are all negative (Jefferson, 2002), or imprecisely offers a shifting notion of “masculinity” as comprising whatever it is that most men do in different contexts (Collier, 1998).

Masculinities and contemporary criminology The above criticisms of the masculinities model have been soundly challenged (Connell, 2002; Connell & Messerschmidt, 2005), and the notion of hegemonic and marginalized masculinities deployed in a range of criminological studies that examine a spectrum of masculine offending. The fundamental feature remains the combination of the plurality of masculinities and of the hierarchy among masculinities and femininities. This model has withstood over 25 years of research experience. Moreover, multiple patterns of masculinity have been identified in numerous studies, in a variety of countries, and in different institutional and cultural settings. Furthermore, critical work in criminology has now emphasized that masculinity is linked to more than just violent crime by less powerful men, and relates widely to such matters as motor vehicle offenses, theft, drug use and dealing, white-collar crime, and political crime. In the “new masculinities” approach there has been an emphasis on the relations between different masculinities, the causes and patterns of most criminal offending and victimization, and the broader workings of the wider criminal justice system of public and private policing, criminal courts, corrections, and prisons (Newburn & Stanko, 1994). These scholars share the view that masculinities are plural, socially constructed, reproduced in the collective social practices of different men and embedded in institutional and occupational settings. Masculinities are linked intricately with struggles for social power that occur between men and women and among different men but they vary and intersect importantly with other dimensions of inequality. Messerschmidt’s (1993, 1997/2014, 2000, 2004) influential accounts of crimes as “doing masculinity”—to be understood within a structured action framework—incorporate differences of class, race/ethnicity, age, sexuality, bodies, and the common concern with power. As there are different forms of masculinity that are differently linked to the attainment of social power, crime itself is a means or social resource/practice to construct masculinity and analyses must balance consideration of structural forces and human agency. Differences in masculinity that shape violence against women are a frequent topic of interest. A key analysis of the 1990s concluded that the typical “masculine scenarios” of most killings are disputes between men regarding insults and slights to personal honor or assaults directed at controlling female spouses and domestic partners (Polk, 1994). A detailed discussion of many 85

James W. Messerschmidt and Stephen Tomsen

incidents reflects the masculine and everyday forms of most fatal interpersonal violence. It appears the criminal defenses (particularly provocation) that are invoked by many accused have been generally unavailable to women who kill, which suggests a link with notions of masculine violence and a degree of respect in the criminal justice system and wider culture. The ongoing work of DeKeseredy and Schwartz (2005) has shown that for a variety of forms of male physical and sexual violence against women, the intent of the perpetrator often is to deploy violence as a means of presenting a particular type of dominating masculine image to himself, to the victim, and to his peer group. In a recent study of homicide and sexual assault of Asian women by stranger North American men, Park (2012) compares the motives of white men and non-Asian men of color as perpetrators. Park found more similarities than differences between these two differing rapist-murderers; specifically, through this violence both construct Western masculinities as an assertion of their “right” to place and space in national and global hierarchies that are informed by “the west’s deep hostility for, and admiration of, Asian men, nations and economies in the context of western constructs of Asia rising and the Asia Pacific century” (p. 493). In other words, through violence against Asian women, both White and non-Asian men of color, according to Park, are expressing their anxieties regarding alleged Western male decline in the face of the alleged “rising” Asian man by asserting their violent masculine dominance of Asian women who allegedly are unprotected by “weak” Asian men. Until a few decades ago, there had been scant analysis of masculine attitudes toward male subjection to violence beyond the general finding that men as a group tend to be less fearful in relation to crime. Research within the new masculinities approach has studied the experience of confrontational violence by tracing the role of victimization in establishing power relations between men and the mixed effects on victims that both undermine and reinforce conventional ideas of masculinity (Stanko & Hobdell, 1993; Tomsen, 2005; Tomsen & Wadds, 2016). In Violence, Prejudice and Sexuality, Tomsen (2009) outlined how the killing of gay/homosexual men has suggested a particularly masculine pattern in much of this violence and the official criminaljustice system response to it. Anti-homosexual killings occur within two general masculine scenarios. Typically they comprise fatal attacks in public spaces that are perpetrated by groups of young males concerned with establishing a manly self-image and more private disputes with allegations of an unwanted homosexual advance by a perpetrator protecting a masculine sense of honor and bodily integrity through retaliatory violence. More broadly, this reflects how many hate crimes (including racist attacks as well as violence directed at gay men, lesbians, and transgender people) are forms of offending that are not wholly distinct from other masculine violence. In probably the best study to date on masculinities and the experience of street violence—titled Holding Your Square: Masculinities, Streetlife, and Violence—Mullins (2006) presents an important account of how and why a specific form of hegemonic masculinity is embedded in the street life of St. Louis, Missouri. His analysis supports not only previous theoretical work on masculinity and street crime, but also extends that work by demonstrating that street life hegemonic masculinity can be understood only in its relationship to subordinated “punk” masculinities—masculinities that likewise are constructed in the same street-life culture—and in relation to particular femininities in that street culture. Mullins’ exposition of street violence is solid, confirming previous theoretical work that considerable violence among men in public settings results from masculinity challenges (Messerschmidt, 2000). Mullins explores how men within specific social situations come to view certain practices of other men as a threat to their masculinity, a threat that requires a culturally supported masculine response: physical violence. Moreover, he clarifies how such masculinity challenges can subsequently escalate, resulting all too often in the death of one or more of the male participants. 86

Masculinities and crime

Mullins’ analysis adds two new and intriguing dimensions to our understanding of men involved in street violence. First, he presents an incisive discussion of interaction among street men and the various women in their lives. Previous work on masculinities and street crime unaccountably ignores this salient component of gender relations. Mullins, however, uniquely explicates that such men seek to construct hegemonic masculinities—or those masculinities that fashion power relations between men and women and among men—over women on the street and/ or over those sharing domestic households. Second, Mullins examines one of the most underexplored areas of research on masculinities in general—the contradictions involved in masculine constructions. The author lucidly illustrates how the men in his study vacillated among multiple meanings of masculinity according to their interactional needs. A more recent study by Baird (2012) on gang violence and the construction of masculinity adds to Mullins’s conclusions. Baird examined boys from poor neighborhoods who joined gangs with boys who did not. He found that masculinity plays an integral role as to why violence is perpetrated by male gang members and that the gang becomes an attractive offering for “doing masculinity.” Boys who did not join gangs were more likely to have family support that helped them adopt a “moral rejection” of gangs, crime, and violence, which contributed to these boys embracing alternative nongang and nonviolent forms of masculinity. Boys who joined gangs were less likely to adopt “moral rejection,” primarily because of growing up in dysfunctional families; they were also more likely to admire older gang members and perceive the gang as an attractive pathway to masculine construction. The narrow view that masculine crime solely comprises acts of physical violence has been balanced by accounts of gendered patterns of theft, economic, corporate, and political offending. An important early example of this view was an analysis of the particular masculine attractions that motor-vehicle offending and thefts hold for many working-class boys (Cunneen, 1985). The broad potential of this explanation of non-violent offending has been recognized in international studies; for example, an important interview study provides further understanding of the motivations and processes involved in the masculine magnetism to a range of non-violent offending by exploring the group interactions and exchanges that precede collective offending— including robbery, burglary, and vehicle theft by groups of young risk-taking males (Copes & Hochstetler, 2003). For example, Contreras (2009) examined how male robbers manipulate the masculinity of male drug dealers they victimize by employing female accomplices to lure them—for example, by walking by and making “eyes.” The drug dealers subsequently pursue the females and thereby are successfully set up to be robbed. Contreras argues that because drug dealers as “real men” consistently need to “prove” their heterosexual masculinity, they are mindlessly susceptible to female advances. Male robbers then construct a “superior” masculinity by such maneuvering of drug dealers’ heteromasculinity and through the exploitation of female accomplices. Focused lower on the scale of criminal seriousness, a recent study of illegal but nonviolent graffiti artists found that such “writers” construct a particular masculinity through their outlaw art and thereby achieve masculine status and respect among male peers (Monto, Machalek & Anderson, 2012). By practicing this particular form of art, these “outlaws” orchestrate a masculinity that is admired for its flamboyant and edgy set of aesthetics as well as for its daring, risky, and rebellious significance. In an interesting examination of how masculinity is tied to social class through economic fraud committed by socially privileged men, the authors did not attempt to uncover the causes of the criminal behavior but, rather, they analyzed how the offenders subsequently explained and justified their actions (Willott, Griffin & Torrance, 2008). Specifically, during the interviews the sample of privileged men drew on particular masculine discourses to present a cohesive and 87

James W. Messerschmidt and Stephen Tomsen

plausible account of their offending behavior. For example, these men stated that they used the male breadwinner discourse (he is the economic “provider” for the family) but extended this notion to include employees and their families. That is, they described themselves as “normal men” who engaged in financial fraud unpretentiously to provide for their families and to protect their employees and their employees’ families from economic ruin. In this sense, then, these professional men constructed themselves in a specific middle-class masculine way—they must shoulder more responsibility than working-class men who are simply providers for their families but not protectors of others. The masculine seductions of criminal risk at higher levels of social class and privilege are apparent in a classic account of the 1985 Challenger disaster that seriously undermined confidence in the United States Space Shuttle program. The fatal decision to launch against strong evidence of equipment failure and the resulting crew deaths reflected the dominance of a particular managerial masculinity that valued risk and decisiveness and discounted human consequences (Messerschmidt, 1995). Institutional crime by collective decision making or oversight does not fit the classic liberal notion of a single-reasoning (presumptive male) criminal actor. These insights into the masculinity of corporate and economic crime might well inform the recent criminological interest in state crime. There is a range of major public institutional offending of concern to critical criminology— including internal and external official violence, paramilitary activity, and warfare—that also is deeply masculine, yet remains a fertile but mostly untouched field for researchers of this ilk. Destructive military masculinities have been of particular concern in recent discussions about the potential success of international peacekeeping efforts in a range of post-war settings (Breines, Connell & Eide, 2000). And Messerschmidt’s (2010) work—Hegemonic Masculinities and Camouflaged Politics: Unmasking the Bush Dynasty and Its War Against Iraq—investigates the orchestration of regional and global hegemonic masculinities through the speeches of the two USA Bush presidents— George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush—that contrast forms of communicative social action to “sell” the long-standing war against Iraq. The study makes the case for a multiplicity of hegemonic masculinities, and outlines how state leaders may appeal to particular hegemonic masculinities in their attempts to “sell” wars and thereby camouflage salient political and criminal practices that subsequently and significantly violate international law.

Culture, ethnography, and life histories The new crime and masculinities research also has examined the discursive analysis of cultural representations and has included a variety of ethnographic studies that seek out the viewpoints that inform masculine social action in relation to crime and criminal justice. The significance of a general vicarious masculine interest in violence, crime, and wrongdoing is evident from contributions made by researchers exploring the status of cultural meanings in a wide range of societies. Sparks (1996) has explained how popular Hollywood depictions of male heroism as a critical aspect of policing and law enforcement—in such films as Dirty Harry, Lethal Weapon, and Total Recall—shape and skew public understanding of crime and the law. Cavender (1999) has shown how masculine models were constructed differently in Hollywood feature films of the 1940s when compared with those of the 1980s. This is not just a matter of the characters written into the scripts. Practice at the local level—that is, the actual face-to-face interaction of shooting the film as an actor—ultimately constructs masculine fantasy models (in this case, “detectives”) at the society-wide or regional level. The tension between individual agency and objective factors in masculine criminal activity and the value of an insider understanding of that tension are evident in the fully ethnographic 88

Masculinities and crime

picture drawn by Bourgois’s (2002) study of New York crack dealers from a deprived Puerto Rican neighborhood. The men studied by Bourgois struggled for masculine respect through their wrongdoing. Drug-dealing, violence, and sexual assaults provided a distorted mirror of the limited empowerment that was won by male forebears in a traditional rural patriarchy, where protection and provision for women and families were vital aspects of gender dominance. Graphic snapshots of brutality, gang rapes, and other crimes and cultural detail gathered by painstaking and dangerous fieldwork fleshed out the racialized, criminal masculinities assumed by these young men. In a similar way, a more recent Australian study mixed a local ethnographic focus with awareness of the destructive masculinities associated with rapid economic exploitation of land and worker mobility. Pronounced local cultures of male violence and aggression and the exploitation of female sex workers in frontier mining settlements as masculine leisure practices are substantially condoned among company and political leaders. These are a seemingly inevitable aspect of the clustering of groups of men in harsh and homosocial environments in order to carry out the work that produces corporate profits and a large slice of national wealth (Carrington, McIntosh & Scott, 2012). The theme of masculine crime in deindustrialized settings has been pursued by ethnographic researchers studying night time leisure and related offending and policing (Tomsen, 1997; Winlow, 2001; Hobbs, Hadfield, Lister & Winlow, 2003; Tomsen & Wadds, 2016). There are sensual attractions in the liminal “night time” economy for its many young participants, and an allied official ambivalence toward the male aggression and disorder that characterize it. In Monaghan’s (2002) insider account of “bouncing” in a study of private security officers working in nightclubs and pubs in city centers in southwest Britain, physicality and violent potential are transformed into a workplace skill built on the importance of forceful bodies. The mixed official response to the economic benefits and social costs of the expanding night economy that fosters drunkenness, male conflicts, and disorder problems is evident also in the discomfort with, and reliance on, the aggressive masculinity of security officers instructed to maintain a semblance of public order. The danger of this work generates hierarchies of male physical ability within private policing, especially reflected in the masculine contrasts between “hardmen,” “shopboys” working security in retail stores, and “glass-collector types” who are less physically imposing and are unable to deal with the risks of violent encounters. The same masculine hierarchy inflects the positioning of the minority of women working in this occupation; they are either denigrated as unmasculine and physically incapable or, in fewer cases, given a marginal position in a masculine hierarchy. This hierarchy is a specific form of masculinity that has global manifestations and corresponds with images from a general culture. It also seems to involve a form of private policing that is laxly regulated and that reproduces forms of masculine identity that are close to the original aggressive physicality of traditional, unreformed public policing. Given the fine line between legitimate force and actual assault, bouncing itself encapsulates a gendered identity at the edge of protest and official masculinities that criminal justice systems often express as tensions and convergence. In a North American study, Anderson, Daly and Rapp (2009) explored the relationship between masculinities and crime within the hip-hop and electronic dance music nightclub scenes. The authors found that respondents who revealed they contextually constructed masculinity “upward” through excessive alcohol use, heightened sexuality, competitiveness, and commercialization were the most frequently involved in nightclub crime. These males defined “clubbing” as a status-oriented and hedonistic endeavour in which “they must toughen or macho-up to navigate,” thereby constructing a masculine performance that often simultaneously leads to crime. The importance of life-histories research to studies of crime and masculinity that seek out insider perspectives on offending has appeared in a range of recent accounts. Jefferson (1997) 89

James W. Messerschmidt and Stephen Tomsen

argued that researchers in this field should not ignore the unconscious and contradictory personal aspects of any criminal masculine identity. Obviously, he had in mind the lessons of his own life-history account of Mike Tyson that traces the evolution of a socially vulnerable boy into a champion athlete and convicted rapist, and reveals the links between racial marginality and hypermasculine violence. Similarly, in one of Messerschmidt’s studies, a dynamic interplay of hegemonic and other masculinities is demonstrated through discussion of the lives of youth assaultive and sexual offenders from working-class neighborhoods. This interplay occurs against the backdrop of different relations between the body and achievable masculinities, as social understandings of the body shape offending in two different criminal pathways (Messerschmidt, 2000). Despite an attempt to challenge the notion that some girls/women under specific situations construct masculinities through criminal practices (Irwin & Chesney-Lind, 2008), the fact that gender is not determined biologically surely leads scholars to identify and examine possible masculinities by women and girls (and femininities by men and boys) and their relation to crime. There remains a necessity in the new masculinities criminological research to uncover girls’ and women’s relations to crime and violence, and to determine whether or not such social action constructs masculinity or femininity. Jody Miller’s (2001, 2002) work is unique in this regard, as her important book, One of the Guys, shows that certain gang girls identify with the boys in their gangs and describe such gangs as “masculinist enterprises”: “To be sure, ‘one of the guys’ is only one part of a complex tapestry of gender beliefs and identities held by the gang girls I spoke with—and is rarely matched by gendered actions—but it remains significant nonetheless” (Miller, 2002, p. 442). Pointing out that gender inequality was rampant in the mixed-gender gangs of which these girls were members—such as male leadership, a double standard with regard to sexual activities, the sexual exploitation of some girls, and most girls’ exclusion from serious gang crime—certain girls differentiated themselves from other girls through a construction of “one of the guys.” In other words, the notion “one of the guys” is not fashioned by being similar to boys (because of inequalities) but, rather, certain girls are different from other girls because they embrace a masculine identity. Miller’s research contributes to the process of discovering differences among gang girls, especially regarding how the distribution of male and female members within particular gangs may impact gender construction. Moreover, her work helps point scholars in an important direction for discovering these differences and demonstrates how certain girls, like certain boys, can construct a masculine self through involvement in crime. Similarly, in Flesh & Blood, Messerschmidt (2004) demonstrated through a study of adolescent assaultive violence that numerous gender constructions by violent girls were prevalent, and that some girls “do” masculinity by in part displaying themselves in a masculine way, by engaging primarily in what they and others in their milieu consider to be authentically masculine behavior, and by outright rejecting most aspects of femininity. In addition to eschewing possible masculinities by girls and women and femininities by boys and men, most writing on crime and masculinity concentrates on the mind while ignoring the body. Messerschmidt’s work, however, just discussed, highlighted how violent boys and girls interact with and through their body. The interview data in his study demonstrated that the body is not neutral in “doing masculinity” (or femininity) but, rather, it is an agent of social practice: often the body initially constrained, yet eventually facilitated, gendered social action; it mediated and influenced future social practices. Given the social context, bodies could do certain things but not others—the bodies of these youth are “lived” in terms of what they can “do.” Consequently, for these youth “doing masculinity” (or femininity) is experienced in and through the body: eventually they literally construct a different body and, thus, a new gendered self through their embodied violent practices. 90

Masculinities and crime

The life-histories approach has also been deployed to offer clues about questions raised by nonoffenders. As crime is a ready resource for attaining masculinity, particularly among socially marginal or highly competitive groups of men, researchers wonder what this means for the masculinity of nonoffenders. Accordingly, British researchers have explored the subjective significance of “desistance” for male working-class offenders (Gadd & Farrall, 2004). Ending criminal offending and criminal careers is a puzzle for conventional criminology that the masculinities approach may help to unravel. By balancing individual agency with structural determination (of the sort stressed in research on risk factors and life-course stages), these researchers conclude that desistance is a complex gendered process. A detailed discussion of life circumstances reveals the contradictory nature of this desistance. An apparent ending to criminality is shaped around heroic male discourses of redemption and protectiveness and the uncertain possibilities of male renunciation of actual or fantasized violence, the latter being more widespread and commonly shared by offenders and other males alike. Although Gadd and Farrall undoubtedly uncovered some of the reasons for desistance, more recently Carlsson (2013) showed how both persistence in and desistance from crime are imbued with age-specific notions of masculinity at different stages of the life course. For example, Carlsson found that at specific times in life (e.g., early adulthood), certain practices, such as having a good job and/or forming a family, become more important markers of masculinity than other practices, such as risk taking, which is more likely to center the self during teenage years. Consequently, desistance from crime is clearly related to age-specific meanings of masculinity.

The masculinity and criminalization conundrum A growing number of studies in this new field explore the ties between masculinity and elements of the justice system: policing, courts, prisons, and probation. A close look at these studies suggests the contradictory relations that exist between criminal “protest” masculinities and “official” state masculinities in this sphere. Any full understanding of this evidence must consider the ways in which criminalized masculinities are produced in tension with the official forms of masculinity inscribed in policing and criminal justice systems. As Connell (1995) has suggested, dynamic relationships exist between hegemonic and other subordinated or marginalized forms of masculinity that produce different masculinities and gender politics within masculinity. The criminological implication is that masculine dominance and social forms of masculinity linked to violence and offending are both produced and policed by aspects of the criminal justice system and state institutions. The paradox of regulating criminalized masculinities with the formally law-abiding though sexist and aggressive official masculinities of criminal justice systems is reflected in research on policing (Prokos & Padavic, 2002). Nolan (2009, p. 250) discussed the existence in policing of an “idiosyncratic construct of masculinity that privileges tacit conspiracies of silence,” thereby validating heterosexuality, hierarchical regimentation, homosocial bonding, homophobia, and paternalistic misogyny among North American male police officers. And responses to criminaljustice intervention that foster and reproduce masculinities with a direct or indirect relation to criminality are uncovered in other contemporary studies. Most notably, the general failure of prisons to deter crime or to rehabilitate inmates with any certainty is now informed by accounts of inmate masculinity, illustrating the sharp struggles over male power and status and the masculine hierarchies that characterize prison subcultures and the lives of incarcerated men. An interview study with British prisoners suggests that a specific form of masculinity that is hard, aggressive, bullying, and conformist is a usual adaptation to prison (Jewkes, 2005). Prisons cause a dehumanizing impact that threatens personal identity through a climate of “mortification 91

James W. Messerschmidt and Stephen Tomsen

and brutality.” This impact engenders a hard masculine social performance among inmates. This analysis and related work on prison masculinities cogently suggest that aspects of the intervention process itself affirm destructive forms of male identity, to which criminal justice systems ostensibly are opposed to (Sabo, Kupers, & London, 2001). This contradiction leads to a major conceptual problem for the new crime and masculinities paradigm, as a critical analysis of masculine offending necessitates an understanding of the historically shifting and fluid way that destructive masculinities have been either condoned or denounced by policing and criminal justice systems. Moreover, this problem results in dilemmas for programs of punishment, correction, and crime prevention that may appear both to treat and foster male criminality (Holland & Scourfield, 2000). These different examples reflect the complexities of official reactions and the criminalization process in relation to different crimes and masculinities. Male crime is gendered crime; yet when commentators on the masculinity-crime nexus cannot acknowledge the link between the bulk of male offending and such other factors as social class and race, they risk inadvertently naturalizing male offending. This shortsighted view reinforces a widespread public belief in a commonsense opinion of masculinity as a force inevitably leading millions of men to involvement in crime and violence. The dilemmas of problematic-gendered male offending and an overlapping criminalization process are evidenced in the debate raised by certain key examples of contentious crimes and their policing. For example, the ongoing concern in Australia over how to deal progressively with the issue of domestic and sexual assaults in indigenous communities has become increasingly public (HEREOC, 2006). Indigenous people, and in particular indigenous boys and men, are disproportionately subjected to police surveillance, prosecution, and then incarceration in juvenile detention centers and adult prisons. In such contentious cases, different forms of violence are related to particular racialized protest masculinities that reflect distinct histories of marginality due to the effects of migration and racial dispossession in a White Anglo-dominated culture. And in the United States, more African-American men are under the control of the criminaljustice system than were enslaved in 1850, resulting in racial segregation being replaced by mass incarceration as “the new Jim Crow” form of social control (Alexander, 2010). In Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys Rios (2011) demonstrates the significance of masculinity and crime in the casting of an increasingly wide net of social control in the everyday lives of delinquent black and Latino boys in Oakland, California (Rios, 2011). An extended “youth control complex” impacts the future outcome of these boys through the combined effects of schools, families, businesses, residents, media, community centers, and the criminal-justice system that “collectively punish, stigmatize, monitor, and criminalize young people in an attempt to control them” (p. 40). Through institutionalized mechanisms of social control, the ongoing developing masculinity of these boys is challenged through systematic marking them as criminal. Rios demonstrates that for the most part, the youth control complex offers the boys meanings of masculinity that emphasize conformity to a subordinated racialized social status and, therefore, many of the boys find that the alternative to conformity is to become “hard”; that is, to survive on the street one must construct a hypermasculinity. And this masculinity found embedded in the street culture is likewise reinforced through certain aspects of the youth control complex, especially institutions of the criminal-justice system. For example, Rios (2011, p. 138) observes that police officers frequently used “a brutal masculinity that inculcated a toughness, manliness, and hypermasculinity in the boys. This hypermasculinity often influenced the young men to perpetrate defiance, crime, and violence, sanctioning police to brutalize or arrest them.” The result becomes a cycle whereby the boys practice a hypermasculinity on the streets, certain aspects of the youth control complex generate 92

Masculinities and crime

meanings supporting that notion of masculinity, and the boys are channeled into crime and the criminal-justice system.

Conclusion It is incumbent upon critical criminology to move beyond the impasse generated by explanations of crime that either downplay male offending, or focus on it, to the exclusion of evidence of criminalization and other social factors. Criminalization is a common strategy in a contemporary era of social movement activism toward crime that may dovetail with punitive law and order politics (Snider, 1998). This strategy can encourage a major expansion of police and prisons, and the imposition of longer and often mandatory sentences, which erode any commitment to alternative punishments. Such harsh penalties will have the pernicious effect of net widening, mass incarceration and punishment for vengeance sake, rather than reform or rehabilitation. And, of course, this strategy specifically targets and brutalizes poor, non-white, and indigenous men, causing further divisive and negative impacts on their fragile communities. Masculine crime may appear to be inevitable, even abhorrent. Yet there is scant progressive gain in simple essentialist understandings of male offending, a denial of human agency, or a cynical dismissal of substantial efforts to educate and promote diverse and non-violent masculinities among marginalized boys and men. To be critically aware of the extent and effects of the criminalization process and its secondary effects in racist and class-divided societies requires a constant reflexivity in analyzing the masculinity-crime nexus.

References Anderson, T., Daly, K. & Rapp, L. (2009). Clubbing masculinities and crime: a qualitative study of Philadelphia nightclub scenes. Feminist Criminology, 4(4): 302–332. Alexander, M. (2010). The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. New York, NY: The New Press. Baird, A. (2012). The violent gang and the construction of masculinity among socially excluded young men. Safer Communities, 11: 179–190. Beirne, P. & Messerschmidt, J.W. (2015). Criminology: A Sociological Approach. New York: Oxford. Bonger, W. (2003). Criminality and economic conditions. In E. McLaughlin, J. Muncie, & G. Hughes (Eds.) Criminological Perspectives: Essential Readings. London/Thousand Oaks: Sage [original –1916]. Bourgois, P. (2002). In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Bowker, L. (1998). (Ed.). Masculinities and Violence. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Breines, I., Connell, R.W. & Eide, I. (Eds.) (2000). Male Roles, Masculinities and Violence: A Culture of Peace Perspective. Paris, UNESCO Publishing. Carlen, P. & Jefferson, T. (1996). (Eds.) Masculinities and crime. Special issue of The British Journal of Criminology, 33(6). Carlsson, C. (2013). Masculinities, persistence, and desistance. Criminology, 51(3): 661–693. Carrington, K., McIntosh, A. & Scott, J. (2012). Globalization, frontier masculinities, and violence. The British Journal of Criminology, 50: 393–413. Cavender. G. (1999). Detecting masculinity. In J. Ferrell & N. Websdale (Eds.) Making Trouble: Cultural Constructions of Crime, Deviance and Control. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Cohen, A. (1955). Delinquent Boys: The Culture of the Gang. New York: Free Press. Cohen, J.W. & Harvey, P.J. (2006). Misconceptions of gender: sex, masculinity, and the measurement of crime. The Journal of Men’s Studies, 14(2): 223–233. Collier, R. (1998). Masculinities, Crime and Criminology: Men, Heterosexuality and the Criminal(ised) Other. London: Sage. Connell, R.W. (1987). Gender and Power. Sydney, Australia: Allen and Unwin. Connell, R.W. (1995). Masculinities. St. Leonards: Allen and Unwin. 93

James W. Messerschmidt and Stephen Tomsen

Connell, R.W. (2002). On hegemonic masculinity and violence: response to Jefferson and Hall. Theoretical Criminology, 6(1): 89–99. Connell, R.W. & Messerschmidt, J. (2005). Hegemonic masculinity: rethinking the concept. Gender and Society, 19(6): 829–859. Connell, R.W., Kimmel, M. & Hearn, J. (2005). (Eds.) Handbook of Studies on Men and Masculinities. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage. Contreras, R. (2009). “Damn, yo—who’s that girl?” An ethnographic analysis of masculinity in drug robberies. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 38: 465–492. Copes, H. & Hochstetler, A. (2003). Situational construction of masculinity among male street thieves. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 32(3): 279–304. Cunneen, C. (1985). Working class boys and crime: theorising the class/gender mix. In P. Patton & R. Poole. (Eds.) War/Masculinity. Sydney: Intervention Publications. DeKeseredy, W. & Schwartz, M. (2005). Masculinities and interpersonal violence. In R.W. Connell, M. Kimmel & J. Hearn (Eds.) Handbook of Studies on Men and Masculinities. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage. Gadd, D. & Farrall, S. (2004). Criminal careers, desistance and subjectivity: interpreting men’s narratives of change. Theoretical Criminology, 8(2): 123–156. Gould, S. (1981). The ape in some of us: criminal anthropology. In The Mismeasure of Man. New York: W. W. Norton and Co. Hall, S. (2002). Daubing the drudges of fury: men, violence and the piety of the “hegemonic masculinity” thesis. Theoretical Criminology, 6(1): 35–61. Hearn, J. & Whitehead, A. (2006). Collateral damage: men’s “domestic” violence to women seen through men’s relation with men. Probation Journal, 53(1): 38–56. HEREOC. (2006). Ending Family Violence and Abuse in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Communities—Key Issues. Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, June, 2006. Hobbs, D., Hadfield, P., Lister, S. & Winlow, S. (2003). Bouncers: Violence and Governance in the Night-time Economy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Holland, S. & Scourfield, J.B. (2000). Managing marginalised masculinities: men and probation. Journal of Gender Studies, 9(2): 199–211. Irwin, K. & Chesney-Lind, M. (2008). Girls’ violence: beyond dangerous masculinity. Sociological Compass, 2(3): 837–855. Jefferson, T. (2002). Subordinating hegemonic masculinity. Theoretical Criminology, 6(1): 63–88. Jefferson, T. (1997). Masculinities and crime. In M. Maguire, R. Morgan, & R. Reiner. (Eds.) The Oxford Handbook of Criminology. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Jewkes, Y. (2005). Men behind bars: “doing” masculinity as an adaptation to imprisonment. Men and Masculinities, 8(1): 44–63. Kimmel, M.S. (1987). (Ed.) Changing Men: New Directions in Research on Men and Masculinity. Newbury Park, California: Sage Publications. Lander, I., Ravn, S. & Jon, N. (2016). (Eds.) Masculinities in the Criminological Field: Control, Vulnerability and Risk-taking. London/New York: Routledge. Messerschmidt, J.W. (1993). Masculinities and Crime: Critique and Reconceptualization of Theory. Lanham, Md: Rowman and Littlefield. Messerschmidt, J.W. (1995). Managing to kill: masculinities and the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion. Masculinities, 3(4): 1–22. Messerschmidt, J.W. (1997). Crime as Structured Action: Gender, Race, Class, and Crime in the Making. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications. Messerschmidt, J.W. (2000). Nine Lives: Adolescent Masculinities, the Body, and Violence. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Messerschmidt, J.W. (2004). Flesh & Blood: Adolescent Gender Diversity and Violence. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Messerschmidt, J.W. (2010). Hegemonic Masculinities and Camouflaged Politics: Unmasking the Bush Dynasty and Its War against Iraq. Boulder, CO: Paradigm. Messerschmidt, J.W. (2012). Gender, Heterosexuality, and Youth Violence: The Struggle for Recognition. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Messerschmidt, J.W. (2014). Crime as Structured Action: Doing Masculinities, Race, Class, Sexuality, and Crime. 2nd ed. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Miller, J. (2001). One of the Guys: Girls, Gangs, and Gender. New York: Oxford University Press.

94

Masculinities and crime

Miller, J. (2002). The strengths and limits of “doing gender” for understanding street crime. Theoretical Criminology, 6(4): 433–460. Monaghan, L.F. (2002). Hard men, shop boys and others: embodying competence in a masculinist occupation. The Sociological Review, 50(3): 334–355. Monto, M.A., Machalek, J. & Anderson, T. (2012). Boys doing art: the construction of outlaw masculinity in a Portland, Oregon, graffiti crew. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 42: 259–290. Mullins, C. (2006). Holding Your Square: Masculinities, Streetlife, and Violence. Portland, OR: Willan. Newburn, T. & Stanko, E. (1994). (Eds.) Just Boys Doing Business? Men, Masculinities and Crime. London: Routledge. Nolan, T. (2009). Behind the blue wall of silence. Men and Masculinities, 12(2): 250–257. Park, H. (2012). Interracial violence, Western racialized masculinities, and the geopolitics of violence against women. Social and Legal Studies, 21: 491–509. Polk, K. (1994). When Men Kill: Scenarios of Masculine Violence. Cambridge University Press: Melbourne. Prokos, A. & Padavic, I. (2002). “There oughtta be a law against bitches”: masculinity lessons in police academy training. Gender, Work and Organizations, 9(4): 439–459. Rios, V. (2011). Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys. New York, NY: New York University Press. Sabo, D., Kupers, T. & London, W. (2001). (Eds.) Prison Masculinities. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Segal, L. (1990). Slow Motion: Changing Masculinities, Changing Men. London: Virago. Snider, L. (1998). Towards safer societies: punishment, masculinities and violence against women. The British Journal of Criminology, 38(1): 1–39. Sparks, R. (1996). Masculinity and heroism in the Hollywood “blockbuster”: the culture industry and contemporary images of crime and law enforcement. The British Journal of Criminology, 36(3): 348–360. Stanko, E. & Hobdell, K. (1993). Assault on men: masculinity and male victimization. The British Journal of Criminology, 33(3): 400–415. Sutherland, E. (1947). Principles of Criminology. Philadelphia: Lippincott. Taylor, I., Walton, P. & Young, J. (1973). The New Criminology: For a Social Theory of Deviance. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Tomsen, S. (1997). A top night: social protest, masculinity and the culture of drinking violence. The British Journal of Criminology, 37(1): 90–103. Tomsen, S. (2005). “Boozers and bouncers”: masculine conflict, disengagement and the contemporary governance of drinking-related violence and disorder. The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 38(3): 283–297. Tomsen, S. (2008). (Ed.). Crime, Criminal Justice, and Masculinities. Burlington, VT: Ashgate. Tomsen, S. (2009). Violence, Prejudice and Sexuality. New York: Routledge. Tomsen S. & Wadds, P. (2016). Nightlife ethnography, violence, policing and security. In J. Stubbs & S. Tomsen (Eds.) Australian Violence: Crime, Criminal Justice and Beyond. Sydney, Federation Press. Whitehead, A. (2005). Man to man violence: how masculinity may work as a dynamic risk factor. The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, 44(4): 411–422. Willott, S., Griffin, C. & Torrance, M. (2008). Snakes and ladders: upper-middle class male offenders talk about economic crime. In S. Tomsen (Ed.). Crime, Criminal Justice, and Masculinities. Burlington, VT: Ashgate. Winlow, S. (2001). Badfellas: Crime, Tradition and New Masculinities. Oxford: Berg.

95

7 Queer criminology Carrie L. Buist, Emily Lenning, and Matthew Ball

Introduction Queer people1 experience the criminal legal system in a way that is unique and worthy of criminological inquiry, hence the emergence of queer criminology. Queer criminology, simply put, is “a theoretical and practical approach that seeks to highlight and draw attention to the stigmatization, the criminalization, and in many ways the rejection of the Queer community . . . as both victims and offenders, by academe and the criminal legal system” (Buist & Lenning, 2016, p. 1). Queer criminology also considers the experiences of criminal legal professionals working in the field, such as in law enforcement, courts, and corrections systems. More recently, queer criminologists have expanded their scope of inquiry to include engaging “queer theoretical critiques to not only identify heteronormativity within criminal justice institutions, but also to question whether, in fact, the reform of such institutions can ever hope to address the injustices experienced by LGBTIQ people” (Ball, 2016, p. 8). Arguably, it is the latter focus that has placed queer criminology under the broader rubric of critical criminology. Indeed, contemporary queer criminology is differentiated from previous criminological work that simply considered Queer people as subjects particularly because of its disruptive and challenging nature (Dwyer, Ball, & Crofts, 2016). Additionally, queer criminology mirrors the variety of perspectives that fall under the umbrella of critical criminology (feminist criminology, cultural criminology, green criminology, and so on) – while there are countless ideas about what makes a particular criminology “critical,” so are there many notions about what makes queer criminology “queer.” This chapter is meant to provide a sampling of the varied topics of inquiry, theoretical perspectives, and research that currently dominate criminological work that we might consider “queer.” In this chapter, we will first explore the ongoing debates in queer criminology over what queer means and the implications of these debates for the directions of queer criminological work. We will then discuss how Queer identity has an impact on one’s experiences in the criminal legal system, particularly in relation to police, courts, and corrections, and explore how the history of criminalizing Queer people has had a long-standing (and ongoing) impact on Queer people as victims, offenders, and as criminal legal professionals working within the system. We will conclude by discussing some important directions for research and policy development in the area. 96

Queer criminology

Debating “queer” in queer criminology While queer criminologists share a number of general goals, they have different perspectives on the kinds of criminological work that are necessary in order to achieve them. These differences revolve, in many respects, around what the term “queer” means, and how it is used in such work. Though this may appear somewhat trivial, these debates cut directly to the heart of the theoretical foundations and development of the field. Historically a term of abuse levelled at LGBT communities, “queer” was “reclaimed” by LGBT activists during the 1980s and early 1990s as a symbol of defiance and empowerment, and to celebrate difference from the heterosexual “norm.” It gained particular strength in a period of governmental inaction in the face of the AIDS crisis, and especially among those who felt excluded from the dominant strands of LGBT-related activism at the time. For example, Queer women of color pushed against the dominance of white women within feminism; those who did not neatly identify with rigidly defined identity categories, and who sought more radical and subversive political change beyond mainstream “inclusion” politics, found gay liberation movements quite limiting and exclusionary; and transgender people also experienced exclusion from both feminist groups and gay and lesbian groups (Sullivan, 2003; Jagose, 1996). Thus “queer” politics became attractive because it began to interrogate these exclusions and pursue a more radical politics beyond identity. Poststructural academic scholarship, particularly the work of French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault, played a formative role in these movements. Foucault’s History of Sexuality (1998) identified how “sexuality” has been historically constructed through power and is a component of the government of populations. Foucault argued that politics organized around the “liberation” of one’s sexuality merely reinforced these power relations. This view has informed the move away from LGBT identity politics in queer scholarship and activism. The focus of queer work has now become power relations and issues of normativity more generally, with queer politics pushing against social norms and categories, and embracing the non-normative. In this sense, queer work has become a strategy or an attitude along the lines of dictionary definitions that define “queer” as “to quiz or ridicule, to spoil, to put out of order” (Sullivan, 2003, p. 52). It is open-ended; its engagements unfixed and continuous. As David Halperin has famously noted, “‘Queer’ is by definition whatever is at odds with the normal, the legitimate, the dominant. There is nothing in particular to which it necessarily refers” (Halperin, 1995, p. 62, emphases in original). While “queer” might have this particular meaning in many academic and activist circles, it has come to be used frequently as a shorthand term for LGBT issues generally, in lieu of the ever-expanding initialism (like LGBTIAQ). Where once “queer” politics could be distinguished from LGBT politics as a reaction to the limitations of the latter, in many respects “queer” has now come to refer to an extension of those same politics. It is often used as a way of bolstering the task of “inclusion,” although certainly not unproblematically (Buist & Lenning, 2016). It is this slippage of meaning that underpins some of the key theoretical divisions in queer criminology. While some of the earliest suggestions made by criminologists about what a queer criminology could become sought a relatively close connection between queer theory and criminology in line with the understanding of “queer” outlined above (see Tomsen, 1997, p. 34; Groombridge, 1999, p. 539), as queer criminology has developed, “queer” has largely come to be used as an umbrella shorthand for LGBT people. This is apparent in recent suggestions about the field and the directions that it might take. Jordan Blair Woods, for example, has argued that queer criminology can “consider how sexual orientation and gender identity/ expression as non-deviant differences – in combination with other differences, such as race/ 97

Carrie L. Buist, Emily Lenning, and Matthew Ball

ethnicity, class, and religion – may influence victimisation, involvement in crime, and experiences in the criminal justice system more broadly” (2014, p. 18). By and large, in scholarship undertaken along these lines, “queer” comes to mean LGBT people, and LGBT people thus become the subjects of queer criminology (Ball, 2016, p. 67). While this does not mean that all such work takes the same methodological approach, or focuses on exactly the same concerns, there are some similarities in the general tasks undertaken. These approaches focus on highlighting the shortcomings of criminological theory and research, and explaining/understanding how sexuality and gender influences crime and victimization for LGBT people. As Buist and Stone (2014, p. 37) summarize it, “queer criminology is a necessary addition to the field; not only for the sake of knowledge, but also for the lives of those in the LGBTQ community impacted by injustice in the criminal justice system.” However, there is another approach to queer criminology that is also being developed simultaneously; one that draws more deeply from queer scholarship. Noting the significant distance that appears to exist between queer criminology and queer theory more generally, Matthew Ball (2016) has argued that there is considerable scope for queer criminology to draw from the disruptive and radical aspects of queer theory. These would allow the concept of “queer” to be utilized to what he suggests is its fullest potential. It would also offer a more thoroughgoing and fundamental critique of criminology, especially if Halperin’s understanding of queer, outlined above, is followed. This requires queer criminology to move beyond the somewhat more traditional criminological tasks of expanding criminological knowledge about victims, offenders, and criminal legal professionals, or evaluating and reformulating criminal justice policies, towards a greater “queering” of criminology – that is, a more thorough deconstruction and disruption of criminology and the criminal legal system. Each approach to queer criminology makes important contributions, while also having its fair share of limitations. Queer criminology that uses “queer” as a shorthand term may risk lapsing into identity politics, thereby reproducing some of the dynamics that initially led to the development of queer activism. Without utilizing the more disruptive aspects of queer work, these approaches to queer criminology may also forego the opportunity to step further outside of criminology and “queer” it (Ball, 2016). At the same time, there is a danger that the more disruptive approaches to queer criminology take the deconstruction of identity categories too far, especially because these categories remain relevant in the lives of Queer people. This deconstruction may potentially limit the ability of queer criminology to address material injustices and trauma experienced by victims (Buist & Lenning, 2016; Woods, 2014). At this point, there is no clear way of reconciling these different styles of queer criminology, and the benefits and limitations of each approach suggest that it may be untenable to posit a single direction for the field. Given that queer criminology is a relative newcomer on the criminological scene, there is significant potential within each of these approaches – and many others besides – for further development. Ultimately, the fact that there exists a diversity of views on what “queer” means and how it ought to be used is a strength of the field, for it means that there will always be many queer criminologies. Drawing from both of these key directions within queer criminology, next we provide a brief history of the criminalization of queerness and identify how that has shaped the experiences that Queer folks have had in their interactions with the criminal legal system.

Queer experiences in the criminal legal system The behavior and bodies of Queer people are routinely criminalized. Queer people face increased risks of victimization, and their identity and the treatment they receive as a result can impact 98

Queer criminology

their offending patterns, experiences with the court system and subsequent punishments. These encounters are often negative and are experienced despite one’s position within the system. That is to say that regardless of an individual’s position as offender, victim, or even as an individual working within the criminal legal system, there continues to be evidence of distrust and uncertainty – from law making, to policing, to the court system, to corrections, Queer people face discrimination and violence that cannot continue to go ignored. Today, Queer people constitute a group that consistently encounters criminalization and significant legal regulation throughout the world, precisely because of their sexuality or gender diversity. The majority of (if not all) countries legislatively regulate some aspect of sexuality and/or gender expression (Buist & Lenning, 2016). As of this writing, sex between same-sex individuals is illegal in 72 countries, and punishable by death in parts of 13 different African and Asian countries (Carroll, 2016). Not surprisingly, it is in these countries that we see some of the most atrocious violence committed against Queer people – by both citizens and agents of the state – including vicious rapes, assaults, bludgeoning, and hangings (Buist & Lenning, 2016). Even in those countries where same-sex behavior is legal, backlash is usually evident in the wake of any real progress, and new laws surface to criminalize sexual minorities in other ways. A prime example of this is the 17 countries which have enacted laws prohibiting freedom of expression in regards to sexual orientation, commonly called “propaganda laws” (Carroll, 2016). In Russia, where sex between same-sex individuals has been legal since 1993, a strict propaganda law has ushered in not only the arrests of Queer rights activists, but a disturbing wave of anti-LGBT violence at the hands of right-wing extremist groups. As Buist and Lenning (2016) point out, it isn’t the laws themselves that necessarily pose the greatest danger to Queer people – it is the culture of homophobia that they promote, which serves to dehumanize Queer people and makes violence against them more probable. Like lesbian, gay and bisexual folks, transgender individuals also find their identities threatened by laws that dictate or limit their gender expression. One such form of gender policing comes in the form of “imitation” or “masquerade” laws that prohibit people from wearing clothes that do not “match” their sex assigned at birth. Though these laws are a historic relic in countries like the United States, others like Kuwait and Malaysia continue to enforce them with jail time and expensive fines. Though the United States no longer has masquerade laws, transgender folks (especially trans women of color) are so frequently harassed during stops by police officers that the phenomenon has been dubbed “walking while trans” (to echo the phenomenon of “driving while Black”). Not surprisingly, trans women of color face extreme violence, including murder. In the United States, for instance, the number of trans people murdered has been at an all-time high for two years in a row. No less than 21 trans women were murdered in the U.S. in 2015, with this figure being surpassed in 2016 with the murder of Crystal Edmonds in September (Ring, 2016). Despite the horrific nature of murders like that of Crystal and others, laws continue to be passed that promote discrimination against the transgender community. The most controversial of these laws at the time of this writing is probably North Carolina’s House Bill 2, a portion of which requires that citizens use public restrooms that match the sex designated on their birth certificate. Given the persistence with which queerness has been criminalized throughout the world, it is no surprise that Queer people experience differential and even violent treatment by police, courts, and corrections – the components that make up the criminal legal system in many countries. Though each country has its own criminal legal system (and sometimes many systems, differing by state), there are some similarities, such as a general lack of understanding and thus, preparation, to serve the Queer community. In policing, for example, very few departments in the United States and abroad have implemented training or policies regarding the Queer community. This lack of training, policy and, 99

Carrie L. Buist, Emily Lenning, and Matthew Ball

ultimately, lack of understanding and acceptance of Queer-identified individuals is evident in the interactions Queer folks have with police officers around the globe. In the most general sense, the Queer community continues to hold negative perceptions of police officers, and Queer people of color, Queer youth, and especially transgender people report higher percentages of discrimination than non-Queer people (Mallory, Hasenbush, & Sears, 2015; Dwyer, 2011). Distrust is quickly established between Queer youth and law enforcement whether it be because the young people feel as though they are being harassed for “looking queer” (Dwyer, 2015) or presenting outside of gender norm constructions, which speaks to the historic roots of criminalizing queerness (Buist & Lenning, 2016). The discrimination felt by Queer youth is especially important to highlight, as these negative encounters will no doubt have a significant impact on the level of trust these young people have in the system for years to come. In fact, such distrust may lead Queer youth away from seeking police assistance if they become the victim of a crime. In the U.S., oft-cited research from the National Transgender Victimization Survey (NTVS) and the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP) confirms that Queer people report rates of abuse and harassment by police at two to three times higher than others, and nearly half of respondents in their study reported being victims of violence at the hands of police (NCAVP, 2012). In addition, the NTVS has reported that gender variant and non-conforming people have been denied equal treatment from police officers (20 percent), have been harassed or disrespected by an officer (29 percent) and nearly half of the 6,400 respondents reported discomfort seeking assistance from police officers (see Buist & Lenning, 2016; Buist & Stone, 2014; Grant et al., 2011; Berman & Robinson, 2010). Like civilians, Queer law enforcement officers are also subjected to differential treatment by their peers. The same stereotypes experienced by Queer civilians who live outside of gendered expectations have contributed to not only how law enforcement officials police certain populations, but how police officers are judged on the effectiveness of their skills. For instance, regardless of sexual orientation, women police officers continue to face discrimination on the job, simply because they are women who have entered into a profession that is predominately male. This treatment persists in part because of the patriarchal influence on policing and, in turn, the value placed on characteristics that are commonly associated with cisgender heterosexual males. Valuing traditional masculine constructions of gender on the job perpetuates heteronormativity and compulsory heterosexuality (see Buist & Lenning, 2016; Miller, Forest, & Jurik, 2003). In promoting these concepts and applying them in the field of policing, Queer officers are at heightened risk for harassment and discrimination on the job. Certainly we don’t espouse that all Queer police officers, or civilians for that matter, have negative experiences with and within law enforcement, but evidence does strongly suggest that Queer officers (especially gay male officers and transgender officers) feel as though they are viewed as deviant because of their sexual orientation and gender identity (Jones, 2015; Mallory, Hasenbush, & Sears, 2013). With continued reports of feelings of discrimination and abuse on the job, some police departments are beginning to take the proper steps to begin implementing new training practices. The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, police in England and Wales, and police in parts of Australia, have adopted new codes of conduct for police officers or are seeking to improve relations with the Queer community (Jones, 2015; Dwyer & Tomsen, 2016). Certainly police departments continue to develop LGBT liaison officers and new training and policy implementation, however there is still a lack of mandatory training and in turn policy implementation in all departments. Additionally, as a recent case in Australia shows, it can take just one incident of police violence toward the Queer community to undo much of the progress made in improving these relations (Dwyer & Tomsen, 2016). 100

Queer criminology

To the general public, Queer experiences in the court system are perhaps less visible than those with law enforcement, but nonetheless they are characterized by homophobic and transphobic discrimination, regardless of one’s role in the courtroom as a victim, a defendant, or an employee (Brower, 2011; Buist & Lenning, 2016; Cramer, 2002; Farr, 2000; Lee, 2013; Meidinger, 2012; Mogul, 2005; Mogul, Ritchie, & Whitlock, 2011; Shay, 2014; Shortnacy, 2001). Studies on courtroom bias reveal that both court users and employees routinely hear anti-LGBT remarks and observe negative treatment of Queer jurors, defendants, and victims (Brower, 2011; Cramer, 2002; Sexual Orientation Fairness Committee, 2001). The shroud of homophobia and transphobia that envelops the court system both hinders Queer defendants and can benefit non-Queer defendants. For example, Farr (2000), Mogul (2005), and Shortnacy (2001) all reveal that prosecutors have felt it advantageous to paint women facing capital cases as manly, man-hating lesbians, and to characterize gay defendants as innately insane. This tactic of putting the Queer victim on trial has prompted legal scholars to advocate for gay shield laws that mimic rape shield laws, which protect rape victims from becoming revictimized during trial (Strader, Selvin, & Hay, 2015). Likewise, Queer defendants are not only on trial themselves, but find their sexuality and gender identity on trial as well. On the other hand, defendants accused of committing crimes against Queer people use homophobia and transphobia quite literally as forms of defense, in what have become known as “gay panic” and “trans panic” defenses (Lee, 2013; Perkiss, 2013). Such defenses are particularly common in cases where hate crime sentencing enhancements are on the table. In the corrections branch of the criminal legal system, we see little difference regarding the harassment and discrimination felt among correctional professionals and those who are incarcerated. This also mirrors the feelings of isolation and alienation that corrections officers, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, have indicated experiencing (see Klofas & Toch, 1982; Walters, 1991; Conover, 2000; Tracy, 2004; Crary, 2005). Since there is little to no information that explores the experiences of Queer folks under correctional supervision (which includes jail, probation, parole, and so on), we focus our discussion on those Queer people who are incarcerated. In addressing this issue, a primary concern is the housing and classification of Queer inmates, more specifically transgender inmates, as well as the treatment of transgender correctional officers. The default policy in most jails and prisons around the world is to house transgender inmates in the prison setting that matches their sex as determined by their genitalia. Therefore, regardless of how long an individual may be living and presenting as one gender, if their sex does not match that gender presentation, they will be housed in the prison that coincides with their current genitalia. It is important to note that as recently as November 2016, the United Kingdom Ministry of Justice published a report commenting on the state of gender identification in prisons in England and Wales, pointing out that in decisions regarding the housing of inmates, their policy going forward will be to pay particular attention to “those offenders who wish to live consistently in the gender with which they identify (opposite to the sex assigned at birth)” (Ministry of Justice, 2016). Most often, though, prison officials choose to house transgender and other Queer inmates in segregation units for their protection even though, in the United States, these practices go against the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) prohibiting segregation of inmates for their protection. It is difficult to argue against the protection of anyone in prison. However, there are additional problems that come with segregation, especially long term segregation, such as mental and physical illness, and if an inmate, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, has experienced mental illness in the past, segregation can often exacerbate that illness (see Grassian, 1983; Collins, 2004; Arkles, 2009; O’Keefe et al., 2011; Colopy, 2012; Lydon et al., 2015). Additionally, being in 101

Carrie L. Buist, Emily Lenning, and Matthew Ball

segregation prevents the incarcerated individual from participating in life in the general population, such as having access to work assignments and longer periods of exercise. It is also true that incarcerated Queer folks experience higher rates of victimization while incarcerated, including sexual assault. Indeed, “incarcerated Queer identified persons experience sexual violence in prison at devastatingly higher rates, up to ten times higher than heterosexual inmates” (Buist & Lenning, 2016 p. 108; Beck, Berofsky, & Krebs, 2013; Just Detention International, 2015). There is also concern that the victimization of Queer people who are incarcerated comes at the hands of correctional officials (Beck et al., 2013). Sexual assault and victimization is not confined to prisons in the United States, as an Australian study also found that non-heterosexual men in prison were more likely to be threatened with sexual coercion than their heterosexual peers (Simpson et al., 2016). Transgender prison officers also encounter similar discrimination in their jobs, but for some their experience can also be mixed. Mandi Camille Hauwert, a correctional officer at San Quentin in California, and Sarah Stowe, a correctional officer at Old Colony Correctional Center in Massachusetts, are two notable transgender women who experienced more acceptance on the job from the incarcerated men whom they supervise than their co-workers. Hauwert (2015), in her op-ed for The Advocate, noted that while her co-workers were less understanding, the administrators were supportive of her transition. While this support was no doubt appreciated, it did little to quell the hurt from discriminatory co-workers. Stowe also commented on inmates respecting her transition more than her co-workers, some of which accused her of creating a hostile work environment because of her transition (English, 2016). Certainly, while legal protection under the law is important for officers like Hauwert and Stowe, the everyday obstacles they face working in the criminal legal system are a long way from being addressed. Ultimately, the experiences of Queer people within the criminal legal system highlight the need for ongoing research in these contexts. Such research is an essential component of policy change, and key to improving the experiences of victims, offenders, and criminal legal professionals in the criminal legal system. The next section will explore some of the empirical directions in queer criminology and their potential policy implications.

Queer criminological research and policy development Because of the diverse theoretical positions that can inform queer criminological research (as we outlined above), and the general lack of criminological research on Queer people, there are many possible research paths that queer criminologists can pursue. Regardless of the theoretical position taken, or the particular topic investigated, queer criminological research of all kinds is necessary in order to not only fill these gaps in the literature, but also to strengthen the presence of queer criminology within the academy. Additionally, increasing research in this field has significant potential to contribute to policy development in the interests of Queer communities. Much of the existing research in this area, as outlined in the section above, has focused on important issues such as homophobic and transphobic hate crimes; Queer people as victims and perpetrators of intimate partner violence; and the experiences of Queer people in relation to policing, courts, and corrections, particularly their encounters with heteronormativity and cisnormativity in those contexts. There is certainly much more to be known about these issues, and empirical research on these topics will necessarily continue to feature as a key component of queer criminology going forward. However, given that these topics are somewhat specific to the lives of Queer people, queer criminology risks limiting its relevance if it remains primarily focused on these topics. That is, it may reinforce the notion that it is only useful for understanding LGBT lives and experiences 102

Queer criminology

(and even then, only a narrow set of issues in those lives), both foregoing other opportunities to contribute more broadly to criminology, and justifying queer criminology’s relegation to the margins of the discipline. As such, for queer criminology to be most effective, we would suggest that empirical work undertaken under its aegis seek to push criminology as a discipline further. Ultimately, the field of criminology should not remain unchanged in its encounter with queer criminology, and nor should criminologists themselves. Queer criminologists need to find ways of penetrating the field more deeply, ensuring the inclusion of LGBT people in all criminological research – whether it be about burglary or white collar crime – and the incorporation of sexuality (hetero, homo, or any other) and gender diversity, as relevant factors for analysis alongside race, gender, and class. To do otherwise risks merely reinforcing the exclusions, oversights, and assumptions that produced the need for queer criminology in the first place. To progress empirical research in queer criminology it is necessary to reflect on the methodological approaches adopted by queer criminologists. As always, the methodologies chosen must be appropriate for the research topic and questions investigated. But here it is worth considering which methodologies will best capture the experiences of queer people. It is not surprising that many queer criminologists have found qualitative approaches quite useful, given their ability to bring queer experiences to light with richness and depth (see, for example, Peterson & Panfil, 2014). These approaches can provide a vivid and detailed picture of experiences that Queer people have in the criminal legal system, with this detail being necessary in mobilizing campaigns for reform. For example, it is only through research providing space for transgender people in prison to give voice to their own experiences that it is possible to make appropriate policy responding to their needs. Of course, this is not to minimize the importance of quantitative research on these issues as well. Indeed, it is absolutely vital that Queer people are included in large-scale crime and victimization surveys, as well as other quantitatively-focused criminological research (Woods, 2014). These data not only offer effective ways of understanding the extent of crime victimization, but are also essential to the development of appropriate criminal justice policy. They can give a sense of how widespread hate crimes are, or how many people access the formal institutions of the criminal legal system after victimization, which are essential in making resourcing decisions in the criminal legal system, and thus in improving the criminal legal response to these matters. As such, information about sexuality and gender diversity should be collected through these instruments as a matter of course – in much the same way that gender, race, or socio-economic status is collected (Woods, 2014). Importantly, though, consideration must be given to the ways in which quantitative methods can sometimes work against the inclusion of Queer people. The tendency to utilize sometimes blunt and problematic categories (male and female), or to parcel individuals into apparently solid identities (gay, lesbian, transgender) in the collection and analysis of this data can render invisible much of the fluidity, diversity, and difference that Queer lives represent. As such, queer criminologists need to work hard to develop quantitative approaches that ensure queer people are “designed in,” and that the research methods utilized do not, in essence, limit the ability to account for the fluidity and complexity that are signaled by queer (Browne, 2008). An important way in which to ensure queer criminology is seen as having wider relevance for criminology is for it to investigate Queer people as offenders. Doing so does not involve returning criminology to the offensive assumptions about the inherent “deviance” of Queer people that dominated its history. Rather, this is important in order to move away from approaches that reinforce assumptions that Queer people are only victims (Panfil, 2014). It not only allows for a recognition of the agency of Queer people, but is also an opportunity to bring to light the multitude of inequitable factors in some queer lives (such as homelessness experienced after 103

Carrie L. Buist, Emily Lenning, and Matthew Ball

coming out to family members) that lead to offending (including “survival” crimes) (Panfil, 2014). Research already undertaken in this area points to a range of policy directions that may limit the offending of Queer people, such as improved funding and support for Queer youth services, and the need for greater support for Queer young people who might experience homelessness upon coming out. It is only possible in this short chapter to provide a snapshot of the key components of queer criminology, including its key theoretical debates, the reasons that this work is necessary, and the kinds of research and policy directions that it points to. No matter which path is followed, queer criminological work will invariably push the boundaries of criminology. In doing so, it is important that queer criminology not remain purely an academic pursuit. Queer criminologists must not lose sight of the fact that queer criminological research can, and should, remain focused on improving the experiences that Queer people have when interacting with the institutions of the criminal legal system. Queer criminological research and activism have the potential to lead to significant, necessary, and long overdue changes to criminal justice policy, and subsequently the lives of Queer people.

Note 1

This term will be used in this paper to refer broadly to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ) people. While its use in this manner is not unproblematic (as outlined above), it can be a useful shorthand term with which to discuss sexuality and gender diversity.

References Arkles, G. (2009). Safety and solidarity across gender lines: Rethinking segregation of transgender people in detention. Temple Political & Civil Rights Law Review, 18(2), 515–560. Ball, M. (2016). Criminology and Queer Theory: Dangerous Bedfellows? Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Beck, A.J., Berzofsky, M., & Krebs, C. (2013). Sexual victimization in prisons and jails reported by inmates, 2011–2012. Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics. Berman, A. & Robinson, S. (2010). Speaking Out: Stopping Homophobic and Transphobic Abuse in Queensland. Australia: Australian Academic Press. Brower, T. (2011). Twelve angry—and sometimes alienated—men: The experiences and treatment of lesbians and gay men during jury service. Drake Law Review, 59, 669–706. Browne, K. (2008). Selling my Queer soul or Queerying quantitative research?, Sociological Research Online, 13(1), 11, www.socresonline.org.uk/13/1/11.html, (accessed 15 December 2015). Buist, C.L. & Lenning, E. (2016). Queer Criminology. London: Routledge. Buist, C.L. & Stone, C. (2014). Transgender victims and offenders: Failures of the United States criminal justice system and the necessity of queer criminology. Critical Criminology, 22(1), 35–47. Carroll, A. (2016). State Sponsored Homophobia 2016: A World Survey of Sexual Orientation Laws: Criminalisation, Protection and Recognition. International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association: Geneva. Collins, W.C. (2004). Supermax prisons and the constitution: Liability concerns in the extended control unit. Washington, DC: National Institute of Corrections. Colopy, T.W. (2012). Setting gender identity free: Expanding treatment for transsexual inmates. Health Matrix: Journal of Law Medicine, 22, 262–271. Conover, T. (2000). Newjack: Guarding Sing Sing. New York: Random House. Cramer, A.C. (2002). Discovering and addressing sexual orientation bias in Arizona’s legal system. Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law, 11(1), 25–37. Crary, D. (2005). High stress, low glamor: Correctional officers struggle with workplace strains. May 8, 2005. www.policeone.com/health-fitness/articles/100392-High-Stress-Low-Glamor-Correctional-OfficersStruggle-with-Workplace-Strains/. Dwyer, A. (2011). “It’s not like we’re going to jump them”: How transgressing heteronormativity shapes police interactions with LGBT young people. Youth Justice, 11(3), 203–220. 104

Queer criminology

Dwyer, A. (2015). Teaching young Queers a lesson: How police teach lessons about non-heteronormativity in public spaces. Sexuality & Gender, 19, 493–512. Dwyer, A. & Tomsen, S. (2016). The past is the past? The impossibility of erasure of historical LGBTIQ policing, in A. Dwyer, M. Ball & T. Crofts (eds.) Queering Criminology. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 36–53. Dwyer, A., Ball, M., & Crofts, T. (eds.) (2016). Queering Criminology. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. English, B. (2016). In state first, a prison guard becomes a woman. Boston Globe. August 8, 2016. www. bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/2016/08/07/state-first-prison-guard-becomes-woman/mOI11JNv 4va6Ps8My6axlJ/story.html. Farr, K.A. (2000). Defeminizing and dehumanizing female murderers: Depictions of lesbians on death row. Women & Criminal Justice, 11(1), 49–66. Foucault, M. (1998). The Will to Knowledge: The History of Sexuality Volume 1. London: Penguin Books. Grant, J., Mottet, L., Tanis, J., Harrison, J., Herman, J.L., & Keislin, M. (2011). Injustice at every turn: A report of the national transgender discrimination survey. Washington, DC: National Center for Transgender Equality & National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. Grassian, S. (1983). Psychopathological effects of solitary confinement. American Journal of Psychiatry, 140(11), 1450–1454. Groombridge, N. (1999). Perverse criminologies: The closet of Doctor Lombroso, Social and Legal Studies, 8, 531–548. Halperin, D. (1995). Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hauwert, M.C. (2015). Op-ed: Transitioning as a guard at San Quentin State Prison. The Advocate, March 3, 2015. www.advocate.com/commentary/2015/03/03/op-ed-transitioning-guard-san-quentin-state-prison. Jagose, A. (1996). Queer Theory. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press. Jones, M. (2015). Who forgot lesbian, gay, and bisexual police officers? Findings from a national survey. Policing, 9(1), 1–12. Just Detention International. (2015). The basics about abuse in U.S. detention. Accessed from www.just detention.org/en/fact_sheets.aspx. Klofas, J. & Toch, H. (1982). The guard subculture myth. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 19(2), 238–254. Lee, C. (2013). Masculinity on trial: Gay panic in the criminal courtroom. Southwestern Law Review, 42, 817–831. Lydon, J., Carrington, K., Low, H., Miller, R., Yazdy, & M. (2015). Coming out of concrete closets: A report on Black & Pink’s national LGBTQ prisoner survey. Mallory, C., Hasenbush, A., & Sears, B. (2013). Discrimination against law enforcement officers on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity: 2000–2013. University of California Los Angeles School of Law. The Williams Institute. Mallory, C. Hasenbush, A., & Sears, B. (2015). Discrimination and harassment by law enforcement officers in the LGBT community. University of California Los Angeles School of Law. The Williams Institute. Meidinger, M.H. (2012). Peeking under the covers: Taking a closer look at prosecutorial decision-making involving queer youth and statutory rape. Boston College Journal of Law & Social Justice, 32(2), 421–451. Miller, S.L., Forest, K.B., & Jurik, N.C. (2003). Diversity in blue: Lesbian and gay police officers in a masculine occupation. Men and Masculinities, 5(4), 355–385. Ministry of Justice. (2016). National Offender Management Service: The care and management of transgender offenders. 9 November 2016. Mogul, J.L. (2005). The dykier, the butcher, the better: The state’s use of homophobia and sexism to execute women in the United States. New York City Law Review, 8, 473–493. Mogul, J.L., Ritchie, A.J., & Whitlock, K. (2011). Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States. Beacon Press: Boston. National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs. (2012). Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and HIVaffected hate violence in 2012. New York, NY: National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs. O’Keefe, M.L., Klebe, K., Stucker, A., Sturm, K., & Leggett, W. (2011). One year longitudinal study of the psychological effects of administrative segregation. United States Department of Justice. National Criminal Justice Statistics Service. Panfil, V.R. (2014). Better left unsaid? The role of agency in Queer criminological research, Critical Criminology: An International Journal, 22(1), 99–111. Perkiss, D.A. (2013). A new strategy for neutralizing the gay panic defense at trial: Lessons from the Lawrence King case. UCLA Law Review, 60(3), 778–824. Peterson, D. & Panfil, V. (eds) (2014). The Handbook of LGBT Communities, Crime, and Justice. New York: Springer. 105

Carrie L. Buist, Emily Lenning, and Matthew Ball

Prison Rape Elimination Act of (2003). PREA Public Law 108–79. Accessed from www.gpo.gov/fdsys/ pkg/PLAW-108publ79/pdf/ PLAW-108publ79.pdf. Ring, T. 2016. Trans woman murdered in Baltimore is 21st this year; Equaling 2015’s total. The Advocate, September 16. Accessed from www.advocate.com/transgender/2016/9/16/trans-womanmurdered-baltimore-21st-year-equaling-2015s-total. Sexual Orientation Fairness Committee. (2001). Sexual orientation fairness in the California courts: Final report of the Sexual Orientation Fairness Subcommittee of the Judicial Council’s Access and Fairness Advisory Committee. Shay, G. (2014). In the box: Voir dire on LGBT issues in changing times. Harvard Journal of Law & Gender, 37, 407–457. Shortnacy, M.B. (2001). Guilty and gay, a recipe for execution in American courtrooms: Sexual orientation as a tool for prosecutorial misconduct in death penalty cases. American University Law Review, 51(2), 309–365. Simpson, P., Reekie, J., Butler, T., Richters, J., Yap, L., & Donovan, B. (2016). Sexual coercion in men’s prisons. In Dwyer, A., Ball, M., & Crofts, T. (eds.) Queering Criminology. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 204–228. Strader, K., Selvin, M., & Hay, L. (2015). Gay panic, gay victims, and the case for gay shield laws. Cardozo Law Review, 36(4), 1473–1531. Sullivan, N. (2003). A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory. New York: New York University Press. Tomsen, S. (1997). Was Lombroso a queer? Criminology, criminal justice, and the heterosexual imaginary, in G. Mason & S. Tomsen (eds.) Homophobic Violence. Annandale: Hawkins Press, 33–45. Tracy, S.J. (2004). The construction of correctional officers: Layers of emotionality behind bars. Qualitative Inquiry, 10(4), 509–533. Walters, S. (1991). Alienation and the correctional officer: A multivariate analysis. American Journal of Criminal Justice, 16(1) 50–66. Woods, J.B. (2014). “Queering criminology”: Overview of the state of the field, in D. Peterson & V. Panfil (eds.) The Handbook of LGBT Communities, Crime, and Justice. New York: Springer, 15–41.

106

8 Cultural criminology Stephen L. Muzzatti and Emma M. Smith

Introduction We were to become self-contained and confident, distant, untouchable by the emotions of the crowd. We were taught to become impartial, objective, unemotional, in control, intellectual; and it bred a deep loneliness in me that could only be dulled by my dreams.1

Originating in the mid-1990s, cultural criminology explores the complex interplay of crime, transgression and control under late capitalism. It pays careful attention to crime’s omnipresent lifeworlds and mediascapes by critically interrogating the multilayered carceral contexts of late capitalism on individual, social and institutional consciousnesses and practices. It is a distinct theoretical and methodological approach that situates crime, transgression and control within the context of cultural dynamics (Hayward & Presdee, 2010). Perhaps more than any other of the critical orientations, cultural criminology recognises the intersections of cultural and criminal processes and the ways in which they interweave along a multiplicity of intersecting axis; pain and pleasure, production and consumption, accommodation and resistance, privacy and public display, messages and audiences, approved and fugitive meanings, intertextuality and reification. According to Hayward and Young (2010), “If traditional criminology mistakes textual dullness and robot like social actors for objectivity, cultural criminology zooms in on the phenomenal experience of crime, victimisation and punishment, stressing anger, humiliation, exuberance, excitement and fear. It reveals the energy of everyday life whether in the transgressive breaking of rules or in repressive nature of conformity and boredom” (p.108). It strives to blend the best of the criminological past with new insights from a host of disciplines (Hayward, 2016). As such, cultural criminology exists not in strict dialogic opposition to traditional criminological approaches, but instead rather as an anarchic de-shackling of criminological consciousness. Cultural criminology is rooted largely in the work of Ferrell and Sanders (1995), and Presdee (1994, 2000). In drawing upon an eclectic mix of critical and interactionist traditions, continental theory, media studies, cultural studies and varied qualitative methodologies, cultural criminology establishes a homology between eclectic subjects and diverse criminological ontologies and epistemologies (Ferrell et al., 2004). As such, it offers a toolbox with which to not only deconstruct

107

Stephen L. Muzzatti and Emma M. Smith

and demystify the mediated realities of crime and control, but as well the acumen to put forth alternative, more social-justice-oriented readings and prescriptions.

Cultural criminology’s progenitors As DeKeseredy (2011) notes, cultural criminology is a prime example of intellectual and political cross-fertilisation with leading figures on both sides of the Atlantic borrowing from richly progressive intellectual and political legacies. This Anglo-American fusion was born of a coalescence of frustration at the unimaginative and soul-crushing character of much of traditional criminology. In one respect, cultural criminology is the product of their collective response to Cohen’s (1988) challenge to criminologists to adopt a structurally and politically informed version of Labelling Theory. Whilst it is true that critiques of the constraining and dehumanising character of conventional criminology have existed in one form or another since at least the 1970s (see Muzzatti, 2006) cultural criminology is alone in its nuanced analysis of liquid modernity’s hyperreal process of creation, display, carnival and mediation through which behaviours, individuals and communities come to be exalted, celebrated, castigated, demonised and controlled by cooptation, stigmatisation or sanction.

Unlashing the tethers: subcultural and interactionist theory The tectonic landscape of crime, transgression and control are ever-shifting and contested terrains. They are inextricably linked to issues of governance, social control, order maintenance and moral regulation and are played out not only on street corners, boardrooms and court houses, but in the media. Cultural criminology focuses upon image, style, meaning, and representation in the complex interplay of crime and its control. Specifically, it examines the stylised frameworks and experiential dynamics of youth tribes, “deviant” subcultures, the symbolic criminalisation of popular culture artefacts, spaces, practices and actors, and the mediated construction of crime and crime control issues. As such, it draws heavily upon the long history of critical interactionist and subcultural theories. The examination of transgression, crime and control should include an analysis of the processes and strategies by which certain forms of behaviour and certain individuals, groups and communities come to be defined as deviant and/or criminal and are therefore subjected to any number of informal and formal mechanisms of social control and moral regulation. Sociologists employing the Societal Reaction perspective such as Howard Becker (1964) closely attended fundamental questions such as: “Who has the authority to apply a label?”, “Under what conditions are labels successfully applied?”, and “What are the consequences of the application of deviant labels for those so designated?” His work also paid close attention to “non deviants”. He and other Labelling theorists were particularly interested in the way in which audience members react to the perceived rule breaking, for it is here, and not in simple rule breaking behaviour, that the true catalyst of deviance is to be found. Stanley Cohen’s Folk Devils and Moral Panics (1972) was a significant step toward the development of cultural criminology. Cohen’s book was the first place that the concept of moral panic – a collective overreaction to some perceived transgressive behaviour or criminal activity – was fully developed. According to Cohen (1972) this includes grossly exaggerating the seriousness of the events according to criteria such as the number of people involved and the amount and effects of violence and/or damage (p.31). Cohen’s work focused on the reactions of the media, agents of social control and the general public to relatively minor clashes between youth subcultures

108

Cultural criminology

in the United Kingdom, and, as the above excerpt illustrates, the ways in which these reactions influenced the formation and enforcement of law, social policy and societal conceptions of the youth culture–delinquency nexus. Whilst many subsequent scholars have similarly applied the concept to members of youth tribes (online gamers, tag artists, goths, chavs, hip-hop fans, street racers, emo-kids, etc.) others have gone beyond the original focus to apply it to more generalised transgressive and/or criminal behaviour (users of fentanyl or bath salts, motorcycle clubs, immigrants [both illegal and legal], G20 protestors, Satanists, paedophiles, pan-handlers, serial killers, terrorists, etc.). Cultural criminology also draws upon the rich legacy of studies on youth subcultures. While some of this influence was drawn from American authors (see particularly Cohen, 1955; Turner & Surace, 1956; Sykes & Matza, 1957; Irwin, 1977) most came from British scholars, primarily those associated with the University of York’s National Deviancy Conference, and the University of Birmingham’s Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (see particularly Downes, 1966; Rock & Cohen, 1970; Willis, 1977; Hebdige, 1979; Brake, 1980). The work of these authors alerted criminologists to the subtle, situated dynamics of deviant and criminal subcultures, and to the importance of symbolism and style in shaping meaning and identity. So too, a cultural studies informed orientation draws much needed attention to the symmetry amongst youth, popular culture, the media and agents of moral regulation and social control under late capitalism.

Broadcasting the crisis: critical criminology and crime news Cultural criminology’s development was also significantly spurred by critical scholarship in the area of crime and the news media. Critical criminologists long ago established that corporate media organisations do not simply report the news, but instead determine what “is news”. Cohen and Young’s, The Manufacture of News (1973) and Stuart Hall and his colleagues’ Policing the Crisis (1978) were the first in a long line of studies that critically examined the media’s role in constructing the reality of crime, and the interconnectedness of mediated realities of crime and crime control. As such, these pieces were early precursors of the cultural criminological canon that images of crime and control are now as “real” as crime and criminal justice itself (Ferrell et al., 2004). As Cohen and Young point out, crime stories about drugs, sex and street violence, particularly those involving youths, immigrants or other socially disenfranchised groups always make for successful copy and hence disproportionately comprise the negotiated accomplishment, “crime news”. The discourse which increasingly mirrors that of the police and other hegemonic agenda setters within the criminal justice system, privileges conventional criminology through the “expert analysis” of academic authorities and State techno-bureaucrats is, as Stuart Hall and his colleagues (1978) write, “the end product of a complex process which begins with a systematic sorting and selecting of events and topics according to a socially constructed set of categories” (p.53). Media coverage of crime is not about the reality of crime; rather it constitutes crime as a reality through narrative contextualisation. The media-generated images of crime are “what society tells itself about crime”. Crime news acts as a buffer of social reality – omitting, suppressing, homogenising and converting the message into crime-infotainment (Barak, 1994). Public perceptions about ‘the crime threat’ are shaped by underlying elements of social organisation, particularly the production and distribution of cultural services like news (Muzzatti, 2015). Drawing upon this rich criminological history, cultural criminology is particularly attentive to the ways in which the media’s images shape the perceptions of the public through popular crime narratives, thereby reflecting and recreating the unequal social and economic relations that are the hallmark of late capitalism.

109

Stephen L. Muzzatti and Emma M. Smith

Cultural criminology: the fuel ignites Some of the earliest and most celebrated pieces of cultural criminology focused on the connections between youth culture and transgression. For example, in addressing the youth riots that occurred in the United Kingdom during the summer of 1991, Mike Presdee (1994) demonstrated that late capitalism’s expanding regulatory process masquerades as a civilising process. He poignantly notes that, “we are confronted with a developed system of production, distribution and consumption that relies almost entirely on a system of regulation over workers mixed with the desire to consume – what we might call the self-destructive cocktail of capitalism” (Presdee,1994, p.181). In so doing, he drew much needed attention to the limitations criminologists face when they entrench themselves within an oversimplified structure vs. agency bifurcation.2 Around the same time, Mark Hamm published some research on American neo-Nazi skinheads (1993, 1995). Hamm blended ethnographic methods with an analysis of hate-core and related musical genres to unpack the subculture’s symbolism and reveal its homology. Similarly, Ferrell and Hamm (1994) worked to refute claims by moral entrepreneurs, police and politicians that rap and hip-hop was the martial music of murder and gang violence. As new artistic genres emerged as the foci of control strategies in the intervening decades, so too did cultural criminology’s challenge to the moral entrepreneurship work of interest groups, politicians, criminal justice agencies and the media (Hollywood, 1997; Muzzatti, 2004; Seal, 2013). Other pieces of cultural criminology explored subcultural style by documenting the dynamic interplay between subcultural resistance and corporate marketing strategies. Tracing the development of the biker “one percenter” style from an acutely class conscious form of cultural resistance to a marketable commodity, Lyng and Bracey (1995) reveal much about lifestyle fetishism, the media and the transpraxis of fugitive style. Other studies have focused on how “mass” or “common culture” is recast as crime. Cultural criminologists have recognised that the criminalisation of everyday life is a cultural enterprise of the powerful and must be investigated as such (Ferrell & Sanders, 1995, p.7). For example, Muzzatti’s (1996) interviews with sportbike enthusiasts reveal a great deal about the meaning loops embedded within relationships of control, resistance, transgressive leisure practices, public display and masculinity. His work on the “crotch rocket heroes” aptly addresses the myriad ways in which tribal style exists as the medium of meaning for both motorcyclists and the police officers with whom they come into contact.

Edgy ethnography and illicit fieldwork One of cultural criminology’s greatest strengths is its methodological diversity. In contrast to the quantitative regimen of numerical alchemy (see Young, 2010; Ferrell, Hayward & Young, 2015, particularly Plates 7.1 and 7.2) that dominates most criminology, cultural criminology is propelled by an unparalleled methodological openness and creativity. Cultural criminology offers revamped terms of engagement with the spheres of crime and transgression through edgy counter-current methodologies that directly confront the convenient fictions which privilege quantitative analysis and circumvent its disciplinary madness. Cultural criminology is possibly best known for its rich, multilayered ethnographies. The driving ethos behind much of that ethnographic research is criminological verstehen (Ferrell & Hamm, 1994; Ferrell & Sanders, 1995; Ferrell, 1997). Informed by Weber’s case for an “interpretive understanding” and “sympathetic participation”, criminological verstehen signifies not only the researcher’s commitment to naturalism, but more specifically her/his appreciation and empathic understanding of crime’s situated meanings, symbolism, and emotions (Ferrell, 1998, 110

Cultural criminology

p.72). Whilst this approach is the bane of institutional ethics/review boards and the scourge of abstract empiricists, it provides tremendous insight into the cultures of crime, transgression and control by challenging the researcher–subject dichotomy reified by much mainstream criminology. This novel approach demystifies much of the common-nonsense about crime and control that the methodological shackles of empiricism fail to recognise. The edgy methodologies of cultural criminology inherently function to dismantle hierarchies of knowledge and undermine a methodological framework which is as obsolete as it is oppressive. It is also about embracing an ongoing criminology of the moment. As Ferrell (2004) contends, the immersion of the cultural criminologist into the everyday/night worlds of marginalised and despised groups is driven by the need to sabotage the machinery of boredom and dehumanisation that defines mainstream criminology. In recounting the travails of his research, Mark Hamm’s (1998) near legendary axiom, “I am what you might call a janitor for academic criminology”, reveals a conscious political stance (p.111). Like that which it studies, cultural criminology’s edgework tradition confronts the overdetermined character of life under late capitalism (see Lyng, 2005). Predictably, such endeavours are risky. As a number of cultural criminologists have poignantly revealed, the consequences emanate from both sides of the law, ranging from harassment, legal intimidation and arrest (Ferrell, 1996; Muzzatti, 1996; Tunnell, 1998; Wall & Linnemann, 2014) through traffic collisions and fires (Lyng, 1998; Presdee & Vaaranen, 2004), gunplay (Jacobs, 1998), physical threats (Hamm, 1998; Presdee, 2005; Rajah, 2007), and beatings (Jackson-Jacobs, 2004). Perhaps some of the most insidious threats come from colleagues and university administrators who respond to this type of work with, at best, indifference, if not hostility and contempt (frequently mixed with litigious panic). In the words of Mike Presdee, “The skinheads may have tried to break your legs, but your colleagues tried to destroy your career” (Hamm, 2005, p.283). Perhaps academic attacks on these methods are a means of reasserting orthodoxy and resisting change, functioning to preserve the very types of dominant viewpoints that cultural criminology questions (Muzzatti & Samarco, 2006). Despite these challenges, cultural criminologists continue to embrace outsider methodologies as useful tools for exploring difference and for offering resistance to the hegemonic imperatives of dominant criminological paradigms precisely because they do not rely upon hegemonic tools of order specified by State funding agencies, criminal justice organisations and indeed the prevailing conventions of “mainstream journal-article sociology” (Ferrell & Hamm, 1998, p.5). Cultural criminology’s ethnographies explore human experience in a rich and multifaceted manner. It stresses the foreground of experience and the existential psychodynamics of the actor (Young & Brotherton, 2014). These studies present informed testimony from the heart of experience; tangible, authentic accounts from the intersections of the cultural and the criminal. For example, Ferrell’s (1996) study of hip-hop graffiti artists in Denver is as much an analysis of moral panic and mediated anti-crime campaigns as it is an ethnographic account of the transgressive pleasure he experienced with the scene’s writers and clowns. Equipped with krylon and alcohol, Ferrell spent nights wandering, talking and painting while at the same time producing a complex narrative documenting the interplay between cultural innovation and institutional intolerance; a case study in fugitive art, recreation, resistance, marginality and the politics of crime and culture – framed by anarchist sensibilities. Perhaps less well known, though no less illuminating than these ethnographies, is cultural criminology that employs content and discourse analysis. Whilst some studies utilise traditional content analysis techniques to measure crime’s mediated presentation, others use more unconventional methods informed by grounded-labelling, critical constructionism, cultural studies and postmodernism’s nuanced sensibilities to rigorously deconstruct the mediated reality of crime. 111

Stephen L. Muzzatti and Emma M. Smith

Cultural criminologists have examined a wide range of media texts including news reports, independent and Hollywood films, magazines, TV crime dramas, videogames and social media sites, covering a vast array of criminal, transgressive and control activities ranging from feminist performance art, roadside memorials and online sex trade sites through the war on terrorism, street fights recorded on smartphones broadcast on YouTube, and prison tourism. The cultural industries produce a seemingly endless flow of crime images and crime texts, resulting in a great deal of raw material in the crime and culture pool.

The explosion of carnival The publication of Mike Presdee’s Cultural Criminology and the Carnival of Crime in 2000 was the big-bang of cultural criminology. Free from the tethers which bind much of criminological scholarship, Presdee outlined a powerful ontological and epistemic challenge to conventional criminology. Melding Bakhtin’s notion of the carnivalesque with insights from the Frankfurt and Birmingham schools, critical criminology, media studies and social anthropology, Presdee created a provocative and evocative model of crime and transgression – the carnival of crime. The book begins with tales of violence, mayhem and murder; school shootings in the suburban US and rural Canada, a series of nail-bomb blasts and the murder of a female TV presenter in the UK, soccer violence in Holland and the war in Kosovo. Presdee theorises that such seemingly disparate carnage can be understood as the predictable response of people to the tightly controlled yet highly unstable conditions of late capitalism. He utilises myriad examples from internet bondage sites and arson to racing stolen cars and raving to explore the contradictions and irrationality of a commodity-oriented society from which criminalised culture emanates. He writes, “In the ecstatic, marginal, chaotic acts of carnival damage is done, people are hurt and some ‘pleasurable’ performances reflect on or articulate pain” (2000, p.32). His analysis of carnival desire and the seductive sensuality of wickedness sheds considerable light on how our everyday responses to late capitalism come to be defined as criminal. Presdee is particularly attentive to the commodification of violence, the appropriation of carnival and the impact of such developments of the second life of the people. Analogising mediated crime to the board game Monopoly, he examines the way in which crime, like monopoly capitalism, is dehistoricised, whitewashed, and transmogrified into mass-marketed pleasure. Violence, he theorises, is simplified, trivialised and stripped of meaning, thereby becoming a product to be instantly consumed and enjoyed. Given the conditions of intrusion, constraint and control people increasingly face and the widespread desire for extreme forms of individual and collective pleasure, he contends that the second life of the people “is driven deeper and deeper from both view and comprehension” (Presdee, 2000, p.135). Presdee’s book is the seminal sole-authored piece of cultural criminology. Its scope, style and level of analysis continues to resonate almost two decades after publication, and will undoubtedly do so for generations.

Cultural criminology confronts late capitalism Cultural criminology uses the “evidence” of everyday existence, wherever it is found and in whatever form it can be found; the debris of everyday life is its “data”. It uses cultural artifacts whenever and wherever they present themselves, examining the cultural “trail” they leave behind. (Presdee, 2000, p.15) In the wake of Presdee’s groundbreaking book, cultural criminologists have become highly attuned to late capitalism’s banality and viciousness. Melding resurrected elements of Marx, 112

Cultural criminology

Bonger and Merton with the work of Bauman, Bordieu and Zˇizˇek, cultural criminologists carefully attend to the nuances of late capitalism’s perniciousness. This includes the broad swath of destruction and human suffering in its wake, including, but not limited to, what we call crime. The “crime-culture nexus” is inextricably bound to the trauma of liquid modernity and constitutes a vital area of inquiry (Muzzatti, 2010; Hayward, 2016). In his work on crime and consumer culture, Hayward (2004) illustrates that the creation and expression of identities through consumerism has all but supplanted other forms of identity expression. This, in combination with precariousness of work and other anxiety producing elements of liquid modern existence seriously undermines the life world and moral codes of ordinary people and is criminogenic (Hayward & Yar, 2006; Hall & Winlow, 2015). Ferrell’s (2006) authoethnographic research into dumpster diving and urban scavenging addresses many similar themes, boldly revealing the inevitable material and symbolic effluvia of late modernity. The pathology of late capitalism is evinced by the excessive waste he documents while trash picking and by the attempts to criminalise the practice. For Ferrell, the true criminality lies in the realisation that waste is less a by-production of hyperconsumption and more a prerequisite for its continuation (Ferrell, 2006, p.5). According to Young (2007, p.12) the social insecurity and individual hubris from which Hayward and Ferrell’s ostensibly diverse subject matter emanates is the same. What he terms “vertigo” is a malaise of liquid modernity characterised by total cynicism, no opinions (except as they relate to the incontrovertibly mundane), no hope, a sense of entitlement, unrealistic expectations, giddiness, unsteadiness, uncertainty and insecurity. Perhaps most significantly, it is evident in misplaced fear; not a legitimate fear of government, corporations or other authority, but a misplaced and unrealistic fear of other people. It is highly injurious to individual human relations, and is no less detrimental in that it informs and distorts institutional and criminal justice policies.

New directions in cultural criminology The publication of Ferrell, Hayward and Young’s Cultural Criminology: An Invitation (2015) marks the most comprehensive coverage of cultural criminology’s theory, method and praxis to date. It covers an exhaustive array of late capitalism’s “mainstreaming of the extreme” such as the pornification of culture, neo-imperial war, the insecuritisation and criminalisation of everyday life, celebrity deviance, violent street crime and reality TV. Crisscrossing many of these topics are the processes and products associated with what they describe as the “commodification of violence” and the “marketing of transgression”. They contend that this mediated representation of crime and transgression is central to the production of both news and entertainment. Conceding that there is nothing intrinsically new about the use of this type of imagery in the service of consumerism, Ferrell, Hayward and Young (2015) stress that it is the greater force and broader range of these messages that are worthy of our attention. This transformation of crime’s mediascape is closely related to the increased willingness amongst mainstream corporations to utilise allusions to crime and transgression to give their products edgy appeal whilst still serving the conservative interests of consumer capitalism and its control functions (Muzzatti, 2010). Ferrell, Hayward and Young (2015) devote considerable attention to cultural criminology’s methodological toolkit. In addition to highlighting the rich history of critical ethnography and edgework, they address other qualitative orientations, including visual criminology. Hayward and Presdee’s (2010) edited collection, Framing Crime: Cultural Criminology and the Image fuses precise visual attentiveness with politically charged analyses (Hayward & Presdee, 2010, p.3) on visual subjects such as genocidal tourism, aboriginal art, documentary photography and the photographic spectacle, TV commercials, crime films and illicit soccer fan internet sites. More recently, 113

Stephen L. Muzzatti and Emma M. Smith

work by Wall and Linnemann (2014) analysed the state’s attempts to control images of crime and transgression. Their examination of literal skirmishes between the police and members of the public over who and what can be photographed illustrates the prescience of state power in the battle over visual economies (p.138).

Intersectionality Whilst there are examples of cultural criminology employing intersectional analysis dating back to the mid-1990s with research exploring anti-colonial and anti-racist readings of street art (Ferrell, 1995), patriarchy and the gendering of research norms (Kane, 1998), social regulation and Aboriginal folktales (Meyer & Bogdan, 1999), anti-abortion violence (Jenkins, 1999), the criminalisation of gay bondage play (Presdee, 2000), refugees and asylum seekers (O’Neill, 2004), violence against immigrant women (Cunneen and Stubbs, 2004) and ethnic pluralism in criminal law (Bovenkerk & Yesilgoz, 2004) amongst others, the last several years has seen an increase in the work dealing explicitly with issues of class, ethnicity, gender and sexuality. There are a number of fundamental connections between feminist criminology and cultural criminology (Naegler & Salman, 2016). And, as Hayward (2016) illustrates, there has been a growth of intersections between feminist and cultural criminology. Amongst these are Rajah’s (2007) use of the edgework model to shed light on intimate partner violence against women in the drug scene and O’Neill’s (2010) examination of sex work. So too, Seal’s (2013) analysis of the criminalisation of Maria, Nadezhda and Yekaterina from the punk rock/performance art group Pussy Riot for challenging the twin hegemonies of Vladimir Putin and the Russian Orthodox Church forges precise ties between feminist and cultural criminologies. Likewise, in their examination of the horrification and pornification of rural spaces and people, DeKeseredy et al. (2015) illustrate how mediated images of rural life ranging from big budget Hollywood productions, through B-movies and amateur pornography intersect with hegemonic codes of femininity and masculinity work to obscure real issues about crime, violence, and gender relations in the rural context. Finally, in the best tradition of cultural criminology Saleh-Hanna (2016) draws upon a number of distinct perspectives, including critical-race theory, African-American literary studies, and continental theory to explore the criminality of the post-colonial legacy.

The state The last several years has also seen cultural criminology’s greater engagement with an analysis of crimes of the powerful. Like the examination of the intersections of class, gender and race and ethnicity, the critical underpinnings of cultural criminology’s theoretical orientation made confronting state power an inevitability. Though some superficial critiques would suggest otherwise, cultural criminology has been premised on confronting the state since its inception. Far from being a decorative criminology of voyeurism (Ferrell et al., 2004, p.7), from the outset, cultural criminology has investigated the pathology of life under late capitalism, including the roles that the state plays in facilitating that criminogenesis. To be certain, cultural criminology’s engagement with high profile crime and criminalisation campaigns is not a criminology of “nuts, sluts and preverts” and “the exotic, the erotic and the neurotic”, but rather a strategy capable of revealing the subtle and insidious ways in which control is exercised, inequality reproduced and domination normalised. Contrary to the misconception that circulates in some bubble-like criminological circles, cultural criminology was never exclusively or even primarily about graffiti, French weapons bazaars, Bonfire Night, ghetto fabulousness, Marilyn Manson, motorcycle wrecks, binge-drinking and torching stolen cars. Rather, cultural criminology strives to expose 114

Cultural criminology

and understand the complex crime stories produced under the oppressive conditions of late capitalism (Hayward, 2016). Coinciding with the onset of the United States’ war on terror, cultural criminologists, like their close colleagues in the areas of state crime and crimes of globalisation, have been particularly attendant to state violence, both at home and abroad. Cultural criminologists have produced studies on terrorism (Jenkins, 2003; Hamm, 2004; Rothe & Muzzatti, 2004). Indeed, Hayward’s (2011) essay exploring the reciprocal influence between cultural criminology and the more recent field of critical terrorism studies was a significant catalyst in the development of a framework for understanding terrorism which accounts for both global structural forces and the mediated representations thereof in the reification of terrorist narratives. Cultural criminology has also informed work on war and militarisation. Colaguori (2012) examines the role of what he terms “agon culture” in the fetishistic disavowal of state violence and public campaigns glorifying war. In a similar fashion, Klein (2012) calls for a cultural criminology of war that focuses on the structural and cultural processes that form the background to war – specifically the roles of elites in legitimising wars and those of non-elites in supporting them. Borrowing elements from both, Rothe and Collins (2015) examine how the spectacles of consumer culture from airshows and military souvenirs, through tee-shirts and children’s toys, normalises state violence. Other cultural criminologists have examined the news media’s appropriation of popular cultural imagery, and the ways in which the culture industries reproduce the state’s narratives about domestic threats to justify police use of force (Linnemann, Wall & Green, 2014; Muzzatti, 2017). In the various lifeworlds of mediated crime, urban pacification strategies, no matter how extreme, are understood as reasonable and legitimate because of amplified and immediate threats. Indeed, as Linnemann and his colleagues theorise, the mediated images of monstrous dangers are in keeping with the social reflex to gape in horror rather than confront the proliferating insecurities of life under late capitalism (2014).

The narrative The impact of storytelling, either through eliciting an emotional response or confirming group solidarity, is amongst the recent practices embraced by cultural criminology. Presdee’s The Muck of Ages (2009) is a wealth of cultural criminological insight ensconced in autobiographical selfreflexivity.3 Presdee included several potent excerpts from this manuscript in his writing over the years (see Presdee, 1994, 2000, 2004, 2006). And whilst Presdee was not the first criminologist to utilise the narrative (see Irwin, 1970; King & Chambliss, 1984; Terry, 2003; Ross & Richards, 2003) he was the first to consistently do so as a means of excavating truths hidden by traditional criminological discourse. The narrative of his own trouble-prone working class youth intersects with a critical examination of crime and inequality. For Presdee, the narrative allows people to view themselves as “the subjects of society rather than as passive objects of someone else’s history. In this way we become the ‘text’, rather than the ‘footnotes’ of history” (Presdee, 1992, p.1). Through “narrative criminological research” (Presser, 2013), crime stories (contributed by people with varying political controls and freedoms) are analysed in order to gain greater insights into the self and our relationships with others under the condition of late capitalism (Sandberg & Ugelvik, 2016). It is argued that stories have the ability to influence and obstruct the production of crime and violence, as individuals assign personal meaning to each narrative. Presser’s Why We Harm (2013) serves a seminal contribution towards this emerging vein of cultural criminology, where the narrative process associated with the topics of genocide, penal harm, and intimate partner violence are reviewed. The recent formation of a methodological foundation, initiated by Presser and Sandberg (2015), has further encouraged the extension of narrative criminology 115

Stephen L. Muzzatti and Emma M. Smith

into the topics of religious doctrine and colonialism (Keeton, 2015), cautionary tales of drug use (Sandberg & Tutenges, 2015), and tax evasion (Tognato, 2015). The use of the narrative in cultural criminology continues to be examined through the work of Aspden and Hayward (2015).

Conclusion Taken from The Muck of Ages, this chapter’s epigram is part of Mike Presdee’s account of his early days at school. The detachment, aloofness, rationality and soul-crushing conformity demanded of 12-year-old Mike and his classmates are disturbingly reminiscent of that associated with criminological orthodoxy. Criminology’s high priests and legions of lesser clergy demand obedience of their parishioners and attempt to turn transgressors into penitents with a rod. It is little wonder that loneliness festers inside us, fuelling carnival desire. It is under these conditions that cultural criminology was born, and has grown. Cultural criminological research blossoms and thrives within a sphere of unconventional methodologies, interdisciplinary claims and dynamic (arguably non-traditional) objects of study. Contributors are motivated by the necessity to expose the immediacy, identities and ontologies produced and reinforced through crime narratives (Young & Brotherton, 2014). Moments of capitalistic manipulation and elitist rule are critically dissected through compelling and diverse research on the intersections of media, crime and power. Despite the unrelenting testimonies, rooted within criminological orthodoxy, being foisted upon anyone wanting to call her/himself a criminologist, this growing field incites a fluidity and creativity amongst research practices. A burning “disciplinary flame” sparked by unbound curiosity and unscripted values (see Hayward, 2016) remains lit.

Notes 1 2 3

Presdee (2009, p.85). Herein Presdee provided the first inkling of the model of carnival that he would so masterfully illuminate in his seminal Cultural Criminology and the Carnival of Crime (2000). His close friends and colleagues Keith Hayward and Jock Young (2010, pp.108–109) beautifully address this in their moving commemorative essay.

References Aspden, K., & Hayward, K. J. (2015). Narrative criminology and cultural criminology: Shared biographies, different lives? In L. Presser & S. Sandberg (Eds.), Narrative Criminology Understanding Stories of Crime (pp. 235–259). New York: York University Press. Barak, G. (1994). Newsmaking criminology: Reflections on the media, intellectuals, and crime. In G. Barak, (Ed.), Media, Process, and the Social Construction of Crime (pp. 237–264). New York: Garland Publishing. Becker, H. S. (1964). Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance. New York: The Free Press. Bovenkerk, F., & Yesilgoz, Y. (2004). Crime, ethnicity and the multicultural administration of justice. In J. Ferrell et al., Cultural Criminology Unleashed (pp. 81–96). London: Glasshouse. Brake, M. (1980). The Sociology of Youth Culture and Youth Subculture. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Cohen, A. (1955). Delinquent Boys: The Culture of the Gang. New York: The Free Press. Cohen, S. (1972). Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Cohen, S. (1988). Against Criminology. New Bruswick, NJ: Transaction. Cohen, S., & Young, J. (Eds.) (1973). The Manufacture of News. Beverley Hills: Sage Publications. Colaguori, C. (2012). Agon Culture: Competition, Conflict and the Problem of Domination. Whitby, ON: deSitter Publications. Cunneen, C., & Stubbs, J. (2004). Cultural criminology and engagement with race, gender and postcolonial identities. In J. Ferrell et al., Cultural Criminology Unleashed (pp. 97–108). London: Glasshouse. DeKeseredy, W. S. (2011). Contemporary Critical Criminology. London: Routledge. 116

Cultural criminology

DeKeseredy, W. S., Muzzatti, S.L., & Donnermeyer, J. F. (2015). Mad men in bib overalls: The media’s pornification and horrification of rural culture. Critical Criminology, 22(2): 179–197. Downes, D. (1966). The Delinquent Solution. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Ferrell, J. (1995). Culture, crime and cultural criminology. Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture, 3(2): 25–42. Ferrell, J. (1996). Crimes of Style: Urban Graffiti and the Politics of Criminality. Boston: Northeastern University Press. Ferrell, J. (1997) Criminological verstehen: Inside the immediacy of crime. Justice Quarterly, 14(1): 2–23. Ferrell, J. (1998). Criminalizing popular culture. In F. Bailey and D. Hale, Popular Culture, Crime and Justice (pp. 71–84). Belmont, CA: West/Wadsworth Publishing Co. Ferrell, J. (2004). Boredom, crime and criminology. Theoretical Criminology, 8(3): 287–302. Ferrell, J. (2006). Empire of Scrounge: Inside the Urban Underground of Dumpster Diving, Trash Picking and Street Scavenging. New York: New York University Press. Ferrell, J., &. Hamm, M. S. (1994). Rap, cops and crime: Clarifying the ‘Cop Killer’ controversy. ACJS Today May/June. Ferrell, J., & Hamm, M. S. (Eds.) (1998). Ethnography at the Edge: Crime, Deviance, and Field Research. Boston: Northeastern University Press. Ferrell, J., & Sanders, C. (Eds.) (1995). Cultural Criminology. Boston: Northeastern University Press. Ferrell, J., & Websdale, N. (Eds.) (1999). Making Trouble: Cultural Constructions of Crime, Deviance and Contro. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Ferrell, J., Hayward, K., & Young, J. (2015). Cultural Criminology: An Invitation (2nd ed.). London: Sage. Ferrell, J., Hayward, K., Morrison, W., & Presdee, M. (Eds.) (2004). Cultural Criminology Unleashed. London: Glasshouse Press. Hall, S., & Winlow, S. (2015). Revitalising Criminological Theory: Toward a New Ultra-Realism. Oxon: Routledge. Hall, S., Cuthcher, C., Jefferson, T., Clarke, J., & Roberts, B. (1978). Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order. London: Macmillan. Hamm, M. S. (1993). American Skinheads: The Criminology and Control of Hate Crime. Westport: Praeger. Hamm, M. S. (1995). Hammer of the gods revisited: Neo-Nazi skinheads, domestic terrorism and the rise of the new protest. In J. Ferrell and C. Sanders (Eds.), Cultural Criminology (pp. 190–212). Boston: Northeastern University Press. Hamm, M. S. (1998). The ethnography of terror: Timothy McVeigh and the blue centerlight of evil. In J. Ferrell and M. S. Hamm (Eds.), Ethnography at the Edge: Crime, Deviance, and Field Research (pp. 111–130). Boston: Northeastern University Press. Hamm, M. S. (2004). Apocalyptic violence: The seduction of terrorist subcultures Theoretical Criminology, 8(3): 323–339. Hamm, M.S. (2005). Doing terrorism research in the dark ages: Confessions of a bottom dog. In S. Lyng (Ed.), Edgework: The Sociology of Risk-Taking (pp. 273–291). New York: Routledge. Hayward, K. (2004). City Limits: Crime, Consumer Culture and the Urban Experience. London: Glasshouse Press. Hayward, K. (2011). The critical terrorism studies-cultural criminology nexus: Some thoughts on how to “toughen up” the critical studies approach. Critical Studies on Terrorism, 4(1): 57–73. Hayward, K. (2016). Cultural criminology: Script rewrites. Theoretical Criminology, 20(3), 297–321. Hayward, K., & Presdee, M. (Eds.) (2010). Framing Crime: Cultural Criminology and the Image. London: Routledge. Hayward, K., & Yar, M. (2006). The “Chav” phenomenon: Consumption, media and the construction of a new underclass. Crime, Media, Culture, 2(1): 9–28. Hayward, K., & Young, J. (2010). Mike Presdee (1944–2009): Cultural criminologist and champion of a life less ordinary. Crime, Media, Culture, 6(1), 105–110. Hebdige, D. (1979). Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Routledge. Hollywood, B. (1997) Dancing in the dark: Ecstasy, the dance culture and moral panic. Critical Criminology, 8(1): 62–77. Irwin, J. (1970). The Felon. Berkeley: University of California Press. Irwin, J. (1977). Scenes. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications. Jackson-Jacobs, C. (2004). Taking a beating: The narrative gratifications of fighting as an underdog. In J. Ferrell et al. (Eds.), Cultural Criminology Unleashed (pp. 231–244). London: Cavendish/Glasshouse. Jacobs, B. A. (1998). Researching crack dealers: Dilemmas and contradictions. In J. Ferrell & M. S. Hamm (Eds.), Ethnography at the Edge: Crime, Deviance, and Field Research (pp. 160–179). Boston: Northeastern University Press. 117

Stephen L. Muzzatti and Emma M. Smith

Jenkins, P. (1999). Fighting terrorism as if women mattered: Anti-abortion violence as unconstructed terrorism. In J. Ferrell & N. Websdale (Eds.), Making Trouble: Cultural Constructions of Crime, Deviance and Control (pp. 319–348). New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Jenkins, P. (2003). Images of Terror: What We Can and Can’t Know About Terrorism. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Kane, S. (1998). Reversing the ethnographic gaze: Experiments in cultural criminology. In J. Ferrell and M. Hamm (Eds.), Ethnography at the Edge: Crime, Deviance, and Field Research (pp. 132–145). Boston: Northeastern University Press. Keeton, R. M. (2015). “The race of pale men should increase and multiply”: Religious narratives and Indian removal. In L. Presser & S. Sandberg (Eds.), Narrative Criminology Understanding Stories of Crime (pp. 125–149). New York: York University Press. King, H., & Chambliss, W. J. (1984). Harry King: A Professional Thief’s Journey. New York: Simon & Schuster. Klein, J. R. (2012). Toward a cultural criminology of war. Social Justice, 38(3): 86–103. Linnemann, T., Wall, T., & Green, E. (2014). The walking dead and killing state: Zombification and the normalization of police violence. Theoretical Criminology, 18(4): 506–527. Lyng, S. (1998). Dangerous methods: Risk taking and the research process. In J. Ferrell & M. S. Hamm (Eds.), Ethnography at the Edge: Crime, Deviance, and Field Research (pp. 221–251). Boston: Northeastern University Press. Lyng, S. (Ed.) (2005). Edgework: The Sociology of Risk-Taking. New York: Routledge. Lyng, S., & Bracey, M. L. (1995). Squaring the one percent: Biker style and the selling of cultural resistance. In J. Ferrell & C. Sanders (Eds.), Cultural Criminology (pp. 235–276). Boston: Northeastern University Press. Meyer, J., & Bogdan, G. (1999). The Elders were our textbooks: The importance of traditional stories in social control. In J. Ferrell & N. Websdale (Eds.), Making Trouble: Cultural Constructions of Crime, Deviance and Control (pp. 25–46). New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Muzzatti, S. L. (1996). The urban speed gang: An exploration of motorcycle-youth culture. In N. Herman (Ed.), Deviance: A Symbolic Interactionist Approach (pp. 354–370). New York: General Hall Publishers. Muzzatti, S. L. (2004). Criminalising marginality and resistance: Marilyn Manson, Columbine and cultural criminology. In J. Ferrell et al. (Eds.), Cultural Criminology Unleashed (pp. 143–153). London: Cavendish/ Glasshouse. Muzzatti, S. L. (2006). Cultural criminology: A decade and counting of criminological chaos. In W. DeKeseredy & B. Perry (Eds.), Advancing Critical Criminology: Theory and Application (pp. 63–81). Lanham: Lexington Books. Muzzatti, S. L. (2010). Drive it like you stole it: A cultural criminology of car commercials. In K. Hayward & M. Presdee (Eds.), Framing Crime: Cultural Criminology and the Image (pp. 138–155). London: Routledge. Muzzatti, S. L. (2015). Consumer culture, criminology and the politics of exclusion. In M. Maguire & D. Okada (Eds.), Critical Issues of Crime and Justice: Thought, Policy and Practice, 2nd ed. (pp. 155–166). Thousand Oaks: Sage. Muzzatti, S. L. (2017) Terrorism and counter-terrorism in popular culture in the post-9/11 context. Crime, Media, and Popular Culture. doi: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190264079.013.123. Muzzatti, S. L., & Samarco, C. V. (2006). Working class need not apply: Reflecting on the academic job hunting experience. In S. L. Muzzatti & C. V. Samarco (Eds.), Reflections from the Wrong Side of the Tracks: Class, Identity, and the Working Class Experience (pp. 69–80). Landham: Rowman and Littlefield. Naegler, L., & Salman, S. (2016). Cultural criminology and gender consciousness: Moving feminist theory from margin to center. Feminist Criminology, 11(4): 354–374. O’Neill, M. (2004). Crime, culture and visual methodologies: Ethno-mimesis as performative praxis. Cultural criminology and engagement with race, gender and post-colonial identities. In J. Ferrell et al. (Eds.), Cultural Criminology Unleashed (pp. 97–108). London: Glasshouse. O’Neill, M. (2010). Cultural criminology and sex work: Resisting regulation through radical democracy and participatory regulation. Journal of Law and Society, 37: 210–232. Presdee, M. (ed.) (1992). Working It Out: Recounting, Reclaiming and Reworking Reality. Canterbury: Canterbury Christ Church College. Presdee, M. (1994). Young people, culture and the construction of crime: Doing wrong versus doing crime. In G. Barak (Ed.), Varieties of Criminology: Readings from a Dynamic Discipline (pp. 179–188). London: Praeger. Presdee, M. (2000). Cultural Criminology and the Carnival of Crime. London: Routledge. Presdee, M. (2004). Cultural criminology: The long and winding road. Theoretical Criminology, 8(3): 275–285. Presdee, M. (2005). Burning issue. New Humanist, 120(2). Retrieved from: https://newhumanist.org.uk/ articles/862/burning-issue. 118

Cultural criminology

Presdee, M. (2006). Working it out. In S. Muzzatti and V. Samarco (Eds.), Reflections from the Wrong Side of the Tracks: Class, Identity, and the Working Class Experience (pp. 23–36). Landham: Rowman and Littlefield. Presdee, M. (2009). The Muck of Ages: A Working Class Upbringing in Gloucester. Canterbury: Puckle Lane Publishing. Presdee, M., & Vaaranen, H. (2004). Stories from the streets: Some fieldwork notes on the seduction of speed. In J. Ferrell et al., Cultural Criminology Unleashed (pp. 245–248). London: Glasshouse. Presser, L. (2013). Why We Harm. New Brunswick, NJ and London: Rutgers University Press. Presser, L., & Sandberg, S. (2015). Research strategies for narrative criminology. In J. Miller and W. Palacios (Eds.), Advances in Criminological Theory: The Value of Qualitative Research for Advancing Criminological Theory. Piscataway, NJ: Transaction. Rajah, V. (2007). Resistance as edgework in violent intimate relationships of drug-involved women. British Journal of Criminology, 47: 196–213. Rock, P., & Cohen, S. (1970). The teddy boy. In V. Bogdanor and R. Skidelsky (Eds.). The Age of Affluence: 1951–1964 (72–84). London: MacMillan and Company. Ross, J. I., & Richards, S. C. (Eds.) (2003). Convict Criminology. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning. Rothe, D., & Collins, V. (2015). Consent and consumption of spectacle power and violence. Critical Sociology, 41(1): 1–14. doi:10.1177/0896920515621119. Rothe, D., & Muzzatti, S. L. (2004). Enemies everywhere: Terrorism, moral panic and US civil society. Critical Criminology: An International Journal, 12(3): 326–350. doi:10.1007/s10612–004–3879–6. Saleh-Hanna, V. (2016). Black feminist hauntology champ: Rememory the ghosts of abolition?. Champ Pénal/ Penal field; Vol. XII. Online. Retrieved from: http://champpenal.revues.org/9168, accessed February 2016. DOI: 10.4000/champpenal.9168. Sandberg, S., & Tutenges, S. (2015). Meeting the djinn: Stories of drug use, bad trips, and addiction. In L. Presser & S. Sandberg (Eds.), Narrative Criminology Understanding Stories of Crime (150–173). New York: York University Press. Sandberg, S., & Ugelvik, T. (2016). The past, present, and future of narrative criminology: A review and an invitation. Crime Media Culture, 12(2): 129–136. Seal, L. (2013). Pussy riot and feminist cultural criminology: A new “femininity of dissent”?. Contemporary Justice Review, 16(2): 293–303. Sykes, G., & Matza. D. (1957). Techniques of neutralization: A theory of deviance. American Sociological Review, 22: 664–670. Terry, C. M. (2003). The Fellas: Overcoming Prison and Addiction. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning. Tognato, C. (2015). Narratives of tax evasion: The cultural legitimacy of harmful behavior. In L. Presser & S. Sandberg (Eds.), Narrative Criminology Understanding Stories of Crime (pp. 260–284). New York: York University Press. Tunnell, K. D. (1998). Honesty, secrecy and deception in the sociology of crime: Confessions and reflections from backstage. In J. Ferrell and M. Hamm (Eds.), Ethnography at the Edge: Crime, Deviance, and Field Research (pp. 206–220). Boston: Northeastern University Press. Turner, R. H., & Surace, S. J. (1956). Zoot-Suiters and Mexicans: Symbols in crowd behavior. The American Journal of Sociology, 62(1): 14–20. Wall, T., & Linnemann, T. (2014). Staring down the state: Police power, visual economies, and the “war on cameras”. Crime Media Culture, 10(2): 133–149. Willis, P. (1977). Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs. New York: Columbia University Press. Young, J. (2007). The Vertigo of Late Modernity. London: Sage. Young, J. (2010). The Criminological Imagination. Cambridge: Polity. Young, J., & Brotherton, C. D. (2014). Cultural criminology and its practices: A dialog between the theorist and the street researcher. Dialect Anthropology, 38: 117–132.

119

9 Critical green criminology Rob White

Introduction This chapter provides an overview of critical green criminology. The generic title “green criminology” refers to a variety of approaches, theories and perspectives (White, 2011; White & Heckenberg, 2014; Beirne & South, 2007; Ruggiero & South, 2010; South & Brisman, 2013). However, the focus of this chapter is not on green criminology in general, but rather its critical versions. A distinguishing characteristic of critical criminology is that it is generally associated with an oppositional position in relation to much of the work of conventional criminology, and also to many contemporary policy developments in the field of criminal justice (see Schissel & Brooks, 2002; Carrington & Hogg, 2002; McLaughlin, 2010; DeKeseredy, 2011). It also has a strong tendency toward transformational politics – to not only provide understanding of the wider world, but to engage in actions that will substantially change it (White, Haines & Asquith, 2017). Not all green criminology can be characterised as “critical criminology” from the point of view of engagement in transformative politics and/or radical critique of existing political economic systems. Indeed, some variants largely mirror conventional criminology in regards to techniques (use of situation crime prevention in combating illegal wildlife trafficking) and adherence to mainstream definitions of crime (such as natural resource and conservation criminology). Here the main emphasis is on crime control and better systems of regulation and law enforcement, rather than radical shifts in eco-justice perspective or practice (Lemieux, 2014; Gibbs et al., 2010). While also directed at better protection of environments and species, critical green criminology nonetheless challenges the baseline definitions of ‘environmental harm’ (White, 2013) and is critical of the dominant institutions of contemporary capitalism that prop up the environmental status quo (Stretesky, Long & Lynch, 2014). This chapter highlights three broad approaches to the doing of critical green criminology. Within each of these conceptual domains there are particular concepts that provide theoretical understanding and interpretation of environmental crime and harm. Accordingly, the chapter discusses critical green criminology in terms of these key organising concepts. These conceptual building blocks provide the foundations for particular types of analyses of substantive issues and the identification of certain key targets for social action. 120

Critical green criminology

Political economy The hallmark of the political economy approach is its focus on “politics” and “economics” in explaining social behaviour and environmental issues. The first part of the phrase political economy refers to an emphasis on examining the role and activities (including failures to act) of nation-states in facilitating and/or providing the conditions under which environmental destruction and harm occurs. This is about public policy and the dynamics of state intervention. The second and inextricably intertwined consideration is the nature of the dominant mode of production in the contemporary era, and specifically the overarching tendencies of global capitalism. At a systemic level, global capitalism is the dominant system of production and consumption, one which is viewed as being inherently “bad” for the environment. From the point of view of agency (rather than structure), system-level imperatives are manifest in the actions of specific transnational corporations. The bottom line is profit for private interests which, in turn, are supported by nation-states in a variety of instrumental, financial and policy-oriented ways. There are several interrelated and at times overlapping concepts within critical green criminology that describe contemporary political economy. These include the following notions.

Treadmill of production This refers to the intrinsic conflict between “economy” and “ecology” (Foster, 2002). That is, the global capitalist economy is premised upon a growth imperative that fundamentally relies upon systemic modification and using up of the natural environment. Contemporary political economy tends to congeal around two key activities – resource extraction (such as mining, forestry and fishing); and contamination (the pollution of land, air and water associated with production and consumption activities) (Stretesky, Long & Lynch, 2014). At the heart of these activities lies the quest to increase and augment private profit, with regards to specific companies but also for the benefits that accrue to individual corporate stakeholders such as investors, shareholders and directors. Critical green criminologists argue that capitalism is generally destructive and uncaring of environments (unless there is money to be made in preserving selected terrain, animals, plants or water systems). Systemically, it destroys the habitats of animals and plants in the same moment that it degrades the living conditions and work experiences of “expendable” humans.

Commodification of nature The exploitation of humans and nonhumans (such as animals, plants and specific ecosystems) is explained as being part and parcel of the commodification of nature and humans alike (White, 2002, 2015). That is, nature (and human labour) is treated as a “thing” that only has worth insofar as it can be exchanged on the market. Transformations of nature involve the commodification of nature such that the “use-value” (its intrinsic usefulness), for example of water, is transformed into an “exchange-value” (its market value). So for instance, potable water is no longer free and accessible but becomes a commodity that is sold to people. Natural resources such as land and water are subject to privatisation in ways that vest control and management of these into private hands, for the benefit of the private property holders. The public interest is thereby diminished, as is democratic control over what were formerly commonly-held goods and services such as fresh water and state-owned forests. Even the air we breathe is subject to commodification, for instance in the form of residences accruing higher purchase prices and rentals the farther they are located away from pollution hot-spots in cities and polluted river systems in the country. A specific “clean and green” environment becomes yet another commodity that is thereby integrated into the buyer–seller nexus. 121

Rob White

Corporate colonisation of nature The intrusion of corporate forms of valuation and exploitation into all spheres of life has been described as the corporate colonisation of nature (South, 2007). There is a race to exploit natural resources worldwide due partly to the diminishment of these resources through over-exploitation but also partly due to the spoiling of natural resources because of widespread pollution of air, water and land. The colonisation of nature takes several different forms. It includes direct purchase and at times coercive take-over of land – so-called “land grabs” (Borros, Franco & Wang, 2013). It also includes the literal transformation of nature through the use of capitalist methods of production and particular applications of technology. For example, the deployment of geneticallymodified organisms (GMOs) as part of agribusiness completely changes existing ecologies. Colonisation also refers to the corporate take-over and assertion of control over indigenous systems of knowledge and the products of this knowledge (through patents taken out on local beans and rainforest plants, for example) (Mgbeoji, 2006). There is usurpation of prior communal rights to specific lands, rivers and mountains, a phenomenon most affecting indigenous peoples around the globe. There is also a systematic modification of existing environments in the service of profit-making activities, such as clearfelling of forests in order to introduce palm oil plantations (Mol, 2013).

State-corporate crime involving the environment Much of the activities of destruction and transformation of nature could not occur without close collusion between private companies and particular nation-states (Michalowski & Kramer, 2006). Government policies set the context within which contemporary neoliberal practices and ideologies flourish. The emphasis here is on “the market” as determiner of who gets what, and on the individual taking responsibility for their opportunities and life chances. The environment is viewed as part of the national economic calculus, rather than as having intrinsic importance. Resource extraction companies, such as big oil, coal and gas companies, tend to receive privileged support from governments regardless of the damage they cause to specific environments or the contributions they make to global warming (Kramer & Michalowski, 2012; Kramer, 2013; Ruggerio & South, 2013). Public policy is framed in terms of supporting big business (through tax breaks and via policies that allow continued carbon emissions to occur), and corporations in turn are generous contributors to the coffers of mainstream political parties. Both states and companies regularly engage in techniques of neutralisation whereby they decry their critics, deny the extent and nature of environmental harm, and excuse themselves from accountability for environmental destruction accompanying economic enterprise (Brisman, 2013).

Ecology Another critical approach to the study of green criminology is that which focuses primarily on ecology as the key criterion in determining the nature of harm and criminality. Any particular ecosystem is made up of both abiotic components (air, water, soils, atoms and molecules) and biotic components (plants, animals, bacteria and fungi). Thus, ecosystems are comprised of biotic (living) and abiotic (non-living) components that include plants and animals, rivers, mountains and oceans. An ecological conception of harm places attention on the effects of human intervention on ecosystems, and especially interventions by nation-states and corporations. The key issue is that of ecological sustainability, and the division of social practices into benign and destructive. 122

Critical green criminology

There are several theoretical dimensions to the ecology approaches, which again overlap and intersect in varying ways. These pertain to a specific type of approach, different dimensions of justice, the conceptualisation of harm, and appreciation of the key threat to ecological wellbeing today.

Eco-global criminology An over-arching perspective that places ecology at its centre is eco-global criminology (White, 2011). This refers to an approach to the study of environmental harm that focuses on ecological destruction (the “eco”), transnational environmental crime (the “global”) which is defined in terms of ecological harm rather than international law as such, and notions of justice that address transgressions against humans, specific ecosystems, and animals and plants (the “criminology”). It is argued that in a steadily shrinking world, environmental harm inevitably crosses borders and/or is influenced by decisions made in completely different parts of the globe. We are all connected in some way, and environmental harm in one place will have repercussions for those living in other places. Fundamental to this perspective is the idea that there are global dimensions to environmental harm. Moreover, in some instances the most ecologically destructive practices are in fact quite legal, precisely because they are facilitated by nation-states as well as corporations and other powerful actors. This perspective argues for a global perspective on environmental harm. As such, it shares similar theoretical and political concerns with “southern criminology” (Carrington, Hogg & Sozzo, 2015); namely, that voices from the periphery and the margins must be incorporated into critical green criminology analysis.

Eco-justice Within critical green criminology, three broad approaches to justice have been identified, each with its specific conceptions of what is harmful (White, 2013). Eco-justice includes consideration of environment rights and environmental justice, in which environmental rights are seen as an extension of human, or social, rights, so as to enhance the quality of human life, now and into the future. Here the victims are humans. Eco-justice also makes reference to ecological citizenship and ecological justice, in which ecological citizenship acknowledges that human beings are merely one component of complex ecosystems that should be preserved for their own sake via the notion of the rights of the environment. Accordingly, the victim is the specific ecosystem. A third component of eco-justice is animal rights and species justice, in which environmental harm is constructed in relation to the place of nonhuman animals within environments and with their intrinsic right to not suffer abuse, whether this be one-on-one harm, institutionalised harm, or harm arising from human actions that affect climates and environments on a global scale, and cause the degradation of habitat to the extent that threatens biodiversity loss. In this instance, the victims are the animals and plants. Acknowledging “victim” status is crucial to understanding the ways in which environmental harm affects both human and nonhuman, as well as assessments of insecurity and potential risks.

Ecocide The destruction of the environment in ways that adversely affect humans, ecosystems, and nonhuman species can be conceptualised, criminologically, as a specific type of crime. Ecocide describes an attempt to criminalise human activities that destroy and diminish the wellbeing and health of ecosystems and species within these, including humans (Higgins, 2012; see also Gray, 1996; Higgins, Short & South, 2013). Where this occurs as a result of human agency, then 123

Rob White

it is purported that a crime against humanity has occurred. Juxtaposed against and contrary to specific state or corporate interests are the collectivist ideals of “universal human interests” and “ecological citizenship”. The appeal of ecological citizenship as a concept stems in part from recognition of the universal interests that underpin the relationship of humans with the environment. Ecological citizenship allows for stepping outside prescriptive patriotism (e.g., Australia first, America first, China first) when global ecological health and wellbeing demands a planetary response (e.g., Earth first). Ecological citizenship is also tied to the notion of “Earth Rights” and the survival needs of all species and biospheres on the planet (see Cullinan, 2003). A key feature of this crime is that it occurs in the context of foreknowledge and intent. For instance, ecocide arising from global warming, while marked by uncertainty in regards to specific rates and types of ecological change, is nonetheless founded upon generalised scientific knowledge that profound change is unavoidable unless carbon emissions – the key source of global warming – are not radically reduced, now.

Climate change Global warming is rapidly and radically transforming the biophysical world in ways that will continue to have massive ramifications for humans, specific ecosystems, and animal and plant species. Critical green criminological perspectives emphasise the connection between crimes of the powerful and global warming. It highlights the fact that the key perpetrators and responders to global warming tend to be one and the same: namely, nation-states and transnational corporations, both of which are primarily concerned with maintaining “business as usual” (Kramer & Michaelowski, 2012; White, 2017). The last couple of centuries has been described as delimiting a period referred to as the “Anthropocene” insofar as the impact of human activity on global warming is now clear and unequivocal (Shearing, 2015). Yet, critics of a “species-level” conceptualisation of human activity insist that it is the specifically capitalist nature of industrialisation that transformed nature in particular degrading ways and contributed to ecological imperialism on a world scale (Greig & van der Velden, 2015). Carbon emissions that lead to global warming occur in the pursuit of “normal” business outcomes and involve “normal” business practices (see Rothe & Kauzlarich, 2016; Tombs & Whyte, 2015). This can be distilled down somewhat by reference to specific industries, such as the “dirty industries” of coal and oil and how they engage in particularly damaging practices. But the overarching imperative to expand and increase production and consumption nonetheless obtains for all industries plugged into the global capitalist mode of production. The net effect of this is anthropogenic climate change.

Species A third identifiable strand of critical green criminology is one that focuses mainly upon questions of species justice. These approaches discuss both the individual and aggregate rights and status of plant and animal species. As with previous approaches there is distinctiveness in perspective as well as overlap among these particular approaches. The notion of species is central to this domain. Basically this refers to identification of flora and fauna via systems of classification that distinguish specific plants and animals on the basis of physiological characteristics. An ecological community is a dynamic entity that is comprised of different species. At the heart of concerns about species are the notions of preservation (e.g., an emphasis on and privileging of nonhuman nature, such as preserving wilderness areas from human visitation) and conservation (e.g., an emphasis on maintaining natural areas, such as marine parks and forest reserves, so that humans can enjoy them). Issues of rights and stewardship are also of significant concern. 124

Critical green criminology

Biodiversity Critical green criminology sees the question of biodiversity as important in analysis of environmental wellbeing and harm (Boekhout van Solinge, 2008, 2010). Biodiversity is generally defined as the variety of all species on earth. It refers to the different plants, animals and micro-organisms, and their genes, that together make up life on the planet. It also includes reference to the terrestrial (land), marine (ocean) and freshwater (inland water systems) ecosystems of which they are a part. The loss of biodiversity in all three of its main components – genes, species and ecosystems – continues at a rapid pace today and the principal pressures directly driving biodiversity loss (habitat change, overexploitation, pollution, invasive alien species and climate change) are either constant or increasing in intensity (Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, 2010; United Nations Environment Programme, 2013). With biodiversity, the key ecological message is the greater the number of species the greater the resilience of the system as a whole to potential catastrophe, whether this is fire, drought or climate change. Changes to an ecosystem through human intervention may occur through manipulation, contamination or destruction of these components (for example, through mining or land clearance or use of pesticides). Deforestation is seen as particularly harmful and one of the greatest challenges to maintaining and enhancing biodiversity, regardless of whether it is deemed legal or illegal (Boekhout van Solinge, 2010).

Speciesism The matter of animal rights and animal welfare is encapsulated in that work concerned with species justice (Benton, 1998; Beirne, 2007). In specific terms, concepts such as speciesism may be invoked. This refers to the practice of discriminating against nonhuman animals because they are perceived as inferior to the human species in much the same way that sexism and racism involve prejudice and discrimination against women and people of different colour (Ryder, 2010). Animal rights supporters argue that there are two kinds of animals – human and nonhuman – and that both have rights and interests as sentient beings; they believe, however, that the dominant ideology of speciesism enables humans to exploit nonhuman animals as commodities to be eaten, displayed, hunted and dissected for human benefit. For critical green criminologists the vital issue is to expose the ill treatment and abuse of animals, and to forge new understandings of the human-nonhuman animal relationship through consideration of animal rights and the status of animals generally (Sollund, 2012a, 2013; Beirne, 2009). The legal trade in animals, for example, is criticised insofar as it legitimates the treatment of animals as a commodity and “other”, while simultaneously allowing the invasion of their habitats and communities solely for human instrumental purposes. The “value” of animals is thus largely constructed according to human interests, whether this is in regard to commercial benefit, psychological wellbeing, or safety and security. This is deemed to be wrong, misguided and/or notoriously inadequate by critical green criminology.

Theriocide The human killing of different animals for ostensibly distinct purposes is the most contentious issue when it comes to discussion of species. Beirne (2014) argues that the killing of an animal by a human ought to be described as a form of theriocide: Theriocide refers to those diverse human actions that cause the deaths of animals. As with the killing of one human by another (for example, homicide, infanticide and femicide), 125

Rob White

a theriocide may be socially acceptable or unacceptable, legal or illegal. It may be intentional or unintentional. It may involve active maltreatment or passive neglect. Theriocides may occur one-on-one, in small groups or in large-scale social institutions. The numerous sites of theriocide include intensive rearing regimes; hunting and fishing; trafficking; vivisection; militarism; pollution; and human-induced climate change. (Beirne, 2014, p. 56) Many millions of animals, particularly rats, mice, birds and guinea pigs, are used for scientific research. But the biggest category of animals, numerically, is that of animals used by humans for food (Baur, 2008). In fact animals are killed and maimed for a wide variety of reasons and in different contexts that include: • • • • • • •

being homeless: shelters frequently only take animals for a specified period of time, after which they are killed for entertainment: this includes events such as cock fighting, dog fighting, the blooding of greyhounds for racing and recreational fishing for food: not only mass production and factory farming, but also specific religiously prescribed procedures for killing animals that may be inherently problematic and cruel for military and policing purposes: putting dogs and other animals at risk in war and civil policing operations for collection: private trafficking and containment of exotic animals, the treatment of animals by staff and by the public in circuses and zoos for pleasure: the abuse of animals for sexual gratification, such as bestiality and including bestial pornography involving humans and nonhuman animals for service and sale: the mass production of animals, for example in the form of ‘puppy mills’ in which excessive numbers of animals are quarantined in order to maximise breeding and the sale of offspring. (White, 2016, p. 182)

Over time a number of initiatives have been introduced in countries such as the United States and Australia to prohibit or prevent the most offensive forms of overt cruelty and exploitation (such as animal fights), and to make illegal the trade in certain types of plant and animal species (such as poaching of abalone). Yet the growth in the number of animals killed “legitimately” has continued to rise, in part due to the consumer demands of ever increasing numbers of city dwellers. Mass consumption is being matched by mass production – namely, theriocide on a large scale.

Habitat Destroying species’ home lands is a profoundly harmful activity that intrinsically constitutes a form of abuse and harm. Built into this equation is also consideration of what kind of environment or habitat best suits which species, and how this particular habitat might be preserved or conserved to support the most privileged species. Cazaux (1999) has observed that consideration of human practices that are detrimental to the wellbeing of animals, such as loss and fragmentation of habitat, tend to focus on the effects regarding animal populations of a certain species (matters pertaining to the threat of extinction). Less attention is paid to the consequences of broad trends to the wellbeing of animals as individual subjects. Somewhat

126

Critical green criminology

perversely, the logic of species protection, over and above respect for the individual animal, means that in some instances animals are killed for no apparent reason or justification. In Norway, for example, efforts to protect the endangered species of polar fox, have been accompanied by the killing of individual creatures that were guilty of the “crime” of not fitting into the existing breeding programme (Sollund, 2012b). Their deaths served no apparent purpose, but their value (or lack thereof) was reflected in the actions taken to put them down. Respect and acknowledgement of the right of these individual creatures to live is confounded by the human emphasis on collective survival. Yet the ethic of species is important nonetheless. Around the world there are examples where the deaths of individual creatures have been weighed up against the potential demise of whole species (Rolston, 2010; White, 2013). While objectionable from the point of view of killing animals, unless suitable alternatives for relocation are possible or available, there is a moral justification for such acts insofar as they allow future and more diverse life to flourish. Threats to those habitats that service a wide variety of species may mean human intervention to “cull” the “offending” creatures, namely those that would otherwise denude the landscape and thereby ruin the survival chances of all species in the same vicinity.

Issues for consideration What distinguishes critical green criminology from mainstream green criminology is its primary focus on social power, vested interests and the constant questioning of the conventional. This applies to analysis of perpetrators as well as victims. Conventional definitions of environmental crime and victimisation are not ignored, as illegal logging, illegal fishing, pollution and waste crimes, and illegal wildlife trafficking do produce harms that warrant attention. Mainstream approaches to these issues, therefore, are not rejected or dismissed as irrelevant. However, critical green criminology places emphasis on crimes of the powerful, and on those nonhuman victims that are less visible in the ordinary policies and practices of environmental regulation and criminal justice. For example, not all “carbon crimes” are attributable to the powerful. Everyday consumers are implicated in activities that contribute to global warming through the embedded experiences and habits of everyday life (for example, high meat consumption, and reliance upon private petroleum-based automobiles) (Agnew, 2013). But such crimes tend to be related to the dominant mode of production and/or arise from class inequalities (White, 2015). Their origins lie in structures over which the participants have little or no direct control. In a similar vein, organised criminal networks are implicated in many environmental crimes. For example, mafia investment in the wind power sector in Italy has involved fraudulently skimming money from alternative energy subsidies with developers playing a central bridging role between legitimate and criminal interests. Related to this is corruption of public officials (Caneppele, Riccardi & Standridge, 2013). But these crimes stem, in part, from the regulatory systems put into place that allow certain activities to go forward while not threatening the existing status quo whatsoever. They are crimes associated with new economic projects and directions, the origins of which stem from limited state responses to climate change challenges. For critical green criminology, the biggest contributors to environmental harm remain the transnational corporation and the nation-state, and it is to these that most attention is directed. Similar concerns are evident when it comes to issues pertaining to victims and victimisation. Conventional accounts of environmental victimisation tend to focus mainly if not exclusively on humans, as individuals, groups and communities (Hall, 2013). Again, this is of interest and con-

127

Rob White

cern to the critical green criminologist. But so too are analyses that adopt ecocentric perspectives on the “rights of nature”, and that speak about the importance of nonhuman entities such as trees, rivers and animals having their voices heard in discussions and debates over environmental harm. Whether it is a concern about the “ordinary” harms suffered by animals within existing systems of production, consumption and trade, or the importance of recognising the intrinsic worth and value of rivers and forests, critical green criminology is concerned with pushing the boundaries of contemporary thinking about “nature” and the place of humans within the web of life generally. This chapter has outlined three broad approaches to critical green criminology – those that focus on political economy, ecology, and species. These approaches are “critical” in the sense that they tend to challenge existing power relationships (between citizens and corporations; between humans and nonhuman animals), they are propelled by an urge to radically alter existing ways of thinking about the natural world and the place of humans within this, and they are oriented toward major social and economic transformations. As critical green criminology continues to develop there are several areas warranting further attention and it is to these that we now briefly turn.

The state How the state is defined, perceived and reacted to have significant implications for the critical green criminology project. To date, very little has been explicitly written about the nature of the state, and how green criminology is or ought to be positioned in relation to questions of state power. The exercise of state power is a source of environmental harm and vandalism but it can also be a key lever for law reform around animal rights, protection of the environment, and action on climate change. Thinking through the contradictions and paradoxes of the contemporary nation-state remains an important unfinished task of critical green criminology.

Balancing rights and interests Different strands of critical green criminology tend to emphasise different actors and “victims”. Animals, plants, ecosystems and humans are part of the composite picture that collectively expresses the eco-justice mosaic. Yet conflicting interests and viewpoints are inevitable when human interests, ecological interests, and animals (and plant) interests occasionally collide in the real world of actual decision-making processes. For critical green criminology there needs to be conceptual, moral and instrumental ways to forge dialogue and “bridges” when strategic and ideological differences cannot be easily reconciled.

Action Visions of the future need to be constructed so that critical green criminology is not only reactive to environmental destruction and the exploitation of humans and animals, but offers direction for “where to go from here”. This should involve several interrelated projects. One is to identify the multiple sites for social action and intervention on relevant issues. The other is to map out the values and kinds of institutions that can be foreshadowed in and by our actions to change the world.

128

Critical green criminology

Critical green criminology has exhibited considerable vibrancy and energy, critique and expose over the past two decades or so. As a distinctive kind of critical criminology, it has been carving out its own particular intellectual and activist niche among those who are motivated by concerns for social and ecological justice. Present day political trends do not bode well for the health and wellbeing of Planet Earth and the myriad species and places that make our house a home. Acknowledging this is likewise essential to the critical green criminology project – the future eaters are killing the planet, and resistance and struggle are thus more necessary than ever.

References Agnew, R. (2013) “The ordinary acts that contribute to ecocide: a criminological analysis”, in N. South & A. Brisman (eds) Routledge International Handbook of Green Criminology. London: Routledge. Baur, G. (2008) Farm Sanctuary: Changing Hearts and Minds about Animals and Food. New York: Touchstone. Beirne, P. (2007) “Animal rights, animal abuse and green criminology”, in P. Beirne & N. South (eds) Issues in Green Criminology: Confronting Harms Against Environments, Humanity and Other Animals. Devon: Willan Publishing. Beirne, P. (2009) Confronting Animal Abuse: Law, Criminology, and Human-Animal Relationships. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Beirne, P. (2014) “Theriocide: naming animal killing”, International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 4(3): 50–67. Beirne, P. & South, N. (eds) (2007) Issues in Green Criminology: Confronting Harms against Environments, Humanity and Other Animals. Devon: Willan Publishing. Benton, T. (1998) “Rights and justice on a shared planet: more rights or new relations?”, Theoretical Criminology, 2(2): 149–175. Boekhout van Solinge, T. (2008) “Crime, conflicts and ecology in Africa”, in R. Sullund (ed) Global Harms: Ecological Crime and Speciesism. New York: Nova Science Publishers. Boekhout van Solinge, T. (2010) “Deforestation crimes and conflicts in the Amazon”, Critical Criminology, 18: 263–277. Borras Jr., S., Franco, J. & Wang, C. (2013) “The challenge of global governance of land grabbing: changing international agricultural context and competing political views and strategies”, Globalizations, 10(1): 161–179. Brisman, A. (2013) “The violence of silence: some reflections on access to information, public participation in decision-making, and access to justice in matters concerning the environment”, Crime, Law and Social Change, 59(3): 291–303. Caneppele, S., Riccardi, M. & Standridge, P. (2013) “Green energy and black economy: mafia investments in the wind power sector in Italy”, Crime, Law and Social Change, 59(3): 319–339. Carrington, K. & Hogg, R. (eds) (2002) Critical Criminology: Issues, Debates, Challenges. Devon: Willan Publishing. Carrington, K., Hogg, R. & Sozzo, M. (2015) “Southern criminology”, British Journal of Criminology, 56(1): 1–20. Cazaux, G. (1999) “Beauty and the beast: animal abuse from a non-speciesist criminological perspective”, Crime, Law and Social Change, 31: 105–126. Cullinan, C. (2003) Wild Law: A Manifesto for Earth Justice. London: Green Books in association with The Gaia Foundation. DeKeseredy, W.S. (2011) Contemporary Critical Criminology. Routledge, New York. Foster, J. (2002) Ecology Against Capitalism. New York: Monthly Review Press. Gibbs, C., Gore, M., McGarrell, E. & Rivers III, L. (2010) “Introducing conservation criminology: towards interdisciplinary scholarship on environmental crimes and risks”, British Journal of Criminology, 50: 124–144. Gray, M. (1996) “The international crime of ecocide”, California Western International Law Journal, 26: 215–271. Greig, A. & van der Velden, J. (2015) “Earth hour approaches”, Overland, 25 March 2015. Online. Available: https://overland.org.au/2015/03/earth-hour-approaches/, accessed 3 August 2016.

129

Rob White

Hall, M. (2013) Victims of Environmental Harm: Rights, Recognition and Redress Under National and International Law. London: Routledge. Higgins, P. (2012) Earth is Our Business: Changing the Rules of the Game. London: Shepheard-Walwyn Publishers Ltd. Higgins, P., Short, D. & South, N. (2013) “Protecting the planet: a proposal for a law of ecocide”, Crime Law and Social Change, 59(3): 251–266. Kramer, R. (2013) “Carbon in the atmosphere and power in America: climate change as state-corporate crime”, Journal of Crime & Justice, 36(2): 153–170. Kramer, R. & Michalowski, R. (2012) “Is global warming a state-corporate crime?”, in R. White (ed.), Climate Change from a Criminological Perspective (71–88). New York: Springer. Lemieux, A. (ed) (2014) Situational Prevention of Poaching. London: Routledge. McLaughlin, E. (2010) “Critical criminology”, in E. McLaughlin & T. Newburn (eds), The SAGE Handbook of Criminological Theory (153–174). SAGE, London. Mgbeoji, I. (2006) Global Biopiracy: Patents, Plants, and Indigenous Knowledge. Vancouver: UBC Press. Michalowski, R. & Kramer, R. (2006) State-Corporate Crime: Wrongdoing at the Intersection of Business and Government. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Mol, H. (2013) “‘A gift from the tropics to the world’: power, harm, and palm oil”, in R. Walters, D. Westerhuis and T. Wyatt (eds) Emerging Issues in Green Criminology. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Rolston, H. (2010) “Wild animals and ethical perspectives”, in M. Bekoff (ed) Encyclopedia of Animal Rights and Animal Welfare,Volume 2. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Press. Rothe, D. & Kauzlarich, D. (2016) Crimes of the Powerful: An introduction. London: Routledge. Ruggiero, V. & South, N. (2010) “Critical criminology and crimes against the environment”, Critical Criminology, 18(4): 245–250. Ryder, R. (2010) “Speciesism”, in M. Bekoff (ed) Encyclopedia of Animal Rights and Animal Welfare,Volume 2 (527–528). Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Press. Schissel, B. & Brooks, C. (eds) (2002) Marginality and Condemnation: An Introduction to Critical Criminology. Fernwood, Halifax. Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (2010) Global Biodiversity Outlook 3. Montreal: SCBD. Shearing, C. (2015) “Criminology and the Anthropocene”, Criminology & Criminal Justice, 15(3): 255–269. Sollund, R. (2012a) “Speciesism as doxic practice versus valuing difference and plurality”, in R. Ellefsen, R. Sollund and G. Larsen (eds) Eco-Global Crimes: Contemporary Problems and Future Challenges. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate. Sollund, R. (2012b) “Oil production, climate change and species decline: the case of Norway”, in R. White (ed) Climate Change from a Criminological Perspective. New York: Springer. Sollund, R. (2013) “Animal trafficking and trade: abuse and species injustice”, in R. Walters, D. Westerhuis and T. Wyatt (eds) Emerging Issues in Green Criminology. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. South, N. (2007) “The ‘corporate colonisation of nature’: bio-prospecting, bio-piracy and the development of green criminology”, in P. Beirne & N. South (eds) Issues in Green Criminology: Confronting Harms Against Environments, Humanity and Other Animals. Devon: Willan Publishing. South, N. & Brisman, A. (2013) (eds) Routledge International Handbook of Green Criminology. New York: Routledge. Stretesky, P., Long, M. & Lynch, M. (2014) The Treadmill of Crime: Political Economy and Green Criminology. London: Routledge. Tombs, S. & Whyte, D. (2015) The Corporate Criminal: Why Corporations must be Abolished. London: Routledge. United Nations Environment Programme UNEP (2013). Threats to biodiversity. Online. Available: www. unep-wcmc.org/threats-to-biodiversity_52.html, accessed 4 September 2013. White, R. (2002) “Environmental harm and the political economy of consumption”, Social Justice, 29(1&2): 82–102. White, R. (2011) Transnational Environmental Crime: Toward an Eco-Global Criminology. London: Routledge. White, R. (2013) Environmental Harm: An Eco-Justice Perspective. Bristol: Policy Press. White, R. (2015) “Climate change, ecocide and crimes of the powerful”, in G. Barak (ed) Routledge International Handbook of the Crimes of the Powerful. New York: Routledge.

130

Critical green criminology

White, R. (2016) “Inter-species violence: humans and the harming of animals”, in J. Stubbs & S. Tomsen (eds) Australian Violence: Crime, Criminal Justice and Beyond. Sydney: The Federation Press. White, R. (2017) “Carbon criminals, climate change and ecocide”, in C. Holley & C. Shearing (eds) Criminology and the Anthropocene. London: Routledge. White, R. & Heckenberg, D. (2014) Green Criminology: An Introduction to the Study of Environmental Harm. London: Routledge. White, R., Haines, F. & Asquith, N. (2017) Crime and Criminology. South Melbourne: Oxford University Press.

131

10 Green cultural criminology Avi Brisman and Nigel South

Introduction If criminology is a “rendez-vous subject” or an “umbrella discipline,” as it has been called (see Cao & Wyatt, 2016, p. 415; South, Brisman & Beirne, 2013, p. 28 for a discussion), then green criminology might be considered a “rendez-vous within a rendez-vous” or an umbrella poking out from under a larger umbrella. Green criminology brings together individuals from around the world—and from a number of academic disciplines (see, e.g., Gibbs, Gore, McCarrell & Rivers, 2010; Herbig & Joubert, 2006)—united in investigating and understanding the causes and consequences of—and possible responses to—environmental crime and harm. Green criminology spans the local to the global—and the micro to the macro—from work on individual-level environmental crimes to business/corporate violations to state transgressions. With a wide range of interests and ecophilosophical orientations (see Halsey & White, 1998; White, 2013), green criminologists have undertaken research on agriculture and food; animal abuse/animal rights; air pollution and water pollution; climate change; and poaching and trafficking of flora and fauna (see, e.g., Beirne & South, 2007; South & Brisman, 2013). In so doing, green criminologists employ an array of methodologies and theoretical approaches, including both mainstream and critical perspectives (see, e.g., Brisman, 2014). In an early statement on what a green criminology might address, South (1998, p. 225) offered a list of “green connections for a green criminology,” which he described as “a provisional and exploratory exercise in thinking about how green issues connect to other— established or emerging—criminological concerns.” The eighth item stated that “[a] green perspective is particularly sensitive to cultural politics and the emergence of new social movements concerned with lifestyle, identity and visionary protest” (1998, p. 226) and suggested future research along these lines. Until recently, there have been few attempts to explicitly or implicitly integrate the area of cultural criminology (which seeks to comprehend how various cultural forms and cultural expressions become criminalized) into green criminology and vice versa. This has been a missed opportunity because the fields of green criminology and cultural criminology complement each other and fit together well in a number of ways (Brisman & South, 2013b, 2014; Ferrell, 2013). Taking South’s “connections” as inspiration and accepting cultural criminology’s “invitation” (Ferrell, Hayward & Young, 2008), green cultural criminology 132

Green cultural criminology

seeks to bring together green criminology and cultural criminology, and to identify points of overlap. For present purposes, if cultural criminology is, as Ferrell (1999, p. 396), explains, “an emergent array of perspectives linked by sensitivities to image, meaning, and representation in the study of crime and crime control,” then green cultural criminology might be conceptualized as an emergent array of perspectives linked by sensitivities to image, meaning, and representation in the study of green or environmental crime and environmental crime control. Accordingly, green cultural criminology (1) considers the way(s) in which environmental crime, harm and disaster are constructed, represented and envisioned by the news media and in popular cultural forms; (2) dedicates increased attention to patterns of consumption, constructed consumerism, commodification of nature and related market processes; and (3) devotes heightened concern to the contestation of space, transgression, and resistance, in order to analyze the ways in which environmental harms are opposed in/on the streets and in day-to-day living (Brisman, 2015, 2017a, 2017b; Brisman & South 2012, 2013b, 2014, 2015, 2017a, 2017b, 2017c; Brisman, McClanahan & South, 2014; McClanahan, 2014; McClanahan, Brisman & South, 2017; Mazurek, 2017; Schally 2014). An in-depth discussion of all three of these areas is outside the scope of this chapter. Instead, in the first section, this chapter offers an example of the representation of nature in film. This is followed by three sections on the consumption and commodification of nature—and related consequences and trends: consumption and technology (including “greenwashing” and “green consumerism”; consumerism, narcissism and infantilization; and the consumption/extermination of species and their subsequent de-extinction—essentially, the hubris of causing the extinction of species and then attempting to revive them.

1

Nature “bites back” in film

Being lost, alone and “at the mercy of nature” is the basis of some of the most popular tropes, images and plotlines in various media (Brisman & South, 2014, p. 62; Brisman, 2015). This can be a genre of pure sensationalism without subtext or it can act as the perfect medium for conveying warnings about the consequences of destroying environments and/or interfering with the process of creation of life itself. For example, developing an analysis of a form of Australian genre cinema described as “eco-horror,” Simpson (2010, p. 44) contemplates the rate of extinction of flora and fauna (discussed in a different context in the fourth section of this chapter) but also the resilience of plants and animals and how certain films can be exploitative yet also signal important ecological and social issues. The themes she identifies echo key points of analysis for green criminology, cultural criminology, as well as southern criminology (Carrington, Hogg & Sozzo, 2015; de la Tierra & Henne, 2017) and critical criminology, more generally. Using what she calls an “eco-postcolonial framework,” Simpson (2010, p. 45) argues that “in their attitudes to foreigners, tourists and/or trespassers as ‘prey’, these films extend postcolonial anxieties over settler Australian notions of belonging” and that they “challenge the notion of human mastery over nature.” Simpson (op. cit.) also discusses Low’s (2003) notion of “new nature,” which she (Simpson) describes as “a cultural shift whereby animals have an uncanny knack of adapting and hybridizing in order to survive and sometimes even thrive. As such, they (the films and the animals) force us to acknowledge more culturally plural forms of being.” Indeed, according to one version of what has been called the “eco-gothic,” a dominant theme is “reverse colonisation by nature” (Mayer, 2011, p. 86). In the tropes of environmental horror entertainment—and in reality—nature can be frightening, and human ambivalence about it has contributed major and recurrent sources of inspiration, 133

Avi Brisman and Nigel South

anxiety and tension in films and literature (South, 2017; see generally Brisman & Rau, 2009). Thus, although nature can be conquered, exploited and manipulated, which we discuss in the next section, it can also “fight back,” erect borders and lay traps: You’ve found yourself alone in the woods. No big deal, nature is a perfectly fine place to spend some time, wandering around. But now you can’t see the edge of the forest anymore. And you realize that you can’t see the sun, either, so you can’t tell which direction to go in to get out. Let’s add some scary strange noises. Watch yourself randomly running in some direction, looking for a way out, screaming for help, as the sun goes down and afternoon turns into dusk, which turns into a moonless night. You are so screwed. The truth is, nature isn’t cruel; it just doesn’t care about you. The forest is a big scary place in which you can get lost, or killed by disease or wild and ferocious animals. The desert has only about a hundred ways for you to be injured or die. The jungle is even worse. Even a lake or a river is a dangerous place for a person who isn’t prepared. This trope comes into play when a work’s creator chooses to use that fact, that nature is a dog-eat-dog environment full of disease, natural disasters, parasites, predatory animals, killing and other ghastly things, rather than romanticizing it or portraying nature as harmonious or maternal. The focus is on the horror, danger, amorality, and ruthlessness of untamed nature. (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NatureIsNotNice) To be sure, green cultural criminology has not restricted itself to a consideration of eco-horror films. Rather, it has looked at a number of different approaches to the representation of issues relating to environmental harm in film, including: (a) the capacity of documentary film to raise public awareness about environmental issues and generate public consciousness about environmental harms; (b) film as a powerful medium for the presentation of apocalyptic science fiction (specifically, cinematic climate disaster); and (c) the ways in which various film genres present resistance and responses to environmental harm—some revolutionary, others reformist or reactionary (McClanahan, Brisman & South, 2017). This endeavor, moreover, has not been merely academic. Rather, green cultural criminology has attempted to illuminate how the cultural production of the meanings of environment–human relationships also structure and inform the various ways that we conceive of and think and feel about—as well as act towards, interact with, and make decisions regarding—the environment. Indeed, mediated representations of human–environment relationships and environmental harm are relevant to green cultural criminology not only because they continue to capture the public imagination but because the cultural production and representation of nature and harm may reflect and shape our day-to-day behaviors and habits with respect to the environment—something we consider further in the next sections.

2

Consumption, culture, technology and environment

The human response to the world around us has been to cultivate nature’s ability to provide sustenance but also to engage in patterns and practices of extreme extraction of resources. In raping and pillaging the planet, the growth of dependence on technology has been central. This has provided the machinery that helps meet ever-increasing, culturally constructed consumer demands. Yet one of the profound ironies of all this is that neither more consumption nor more technology guarantee happiness, contentment or enlightenment. Instead, we become trapped on the treadmills of “positionality” and “hedonism,” constantly striving for evidence that we are out-performing and out-consuming relative to others. This has come at the cost of leisure 134

Green cultural criminology

time but has been driven by advertising and marketing that remind people of their lesser status compared to others and “the ideal” (Binswanger, 2006, p. 369). This leads to “rising aspirations,” which, in turn, “lower the happiness people derive from a certain level of income as the joy of additional consumption wears off. Rising material aspirations then lead to the hedonic treadmill . . ., where people constantly adapt their aspiration levels to higher income levels. In the longer run, this causes happiness to stagnate” (op. cit.). The paradox of the impact of technology on the politics of leisure and the prospects for creating and living in an alternative cultural world was central to Young’s (1973, p. 191) analysis of bohemian subcultures. Here, Young discussed the desire to find ways to counter the negative outcomes of the “manifestations of technology,” such as “[e]cological pollution, industrial alienation and mindless consumerism”; he pointed out that although a bohemian culture could critique affluent straight society, its alternatives were “not flawless or consistent.” Young drew attention to the incongruity of individuals—then as now—managing to hold simultaneously, quite divergent positions. The dilemma, Young stated, is the extent to which industrial progress and technological advances are inimical to human happiness and improvement versus the proposition that in fact technology is our best hope and means of achieving liberation: “On one side there is the argument for simplicity and scorn for the consumer society, on the other the stress upon the development of new and more sophisticated leisure goods and pastimes.” This is a tension that remains at the heart of contemporary recognition of the risks to the environment and planet caused by our ways of living and to which we respond with paradoxical behaviors, strategies of accommodation, techniques of denial and too much faith in technological fixes (see, e.g., Brisman, 2015; Brisman & South, 2017b; Wyatt & Brisman, 2017). This is particularly apparent in the neutralization of urgency or significance concerning climate change which is supported by beliefs that we can carry on consuming because technology and science will provide “magic bullet” solutions to problems that, in turn, have their origin—at least in part—in socio-technical processes and developments (see generally Oreskes & Conway, 2014). Advertising and persuasion helps to maintain this belief through fraudulent, misleading or manipulative demand stimulation. Lynch and Stretesky (2014, p. 151) have discussed the origin and use of the term “greenwashing” as an excellent example of how corporate responsibility, technological efficiency and a false sense of social partnership are all invoked to present an impression of improved environmental behaviour that reassures consumers. As Lynch and Stretesky argue: companies engage in claims making which suggest that they are improving their production practices and their products so that they are more environmentally friendly. The term “greenwashing,” first used by biologist Jay Westerveld in 1986 to describe the hotel cards that ask guests to refrain from washing towels to save the environment while at the same time engaging in other more serious forms of ecological disruption, has been used to describe these practices . . . The notion of green products and green consumerism now underpins major sectors of the economy and key strategies for advertising (see, e.g., Brisman, 2009). This is not to suggest that green products are undesirable or that improved environmentally conscious consumer habits would not be positive developments. But we would argue that we should be interrogating what is really meant by the message we receive and what stories we are not hearing. Usually, we want to hear reassuring anecdotes and tales of our “successes” on the “environmental front”—as if we were engaged in some sort of war (see McClanahan & Brisman, 2015)—so that we feel good—proud, even—at the end of a hotel stay that we have not unnecessarily requested new, clean towels. But what we have succeeded in doing is averting our gaze from what Agnew (2013) refers to as the 135

Avi Brisman and Nigel South

“ecocidal behaviours of everyday life”—not noticing all the lighting and other energy consuming devices that are left on all the time in the hotel for “our convenience,” and all the waste that we can see generated in the name of our comfort and relaxation.

3

Consumption, egocentrism, eco-centrism and lack of care

It is not necessary to adopt the stance of a latter-day Luddite or post-modern relativist to detect in the technologies of contemporary communication and marketing a hollow lack of purpose and social usefulness. The messages are superficial; the aim is childish—simply to stimulate more desire; the outcomes are narcissistic competitiveness and waste. Years ago, advertising executives could jokingly praise an expert by saying that he or she “could sell ice-cubes to Eskimos”. Now that kind of feat, getting people to pay for things that they already have in abundance around them, for which they have no manifest need, has become commonplace. . . . Today marketeers recognize that goods have magical powers that have nothing to do with ‘needs’ and they have become magicians who transform mundane and abundant things into exotic valuables. (Wilk, 2006, pp. 304–5) The magic of symbols of status and belonging drives the narcissistic competitiveness and groupmentality of consumerism: “I” must have something because “they have it”; or—preferably— “I” must have it before “they” have it. Or, even more grotesquely, if “I” do not have something, then “I” cease to exist—a perversion whereby identity is linked to or contingent on acquisition of “goods.” As Shove and Warde (2002, p. 235) put it, “the acquisition of goods and services has become central to personal psychological wellbeing. . . . To the extent that people can, relatively freely, redesign their selves by purchasing new outfits and forming new associations—a part of what Bauman and others have described as an emergent neo-tribalism—then a high level of demand for new, or rather different, goods is likely to pertain.” This is consumption based on the marketing of pleasures that need not be accompanied by responsibility, taking the consumer back to “childish pleasures” (Hayward, 2012, p. 216) and desire for unnecessary and instantly obsolete objects (see Brisman & South, 2013a; Ferrell, 2013; Hayward, 2012). As Hayward, evoking Leech, explains, marketers and merchandisers are consciously and deliberately “hoping to rekindle in grown-ups the tastes and habits of children so that they can sell globally the . . . consumer goods for which there is no discernible ‘need market’ other than the one created by capitalism’s own frantic imperative to sell” (2012, p. 216, quoting Barber 2007, p. 7). Indeed, as Leech (2012, pp. 7, 92–3) convincingly argues: Inevitably, the drive to maximize profits that lies at the root of the logic of capital requires that essential natural resources be exploited in an unsustainable manner—to benefit disproportionately a wealthy minority at the expense of the basic needs of the majority. This process not only constitutes structural genocide perpetrated by the haves against the havenots today, it also represents structural genocide against future generations who will not be able to meet their basic needs. ... The unequal distribution of the planet’s natural resources and the unequal consequences of climate change resulting from capitalism are not only problems for the have-nots in today’s society; they will also negatively impact billions of people in the future. 136

Green cultural criminology

Essentially, modern consumerism feeds narcissism, self-absorption and infantilized short-term horizons (see Brisman & South, 2015, 2017a). As Bernardini (2014, p. 41) puts it, “The actorconsumer of this system tends to childishness without pleasure, to indolence without innocence, dresses without formality, has sex without reproducing, works without discipline, plays without spontaneity, buys without a purpose, and lives without responsibility, wisdom or humility. . . . The postmodern infantilization coincides with a kind of collective regression, largely as a result of stringent market logic.” Lasch (1979; see also Giroux, 2004, pp. 59–60) saw such trends as emergent in a culture of narcissism in which individuals take center stage to pursue experience and consumption for the purpose of self- and ego-satisfaction but are then left regressing into infantilization and emptiness. Lasch’s analysis was a critique of the “personal growth” industries of the “therapeutic state” (see also Cohen, 1985) but his overall intellectual and political message is often missed and this was a critique of obsession with economic growth. As Ruggiero and South (2013, p. 370) have pointed out, this obsession is damaging to the environment in various ways: “growth is criminogenic because it depicts greed and acquisitiveness in a positive light, making them core values of individual and collective behavior. Simultaneously, growth as we have experienced it over the decades exacerbates the polarization of wealth, therefore increasing relative deprivation, one of the central variables in the analysis of crime.” Ultimately, this insatiable demand generated by growth is ecocidal.

4

Extreme consumption: ecocide, species exploitation and the genetic pillaging of the past

We are not the first species to have brought about the extinction of other species. But humans are, as the Stanford Environmental Law Society (2001, pp. 2–3) notes, the biggest threat to other organisms, and as Ledec and Goodland (1998, p. 9) remind us, “the first [species] to be aware of the implications of [its] actions and to be capable of controlling them.” As the Stanford Environmental Law Society (2001, p. 6) points out: Consumer tastes have caused many species to decline to the point where they would not survive without human assistance. From elephant tusks, rhinoceros horn, sea otter pelts, tiger bones, exotic bird feathers, and sea turtle shells, all the way to rare orchids sought by collectors, human fancies have caused the decline or extinctions of some of the earth’s most charismatic species. Because of our ability to design and manufacture powerful tools, Homo sapiens have become the most effective and efficient predators the world has ever seen. It is not difficult for humans to hunt a species to extinction, and it is becoming easier. While uncontrolled hunting or poaching—as well as the capture of animals as pets and the (illegal and legal) trade in animal body parts—are obvious threats to some species’ survival (see Daleszcyk, Eycott & Tillman, 2016, pp. 22–3; Zimmer, 2013), various human activities have indirectly contributed to species decline. These include: pollution and atmospheric change (Stanford Environmental Law Society, 2001, pp. 7, 8–9)1; deliberate and inadvertent allochthonous species introduction, which can become serious competitors or predators for autochthonous species (Daleszczyk, Eycott, & Tillmann 2016, pp. 22–3; Stanford Environmental Law Society, 2001, pp. 7–8)2; habitation alteration from agriculture, deforestation and the development of industry (Daleszczyk Eycott, & Tillmann 2016, p. 22; Stanford Environmental Law Society, 2001, pp. 9–10; Zimmer 2013, p. 33)3; and war and civil unrest (Daleszczyk Eycott, & Tillmann 2016, pp. 22–3; 137

Avi Brisman and Nigel South

Brisman & South, 2018; Brisman, South & White, 2015). Such causes and changes may bring about loss of species independently or in concert with one or more of the other factors. Daleszcyk et al. (2016, p. 38) suggest that it is far easier to decimate a species than to bring it back, while Dawson (2016, p. 99) laments that “[o]nce a species or an ecosystem is destroyed, it is lost forever.” Or so one would think. Growing research on resurrecting species—a process known as de-extinction (Carlin, Wurman & Zakim, 2014; Dawson, 2016; Zimmer, 2013)—has raised questions about permanency of extinction, as well as whether we should revive extinct species and the meaning and implications of doing so. Whether we can resurrect extinct species—and how we might do so or which methods we might use—remain important scientific questions for wildlife biologists and geneticists. Should we do so—or why we might bring back extinct species—are ethical questions that, we would submit, have relevance for green cultural criminology as an example of the belief that there need be no limits to consumption and our ecocidal behaviors need not be curtailed because the combination of the market and science will remedy future problems (South, 2016). In order to explore this further, it is necessary to consider some of the arguments for and against de-extinction. Some contend that humans have a moral obligation to resurrect species that we have driven to extinction (Carlin, Wurman & Zakim, 2014, p. 6; Zimmer 2013, p. 33). Defending themselves against the criticism that reviving a species that no longer exists demonstrates “humanity’s lack of humility” (Carlin Wurman & Zakim 2014, p. 6) and is akin to “playing God,” proponents of de-extinction contend that “‘we played God when we exterminated these animals’” (Zimmer 2013, p. 33 (quoting Professor Michael Archer, a paleontologist at the University of New South Wales)).4 Other supporters of de-extinction point to the concrete benefits of reviving extinct species, such as those animals that performed key services to their ecosystems.5 Opponents raise numerous objections including concern that “the ability to revive dead species may undercut conservation efforts for still-living species that are endangered or threatened, detracting from the perceived need to protect them if they are reliably replaceable” (Carlin et al., 2014, p. 6). As Professor John Wiens, an evolutionary biologist, remarks, “There is clearly a terrible urgency to saving threatened species and habitats. As far as I can see, there is little urgency for bringing back extinct ones. Why invest millions of dollars in bringing a handful of species back from the dead, when there are millions still waiting to be discovered, described and protected?” (quoted in Zimmer 2013, p. 40). While advocates of de-extinction reply that the technologies of cloning and genomic engineering for reviving species could be helpful for preserving endangered ones—especially those that do not breed easily in captivity (see Zimmer, 2013, p. 40), there remains the untouched matter regarding why certain species have become endangered in the first place (see Carlin, Wurman & Zakim 2014, 10n.25). In other words, do de-extinction projects serve as a “distraction”—reducing the impetus to address the root causes and underlying problems endangering a species—or do they constitute a form of “salvation” (Zimmer, 2013, p. 41)? So what exactly would we be bringing back? Carlin et al. (2014, 4n.2) note that “most resurrected species would be genetically different from their extinct counterparts, but it may be possible to restore a few species with a genome very close to the original genome.” As these authors maintain, “[t]he results of genetic engineering and artificial selection, both starting with a living species that is either genetically modified or selectively bred to resemble an extinct one, are probably best considered either as modified versions of the living species or as something altogether new—but not as extinct species truly brought back from the dead” (2014, p. 16). Accordingly, Carlin and colleagues employ the term facsimile to refer “to such individuals which may more or less resemble, but are not exact copies of, their extinct counterparts” (2014, p. 16). As noted above, some suggest that reviving species amounts to “playing God.” What message would we 138

Green cultural criminology

send were we to exterminate entire species that inconveniently inhabit some desirable geographical area or possess some sought-after property and then bring back a “facsimile” of them at will? This is an expression of the ultimate arrogance of human consumption—that more can always be bought—even if the land has been ruined or the species is extinct. This is described by Katz (1998, p. 51) in her discussion of corporate environmentalism when she observes that “The commodification of ever smaller bits of bio-diversity, the reproduction of nature as product—whether whole sheep or bit of DNA—and the privatization of common property resources of particular instrumental or aesthetic value suggest the myriad ways that investments in nature pay. . . . The cache of environmental awareness, focussed on consumption practices or gushing sympathy for ‘charismatic megafauna’ in distant places, has not been lost on US corporate leaders.” This is a commercialized and privatized version of preservation and restoration (Katz, 1998, pp. 57–9), seen on screen in “theme park” form in the Jurassic Park movies.

Conclusion There have already been some attempts by green criminologists to integrate cultural criminology into their work—or, at the very least, to apply a cultural lens to their environmental inquiry and/or conduct research falling under various cultural criminological “motifs.” But more could be done. In this chapter, we have described some examples of consumption, representation and commodification of nature and related consequences and trends. Green cultural criminology is a new direction in critical criminology—one that, we believe, offers many further avenues to pursue, while dovetailing nicely with many of the other critical criminological concerns expressed in this volume.

Notes 1

2

3

4

5

Note that while many plant and animal species are struggling to adapt to anthropogenic climate change (see Daleszczyk, Eycott, & Tillmann 2016: 22; Dawson 2016: 10; see also Oreskes & Conway 2014: 31), natural climate change precipitated earlier mass extinctions (see Stanford Environmental Law Society 2001: 2–3), albeit at a much slower rate than the extinctions we are witnessing due to the increase of greenhouse gases (Oreskes & Conway 2014: 31). Daleszcyk et al. (2016: 22) add that exotic species, whether intentionally or unintentionally introduced by people, may transmit new diseases or parasites against which autochthonous species may be unable to defend themselves (citing Sodhi, Brook & Bradshaw 2009). Because forests possess such incredible richness of mammalian species, some claim that deforestation has been and will continue to be the principal direct and indirect cause of species extirpation (see Daleszczyk Eycott, & Tillmann, 2016: 22 (citing Sodhi, Brook & Bradshaw, 2009); Dawson, 2016: 10 (citing Wilson, 2004)). Carlin et al. (2014: 6n.9) ask, “But how far back would such a moral obligation reach? Human-caused extinction is not limited to the modern industrial era. Some paleontologists have suggested that hunting was primarily responsible for extinction of megafauna such as mastodons and mammoths” (citing Martin, 1984). Zimmer (2013, pp. 33, 40) notes that “[m]ost pharmaceutical drugs . . . were not invented from scatch— they were derived from natural compounds found in wild plant species, which are also vulnerable to extinction,” while the insights gleaned from the gastric brooding frog’s unique method of reproduction “might someday lead to treatments for pregnant women who have trouble carrying babies to term.”

References Agnew, R. (2013) The ordinary acts that contribute to ecocide: a criminological analysis. In South, N. & Brisman, A. (eds) Routledge International Handbook of Green Criminology: 58–72. London and New York: Routledge. Barber, B. (2007) Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilize Adults and Swallow Citizens Whole. London: Norton. 139

Avi Brisman and Nigel South

Beirne, P. & South, N. (eds) (2007) Issues in Green Criminology: Confronting Harms Against Environments, Humanity and Other Animals. Cullompton, UK: Willan. Bernardini, J. (2014) The infantilization of the postmodern adult and the figure of kidult. Postmodern Openings 5(2): 39–55. Binswanger, M. (2006) Why does income growth fail to make us happier? Searching for the treadmills behind the paradox of happiness, Journal of Socio-Economics 35: 366–81. Brisman, A. (2009) It takes green to be green: environmental elitism, “ritual displays,” and conspicuous nonconsumption, North Dakota Law Review 85(2): 329–70. Brisman, A. (2014) Of theory and meaning in green criminology, International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy 3(2): 22–35. Brisman, A. (2015) Environment and conflict: a typology of representations. In Brisman, A., South, N. & White, R. (eds) Environmental Crime and Social Conflict: Contemporary and Emerging Issues: 285–311. Surrey, UK: Ashgate. Brisman, A. (2017a) An epilogue to the book, not an elegy for the Earth. In Rodríguez Goyes, D., Mol, H., Brisman, A. & South, N. (eds) Environmental Crime in Latin America: The Theft of Nature and the Poisoning of the Land: 297–301. Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Brisman, A. (2017b) Representations of environmental crime and harm: a green-cultural criminological perspective on Human-Altered Landscapes. In Brown, M. & Carrabine, E. (eds) The Routledge International Handbook of Visual Criminology: 523–39. London and New York: Routledge. Brisman, A. & Rau, A. (2009) From fear of crime to fear of nature: the problem with permitting loaded, concealed firearms in national parks, Golden Gate University Environmental Law Journal 2(2): 255–72. Brisman, A. & South, N. (2012) Proposing a green-cultural criminology: a new perspective for 21st century criminology. In Meško, G., Sotlar, A. & Eman, K. (eds) Ecological Crime and Environmental Protection— Multidisciplinary Perspectives: 17–35. Llubljana, Slovenia: Faculty of Criminal Justice, University of Maribor. Brisman, A. & South, N. (2013a) Conclusion: the planned obsolescence of planet Earth? How green criminology can help us learn from experience and contribute to our future. In South, N. & Brisman, A. (eds) Routledge International Handbook of Green Criminology: 409–17. London and New York: Routledge. Brisman, A. & South, N. (2013b) A green-cultural criminology: an exploratory outline, Crime Media Culture 9(2): 115–35. Brisman, A. & South, N. (2014) Green Cultural Criminology: Constructions of Environmental Harm, Consumerism and Resistance to Ecocide. London and New York: Routledge. Brisman, A. & South, N. (2015) “Life stage dissolution”, infantilisation and anti-social consumption: implications for de-responsibilisation, denial and environmental harm, Young – Nordic Journal of Youth Research 23(3): 209–21. Brisman, A. & South, N. (2017a) Green cultural criminology, intergenerational (in)equity and “life stage dissolution”. In Hall, M., Maher, J., Nurse, A., Potter, G., South, N. & Wyatt, T. (eds) Greening Criminology in the 21st Century: 219–32. Surrey, UK: Ashgate. Brisman, A. & South, N. (2017b) Consumer technologies, crime and environmental implications. In Maguire, M. & Holt, T. (eds) The Handbook of Technology, Crime and Justice: 310–24. London and New York: Routledge. Brisman, A. & South, N. (2017c) Criminología verde cultural. In Mol, H., Rodríguez Goyes, D., South, N. & Brisman, A. (eds) Introducción a la criminología verde. Conceptos para nuevos horizontes y diálogos socioambientales [Introduction to Green Criminology: Concepts for New Horizons and Socio-Environmental Dialogues]: 97–127. Bogotá, Colombia: Editorial Temis S.A. and Universidad Antonio Nariño, Fondo Editorial. Brisman, A. & South, N. (2018) Environment, conflict and profit: harmful resource exploitation and questionable revenue generation. In Spapens, T., White, R., Huisman, W. & van Uhm, D. (eds) Green Crimes and Dirty Money. London and New York: Routledge. Brisman, A., McClanahan, B. & South, N. (2014) Toward a green-cultural criminology of “the rural”, Critical Criminology 22(4): 479–94. Brisman, A., South, N. & White, R., eds. (2015) Environmental Crime and Social Conflict: Contemporary and Emerging Issues. Surrey, UK: Ashgate. Cao, A. N. & Wyatt, T. (2016) The conceptual compatibility between green criminology and human security: a proposed interdisciplinary framework for examinations into green victimisation. Critical Criminology 24(3): 413–30. Carlin, N., Wurman, I. & Zakim, T. (2014) How to permit your mammoth: some legal implications of “deextinction”, Stanford Environmental Law Journal 33(3): 3–57. Online. Available at: https://journals.

140

Green cultural criminology

law.stanford.edu//stanford-environmental-law-journal-selj/print/volume-33/number-1/howpermit-your-mammoth-some-legal-implications-de-extinction. Carrington, K., Hogg, R. & Sozzo, M. (2015) Southern criminology, British Journal of Criminology 56(1): 1–20. Daleszczyk, K., Eycott, A. E. & Tillmann, J. E. (2016) Mammal species extinction and decline: some current and past case studies of the detrimental influence of man. In Problematic Wildlife: 21–44. Dordrecht: Springer International Publishing. Dawson, A. (2016) Extinction: A Radical History. New York and London: OR Books. de la Tierra, A. & Henne. K. (2017) Southern theory. In Brisman, A., Carrabine, E. & South, N. (eds) The Routledge Companion to Criminological Theory and Concepts: 381–85. London and New York: Routledge. Ferrell, J. (1999) Cultural criminology. Annual Review of Sociology 25(1): 395–418. Ferrell, J. (2013) Tangled up in green: cultural criminology and green criminology. In South, N. & Brisman, A. (eds) Routledge International Handbook of Green Criminology: 349–64. London and New York: Routledge. Ferrell, J., Hayward, K. & Young, J. (2008) Cultural Criminology: An Invitation. London: Sage. Gibbs, C., Gore, M., McCarrell, E. & Rivers III., L. (2010) Introducing conservation criminology: towards interdisciplinary scholarship on environmental crimes and risk, British Journal of Criminology 50(1): 124–44. Giroux, H. A. (2004) The Terror of Neoliberalism: Authoritarianism and the Eclipse of Democracy. Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers. Halsey, M. & White, R. (1998) Crime, ecophilosophy and environmental harm, Theoretical Criminology 2(3): 345–71. Hayward, K. (2012) Pantomime justice: a cultural criminological analysis of “life stage dissolution”, Crime Media Culture 8(2): 213–29. Herbig, F. J. W. & Joubert, S. J. (2006) Criminological semantics: conservation criminology—vision or vagary?, Acta Criminologica 19(3): 88–103. Katz, C. (1998) Whose nature, whose culture? Private productions of space and the “preservation” of nature. In Braun, B. and Castree, N. (eds.), Remaking Reality: Nature at the Millenium: 43–63. London: Routledge. Lasch, C. (1979) The Culture of Narcissism. New York: W.W. Norton. Ledec, G. & Goodland, R. (1988) Wildlands: Their Protection and Management in Economic Development. Washington, DC: The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/The World Bank. Online. Available at: http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/102041468739335376/pdf/multi-page. pdf. Leech, G. (2012) Capitalism: A Structural Genocide. London and New York: Zed Books. Low, T. (2003) The New Nature: Winners and Losers in Wild Australia. Canberra: Penguin. Lynch, M. J. & Stretesky, P. B. (2014) Exploring Green Criminology: Toward a Green Criminological Revolution. Surrey, UK: Ashgate. Martin, P. (1984) Prehistoric overkill: the global model. In Martin, P. S. & Klein, R. G. (eds) Quaternary Extinctions: A Prehistoric Revolution. Mayer, J. (2011) A darker shade of green: William Morris, Richard Jefferies, and posthumanist ecologies. The Journal of William Morris Studies 19(3): 79–92. Mazurek, J. E. (2017) Nemo’s plight: aquariums and animal abuse. In Maher, J., Beirne, P. & Peirpoint, H. (eds) The Palgrave International Handbook of Animal Abuse Studies. Basingstoke, Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. McClanahan, B. (2014) Green and grey: water justice, criminalization, and resistance, Critical Criminology 22(4): 403–18. McClanahan, B. & Brisman, A. (2015) Climate change and peacemaking criminology: ecophilosophy, peace and security in the “war on climate change”, Critical Criminology 23(4): 417–31. McClanahan, B., Brisman, A. & South, N. (2017) Green criminology, culture, and the media. In Brown, M. & Carbine, E. (eds) The Oxford Encyclopedia of Crime, Media, and Popular Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190264079.013.151. Available at: http://criminology.oxfordre.com/ view/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264079.001.0001/acrefore-9780190264079-e-151. Oreskes, N. & Conway, E. M. (2014) The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future. New York: Columbia University Press. Ruggiero, V. & South, N. (2013) Green criminology and crimes of the economy: theory, research and praxis, Critical Criminology 21(3): 359–73.

141

Avi Brisman and Nigel South

Schally, J. L. (2014) Agent of harm and good corporate citizen? The case of Tyson Foods. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Tennessee. Shove, E. & Warde, A. (2002) Inconspicuous consumption: the sociology of consumption, lifestyles and the environment. In Dunlap, R., Buttell, F., Dickens, P. & Gijswijt, A. (eds) Sociological Theory and the Environment: Classical Foundations, Contemporary Insights. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield. Simpson, C. (2010) Australian eco-horror and Gaia’s revenge: animals, eco-nationalism and the “new nature”. Studies in Australasian Cinema 4(1): 43–54. Sodhi, N. S., Brook, B. W. & Bradshaw, C. J. A. (2009) Causes and consequences of species extinctions. In Levin, S. A. (ed) The Princeton Guide to Ecology: 514–20. Princeton University Press, Princeton. South, N. (1998) A green field for criminology? A proposal for a perspective. Theoretical Criminology 2(2): 211–33. South, N. (2016) Free trade agreements, private courts and environmental exploitation: disconnected policies, denials and moral disengagement. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy 5(4): 45–59. South, N. (2017) Monstrous nature: a meeting of gothic, green and cultural criminologies. In Brown, M. & Carrabine, E. (eds) The Routledge Handbook of Visual Criminology. Abingdon: Routledge. South, N. & Brisman, A. eds. (2013) Routledge International Handbook of Green Criminology. London and New York: Routledge. South, N., Brisman, A. & Beirne, P. (2013) A guide to a green criminology. In South, N. & Brisman, A. (eds) Routledge International Handbook of Green Criminology: 27–42. London and New York: Routledge. Stanford Environmental Law Society (2001) The Endangered Species Act. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. White, R. (2013) Environmental Harm: An Eco-Justice Perspective. Bristol: Policy Press. Wilk, R. (2006) Bottled water: the pure commodity in the age of branding, Journal of Consumer Culture 6: 303–25. Wilson, E. O. (2004) The Future of Life. New York: Knopf. Wyatt, T. & Brisman, A. (2017) The role of denial in the “theft of nature”: a comparison of biopiracy and climate change. Critical Criminology 25(3): 325–41. DOI: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/ s10612-016-9344-5. Young, J. (1973) The hippy solution: an essay in the politics of leisure. In Taylor, I. & Taylor, L. (eds) Politics and Deviance. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Zimmer, C. (2013) Back to life, National Geographic 223(4): 28–43.

142

11 Convict criminology Stephen C. Richards, Jeffrey Ian Ross, Greg Newbold, Michael Lenza, and Robert S. Grigsby

Introduction Convict Criminology (CC) is a relatively new perspective in the fields of criminology and criminal justice. It provides an alternative to the way crime and criminal justice problems are analyzed and interpreted by researchers, policymakers, and politicians – many of whom have had minimal contact with jails, prisons, and convicts. As a result of its theoretical, methodological, and political aims it finds a natural home in the field of critical criminology. CC started because of the frustrations that an informal group of ex-convict professors (and graduate students) felt when reading the academic literature on crime, corrections and criminal justice. In their view, much of the published work on correctional facilities reflected the ideas of prison administrators, and largely ignored what convicts knew about the day-to-day realities of imprisonment. Many prison studies tended to approach the subject abstractly, or from secondary data sources, with little detail or differentiation among security levels, state or federal systems, or regional jurisdictions. When details were provided, for example on prison conditions or subculture within a prison, the data and sources were often outdated. Most studies were conducted without even entering the prison concerned or interviewing the prisoners. In response, these former prisoners, along with some allied critical criminologists, set out to do research that reflected a more hands-on analysis of prison reality. The emerging field of CC consists primarily of essays, articles and books written by critical criminologists, including convicts or ex-convict graduate students and professors. The Convict Criminologists challenge policies and practices, thus contributing new perspectives to the field of corrections in particular, and criminology in general.

What is a “convict criminologist”? Some areas within the academic study of crime and corrections have changed little since the pre-20th-century contributions of Bentham, Beccaria, and Lombroso. These scholars of criminology’s “classical” period saw crime as pathological and failed to consider the social, political and institutional contexts within which “criminal” behavior is defined. While many academic criminologists today are more circumspect, there is a tendency to identify with state-sponsored 143

Richards, Ross, Newbold, Lenza, and Grigsby

anti-crime agendas that target marginal populations for arrest, conviction, incarceration, rearrest, and reincarceration. One result of the social pathology approach is punitive criminal justice policies that have given the United States easily the largest per capita prison population in the western world. Today, approximately 2.2 million Americans are currently behind bars, with over 7 million under some form of correctional restraint or supervision. This breaks down to 1 in 31 American adults under criminal justice control. Such figures disproportionately impact minority populations: 1 in 27 Hispanics, 1 in 11 Blacks. On current trends, one in three Black males can expect to be imprisoned in their lifetime (Pew Center, 2009). By contrast, notwithstanding Edwin Sutherland’s breakthrough research on white-collar crime (Sutherland, 1940), we know that crimes committed by corporate elites and governments still go largely unprosecuted and unpunished. Thus, identifying, explaining, and critiquing the effects of race and/or class-based inequalities on crime causation and law enforcement practices is of considerable interest to our group. In general, a Convict Criminologist decides to join the group because he or she is interested in the way criminal defendants and prisoners perceive and experience the criminal justice system. Members may be convicts, ex-convicts, or “non-convicts.” Having a criminal record is not a precondition for CC membership. While Convict Criminology was originally conceived primarily for “convicts or ex-convicts, on their way to completing or already in possession of a Ph.D.” (Ross & Richards, 2003, p. 6), today the group also includes prison reform activists without these academic credentials who have decided to join because of their research interests, their publications, or their work in the community. Convict Criminologists’ collective intention is to do research that incorporates the experiences of prisoners and prison workers, and attempts to balance the conventional representations of media and governments. Without this countervailing approach, the production of knowledge will disproportionately reflect the views of criminal justice administrators against the perspectives of their clients. Unchallenged and unilateral ideological thinking undermines democratic principles and leads to misinformed policy making. While Convict Criminology recognizes that criminal justice systems are essential to healthy society, it also holds that excessively repressive law enforcement can compromise the welfare of individuals, families, communities, and ultimately the state as an independent arbiter of justice. Developing a broad, inclusive and balanced knowledge base is thus vital if we are to have crime control strategies that are humane, fair and effective.

Historical background Historically, there have been a number of ex-convicts who have worked at universities in a variety of disciplines. Most have chosen to “stay in the closet,” (i.e., remain silent about their criminal records) perhaps because their criminal histories were not relevant to their studies, or because they were afraid of negative reactions from colleagues or employers. They may have chosen to conceal their criminal records and prison experience because they were hired at universities that did not conduct criminal background searches. Beginning in the late 1990s, most universities, both public and private, began these searches for all new hires. One early exception was Frank Tannenbaum (1938), sometimes referred to as the “grandfather of labeling theory,” a Wobbly (Industrial Workers of the World) organizer, political activist, former federal prisoner, professor at Columbia University in the 1930s, and one of the first to openly identify as an ex-convict. Although Tannenbaum only served one year in prison, he had a successful career first as a journalist, then as a respected scholar (Yeager, 2016). Tannenbaum was a Columbia University Professor who openly used his prison experience to write and publish, which includes nearly 60 years of publications on crime and prison conditions, as well as civil rights and racial discrimination. 144

Convict criminology

Intellectually, the modern day origins of CC began with the published work of John Irwin, notably his books The Felon (1970), Prisons in Turmoil (1980), The Jail (1985), It’s About Time (with James Austin) (2001), The Warehouse Prison (2005), and Lifers (2009). Irwin served five years in prison for armed robbery in the 1950s. In the late 1960s, he was a student of David Matza and Erving Goffman (1961; 1963) as he worked on his PhD at UC Berkeley. Still, even as he became a prominent prison ethnographer and although many of his colleagues knew of his background, his ex-convict history was only apparent to the close reader of his texts. Nevertheless, Irwin was “out of the closet” so to speak, doing inside prison research but still nearly alone in his representation of the convict perspective. On the heels of Irwin came Richard McCleary who wrote Dangerous Men in 1978. This book came out of his experience and doctoral research, conducted when he was on parole from prison in Minnesota. McCleary, who served both state and federal time, went on to develop a wellrespected career as a quantitative criminologist at the University of California-Irvine. A decade later an influential Canadian academic journal began that specialized in publishing the work of convict and ex-convict authors. In 1987, after attending the third International Conference on Penal Abolition held in Montreal in 1987, Canadian criminologists, Robert Gaucher, Howard Davidson and Liz Elliot were concerned about the lack of prisoner participation. As a partial response, they started The Journal of Prisoners on Prisons (JPP) in 1988. A year later, joined by Brian D. MacLean, JPP brought out its first issue and by 2017 had published over 25 volumes featuring convict authors and other critical writers. In spite of these developments, during the 1980s there were very few ex-convict professors apart from Irwin and McCleary, or scholarly publications such as JPP. Although the prison population grew significantly during the 1970s and 1980s, only a handful of ex-convicts completed PhDs in sociology, criminology, or criminal justice. By the late 1980s, however, Irwin was aware of a growing number of convicts who were gaining advanced degrees while in prison or after they got out. At the 1989 American Society of Criminology (ASC) meetings in Reno, he spoke to New Zealand-based ex-convict professor Greg Newbold about the need for educated former prisoners to get together and start producing material that reflected their unique experience. Irwin talked about it regularly from that time forth. In 1997, Chuck Terry (then a PhD student at UC-Irvine) complained to his professor Joan Petersilia about “the failure of criminologists to recognize the dehumanizing conditions of the criminal justice system and the lives of those defined as criminal.” Petersilia suggested that Terry put together a session for the 1997 ASC conference. Terry invited ex-convict professors John Irwin, Stephen Richards, Edward Tromanhauser, and PhD student Alan Mobley to participate in a session entitled “Convicts Critique Criminology: The Last Seminar.” This was the first time a collection of ex-convict academics had appeared openly on the same panel at a national conference. The session drew a large audience including national media. That evening, over dinner, James Austin, John Irwin, Stephen Richards, and Chuck Terry discussed the importance and possibilities of ex-con professors working together to conduct “inside studies” of prisons and other criminological matters. This group and the scholarly work they produced eventually became known as “convict criminology.” In the spring of 1998, Richards spoke with Jeffrey Ian Ross, a former prison worker currently with the University of Baltimore, about the possibility of editing a book using manuscripts produced by ex-con academics. Almost immediately, Ross and Richards sent out formal invitations to ex-convict professors and graduate students, and well-known critical authors of work on corrections. In short order, a proposal was written that would eventually result in the book, Convict Criminology (2003). In 1998, at the ASC’s 50th annual meeting in Washington DC, Richards, Terry, and another ex-con professor Rick Jones, appeared on a panel honoring Richard Quinney, the famous critical 145

Richards, Ross, Newbold, Lenza, and Grigsby

criminologist. Meanwhile, the group used the conference as an opportunity to find and recruit additional ex-convict professors and graduate students. Dan Murphy and Rick Jones joined the group. The following year at the ASC meeting in Toronto, Stephen Richards organized the first official sessions entitled Convict Criminology. The two sessions, Convict Criminology: An Introduction to the Movement, Theory, and Research–Part I and Part II, included ex-convict professors Richards, Irwin, Tromanhauser, and Greg Newbold; ex-convict graduate students Terry, Murphy, Warren Gregory, Susan Dearing, and Nick Mitchell; and, “non-con” colleagues Jeffrey Ian Ross, Bruce Arrigo, Bud Brown, Randy Shelden, Preston Elrod, Mike Brooks, and Marianne FisherGiorlando. A number of the papers presented in these two sessions were early versions of chapters that were later published in Convict Criminology. From here, the activities of the group continued to expand, and by 2010, nearly 30 CC sessions had taken place at major criminology/criminal justice and sociology conferences. It was Stephen Richards and Jeffrey Ian Ross who coined the term, “Convict Criminology.” In 2001, they published the article “The New School of Convict Criminology” in the journal Social Justice, discussing the birth and definition of CC and outlining the parameters of the movement and its research perspective. In 2003, they published Convict Criminology, which included chapters by the founding members of the group. The book’s Foreword was written by Todd Clear, the Preface by John Irwin, and it contained eight chapters by ex-convict criminologists (Tromanhauser, Terry, Richards, Newbold, Lanier, Jones, Mobley, and Murphy), and eight more by “non-con” colleagues writing about jail and prison issues. For example Jim Austin, a wellknown prison research policy analyst, wrote a chapter about how so-called science had been used to justify the “imprisonment bing” (Austin & Irwin, 2001). Barbara Owen, a leading feminist criminologist, contributed a chapter on women in prison, and Brue Arrigo contributed a chapter on the mentally ill in confinement. This was the first time ex-convict academics had appeared in a book together which included discussion of the authors’ own criminal convictions, their time in prison, and their experiences in graduate school and as university professors. In 2008, an ASC Presidential Plenary Convict Criminology Session was held, featuring Dave Curry, John Irwin, Stephen Richards, and Jeffrey Ian Ross. In 2009, Rick Jones, Jeffrey Ian Ross, Stephen Richards and Daniel Murphy published the article “The First Dime: A Decade of Convict Criminology” in The Prison Journal. In 2012 JPP published a special double issue co-edited by Stephen Richards and Michael Lenza with the title Special Issue on the 15th Anniversary of Convict Criminology (Richards & Lenza, 2012). In the tradition of Irwin and McCleary, ex-convict criminologists have added a number of significant ethnographically-informed studies to the literature. Charles Terry, a former California and Oregon state convict, wrote about heroin addicts in The Fellas. Greg Newbold wrote the New Zealand bestseller The Big Huey about his five years inside, followed by Punishment and Politics, Crime and Deviance, Crime in New Zealand, The Girls in the Gang (with Glennis Dennehy) and The Problem of Prisons, all of which have analyzed crime and corrections in his country. Stephen C. Richards and Richard S. Jones, both former prisoners, used “inside experience” to impel their studies of prisoners returning home. Finally, Jeffrey Ian Ross and Stephen C. Richards co-authored Behind Bars and Beyond Bars, and co-edited Convict Criminology.

Convict Criminologists in 2017 The CC group today is informally organized as a voluntary writing and activist collective. There is no formal membership or assignment of leadership roles. Different members inspire or take responsibility for assorted functions, for example lead author on academic articles, research proposals, or program assessments, or mentoring students and junior faculty, or taking 146

Convict criminology

responsibility for speaking to the media. The group continues to grow as more prisoners exit prison to attend universities, hear about the group, and decide to contribute to activities. Typically, new members “come out” when they are introduced to the academic community at ASC or ACJS conferences. Today, the former prisoners of the CC Group can be roughly divided into four categories. The first consists of the more senior members, all associate or full professors, some of whom have distinguished research records. The second group consists of recent PhD recipients who have recently entered the profession or are still looking for jobs. This group is just beginning to contribute to the research field. Within the third group are graduate student ex-convicts, some still in prison but nonetheless anticipating academic careers. The third group consists of men and women behind bars who already hold advanced degrees and publish academic work about crime and corrections. A number have sole- or co-authored books, have written articles alone or with “free world” academics, and are better published than many professors. A fourth group includes former prisoners working for community organizations while participating in CC research and publication. In 2017, the CC group included men and women ex-con academics from Australia, Canada, Finland (see Ekunwe & Jones, 2011), France, New Zealand, Sweden, United Kingdom (see Ross et al., 2014; Aresti & Darke, 2016; Earle, 2016), and the United States. The U.S., with the largest prison population in the western world, continues to contribute the most members. Founded and developed in the U.S., the CC Group now includes a new chapter in the United Kingdom.

Comparing the “convict perspective” and the “convict criminology perspective” Historically, convict authors have written many highly respected books about prison, and composed a vast number of short pieces for periodicals and newspapers. This work has served to illuminate prison conditions for both academics and the public. In addition, about the time Convict Criminology first appeared, several book publishers began accepting manuscripts written by prisoners alone or assisted by established academics (e.g., Carceral, 2004; Johnson & Toch, 2000). These works usually included academic editors writing companion pieces, at least a Preface or a Foreword that linked the prisoners’ writing to relevant research. Nevertheless, being a convict writer in prison does not make him or her a Convict Criminologist; the “Convict Perspective” and the “Convict Criminology Perspective” are two separate entities. While most convict authors in prison understand their immediate environment only too well, they may have little or only dated knowledge of the “free world,” and limited access to academic research material. Thus, they may have difficulty tying their writing to extant academic literature. For example, they have no access to the Internet and rare if any access to university or public libraries. As prisoners, they are confined by both space and time and may only know about prison conditions in a few institutions. This means they may have knowledge of only one prison system (national, federal or state), or one security level (low, medium, high). They may also be unable to comprehend how their own incarceration will impact upon them over time or after their release. By comparison, the convict criminologist perspective provides a more eclectic view of how the penal apparatus impacts society. While the experiential foundation remains, the writing incorporates empirical research as well as the informed observations of “non-cons” who may have conducted research inside many penal institutions and studied the prison literature for years. Incorporating a range of perspectives enables the convict criminologist to better understand discrete phenomena as part of a larger overall picture. 147

Richards, Ross, Newbold, Lenza, and Grigsby

Activities of the CC group The CC group mentors students, organizes sessions at conferences, collaborates on research projects, co-authors articles and monographs, helps organize and support numerous groups and activities related to criminal justice reform, provides consulting services and organizes workshops for criminal defense attorneys, correctional organizations, and universities. For example, some members of the group have worked on major prison research projects in California, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, and Ohio. In New Zealand, Greg Newbold has served 13 government policy agencies either as a consultant or as a bona fide member and is frequently called as an expert witness in criminal trials. Collectively, the group has published books, journal articles, and book chapters using “autoethnographic” or “insider” perspectives. Private foundations, including the Soros Foundation Open Society Institute, have generously supported some CC activities, including conference presentations, research and publication of books (Richards, 2015a). Individuals may serve as consultants or leadership for community groups working on prison issues or legislation. Some local and national media are interested in how convicts become professors and in their insider expertise, and frequently interview group members. Since this is a powerful way of dispelling popular myths about crime, criminals, and the criminal justice system, it is important that convict criminologists become “media savvy” and learn how to answer questions in a clear, direct, informed and concise way. The media love “good talent,” and journalists will continually return to interviewees who provide them with useful copy. Media stories about the group have appeared in print in many countries. Most CC members mentor students with criminal records at their respective universities. In doing so, they assist these individuals with the difficult task of adjusting to the effect that a criminal past may have on their hopes for academic programs and careers. Assistance may include parole board appearances, academic advising, emotional support, and/or preparation for employment or admission to graduate programs. Many group members also act as role models or advisors for convicts doing time or ex-convicts who might be thinking about attending university. This mentoring of convicts is one of the convict criminologist’s most important roles. In a country like the United States, where more than 500,000 men and women get out of prison every year, there is a large potential population of former prisoners attending universities. Unfortunately, students with felony conviction or prison record receive very little support at universities. Most universities provide academic advisors and counselors for at-risk groups. This usually includes an office for university staff that specialize in advising women, minorities, disabled persons, and or military veterans. The CC Group recommends that universities also hire ex-convict counselors to assist convicted felons and former prisoners with their academic endevors. As a consequence of this work, CC is now being taught in universities as well as in some prisons, providing a perspective that may be used as part or all of a course, or simply integrated throughout. In Wisconsin, a program called “Inviting Convicts to College” has been in place since 2004, training pairs of undergraduate intern instructors to go inside prisons to teach a free college program entitled “convict criminology.” The course uses the book Convict Criminology, donated by the publisher, to inspire the prisoners. Classes are taught two hours per week, for 14 weeks, and are supervised by ex-convict professors. Prisoners exiting prison use the course as a bridge to entering college, with the final weeks including instruction on completing university admission and financial aid forms. The prisoners soon learn that admission to college and financial aid grants and loans can be a viable parole plan. The program has 148

Convict criminology

already helped a number of prisoners to enter universities, where they receive ongoing advice and mentoring from members of the CC group.

Ethnographic methodologies: insider perspectives The valuable contributions of CC continue to grow as numerous articles and books based on its perspective are added to the literature on criminology and criminal justice. This includes works discussing or employing ethnographic methods (Newbold & Ross, 2013; Newbold et al., 2014; Richards, 2015a, 2015b; Ross et al., 2016). Today, after 20 years of collective hard work, many textbooks in the field include chapters or sections on the subject. The CC group emphasizes the use of direct observation and “real-life” experience in understanding the various processes, procedures, and institutional settings that comprise the criminal justice system. The methodology includes correspondence with prisoners, face-to-face interviews, retrospective interpretation of experiences, and direct observation inside correctional facilities. The group is especially skilled in gaining entry to prisons, writing research questions, composing interview questionnaires in language that convicts can understand, and in analyzing prison records and statistics. CC specializes in “on site” ethnographic research where a researcher’s previous experience with imprisonment informs his or her work. Through familiarity with the carceral environment, investigators are comfortable interviewing in penitentiary cellblocks, in community penal facilities, or on street corners, using a methodology that may include a combination of survey instruments, structured interviews, informal observation and casual conversation. As former prisoners, convict criminologists know the “walk” and “talk” of the prisoners, how to gain the confidence of men and women who live inside and how to interpret what they say. They also know prison rules and regulations and require less prison staff time for orientation and supervision. As a result, they have earned a reputation for collecting interesting, useful, and sometimes controversial data.

Critiques of language The group is deliberately careful about the type of terminology it uses, recognizing the powerful effect of rhetoric on our perceptions of people and situations (Richards, 1998, 2009). Official terms, like “correction” (imprisonment), “adjustment” (segregation), “behavior management” (solitary confinement), and “control and restraint” (bashing/gassing/electrocuting/handcuffing) are a way that prison administrators sanitize some of the less savory functions they perform. Convict Criminologists are conscious of this and try not to use misleading euphemisms in their writing. Conversely, there is also a lexicon of negative popular terminology of which we are equally aware. Referring to someone as a “robber,” a “burglar,” a “murderer,” or a “rapist,” for example, often conjures up misleading stereotypical images created by sensationalistic fiction. The world is not easily dichotomized into “bad guys” and “good guys” as some television cop shows or action movies might imply. In the real world, people who work or have lived with felons are often surprised at the reserve, sensitivity, gentility and good humor of people who may have been convicted in the past of serious crimes. Working on the principle that a person is more than the worst thing they ever did, convict criminologists try to avoid referring to people in terms of the crime they were convicted of, as if this were their master status. Rather, if we do allude to a person’s criminal conviction, it is usually in terms of the act itself, rather than as a component of identity. In prison, convict criminologists learned that it 149

Richards, Ross, Newbold, Lenza, and Grigsby

takes time to get to know someone, and that a crime may indicate little about a person’s core character and values.

CC policy recommendations In terms of policy initiatives, CC has two general orientations. First, we wish to see a cessation of what Jim Austin and John Irwin (2001) have called the “‘imprisonment binge”’ in America, which began in the 1980s and has caused the national jail and prison population to more than double since 1990. The result has seen millions of citizens incarcerated, with immense cost to taxpayers in terms of prison construction, operation and maintenance, overcrowded courts, overworked parole and probation authorities, and overburdened welfare/social service agencies to which befalls the task of supporting fatherless families. The reasons for the hike in prison numbers are well known and have little to do with crime rates. At the base of the problem are certain elements within the mass media that tend to exaggerate and sensationalize crime in the quest of increasing their market share of reader- or viewer-ship. Citizens startled by the specter of a “crime wave” encourage politicians to outbid their opponents for votes, and attempt to allay public fears by promising to lock criminals up for long periods of time. Draconian enforcement and sentencing laws (e.g., “broken windows” and “three strikes”) have caused hundreds of thousands of petty offenders to receive prison sentences disproportionate to their crimes. These laws have been complemented by the imposition of long parole periods after release, with strict conditions, rigorous monitoring and hair-trigger violation components. By these mechanisms, released prisoners may be summarily returned to prison for breaking rules of supervision as trivial as having a beer or living at an unapproved address. The jails and prisons of the nation are increasingly being filled up with petty violators of this type, who, after years of crime-free liberty, can suddenly lose their jobs, marriages, and homes, because of an unexpected visit from a gung-ho parole officer. Living with the Sword of Damocles suspended so precariously over their heads adds markedly to the stressful lives of parolees and decreases their ability to “make it” in the community. The second orientation of the CC Group concerns jail and prison conditions. Partially as a result of burgeoning correctional populations, rising incarceration costs, crowded institutions and a thinning of resources, prison conditions have deteriorated. Budgets have tightened and many prison programs have disappeared. In addition, a paper written by Robert Martinson in 1974, which argued that “nothing works” in prison reform, added weight to arguments that spending money on programs is a waste of time. This encouraged many American jurisdictions, already struggling under the weight of heavy population increases, to abandon programs and invest instead in security. Thus, many prisons became warehouses (Irwin, 2005) for felons, where criminals are essentially kept in cold storage until they are paroled or their sentences expire. Unprepared for life in the real world after years of stagnation in the artificial environment of the prison, it is little wonder that so many are unable to survive upon release and end up back inside. These kinds of critical issue are grist to the mill of the convict criminologist. They are committed to understanding and attempting to remedy the processes, which have given the “Land of the Free” the largest, and fastest-growing prison population, in the history of the western world. And within the context of the prison itself, they share a determination to expose and address a carceral environment which, ostensibly created to rehabilitate prisoners, in fact produces social and economic cripples whose chances of return to a felonious lifestyle are enhanced. 150

Convict criminology

Thus, in pursuit of the first objective, the CC Group advocates dramatic reductions in the national prison population through attenuating the list of crimes that get people sent to prison, a review of sentence lengths, and an examination of the parole system. We argue for imprisonment only as a last resort for serious crimes, a cut in overall sentence length, and restrictions on the power of parole boards to arbitrarily revoke parole for petty violations. In pursuit of the second objective, convict criminologists support the closing of large-scale penitentiaries and reformatories where prisoners are warehoused in massive cellblocks. Over many decades, the design and operation of these “big house” prisons has dehumanized inmates and resulted in high levels of intimidation, serious assault, and sexual predation. As is the case in many other advanced industrialized countries, a reduced prison population housed in smaller institutions could be accomplished by constructing or redesigning prison units with single cells or rooms. In small correctional facilities, with populations less than 500, where prisoners are held in single-celled units of no more than 50, maintaining control and security is easier and the incidence of sexual predation is close to zero. A number of European countries follow a similar model. In addition to the above, we need to listen carefully to prisoner complaints about bad food, shabby uniforms, ineffective room temperature control, inadequate vocational and education programs, and institutional violence. The list grows longer when we take a careful look at how these conditions contribute to prisoners being poorly prepared to reenter the community and the large number that return to prison. Rehabilitative, vocational, and educational programs that dissolved after the population boom began in the 1980s need to be reactivated. Prisoners should be provided with opportunities for better paid institutional employment, advanced vocational training, higher education, and family skills development. Although it is true that most institutions have “token” programs that serve a small number of prisoners – for example, a prison may have paid jobs for 20 percent of its prisoners, low-tech training like kitchen work or landscaping, a GED program, and occasional classes in life skills or group therapy – the great problem is that these services are limited in scope and availability. Another matter that concerns convict criminologist is voting rights. The United States is one of the few advanced industrial countries that denies most prisoners and felons voting rights. We suggest that if men and women incarcerated in prison could vote, many of the recommendations we advocate would become policy because the politicians would be forced to campaign for convict and felon votes. State and federal governments will only notice the conditions in our correctional facilities when prisoners and felons become voters. We would not expect prisoners to be any less interested than free persons in exercising their right to vote. To the contrary, if polling booths were installed in jails and prisons, we think the voter turnout would be higher than in most outside communities. In order to prevent relapses into criminal offenses caused by desperation, we advocate that prisoners released from prison should have enough “gate money” to allow them to pay for up to three months rent and food. They could earn some of this money working in prison industries, with the balance provided by the state. All persons exiting correctional institutions should have clothing suitable for the climate and applying for employment, eye glasses (if needed), and identification (social security card, state ID or driver’s license), and a copy of their institutional medical records). Finally, perhaps our most controversial policy recommendation is that of eliminating the “snitch” system in prison. The snitch system is used by “guards” to supplement their surveillance of convicts. It is used to control prisoners by turning them against each other, and contributes to institutional violence. If our recommendations for a smaller population, housed in single cells, 151

Richards, Ross, Newbold, Lenza, and Grigsby

with better food and clothing, voting rights, and well-funded institutional programming were implemented, the snitch system would become redundant. Small units are easier to manage than large populous ones and the demoralizing and dangerous cooptation of snitch inmates to assist in operational functions becomes unnecessary.

Ongoing activities In our recent self-assessment of the first ten years of CC (see Jones et al., 2009; also www. convictcriminology.org) we found a broad range of books and articles written by convict criminologists that provide new insights into how criminal justice systems impact individuals, families, and communities. Our research shows how criminal justice systems utilize their capacity for arbitrary rule-making to create “perpetual incarceration machines” (Richards & Jones, 1997; 2004) through revoking paroles for activity unrelated to criminal conduct. We are mentoring a new generation of ex-convict academics by developing new educational programs within prisons. Our work helps other academics and activists to recognize and reduce the harms caused by misuse of the criminal justice system. In particular, we are interested in research on the devastating impacts of mass incarceration on communities (Clear, 2007), and in the development of more effective ways of dealing with the crime problem (Lengyel & Brown, 2009; Lengyel, 2006). Prison and parole is not our only focus. Our group has expanded on its expertise to research and publish on medical marijuana and its potential for treatment of alcoholics (Lenza, 2007), on white collar crime (Newbold & Ivory, 1993), organized crime (Newbold, 1998), gun control (Newbold, 1999),women in gangs (Dennehy & Newbold, 2001), gender differentiation in court sentencing (Jeffries, Fletcher & Newbold, 2003), policing and gender (Winfree, Butler & Newbold, 2003), policing domestic violence (Cross & Newbold, 2010), on research ethics (Lenza, 2004), criminal records as a barrier to employment (Murphy et al., 2011; Murphy, Richards, & Fuleihan, 2012) and on the death penalty (Newbold, 1990; Williams et al., 2014).

Conclusion In 1997, CC was born of our frustration with the sparse attention to reality we found in academic criminology. We now call the founding group, the first generation, CC 1.0, with the second generation being CC 2.0. Even as some of the early members have passed away or retired the group grows as we added more ex-cons, including more women and minorities, as well as hundreds of “non-cons” that collaborate with our efforts to improve our academic disciplines with a heavy dose of badly needed reality (Richards, 2013). John Irwin once remarked that 50 years from now historians will look back to these times and wonder what criminologists were doing while millions of Americans were locked up in cages for mostly non-violent behavior. Maybe they will write histories about the criminal justice holocaust, of the pain and suffering human beings were forced to endure, while academics gave lectures and wrote books that supported the slow-motion destruction of surplus population. Since the conception of the CC group 20 years ago, there has been a steady increase in the number of ex-con academics willing to step forward and become a part of it. In doing so they show a willingness to challenge the taken-for-granted, and offer fresh insights into some of the oldest questions in sociology and criminology/criminal justice. At a personal level, the group provides mutual support for graduate students or junior faculty who decide to “come out” and share their first-hand experiences with the criminal justice system. As the group grows and these 152

Convict criminology

accounts accumulate, a more complete and relatively current picture of modern prison is beginning to emerge (see Jones & Schmid, 2000; Ross & Richards, 2002, 2009; Terry, 2003; Irwin, 2005, 2009; Newbold, 2007; Tregea, 2014; Richards 2015a, 2015b). Members of the group are able to write with authority about what they observed or experienced in prisons located in different states and different countries. The CC literature is now being cited regularly in textbooks and academic journals, as appreciation for experience-driven or “autoenthnographic,” research grows. The “New School of Convict Criminology” (Ross & Richards, 2003: pp. 1–14) assists critical scholars of the prison to cast light on the inner recesses of the criminal justice machine, illuminating mechanisms whose only real function seems to be the confinement of millions of men and women in cages. The CC collective thus encourages the exploration of alternative explanations and remedies to the crime problem, which emanate from different perspectives drawn from the extraordinary experiences of its membership.

References Aresti, A., & Darke, S. (2016). Practicing convict criminology: Lessons learned from British academic activism. Critical Criminology, 24(4), 533–547. Austin, J., & Irwin, J. (2001). It’s About Time: America’s Imprisonment Binge. Belmont, CA: Thomson Learning. Bernard, T. J., Alarid L. F., Bikle, B., & Bikle, A. (2004). Behind a Convict’s Eyes. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Carceral, K. C. (edited by Bernard, T. J., Alarid L. F., Bikle, B., & Bikle, A.) (2004). Behind a Convict’s Eyes. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Clear, T. R. (2007). Imprisoning Communities: How Mass Incarceration Makes Disadvantaged Neighborhoods Worse. New York: Oxford University Press. Cross, J., & Newbold, G. (2010). Presumptive arrest in partner assault: Use of discretion and problems of compliance in the New Zealand Police. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 43, 51–75. Dennehy, G., & Newbold, G. (2001). The Girls in the Gang. Auckland, NZ: Reed. Earle, R. (2016). Convict Criminology: Inside and Out. Bristol: Policy Press. Ekunwe, I. O., & Jones, R. S. (Eds) (2011). Global Perspectives on Re-Entry. Tampere, Finland: University of Tampere Press. Goffman, I. (1961). Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books. Goffman, I. (1963). Stigma: Notes on the Management of a Spoiled Identity. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Irwin, J. (1970). The Felon. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Irwin, J. (1980). Prisons in Turmoil. Boston: Little Brown. Irwin, J. (1985). The Jail. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Irwin, J. (2005). The Warehouse Prison: Disposal of the New Dangerous Class: Los Angeles: Roxbury. Irwin, J. (2009). Lifers: Seeking Redemption in Prison. London: Routledge. Jeffries, S., Fletcher, G., & Newbold, G. (2003). Pathways to sex-based differentiation in criminal court sentencing. Criminology, 41, 701–722. Johnson, R., & Toch, H. (2000). Crime and Punishment: Inside Views. Los Angeles: Roxbury. Jones, R. S., & Schmid, T. (2000). Doing Time: Prison Experience and Identity Among First Time Inmates. Stamford, CT: JAI Press. Jones, R. S., Ross, J. I., Richards, S. C., & Murphy, D. S. (2009). The first dime: A decade of Convict Criminology. The Prison Journal, 89, 151–171. Lengyel, T. E. (September 2006). Spreading the pain: The social cost of incarcerating parents. www.convict criminology.org/downloads.html. Lengye, T. E., & Brown, M. (August 2009). Everyone pays: A social cost analysis of incarcerating parents for drug offenses in Hawaii. www.convictcriminology.org/downloads.html. Lenza, M. (2004). Controversies surrounding Laud Humphreys’ Tearoom Trade: An unsettling example of politics and power in methodological critiques. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 24, 20–31. Lenza, M. (2007). Toking their way sober: Alcoholics and marihuana as folk medicine. Contemporary Justice Review, 10(3), 307–322. 153

Richards, Ross, Newbold, Lenza, and Grigsby

Martinson, R. (1974). What works? Questions about prison reform. The Public Interest, 35, 22–54. McCleary, R. (1978). Dangerous Men: The Sociology of Parole. New York: Harrow and Heston. Murphy, D. S., Richards, S. C., & Fuleihan, B. (2012). Policy options to mitigate the criminal record barrier to employment. Special Issue on the 15th Anniversary of Convict Criminology. The Journal of Prisoners on Prisons, 21(1 & 2), 90–104. Murphy, D. S., Fuleihan, B., Richards, S. C., & Jones, R. S. (2011). The electronic “scarlet letter”: Criminal backgrounding and a perpetual spoiled identity. Journal of Offender Rehabilitation, 50(3), 101–118. Newbold, G. (1982). The Big Huey. Auckland, NZ: Collins. Newbold, G. (1989). Punishment and Politics: The Maximum Security Prison in New Zealand. Auckland, NZ: Oxford University Press. Newbold, G. (1990). Capital punishment in New Zealand: An experiment that failed. Deviant Behavior, 11, 155–174. Newbold, G. (1992). Crime and Deviance. Auckland, NZ: Oxford University Press. Newbold, G. (1998). The emergence of organized crime in New Zealand. Transnational Organized Crime, 3, 73–94. Newbold, G. (1999). The criminal use of firearms in New Zealand. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 32, 61–78. Newbold, G. (2000). Crime in New Zealand. Palmerston, NZ: Dunmore. Newbold, G. (2007). The Problem of Prisons. Wellington, NZ: Dunmore. Newbold, G., & Ivory, R. (1993). Policing serious fraud in New Zealand. Crime, Law and Social Change, 20, 233–248. Newbold, G., & Ross, J. I. (2013). Convict criminology at the crossroads research note. The Prison Journal, 93(1), 3–10. Newbold, G., Ross, J. I., Jones, R. S., Richards, S. C., & Lenza, M. (2014). Prison research from the inside: The role of convict auto-ethnography. Qualitative Inquiry, 20(4), 439–448. Pew Center on the States (2009). One in 31: The long reach of American corrections. Washington, DC: The Pew Charitable Trusts, March 2009. Richards, S. C. (1998). Critical and radical perspectives on community punishment: Lessons from the darkness. In J. I. Ross (Ed.), Cutting the Edge: Current Perspectives in Radical/Critical Criminology and Criminal Justice (pp. 122–144). New York: Praeger. Richards, S. C. (2009). A convict perspective on community punishment: Further lessons from the darkness of prison. In J. I. Ross (ed.), Cutting the Edge: Current Perspectives in Radical/Critical Criminology and Criminal Justice, 2nd edn. (pp. 122–144). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Richards, S. C. (2013). The new school of convict criminology thrives and matures. Critical Criminology, 21(3), 375–387. Richards, S. C. (2015a). The Marion Experiment: Long-Term Solitary Confinement and the Supermax Movement. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. Richards, S. C. (2015b). USP Marion: A few prisoners summon the courage to speak. In Johnson, R. (Ed.), Special Issue “Rough Justice: Penal Sanctions, Human Dignity, and Human Rights.” Laws, 4(1), 91–106. Richards, S. C., & Jones, R. S. (1997). Perpetual incarceration machine: Structural impediments to postprison success. The Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, 13(1), 4–22. Richards, S. C., & Jones, R. S. (2004). Beating the perpetual incarceration machine. In S. Maruna, & R. Immarigeon (Eds), After Crime and Punishment: Pathways to Offender Reintegration (pp. 201–232). London: Willan Publishers. Richards, S. C., & Lenza, M. (2012). Editors’ introduction: The first nickel and dime of Convict Criminology. Special Issue on the 15th Anniversary of Convict Criminology. The Journal of Prisoners on Prisons, 21, 1 & 2.a, 2015b. Richards, S. C., & Ross, J. I. (2001). The new school of convict criminology. Social Justice, 28(1), 177–190. Ross, J. I., & Richards, S. C. (2002). Behind Bars: Surviving Prison. New York: Alpha/Penguin Group. Ross, J. I., & Richards, S. C. (2003). Convict Criminology. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Ross, J. I., & Richards, S. C. (2009). Beyond Bars: Rejoining Society After Prison. New York: Alpha/Penguin Group. Ross, J. I., Jones R. S., Lenza, M., & Richards, S. C., (2016). Convict Criminology and the struggle for inclusion. Critical Criminology, 24(4), 489–501. Ross, J. I., Darke, S., Aresti, A., Newbold, G., & Earle, R. (2014). Developing convict criminology beyond North America. International Criminal Justice Review, 24(2), 121–133. Sutherland, E. H. (1940). White collar criminality. American Sociological Review, 5, 1–12. 154

Convict criminology

Tannenbaum, F. (1938). Crime and the Community. New York: Columbia University Press. Terry, C. M. (2003). The Fellas: Overcoming Prison and Addiction. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Tregea, W. S. (2014). Prisoners on Criminology: Convict Life Stories and Crime Prevention. London: Lexington Books. Williams, D. J., Bischoff, D., Casey, T., & Burnett, J. (2014). “Mom, they are going to kill my dad!” A personal narrative on capital punishment from a convict criminology perspective. Critical Criminology, 22(3), 389–401. Winfree, T., Butler, E., & Newbold, G. (2003). Policing and gender: Male and female perspectives among members of the New Zealand Police. Police Quarterly, 6, 298–329. Yeager, M. G. (2016). Frank Tannenbaum: The Making of a Convict Criminologist. New York: Routledge.

155

12 Postmodern criminology Dragan Milovanovic

Introduction A postmodern orientation, with its epicenter in France in the late 1960s and 1970s, was to develop as a reaction to Enlightenment thought. The inherited assumptions of linearity, logic, rationality, a centered subject as the center of action, the neutrality of language and the desirability of order were to be questioned. A new paradigm was underway. The first wave of postmodernist thinkers was to emerge from France. Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard, Deleuze and Guattari, Lacan, Baudrillard, Cixous, Kristeva, and Irigaray, amongst others, were to rethink ontology and epistemology. Jacques Lacan was especially important in the first wave. His annual Seminars on a revisionist Freudianism of 1950s to 1980, were to be extremely influential. Coming to terms with Lacan was essential for the first wave. The second wave, particularly in the late 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s, was to further these developments. They were to apply them to various fields, two of which were criminology and law. The last decade has witnessed incorporation of their many insights while also showing a notable decline in outright singular “postmodern” analysis in criminology. Recently, a paradigm shift is taking place to a process-informational orientation rooted in quantum mechanics and holography. Affirmative postmodern criminology provides critical challenges to the modernist framework. Among the most salient, arguing for: 1 the non-neutrality of language (language speaks the subject); 2 the emphasis on non-linear logic (such as in genealogical analysis developed by Nietzsche and refined further by Foucault) where surprise, contingent, emergents, and the unpredictable are celebrated; 3 the decentered subject (in opposition to the ideological laden notion of the “individual”) – the person is less determining than suggested by Enlightenment thought (hence notions of causation and responsibility must be rethought); 4 a movement away from a more Hegelian and Lacanian notion of “desire” as response to “lack” to a notion of desire as production, as an active search for connection and transformation, as in the work of Deleuze and Guattari (1987); 5 the growing sensitivity to the “dialectic of struggle” (whereby otherwise well-intentioned activists inadvertently reconstitute hierarchy, as in the case of political correctness, reversal of 156

Postmodern criminology

6

7 8 9 10

11 12 13 14

hierarchies, hate politics, and even creation of categories of distinctions that manifestly are political calls for action and identificatory politics); the importance of challenging the inherent desirability of formal rationality (of bureaucracies and law) at the expense of substantive rational principles (e.g. an ethics of care, a justice of the Other, the needs/abilities principle, etc.); the resurrection of denied, marginalized or co-opted voices (e.g., the “différand”); the notion of co-production, we both create and are the products of our creations; alternative definitions of social injury, as apposed to the “legalistic,” identifying institutionalized investments in hierarchy, harms of repression and reduction; the concern with the ever-increasing use of mechanisms of surveillance, disciplinary mechanism, and information-control, and the increasing ubiquitous, unilateral, and more hidden forms of subjugation as a consequence of “fighting crime”; alternative conceptions of justice both in retributivist or distributivist form; new visions of an alternative, transformative justice and socius; a reconceptualization of the agent and “objects” as a multiplexity (quantum superposition), a wave-particle duality, finding instantiation only with the collapse of the wave function; and, more recently, a rethinking of information-construction, storaging, accessing, and creations of reality by way of quantum and holography theory.

The second wave Affirmative postmodern criminology has witnessed several perspectives. Some of the more salient include: chaos theory; discourse analysis, particularly psychoanalytic semiotics; catastrophe theory; edgework; and forms of constitutive criminology. They have been applied to diverse areas. We briefly list key concepts of each, followed by some applications that have taken place in postmodern criminology.

i. Chaos theory (dynamic systems theory) Is there something to the otherwise outlandish assertion that a butterfly flapping its wings in Warren, Ohio can produce a tornado in Kansas? Chaos theory says yes. It suggests both order and disorder, free will and determinism, stability and creative, and transformative change. Key concepts include: nonlinear change (identified are “jumps,” feedback loops, non incremental change); disproportional effects (small inputs upon iteration can produce large unforeseen consequences); phase maps (dynamic systems can be portrayed in two or more dimensional diagrams reflecting the key determinants, or degrees of freedom, and how they relate to each other over time); attractor basins (dynamic systems tend toward particular rest states identified as point, periodic, torus, and Lorenz attractors); bifurcation (early studies on predicting gypsy moth populations indicate that at key moments called singularities the system’s output diverges); bifurcation diagrams (key input variables and the control parameter are located on this generic schema and then trajectories are developed to see what possible consequences follow e.g., period doubling, attractors, order out of disorder); fractal geometry (Euclidean geometry privileges 0, 1, 2, 3 dimensional space, whereas fractal geometry explains that there are an infinite number of dimensions between whole integers); emergents/dissipative structures (they are highly sensitive to their environment and unlike institutional and bureaucratic structures, a very small input can dramatically change the momentarily formed structure) (Byrne and Callaghan, 2015). Applications have been to: social problems (Young, 1997); juvenile crime and embezzlement (Milovanovic, 2003); organized crime (Besley, 2010; Madsen, 2007); development of a social 157

Dragan Milovanovic

reality of crime (Forker, 1997); violence (Pepinsky, 1997); causes of crime, youth justice, policing, probation and jurisprudence (Pycroft & Bartollas, 2014); policing practices (Verma, 1998); terrorism (Elliot & Kiel, 2004); decision making in law (Brion, 1991; Schum, 1994; Schulman, 1997); the insanity defense (Williams & Arigo, 2001); and a postmodern methodology (Walters, 1999, 2007).

ii. Discourse analysis At least three prominent schools of thought have arisen in criminology and studies in social control: those drawing inspiration from Ferdinand de Saussure, such as Jacques Lacan, a revisionist Freudian; those drawing from Greimas, such as Bernard Jackson and Bobby Kevelson; and those drawing inspiration from C. S. Peirce, Bergson, and Hjelmslev, such as Gilles Deleuze. Postmodernists have generally drawn inspiration from the first and increasingly from the third. Key concepts include: the couplet, signifier (the acoustic-image, i.e., “tree”) and signified (the concept, i.e., the image of a tree); linguistic coordinate systems (particular discursive regions such as in Wittgenstein and Lyotard’s language games and “petit narratives,” each of which is the basis of particular forms of reality construction); the “semiotic self ” (Peirce, 1965; Lacan, 1977, have argued that the self arises within a semiotic context; the latter going so far as saying language speaks the subject); a stipulation that logic, justice, and rationality are a function of the particular linguistic coordinate system within which one is imbedded; and the four discourses (Lacan, 1991, have shown how discourse is structured thus limiting how desire may be embodied and how reality may be constructed). Applications have been to: forensic psychology (Williams, 1998; Arrigo, 1996); legal education (Arrigo, 1998); law practices (Butler, 1997; Stacey, 1996; Caudill, 1997; Arrigo, 1998; see also the special issue of the International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, 2002); judges decision making (Kennedy, 1997); emergence of law (Murray, 2006); constructing identity by way of the commission of crime (Salecl, 1994; Halleck, 1967); reality TV on policing (Milovanovic, 2003); detective fiction (Milovanovic, 2003); critical race theory (Arrigo, Milovanovic & Scher, 2005); feminist analysis (Milovanovic, 2003, pp. 242–250); “narratives of resistance” of incarcerated aboriginal juveniles (Banks, 2008); trial court texts (Jackson, 1988); narrative criminology (Presser and Sandburg, 2015). Lacanian psychoanalytic semiotic has also been integrated with chaos theory in indicating how alternative, more liberating signifiers and discourses may emerge in legal practices (Milovanovic, 2003, Chapter 8).

iii. Catastrophe theory Both order and disorder can appear in a dynamic system. Generic types of catastrophes are applied to trace various trajectories of key parameters identified, some of which traverse a particular region called the “fold” which is where a non-linear “jump” to a completely new state transpires. The value of using catastrophe theory has been to: model theories, develop alternative explanations, and generate insights. It’s also a method of discovery and is suggestive of new hypotheses. Key concepts include: linear and nonlinear dynamics (dynamic systems may progress in an orderly, linear manner until a unique configuration of input variables are encountered at which time a “jump” to an entirely new outcome state will abruptly take place); singularity (moments at which jumps occur); bimodality (within a “fold” region at least two possible outcome states exist and there exists a high degree of uncertainty as to which becomes the response); generic types of catastrophes (seven generic types of catastrophes have been identified ranging from one to four input variables and two output variables embedded in upward of five-dimensional space); dimensional reduction (one identifies key determinants in a particular dynamic system and places these on a selected generic type; one then traces trajectories and identifies possible outcome states). 158

Postmodern criminology

Applications have been to: prison riots (Zeeman, 1976); jury decision-making (Tindale & Nagao, 1986); lawyer’s decision-making (Keown, 1980); theft and embezzlement (Guastello, 1995); serial murder (Lange, 1999); mediation (Schehr & Milovanovic, 1999) and peacemaking criminology particularly in integrating Lacanian psychoanalytic semiotics (Milovanovic, 2003, Chapter 8).

iv. Edgework Modernist criminology privileges “background factors” (Katz, 1988) – categories such as class, race, gender, education, age, environmental factors, etc., and utilitarian dynamics rooted in structural conditions. Edgework literature indicates the importance of subjective, non-materialistic, adrenaline motivated activity that must be integrated with background factors. These are referred to as the “foreground factors.” Lyng’s (1990; see also Lyng, 2005) seminal article on the subject has provided substantial inspiration. Forms of edgework include: packaged edgework, extreme sports, “sneaky thrills,” the “badass” and “righteous slaughter” (Katz, 1988), out-of-body experiences, to near death experiences. Key concepts include: voluntary risk-taking (although risk avoidance is normally seen as desirable, motivation to actually seek it exists for the adrenaline rush it produces as one confronts danger); boundary crossing (physical or psychological, which produce challenges to conventionality and is experienced as a growth, empowerment, self-actualization, self-awareness, and identity building); primacy of the sensual, emotional and affect (often seen as the “foreground” factors, these are elevated in importance in human’s apparently unexplainable behaviors); seductions (illicit border crossing tend to repeat as they are associated with intense pleasures and “highs,” or are a basis of the intense pleasures of unrestrained activity); ineffable and ephemeral states (participants are hard pressed to verbalize their altered states during edgework); political economy of pleasure (each historical period, cultural practices, and political economy tends to develop boundaries that are class/location specific in form that are both taboo and the basis of attraction and seduction); and packaged edgework (amusement parks, video games, arranged hunts for dangerous animals, guided adventure tours, etc.). We see it also practiced at the workplace that is otherwise seen as alienating, unfulfilling, degrading, and non-inspirational. Applications have been to: crime (Katz, 1988; O’Malley & Mugford, 1994; see also some more traditional theories that are accommodative, i.e., Matza on delinquency, 1964, and deviance, 1969; Halleck on excitement and autonomy in the commission of crime, 1967; Cohen on delinquent boys, 1955; detective fiction (Young, 1996); delinquency (Miller, 2005); drug usage (Reith, 2005); terrorism research (Hamm, 2005; Cottee and Hayward, 2011); graffiti writers (Ferrell, 1996); cultural criminology (Ferrell et al., 2015); serial killers (Shon & Milovanovic, 2006; Milovanovic, 2003); a “border criminology,” (Lippens, 1997; see also Tulloch & Lupton, 2003); “wild zones” (Stanley, 1996); and “sacred places” (Shon, 1997). Typologies are also being developed (O’Malley & Mugford, 1994; Milovanovic, 2003).

v. Constitutive criminology Constitutive criminology (CC) is a holistic view that argues crime and crime control cannot be separated from various contexts within which it is co-produced (Henry & Milovanovic, 1996, 1999). We both construct our reality and are constructed by our products (advertent and inadvertent) in an ongoing manner. CC incorporates many key concepts from the previous aforementioned approaches. Key concepts include: nonlinear developments (dialectical causality); co-production of reality and identities; redefining crime as harms of reduction (reducing a person from a position s/he 159

Dragan Milovanovic

has, e.g., property, dignity, colonialism) and harms of repression (restrictions such as those based on sexuality, ethnicity, class, etc.); offenders conceptualized as excessive investors in harms, catalysts in effecting differences and distance while maintaining superiority without others provided an equal opportunity to make a difference; discursive creations of identities; stabilities and instabilities in societal institutions and agency that are in continuous flux; a call for a replacement discourse that provides a new basis of reality construction focused on peace, co-development, respect for differences and inclusion. CC has been widely incorporated in textbooks in criminology; key points such as redefining harm continuous to arouse much discussion in the field (see for example the numerous Handbook and Encyclopedia entries in criminology). Bruce Arrigo, Stuart Henry and Dragan Milovanovic have continued these core concepts in their work (see, for example Arrigo & Milovanovic, 2009; Milovanovic, 2014a; Ahmed, 2014).

Third wave Arguably an outgrowth, a spawning from the five core perspectives in postmodern criminology, is recent work on incorporating quantum and holography theory (Milovanovic, 2014a; see also Symposium, Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Criminology, 2015). Isaac Newton’s fundamental contributions on space, time, causation, objects, locality and linearity have been incorporated in the social sciences as fundamental ontological assumptions. Quantum and holography provide an alternative ontology which reintegrates a conscious, creative agent. This is not a metaphor and contrary to old views can be applied equally to micro and macro levels. Key points for quantum and holography include: wave-particle duality whereby all is described by a wave function reflecting a dynamic cloud of possibilities in movement and it is observation that collapses the wave function; since objects do not exist locally but are spread out (nonlocally) consistent with the wave function idea, notions and definitions of identity and objects with clear boundaries and characteristics remain connected to the collapse of the wave function in context; that traditional empirical research is flawed, (1) by assuming classical probability and logic, whereas offered is quantum logic and probability, (2) contrary to a linear notion of causality, QH assumes, that no recognized objects with clear boundaries and qualities exist outside of a context where observation takes place – only then can instantiated objects be seen to follow more orderly forms of causality, and (3) that such customary measuring instruments (observations) as questionnaires are constructed with faulty logic, that is that an answer to a question is assumed to predate the asking of the question whereas in quantum theory the answer is constructed in the instance; the notion of nonlocality whereby two entities at wide distances may have an immediate effect on each other; atemporal time (information can be antedated to inform the present); information is encoded as interference patterns (holograms) stored not in the brain but “out there” in the “information” field as constellations of energy; information can be accessed, decoded and sent back to where reality is seen through a process called phase conjugate adaptive resonance (PCAR; Mitchell & Staretz, 2011); that the inter- and intra-subjectively constituted conscious, creative, ethical/moral agent can be conceptualized as the product of quantum and/or QH processes (Milovanovic, 2014a, 2014b; Penrose & Hameroff, 2014; Bradley, 2015; Pribram, 2013; Wendt, 2015); that a person is fundamentally interconnected with all and leaves a holographic trace of her/his signature wave with all that they interact; that, in some views, all the cosmos is holographic. Applications in criminology of quantum mechanics and/or QH include: reworking labeling theory (Milovanovic, 2014b) and other dominant theories of crime (Milovanovic, 2014a); re-developing constitutive theory (Milovanovic, 2014a); constructions of a conscious, creative agent (Milovanovic, 2014a; Batiz & Milovanovic, 2017; Penrose and Hameroff, 2014); jury 160

Postmodern criminology

decision-making (Busemeyer & Bruza, 2014); providing ingredients for a transformative justice (Bradley, 2015); and secret terrorist cells (Bradley, 2011).

Seeds for change Postmodern analysis is evolving. Much of the first and second wave is being incorporated into more traditional critical criminology perspectives. Future directions for postmodern theorizing in criminology would include: 1 more integrative analysis (Barak, 1997; Henry & Milovanovic, 1996; Arrigo et al., 2005; Halsey, 2006; Arrigo & Milovanovic, 2009, 2010a, 2010b; Milovanovic, 2014a, 2014b); 2 greater engagement with critics and activists (see Henry & Milovanovic, 1999); 3 further refinement of an alternative definition of crime to the legalistic (Henry & Lanier, 2005). See, for example, our notion of “harms of reduction” and “harms of repression” as an alternative (Milovanovic & Henry, 2005); 4 rethinking agency, away from the dominance of modernist thought and Newtonian physics and toward a quantum and or QH notion of consciousness and processes (Penrose and Hameroff, 2014; Pribram, 2013; Bradley, 2015; Stapp, 2004, 2007; Whitehead, 1957; Wendt, 2015); 5 developing a methodology that is more in tune with postmodern logic (operationalizations, for example that move away from dualisms to fractal geometry, that include both forces of stasis and dissipation as in Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) notion of territorialization and deterritorialization. Similarly, postmodern Marxist methodology would operationalize a variable more in terms of the constitutive dialectical qualities inherent within them; 6 developing methodologies employing quantum logic and probability as well as recognition of the wave-particle duality of all phenomena (consciousness collapses the wave function to a particular instantiation, an object; thus replacing the notion of “interaction” that assumes independent objects, to “intra-action” that assume co-construction of observer/apparatus and phenomena, see Barad, 2007); 7 time series studies, aided by the “chaos analyzer” (Sprott & Rowland, n.d.) – both to previous empirical research and in future works – could seek non-linear developments – effects of iteration, disproportional effects, singularities, bifurcations, feedback loops, time reversals, thresholds for symmetry-breaking cascades; 8 dismantling reifying practices such as socially constructed categories of race, class, gender, etc., initially serving the purpose of identifying harmful practices but which have become the very basis of investing in and sustaining categorical discursive practices themselves (i.e., identity politics); 9 integrating quantum mechanics’ notion of the collapse of the wave function in understanding the occasion for “events,” moments of consciousness (Whitehead, 1957; Stapp, 2007; Penrose & Hameroff, 2014); 10 dynamic analysis that is sensitive to the various attractors that may be embedded in an otherwise orderly appearing dynamic system, particularly those that are more “orderly disordered,” such as the torus and Lorenz/strange attractor; 11 integrating deconstruction/reconstruction with a transformative notion of justice, thus both offering critique and insights of what could be (see: Arrigo and Milovanovic, 2009; Arrigo et al., 2011); 12 developing normative theory, ethics, and evaluative schemas based on quantum and holography (for a first approximation, see Milovanovic, 2011); 161

Dragan Milovanovic

13 exploring alternative notions of justice in the direction of an ethic of care suggested in feminist analysis, and duty to the Other as suggested in Levinas, Derrida, Lyotard; 14 reconceptualizing restorative justice toward a transformative justice (Woolford, 2009; Holland, 2011; Arrigo & Milovanovic, 2009; Milovanovic, 2014a); 15 rethinking the nature of desire, away from a Hegelian-Lacanian ontology of “lack” and toward a more creative, affirmative notion such as in Nietzsche, Bergson, Deleuze, and Guattari, i.e., “will to power,” or élan vital (consider too Schrödinger’s quantum notion, 1944, of free energy or negentropy); 16 rethinking the relationship between agency and social movement in a global order, as with Hardt and Negri’s (2005, 2009) notion of the “multitude” and the “commonwealth”; and 17 theorizing a more just, inclusive society in dynamic movement.

Challenges A challenge to postmodern theorizing is how to better integrate various threads into a holistic position that considers the interconnected, processual nature of phenomena (see Whitehead, 1957). The 2000s have witnessed much incorporation of core concepts of postmodernism in criminology, in particular, cultural criminology (edgework, discourse analysis) and in notions of transformative justice (discourse analysis, edgework, chaos, quantum and holography). Further challenge is to identify determinants of harm in an evolving, transforming society, and responses that consider both agency and macro-level forces in their interconnected and mutually constitutive forms. Strategies must be identified for a transformative justice. An alternative methodology that considers: wave-particle duality; a reconceptualized notion of intra-action; quantum logic and quantum probability; and nonlinear dynamics – all find challenging theorizing and application in criminology.

References Ahmed, S. (2014). Constitutive criminology and the war on terror. Critical Criminology, 22(3), 357–371. Arrigo, B. (1996). The contours of psychiatric justice. New York: Garland. Arrigo, B. (1998). Reason and desire in legal education: A psychoanalytic-semiotic critique. International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, 11(1), 3–24. Arrigo, B., & Milovanovic, D. (2009). Revolution in penology. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Arrigo, B., & Milovanovic, D. Eds. (2010a). Postmodern and post-structural criminology. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate Publishing Ltd. Arrigo, B., & Milovanovic, D. (2010b). Introduction: Postmodern and post-structural criminology, In Bruce Arrigo and Dragan Milovanovic (Eds) (2010). Postmodern and post-structural criminology (pp. xi–xxiv). Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate Publishing Ltd. Arrigo, B., Bersot, H., & Sellers, B.G. (2011). The ethics of total confinement. New York: Oxford University Press. Arrigo, B., Milovanovic, B., & Schehr, R. (2005). The French connection in criminology. NY: SUNY Press. Banks, C. (2008). Alaska native juveniles in detention. New York: Edwin Mellen Press. Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway. Durham: Duke University Press. Barak, G. (1997). Integrating criminologies. Minneapolis, MN: Rowman and Littlefield Publications. Batiz, Z., & Milovanovic, D. (2017). Quantum holography and agency. Journal NeuroQuantology, 15(1), 45–59. Besley, J. (2010). Organised chaos. Current Issues in Criminal Justice, 21, 343. Bradley, R.T. (2011). Communication of collective identity in secret social groups. Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression, 3(3), 198–224. Bradley, R.T. (2015). Bonds and quanta. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Criminology, 7(2), 95–136. 162

Postmodern criminology

Brion, D. (1991). The chaotic law of tort. In Roberta Kevelson (Ed.), Peirce and law (pp. 45–77). New York: Peter Lang. Busemyier, J., & Bruza, P. (2014). Quantum models of cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Butler, J. (1997). Excitable speech. New York: Routledge. Byrne, D., & Callaghan, G. (2015). Complexity theory and the social sciences. London: Routledge. Caudill, D. (1997). Lacan and the subject of law. Atlantic Highlands, NY: Humanities Press. Cohen, A. (1955). Delinquent boys. New York: Free Press. Cottee, S., & Hayward, K. (2011). Terrorist (e)motives. Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 34(2), 963–986. Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Elliott, E., & Kiel, L.D. (2004). A complex systems approach for developing public policy toward terrorism: an agent-based approach. Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, 20(1), 63–68. Ferrell, J. (1996). Crimes of style. Boston: Northeastern University Press. Ferrell, J. K. Hayward, & Young, J. (2015). Cultural criminology. London: Sage. Forker, A. (1997). Chaos and modeling crime. In Dragan Milovanovic (Ed.), Chaos, criminology and social justice (pp. 55–76). Westport, CT: Praeger Press. Guastello, S. (1995). Chaos, catastrophe and human affairs. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Halleck, S. (1967). Psychiatry and the dilemmas of crime. Los Angeles: University of California Press. Halsey, M. (2006). Deleuze and environmental damage. Aldershot: Ashgate. Hamm, M. (2005). Doing terrorism research in the dark ages. In Steve Lyng (Ed.), Edgework (pp. 273–291). New York: Routledge. Hardt, M., & Negri, A. (2005). Multitude. New York: Penguin Press. Hardt, M., & Negri, A. (2009). Commonwealth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Henry, S., & Lanier, M. (2005). What is crime? New York: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Henry, S., & Milovanovic, D. (1996). Constitutive criminology. London: Sage. Henry, S., & Milovanovic, D. (1999). Conclusion: Constitutive Criminology Engages Its Critics – An Assessment 1. Constitutive Criminology at Work: Applications to Crime and Justice, 287. Holland, E. (2011). Nomad citizenship. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. International Journal of the Semiotics of Law (2002), 15(4), 323–434. Jackson, B. (1988). Law, fact, and narrative coherence. Mersyside: Deborah Charles Publications. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Criminology (2015), 7(2): 49–172. Katz, J. (1988). Seductions of crime. New York: Basic Books. Kenney, D. (1997). A critique of adjudication. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Keown, R. (1980). Catastrophe theory and law. Mathematical Modeling, 1, 319–329. Lacan, J. (1977). Ecrits. New York: Norton. Lacan, J. (1991). L’Envers de la psychoanalysis. Paris: Seuil. Lange, R. (1999). A cusp catastrophe approach to prediction of temporal patterns in the kill dates of individual serial murderers. Nonlinear Dynamics in Psychology and the Life Sciences, 3(2), 23–37. Lippens, R. (1997). Border-crossing criminology. Theoretical Criminology, 2, 119–151. Lyng, S. (1990). Edgework. American Journal of Sociology, 95, 876–921. Lyng, S. (2005). Edgework. New York: Routledge. Madsen, F. (2007). Complexity, transnational crime and terrorism. Paper presented at the 48th Annual International Studies Association. Matza, D. (1964). Delinquency and drift. New York: Wiley. Matza, D. (1969). Becoming deviant. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Miller, W. (2005). Adolescents on the edge. In Steve Lyng (Ed.), Edgework (pp. 153–171). New York: Routledge. Milovanovic, D. (2003). Critical criminology at the edge. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing. Milovanovic, D. (2011). Justice rendering schemas, Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Criminology, 3(1): 1–55. Milovanovic, D. (2014a). Quantum holographic criminology. Durham: Carolina Academic Press. Milovanovic, D. (2014b). Revisiting societal reaction. Crimen, 2(5), 123–135. Milovanovic, D., & Henry, S. (2005). Constitutive definition of crime: Power as harm. In M. Lanier and S. Henry (Eds.), What is crime? (pp. 165–178). Boulder, CO: Rowman and Littlefield. Mitchell, E., & Staretz, R. (2011). The quantum hologram and the nature of consciousness. Journal of Cosmology, 14(1), 1–19. Murray, J. (2006). Nome law: Deleuze and Guattari on the emergence of law. International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, 19(2), 127–51. 163

Dragan Milovanovic

O’Malley, P., & Mugford, S. (1994). Crime, excitement, and modernity. In Gregg Barak (Ed.), Varieties of criminology (pp. 189–211). Westport, CT: Praeger. Peirce, C.S. (1965). The collected papers of C.W. Peirce (C. Hartshorne and P. Weiss, Eds). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Penrose, R., & Hameroff, S. (2014). Consciousness in the universe. Physics Life Review, 11(1), 39–78. Pepinsky, H. (1997). Geometric forms of violence. In Dragan Milovanovic (Ed.), Chaos, criminology and social justice (pp. 97–109). Westport, CT: Praeger Press. Pribram, K. (2013). The form within. Westport, CT: Prospecta Press. Pycroft, A., & Bartollas, C. (Eds) (2014). Applying complexity theory: Whole systems approaches to criminal justice and social work. Bristol: Policy Press. Reith, G. (2005). On the edge: Drugs and the consumption of risk. In Steve Lyng (Ed.), Edgework (pp. 227–245). New York: Routledge. Salecl, R. (1994). The spoils of freedom. London: Routledge. Schehr, R., & Milovanovic, D. (1999). Conflict mediation and the postmodern. Social Justice, 26(1), 208–232. Schulman, C. (1997). Chaos, law and critical legal studies. In Dragan Milovanovic (Ed.), Chaos, criminology and social justice (pp. 123–137). Westport, CT: Praeger Press. Schum, D. (1994). Evidential foundation of probabilistic reasoning. New York: Wiley. Shon, P. (1997). The sacred and the profane. Humanity and Society, 23(1), 10–31. Shon, P., & Milovanovic, D. (2006). Serial killers. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press. Sprott, J.C., & Rowland, G. (n.d.). Chaos data analyzer. http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/cda.htm. Stacey, H. (1996). Legal discourse and the feminist political economy. Australian Feminist Law Journal, 6, 1–21. Stanley, C. (1996). Urban excesses and the law. London: Cavendish. Stapp, H.P. (2004). Mind, matter and quantum mechanics. New York: Springer. Stapp, H.P. (2007). Mindful universe: Quantum mechanics and the participant observer. New York: Springer. Tindale, R.S., & Nagao, D.H. (1986). An assessment of the potential utility of scientific jury selection. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 37, 409–425. Tulloch, J., & Lupton, D. (2003). Risk and everyday life. London: Sage. Verma, A. (1998). The fractal dimension of policing. Journal of Criminal Justice, 26(5), 425–435. Walters, G. (1999). Crime and chaos. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 43(2), 134–153. Walters, G. (2007). Advancing science and research in criminal justice/criminology: Complex systems theory and non-linear analyses. Justice Quarterly, 24(4), 555–581. Wendt, A. (2015). Quantum mind and social science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Whitehead, A. (1957). Process and reality. Toronto, Ontario: Collier-Macmillan. Williams, C. (1998). The abrogation of subjectivity in the psychiatric courtroom. International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, 11(32), 181–192. Williams, C., & Arrigo, B. (2001). Anarchaos and order. Theoretical Criminology, 5(2), 223–252. Woolford, A. (2009). The politics of restorative justice. Winnepeg, Canada: Fernwood Publishing. Young, A. (1996). Imagining crime. London: Sage. Young, T.R. (1997). The ABCs of crime. In Dragan Milovanovic (Ed.), Chaos, Criminology and Social Justice (pp. 77–96). Westport, CT: Praeger Press. Zeeman, E.C. (1976). Catastrophe theory. Scientific America, 234, 65–83.

164

Part II

Select topics in critical criminology Walter S. DeKeseredy and Molly Dragiewicz

Introduction1 The lens of establishment criminology is finely honed: it is conventional in its viewpoint and it is narrow in its focus. It is the role of critical criminology to widen this lens so as to, first, include within its scope a whole series of substantive areas previously obscured, forgotten or simply placed within the realms of another discipline: state crime, corporate and white collar crime, crimes of safety in the workplace, racist and hate crimes, domestic violence, crimes against women, crimes of war and genocide. This functions, secondly, to widen the theoretical scope of the subject to encompass culture, structure, power, injustices of distribution and recognition and place these in a historical setting. (Young, 2013, p. xiii)

Critical criminology is much more than a theoretical and/or political enterprise. It also involves ground-breaking or “cutting-edge” research on a myriad of social problems, such as those identified above by Young and the other fields of study covered in this section of the handbook. Further, most of the topics examined by progressive scholars are typically ignored by mainstream criminologists. Even when they are investigated by orthodox researchers, the data generated by them almost always disregard the ways in which macro-level determinants shape crime and societal reactions to it. Consider violence against women, a harm covered in Chapter 23 by Walter DeKeseredy and Amanda Hall-Sanchez, in Chapter 24 by Shana L. Maier and Raquel Kennedy Bergen, in Chapter 25 by Anastasia Powell, Nicola Henry and Asher Flynn, and in Chapter 27 by Molly Dragiewicz. Jordan’s (2009) bibliometric analysis, though slightly dated, shows that the most cited violence against women authors from 2003 to 2007 are based in psychology, psychiatry, nursing, and medicine. These disciplines tend to focus more on individuals and lose sight of the ways in which broader social, cultural, political, and economic forces contribute to rape, image-based sexual abuse, stalking, beatings, and other forms of woman abuse (DeKeseredy, 2016). This is one of the key reasons why feminism needs to be granted equal status in what Jordan (2009) refers to as the state of written knowledge on violence against women.

Part II Introduction

Indeed, as Claire Renzetti (1997), editor of the widely-read and cited journal Violence Against Women, reminds us, “we cannot lose sight of individuals, but the challenge we confront is to disentangle the complex relationships between individuals and society, including our own roles in this dialectic” (p. vii). Feminism has always been up to this challenge. Human trafficking is another form of woman abuse. Many scholars argue that women and girls are especially vulnerable to trafficking (Gozdziak, 2015). In Chapter 34, Emily Troshynski and Olivia Tuttle offer an in-depth review of the social scientific literature on this topic and demonstrate how research in this area can benefit from critical criminological analyses. If human trafficking violates people’s human rights, so do some actions taken by governments in the name of national security and by corporations in the name of increasing profits. The state and corporations have long been of interest to critical criminologists. In fact, scholars like Dawn L. Rothe and David O. Friedrichs (Chapter 14), Sandra Walklate and her colleagues Ross McGarry and Gabe Mythen (see Chapters 16 and 17), and Peter B. Kraska (Chapter 18) are at the forefront of scholarship on “crimes of the powerful” (Pearce, 1976). Their work sheds new critical light on timely issues such as war, white-collar crime, state crime, “crimes of globablization,” the regulation and management of terrorism, and the militarization of police. There is a wealth of critical criminological scholarship on state or government crime. However, conspicuously absent from the progressive, extant empirical and theoretical literature that has rapidly accumulated over the past 26 years is an in-depth feminist analysis of how gender is related to women’s roles as victims and perpetrators of harms such as genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. Hence, Victoria E. Collins’ offering (Chapter 15) is a much-needed response to this glaring omission. Furthermore, the author’s definition of state crime moves well beyond narrow legalistic conceptualizations and encompasses both direct and indirect types of state-perpetrated, gender-based violence. There is plenty of critical criminological work on many topics, especially prisons and other draconian means of social control, such as the death penalty. Incarceration in this current era is of central concern to the authors of Chapter 20 (Sappho Xenakis and Leionidas K. Cheliotis) and 21 (Paul Leighton and Donna Selman). In Chapter 22, Kimberly J. Cook and Saundra Westervelt examine the post-incarceration struggles of people who have been wrongly convicted of capital crimes in the U.S., sentenced to death, and later exonerated. There is limited research on this topic and the authors should be commended for helping to make an invisible population visible. Critical criminological work on adult pornography consumption and its violent consequences is also limited compared to the amount of progressive intellectual attention given to other major social harms, such as racist police practices and environmental crime (DeKeseredy, 2015). In fact, criminologists in general have not been “fleet of foot” in dealing with Internet porn (Atkinson & Rodgers, 2016). Critical criminologists, too, have paid relatively little attention to child sexual abuse and animal exploitation. In Chapter 23, DeKeseredy and Hall-Sanchez address adult porn and Michael Salter suggests new critical ways of understanding child sexual abuse in Chapter 26. In Chapter 13, Bonnie Berry sensitizes us to the importance of including animals in critical analyses of crime and her work will be of great interest to some green criminologists who share her concern about the plight of non-human species (e.g. Beirne, 2014). Stan Cohen (1980) developed the highly useful concept of the moral panic to describe a situation in which a condition, episode, person, or group of persons, comes to be defined as a threat to society. At that point, the media describe the “threat” in detail, although not necessarily accurately, and various editors and politicians jump on the bandwagon with their own claims to be defending the “moral barricades.” Sociologists, lawyers, psychologists, and other “experts” quickly join the fray with diagnoses and solutions. Moral panics are studied extensively by leading 166

Part II Introduction

progressive experts on media and crime, such as Eamonn Carrabine, author of Chapter 33. Moral panics, too, are of central concern to the authors of Chapters 28 (Lisa Pasko and Meda Chesney-Lind) and 29 (Katherine Irwin, Lisa Pasko, and Janet T. Davidson). These two chapters challenge the popular notion that women are becoming just as violent as men, an erroneous claim frequently made by journalists, policymakers, and others who want to turn back the clock on feminism, as Dragiewicz discusses in Chapter 27. As well, there are ongoing moral panic about drugs and street youth gangs. Henry H. Brownstein provides a critical perspective on the realities of the former in Chapter 30 and critical ways of knowing about the latter are described by Simon Hallsworth in Chapter 31. Forty-nine percent of the world’s population lives in small towns, villages and farms. Yet, until recently, criminological scholarship, including that produced by critical criminologists, focused almost exclusively on urban crimes (Donnermeyer, 2016). Today, we are witnessing a rapid growth in critical analyses of rural crime and social control, due mainly to the influence of Joseph Donnermeyer. He reviews the work done by an international cadre of progressive rural criminologists and encourages us to keep moving forward and to focus on new areas of social scientific inquiry. Examining hate groups, many of which have rural roots and mostly act out of their bases in rural environments (Chakraborti & Garland, 2004; Donnermeyer & DeKeseredy, 2014), is a vital arena for rural criminological research and theorizing. For example, in the U.S.A. alone, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center (2017), there are nearly 1,000 identifiable hate groups, ranging from traditional chapters of the Ku Klux Klan to branches of a racist right-wing religious group known as Christian Identity, with a disproportionate share of all hate groups located in rural areas. In Chapter 19, James J. Nolan, Lee Thorpe Jr., and Andrea DeKeseredy focus on hate crime and sensitize us to the importance of using a broader conceptual frame. Whereas Part I of this handbook offered a glimpse of how critical criminologists “think,” Part II offers a look into some of the things they “think about” (DeKeseredy & Perry, 2006). While diverse in scope, as noted in this introduction, the chapters included in this part share some similarities. Chief among these is a critical review and evaluation of the literature on the topic in question. Moreover, the authors suggest new directions in critical thinking about the issues they examine. What is to be done about crime and social control? It is to various progressive answers to this question that we turn to in Part III.

Note 1

This introduction to Part II includes revised portions of materials published previously by DeKeseredy and Dragiewicz (2012).

References Atkinson, R., & Rodgers, T. (2016). Pleasure zones and murder boxes: Online pornography and violent video games as cultural zones of exception. The British Journal of Criminology, 56, 1291–1307. Beirne, P. (2014). Theriocide: Naming animal killing. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 3, 49–66. Chakraborti, N., & Garland, J. (Eds) (2004). Rural Racism. Portland, OR: Willan. Cohen, S. (1980). Folk Devils and Moral Panics (2nd ed.). Oxford, UK: Basil Blackwell. DeKeseredy, W. S. (2015). Critical criminological understandings of adult pornography and violence against women: New directions in research and theory. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 4, 4–21. DeKeseredy, W. S. (2016). Looking backward to move forward: Revisiting some past feminist contributions to the study of violence against women. Violence and Gender, 4, 177–180. 167

Part II Introduction

DeKeseredy, W. S., & Dragiewicz, M. (2012). Introduction to Part II. In W. S. DeKeseredy & M. Dragiewicz (Eds), Routledge Handbook of Critical Criminology. London: Routledge. DeKeseredy, W. S., & Perry, B. (2006). Introduction to Part II. In W. S. DeKeseredy & B. Perry (Eds), Advancing Critical Criminology: Theory and Application (pp. 127–131). Lanham, MD: Lexington. Donnermeyer, J. F. (2016). Introduction to the international handbook of rural criminology. In J. F. Donnermeyer (Ed.), Routledge International Handbook of Rural Criminology (pp. 1–22). London: Routledge. Donnermeyer, J. F., & DeKeseredy, W. S. (2014). Rural Criminology. London: Routledge. Gozdziak, E. M. (2015). Data matters: Issues and challenges for research on trafficking. In M. Dragiewicz (Ed.), Global Human Trafficking: Critical Issues and Contexts (pp. 23–38). London: Routledge. Jordan, C. E. (2009). Advancing the study of violence against women: Evolving research agendas into science. Violence Against Women, 15, 393–419. Pearce, F. (1976). Crimes of the Powerful: Marxism, Crime and Deviance. London: Pluto Press. Renzetti, C. M. (1997). Foreword. In W. S. DeKeseredy & L. MacLeod’s Woman Abuse: A Sociological Story (pp. v–vii). Toronto: Harcourt Brace. Southern Poverty Law Center. (2017). Hate map. Retrieved from www.splcenter.org/hate-map. Young, J. (2013). Introduction to the 40th anniversary edition. In I. Taylor, P. Walton, & J. Young’s The New Criminology: For a Social Theory of Deviance (pp. xi–li). London: Routledge.

168

13 A critical interpretation of animal exploitation Bonnie Berry

Introduction The purpose of this chapter is to acquaint the reader with the broad social science of nonhuman– human relations, beginning with the notion (strange and distasteful to many humans) that nonhumans are equal to humans. From this basis, noting the unequal status of human compared to nonhuman animals, we can better center our understanding of nonhuman–human relations in a critical criminology interpretation. Drawing upon animal rights and human rights literature, nonhuman animal exploitation is clearly placed in the context of critical criminology. Since critical interpretations have as one of their main foci the unequal power relationship between social groups (for instance, the rich and poor), the nonhuman and human relationship can be understood in this same manner. Moreover, and more to the purpose of this chapter, I will put forward a relatively novel way to examine critical criminology as practice and as theory in terms of this unequal relationship between nonhumans and humans. Specifically, I will describe the use of nonhuman animals as crime victims (a well-worn topic already much discussed), as substitutes for human crime victims, as criminals and as tools for crime (for instance, attack dogs), and as symbols of crime (for example, the rat as capitalist criminal). Following that, a brief description of nonhuman animals as helpful participants in “humanizing” the criminal environment, be that environment a prison or a neighborhood, is in order. I will then overview theories used to explain animal exploitation in the context of crime, with a pointed focus on critical criminology as the best-fit explanation. Finally, a few words on the future of animal exploitation, as critically analyzed, will be offered.

The meaning of animal exploitation Animal exploitation encompasses more than physical abuse (Berry, 2004a; Nibert, 2002). It covers a much broader range of harmful human behavior as perpetrated against nonhuman animals and with far-reaching social consequences, as will be discussed below. According to Arluke and Sanders (2009), beginning with the late 1800s, US lawmakers have defined animal cruelty unclearly, in abstract and ambiguous terms. Animal cruelty is typically defined as the infliction of unnecessary suffering, but there is little agreement about the meaning, 169

Bonnie Berry

the determination, or the identification of cruelty: the argument has been made that, perhaps due to the vagueness of animal cruelty laws, we do not necessarily know it when we see it nor do we know if any particular suspected case is a case of animal cruelty. This is not a cogent or convincing argument; it is, rather, an argument given in the interest of doing nothing to protect a powerless class (nonhuman animals in this case). This same type of argument has been made in cases of child abuse and rape of human females. The victims in both of these crimes against minority humans was said to be difficult to determine because the victims often did not register complaints, other explanations could be supplied and accepted (the child’s broken bones resulted from falling down the stairs), and because they were said to be “willing” (the ubiquitous shewanted-it explanation for rape). In the absence of clear legal definitions of crimes against animals, mostly we compile lists of cruel acts as reported to humane societies. Psychologists, among those who want to understand why people engage in animal cruelty, approach animal cruelty by attending to individual motivation (the intent to harm animals) as the basis for animal cruelty. Sociologists hope to understand animal cruelty in a social context, comprised of social constructions of animal abuse, and focus on a relativist approach, examining the manner in which various social groups define the meaning of certain acts of animal cruelty in particular situations. Law enforcement departments, developed in the late 1800s in the northeastern United States, have as their purpose the policing of animal cruelty and prosecution of these cases in court (Arluke, 2004). Humane society agents conduct investigations, obtain and execute search warrants, make arrests, and prosecute complaints in cases of suspected animal cruelty, with most of these cases involving “everyday” animals, namely stray animals, animal companions, vermin, and farm livestock, who are neglected and sometimes deliberately mistreated. Humane agents also inspect circuses, puppy mils, stockyards, slaughterhouses, racetracks, pet shops, guarddog businesses, service-dog businesses, horse stables that rent or board horses, kennels, and animal dealers licensed by the US Department of Agriculture. Over the past century, there has been a steady increase in animal cruelty complaints. It is unknown whether this increase is due to improved record keeping, growing public sensitivity to animal welfare, or to greater awareness of anti-cruelty laws and their prosecution. Due to the efforts of social movements and organizations dedicated to animal rights and animal welfare, such as the Animal Legal Defense Fund, many states have redefined animal cruelty as a felony crime instead of a misdemeanor, followed by monetary fines, incarceration, and other punishments (such as community service). To aid in the control of animal cruelty, researchers, policy makers, animal rights and animal welfare advocates, and mental health practitioners have sought to understand the causes of animal cruelty (Arluke & Sanders, 2009). In concert with the expanding criminal justice trend to deal seriously with animal cruelty, these forces are instrumental in raising public consciousness about animal rights, welfare, and exploitation. The role of animal-rights, animal-welfare, and environmentally-conscious social movements and organizations, however often overlooked, are also an integral part of increasing public awareness of the socially unhealthy and socially dysfunctional power differential between nonhuman animals and human animals (see Beirne & South, 2007 on the interfaces among environmental harm, harm to humans, and harm to nonhuman animals). The very idea of animal rights is a novelty to most, less so as time passes and as humans become more socially evolved. To put a finer point on it, and to place it squarely in terms of a discussion about crime and animal equality, it was only in the late 20th century that powerful legal action could effectively be taken against animal cruelty. The aforementioned Animal Legal Defense Fund is one such organization which has proven successful in investigating and prosecuting animal abuse. Also included in the pantheon of observers and guardians against animal exploitation are the Humane Society of the United States, People for the Ethical 170

A critical interpretation of animal exploitation

Treatment of Animals, International Fund for Animal Welfare, Defenders of Wildlife, the wellknown American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, as well as local community organizations and individuals as concerned public citizens. Yet, the thought of nonhuman animals being equal to human animals is not widely accepted, partly because of human hubris (we like to think that we are mentally, morally, and otherwise superior to nonhumans) and partly because of human selfishness (we like to eat and wear animals). In a similar (maybe identical) way, power-majority humans once took for granted, and many still do, that certain categories of humans (nonwhite, non-native-born, female, poor, differently-abled, etc.) were not equal to other categories of humans (white, native-born, male, propertied, abled, etc.). It takes time and awareness (through education, grassroots activities, political and legislative action) to move forward, against massive and stubborn resistance, toward equality between humans and humans and between nonhumans and humans (Berry, 1997). This last point is meant to convey the progression from viewing certain categories of humans as property, as slaves, as beings to do with what one wants into viewing these same categories of people as beings with rights, including the right to be free from rape, assault, slavery, and so on. In the same way but over a significantly more protracted period of time, we are now beginning to grant rights to nonhuman animals to be free from rape, assault, slavery, and other devastating acts. More importantly perhaps, an increasing number of us are beginning to perceive nonhuman animals as beings with intelligence, memories, feelings — the same as humans possess — and therefore as beings of worth and the right to be free from harm. Defining animal cruelty as crime equates this form of cruelty to crime against humans. So, murder of humans = murder of nonhumans even when the murder takes the form of hunting, slaughter, and other means of ending lives against the will of the victim. Rape of humans is inseparable from rape of nonhumans, even though it may be called bestiality. False imprisonment of humans = imprisonment of nonhumans, in cages or in other confinements. Cannibalism of humans by humans = cannibalism of nonhumans by nonhumans as in the case of nonhumans being fed members of their own species (factory-farmed cows, farmed fish, et al.), which then can create grave harm to the nonhumans (the cows and fish) who are eating their own and to the humans who eat the cannibalizing nonhumans (e.g., “mad cow disease” or BSE). Neglect and abuse in any form = neglect and abuse regardless of species (Berry, 2004a; 2004b; 2002; see also Beirne, 2009).

Scenarios of animal crime and criminal behavior Crime and criminal behavior relevant to animal exploitation, as described herein, include topics of causality and consequences, victimology, crime settings, nonhuman animal victims as substitutes for human victims, nonhuman animals as representatives of human criminals, and coimprisonment of nonhumans and humans. Precursors, along with consequences, of crime being among the main questions in criminology, let us consider these questions in terms of animal exploitation. Some animal rights researchers and animal rights advocates have focused on the relationship between animal cruelty and domestic violence toward spouses or children, with the assumption being that animal abuse co-occurs with or leads to human abuse (Beirne, 2009). Over two-thirds (67 percent) of women seeking shelter from domestic violence had seen their partners abuse their animal companions (Quinlisk, 1999). Of the women interviewed in a shelter for battered women, Clifton Flynn found that their violent partners used companion animals to control, hurt, and intimidate the women. These battered women viewed their companion animals as surrogates for human–human interaction, thinking of them as children, friends, and confidants (Flynn, 1999). The women and the 171

Bonnie Berry

nonhuman companions were both subject to abusive treatment, bonded over their mutual helplessness, and may have benefited from mutual support even as they both suffered. It has, in other words, clearly been established that there is a relationship, causal or not, between cruelty against nonhuman animals and cruelty against human animals. The most obvious and telling cases, in terms of social power-differential explanations, are those studies examining gateway cruelty wherein we find a progression of violent victimization against nonhumans preceding violent victimization as visited upon vulnerable categories of humans (children and women), as commonly found in domestic violence situations (Ascione, 2008a, 2008b; DeGue & DiLillo, 2008; Ascione, 2004; Merz-Perez & Heide, 2004). The progression model, which suggests that animal cruelty can lead to later human cruelty became one of the dominant foci of organizational campaigns, such as that by the Humane Society of the United States, against cruelty. Interestingly, this move toward ending animal cruelty because of its link to human cruelty can have, but may not necessarily have, a concern for nonhuman animals as its catalyst. Instead, even people who do not particularly care about animal welfare may be concerned about preventing cruelty to humans. Perhaps the motivation is selfishly geared toward ending human cruelty without regard to nonhuman cruelty. Even so, the recognition of the progression from one form of abuse to another stands, and is not entirely lost on the humans advocating an end to human abuse. Setting can determine the meaning of victimology, by specifying the definition of “victims”. Animal abuse can take place in an infinite number of settings and these settings often overlap with how and whether humans view the abused animals as victims. This is a tricky and complex set of intellectual and moral gymnastics for the humans involved in victimizing the nonhuman animals, as it is for those humans who are not directly and actively involved in the abuse but merely form an opinion about it and thus encourage or discourage it in a more passive way. Consider the experimental laboratory setting in which nonhuman animals are put through torturous ordeals, always ending in untimely death. This lab work is a paid activity for the humans involved, accompanied by a rigid set of methodologies, which can make the abuse seem (a) practical because it is a job and (b) noble because it has a scientific purpose. Compare this laboratory “scene of the crime” and definition of victim (as not really a victim but a means to an end) with killing “pests” in one’s home. According to Herzog (1993), the internal moral dilemma of laboratory animal exploitation and “ordinary” household cruelty are hard to separate. That is, we can sometimes ignore our cruelty to nonhuman animals via mousetraps and rodent poison in the home because of the easiness of the techniques for killing and the invisibility of the animals’ deaths, but we would find it harder to justify and engage in cruelty as enacted in a lab setting against lab animals where we are directly involved and see their deaths. In both cases, we do these acts because they benefit us (rid us of “pests” and give us a paycheck). But a more direct form of cruelty is far more unpleasant to engage in and to rationalize. Contrasting these two forms of animal cruelty prompts the question of whether there is a difference between lab researchers who kill mice in the name of science and ordinary householders who crush mice’s spines with snap traps or slowly poison them with D-Con. Setting and victimhood take a very different turn when considering animal exploitation in the form of entertainment. Humans often do not recognize that nonhuman animals who serve as entertainers (actors, racers, fighters, etc.) are abused, neglected, and killed. Atkinson and Young (2005) describe greyhound racing in terms of blood sports and sports-related violence. Other forms of blood “sports” would include hunting (canned and other hunting, bearbaiting), fighting (cock, dog, bull, et al.), and racing (horse, dog, et al.). In Atkinson’s and Young’s work, we find, as we do with others’ work on human and nonhuman oppression, a multiplier effect (my term). The multiplier effect refers to humans using nonhumans to oppress other humans and 172

A critical interpretation of animal exploitation

other nonhumans. To explain, at the turn of the 18th century, British colonial expansion led to transformations in the role and status of the greyhound, with greyhounds being used less for hunting game and more for taming colonized people of the New World. British and French explorers used greyhounds to assist in the slaughter of native populations in the Caribbean and in South America. Greyhounds were also used to kill other nonhumans as in “coursing”, an English aristocratic baiting contest whereupon the dogs chased hares through open fields and then killed them. Coursing led to greyhound racing as practiced in the US, a spectator “sport” not limited to the wealthy but open to the working classes. Greyhound racing was billed as a humane version of coursing, and as a more culturally and economically accessible event than upper-class horse racing. However, greyhound racing fell into disrepute due to awareness-raising by groups such as the ASPCA, PETA, and other animal rights and animal welfare groups. Profits declined, racetracks closed, and the deteriorating economy of dog racing resulted in widespread animal abuse and neglect in the surviving racing figuration. The four major types of violence (violence associated with forced breeding, training, housing, and killing) have always been present in racing but have escalated with the racing industry’s decline. This is not to say that greyhound racing should experience a revival in order to improve the dogs’ existence; it is to say that the dogs would be better off if greyhound racing were banned altogether. A much different crime scenario, one less obviously associated with direct nonhuman exploitation but one worth mentioning all the same since it is directly related to human crime, is the use of animal representation of crime. As the critical audience is aware, public protests commonly make use of visual symbols to represent the target of the protest. Sometimes these symbols take the form of human effigies. PETA often uses live humans (appearing to be) caught in traps and drenched in fake blood to represent murdered nonhumans. And recently, we have seen a number of protests against capitalist crime, mainly mortgage fraud, banking fraud, and other forms of corporate abuse, that use nonhumans to represent socially harmful human behavior. In these latter protests, the protesters sometimes employ the use of huge, air-filled depictions of rats and pigs. The rats and pigs normally are holding large bags of money and often are smoking large cigars, to demonstrate that the rats and pigs are representing big-money interests. Labor protests against corporate greed, for instance one put on by a major US airline workers’ union, uses a large, money-holding rat that represents the wealth and greed of the airline’s management. While the objective in these protests is a socially functional one, we might question the use of any nonhuman animal to represent any form of human criminal. There is nothing particularly criminal about pigs or rats, yet they are used to represent human criminals. Another crime-related setting where animals can feature prominently is the prison. Of course, nonhuman animals are imprisoned themselves, usually not for committing crime but for being homeless. But nonhuman animals also live, at least temporarily, in prisons with human prisoners. Gennifer Furst (2006; n.d.) describes prison-based animal programs (PAP) largely in terms of the benefit that the human inmates derive from their association with the nonhuman animals. Institutional residents with various physical and emotional needs train, groom, pet, and otherwise interact with an assortment of animals (dogs, horses, llamas, and others) in many institutional settings (such as prisons, nursing homes, and schools). PAPs have primarily been implemented by departments of correction in order to provide a service to the external community, such as having inmates train and/or care for animals for adoption or service use (e.g., guide dogs) in the community. Furst finds that the prison-based animal program has been highly beneficial to the prisoners. Likewise, DeKeseredy, Schwartz, and Alvi (2000) found that Canadian prison-based nonhuman animal programs have positive outcomes, specifically as pertaining to developing a profeminist attitude among men and reducing the effects of abuse on Canadian university women. 173

Bonnie Berry

I have found that these programs are also quite beneficial to the community at large since, in the case of the Washington Corrections Center for Women, where I have served as a volunteer sponsor for some time, the dogs who are trained as service dogs are given to humans on the outside who need such service animals (epileptics, the blind, et al.). The prisoners learn important skills pertinent to animals, such as grooming, but also important social skills such as patience and communication. At WCCW, the women live with the dogs in their cells, groom them, train them to work as service animals, and get them ready for adoption. (There is also at least one cat living with the women.) My experience at WCCW, in combination with my academic work on animal rights, led to discussions with the women prisoners about the oppression that they and the nonhumans shared (Berry, 1996). It is probably not surprising to the reader that many prisoners have great empathy for nonhuman animals, especially those who, like many of the prisoners, have suffered abuse.

Theoretical explanations of animal exploitation There are four main theoretical explanations to explain the “dark side” of the human–nonhuman relationship, according to Arluke and Sanders (2009). (1) The biological one uses as its support the fact that men are the more common perpetrators of abuse at all levels, severe and less severe (Herzog & Arluke, 2006). (2) The psychological perspective explains cruelty at the level of individual personality and pathology: there is something wrong with the thinking and feeling of people who engage in such behavior, with the antisocial personality being typically named as the culprit. (3) The sociological explanation considers the social and cultural context surrounding the abusive situation, with sociologists taking a macro-level perspective in understanding animal exploitation. Sociological interpretations consider large-scale features of society, such as the economy and politics, as well as smaller but still large features of society such as the entertainment industry and scientific institutions. All of these societal features can produce and perpetuate the oppression of animals. Sociologist Elizabeth Cherry (2016), in her comparison of US and French animal rights movements, compares the two societies’ explanations for animal exploitation along the lines of religious, environmental, medical, food, and media needs. She finds, for instance, that the US, compared to France, focuses on pragmatism as the main explanation for animal exploitation. This is not unusual as we have seen throughout this chapter and in all US-centric rationales for animal exploitation. Using pragmatism as the reason for animal exploitation makes the exploitation seem rational and, for that matter, not exploitative at all. (4) Finally, social-psychological explanations span individual-pathological (psychological) elements and macro-societal (sociological) elements. One social-psychological model used to explain animal exploitation is offered by Robert Agnew (1998). Agnew’s model explains abuse as broadly defined to include the sanctioned institutional use of animals in biomedical labs, animal shelters, and other settings. Ignorance is one direct cause of such abuse when people are unaware that they contribute to the environmental harm of animals, when they consume products or by-products made from animal parts (leather, fur, placenta, etc.), when they use products that are tested on animals, or when they participate in activities that abuse animals such as the aforementioned blood sports. Wolch and Emel (1998) provide an exceptional yet horrifying description of the exploitation of nonhumans to shield humans from death. Specifically, they detail experiments in medicine and physiology to enhance human life and to ensure human “death avoidance” (p. 20). One of the most startling pictures of animal exploitation in the interest of improving human lives is a photo of a mouse with a human ear growing out if its back, as an experiment in “tissue engineering” (p. 21). Moreover, billions of dollars are reaped by pharmaceutical corporations in 174

A critical interpretation of animal exploitation

the selling of vaccines and other chemical substances tested on and derived from animal lives (Wolch and Emel, 1998). The ability to justify, rationalize, or excuse exploitation is another direct cause of animal abuse. Here we find people who claim that nonhuman animals’ lives have little or no moral worth, that nonhumans are here to serve human needs, that nonhumans deserve to be harmed, or that nonhumans would suffer if we did not harm or kill them (as when humans hunt nonhuman animals so that they do not starve). Exploiters also excuse their exploitation by condemning those who condemn their behavior as pious, hypocritical, wrongheaded, or unrealistic. They may also deny responsibility for their exploitative behavior, as though the linkage between their behavior and the resulting harm is thin or nonexistent. Yet another reason for animal exploitation is the financial gain derived from it. Economic gain is something that exploiters want to accumulate, not surprisingly, and it is easy to neutralize the guilt associated with the profitable gain when formal sanctions are nonexistent, weak, or infrequently implemented. The reader is no doubt reminded of Sykes and Matza’s (1957) techniques of neutralization which have long been applied to crime at all levels (street and corporate crime). Symbolic interactionism is another route to understanding nonhuman animal rights, welfare, and abuse. Alger & Alger’s (2005) work on cat culture in a no-kill shelter is interpreted from a symbolic interactionist viewpoint, as is my work on animal physical appearance as a form of reflected social power (Berry, 2008). In the latter, there is plenty of room for exploitation in the unusual sense that humans sometimes force their nonhuman companions (pets) and nonhuman “property” (e.g., race horses) to undergo physical appearance alterations (facelifts, neutical implants, hair coloring, tail and ear docking, etc,) in order to better reflect on the human “owners”. Obviously, the nonhuman animals have no say in what their humans do to them in furtherance of the humans’ social status. Presumably, all social science theories could provide useful explanations of animal rights and related phenomena but probably the best-fit theoretical model would be a critical one for the reason stated above: critical theory attends specifically to inequality, rights, and an unfair power distribution.

The critical explanation The critical interpretation of social phenomena essentially describes the unequal relationship of power between two or more entities with, thus, the typical outcome being that one entity is oppressed by the other. Ordinarily, we think of these entities as human social organizations, groups of humans possessing differential power, with the powerful group hoping to maintain power and the less powerful trying to gain power. And we usually think of power in economic terms. Critical criminology, then, describes this same process in the realm of crime definition (with the powerful empowered to define crime and non-crime), crime sources (notably poverty, racism, sexism, mental disability, and other social disadvantages), patterns of unfair intervention such as disparate law enforcement practices, crime control (differential punishments), and crime consequences (changes in legislation and other forms of regulation). Nonhuman animals as crime victims can be viewed very much like power-minority humans as victims, with, for example, women and nonhumans being faulted for being the victims of rape. Women and, believe it or not, nonhuman animals and are sometimes blamed for being seductive and thus inviting rape. Women who are raped are said to be “asking for it” or not saying “no” strenuously enough, whereas nonhuman animals cannot say no because of language barriers or because they are unable to escape their predators. 175

Bonnie Berry

Moreover, nonhuman animals and human minorities are treated unequally to human powermajorities in the justice system; as when, for instance, minority humans are more likely to be executed for the same offense for which a white person is convicted, and nonhumans are executed for defending themselves or for trespassing on human territory. Socially powerful people hope to maintain the status quo insofar as they retain the social power they have and perhaps gain even more social power, usually via economic rule. Since that is the case, they will invest their vast resources to make sure the unequal conditions continue (Alessio, 2009). Of course this is true and it is well known in the sense of powerful humans keeping less powerful people oppressed. It is also true for humans keeping nonhumans oppressed. Animal rights and animal welfare advocates, who defend the rights and welfare of nonhumans (and the environment), are also oppressed by the powerful. During the George W. Bush era, following the 9/11 attacks and the “war on terror”, animal rights and environmental activists were placed on lists of terrorists (Berry, 2002). We are subject to criminal investigation and worse for engaging in lawful public discourse. Power and wealth lead to, encourage, and defend speciesism. Unlike structural functionalism, conflict theory assumes that social structures and their interrelated parts do not necessarily work together for the good of the whole. Though the parts may indeed be interrelated, there is little or no selfless cooperation. In other words, and as enacted by the destructive forces of power (with the caveat that not all powerful people are socially destructive), struggle trumps cooperation, the social structure is viewed as being made up of competing parts, with the goal being to maintain self interests. One of the tools of social power that the powerful use to retain their power is control over information. If one can control information then one can also control public perceptions. Thus, media and education (entertainment, newspapers, radio, TV, and all levels of education) are controlled in order to create false realities as the only realities. That is, wealth and corresponding power are used to create and maintain the superstructure that determines “reality” through the creation of a sufficiently sophisticated and powerful information-control program which then eliminates the real and existing reality from everyone’s consciousness. False realities can become, with sophisticated corporate influence, the only realities. It is the job of animal rights and animal welfare advocates to identify false realities and uncover hidden “‘truths”. Which brings us to the work of Bill Winders and David Nibert (2004) who write of the relationship between capitalism, the state, and agriculture in their historical account of expanding meat consumption as a profit-making venture. Besides decrying the abuse of animals in general, animal rights activists frequently cite meat-eating, the eating of animal flesh, as a prime example of animal exploitation. Nonhuman animals are “produced” in deplorable conditions, brutally killed and eaten by humans. Most animal rights critiques focus on the ethics and morality of meat production and the horrifying practices that accompany it, but often overlook social structural forces, such as the integral links between the free market economy, government economic policies, and the consumption of nonhuman animals as food. Winders and Nibert analyze the connections between a post-Depression New Deal-inspired US agricultural policy and the expansion of animal oppression after 1945. To help reduce the oversupply of feed grains and thus aid grain farmers, US agricultural policy encouraged increased meat production and consumption. The result was expanded animal oppression by increasing the slaughter of animals (so that they may be consumed) and increasing the oppressive conditions of meat production (large and crowded feeding lots, the use of growth hormones, mutilation of the animals while living, forced reproduction, and assembly-line style slaughter). The expansionary and profit-driven market economy was and is the underpinning of animal oppression, fueled and maintained by state policies. 176

A critical interpretation of animal exploitation

Not only has the expansion of meat consumption increased harm to nonhuman animals, it has also greatly increased harm to the environment, to the workers involved in the meat industry, and to consumers’ health—demonstrating the reach of capitalism’s harm and the wide-ranging effects of state policies. Specifically, the environment has suffered much damage due to, among other practices, farm runoff (animal excrement that has destroyed water supplies, for example) and land waste. Also, as more animals were killed and processed in slaughterhouses, laborers in this slaughter and meat packaging industry have suffered, as quests for increasing profits have led to reduced labor costs. The humans who consume meat have suffered a raft of medical conditions derived from eating meat and, worse, from eating contaminated meat. E. coli and other meat-born diseases kill and permanently disable humans; these contaminants, as widely reported, are the result of profit-seeking. Moreover, the expansion of the meat industry has led to the displacement of subsistence farmers, indigenous humans, free-living animals, and other vulnerable groups in Third World nations. Clearly, these trends in the treatment of nonhuman animals, in the production of and slaughter of nonhuman animals, are a function of competition within capitalist markets. Increased grain surpluses, as experienced in the US, promoted an expansion of meat consumption. There was nothing inherently wrong with having a surplus of grain; after all, we could have given the grain to those less fortunate than ourselves. It was the higher profitability of meat versus grain that solved the problems of capitalist agriculture regardless of the devastating effects that the industrialization of livestock production visited on nonhumans, humans, and the environment in which we all must live.

The future Finally, let us envision the future of critical analyses as relevant to nonhuman animal exploitation. New critical criminology directions that we can anticipate would include an accumulation of theoretical work on the topic, which has already begun. Along with the additions to critical theoretical interpretations of crime against nonhuman animals, we can expect and are already seeing an incremental rise in empirically-supported critical assumptions. Finally, and as at least partially based on theoretical and empirical critical advancements, societies worldwide are undergoing political and policy changes that enable a new perspective of nonhuman equality. As to this latter point, a large number of informal (for instance, grassroots and communitylevel) organizations have challenged long-held beliefs that nonhumans do not feel pain as humans do, are not worthy of legal protections as humans are, and crimes against them do not warrant legal sanctions. Formally, legislation has come to pass ensuring that laws do change, have changed, to protect nonhuman animals from crime ranging from starvation, mutilation, assault, sexual abuse, “canned” hunting, and murder. These legislative changes, while resisted by speciesists, do alter speciesist attitudes and speciesist behavior. These social changes have happened in the same painstaking way that social changes disallowing crimes against minority categories of humans (women, the poor, disabled, LGBTQ, ethnic minorities, immigrants, etc.) have taken place. These changes speak clearly to a recognition of critical views, views questioning inequality and views that translate as remedies against inequality. Changes in definition, legal and other, are necessary to make real the criminal aspect of animal exploitation. Meat is murder, as PETA says. Bestiality is rape. Assault, neglect, starvation, and false imprisonment are all crimes. The official definition of crime, as applied to humans, often still excludes nonhumans. That does not mean that these acts are not crimes, particularly per a critical analysis that takes into account the wrongness and social dysfunction of inequality. 177

Bonnie Berry

Based on what we know so far, reading the animals-and-society literature and observing social movements pertinent to animal rights, we might speculate that progress is in store. This progress will be very slow in coming. As critical criminologists can attest, we are still in the primitive stages of recognizing and correcting human inequality in the field of criminal justice. Inequality is not something that people who do not suffer it want to be rid of, at least those who are insensitive to the plight of the less advantaged. Inequality works for them, it benefits them. Or so they believe. Yet, there are sufficient numbers of us who, while not especially powerful, are educated and, more importantly, are willing to educate and reveal the true reality. One of these true realities is that nonhuman animals are deserving of rights to be free from exploitation, criminal exploitation or other exploitation, the same as humans.

References Agnew, R. (1998). The causes of animal abuse. Theoretical Criminology, 2, 177–209. Alessio, J. (2009). Personal communication, December 6. Alger, J. M. & Alger, S. F. (2005). Cat culture: The social world of a cat shelter. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University. Arluke, A. (2004). Brute force: Animal police and the challenge of cruelty. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University. Arluke, A. & Sanders, C. (Eds) (2009). Between the species: Readings in human–animal relations. Boston, MA: Pearson. Ascione, F. R. (2004). Children, animal abuse, and family violence: The multiple intersections of animal abuse, child victimization, and domestic violence. In K. A. Kendall-Tacket & S. Giacomoni (Eds), Victimization of children and youth: Patterns of abuse and response strategies (pp. 3.1–3.34). Kingston, NJ: Civic Research Institute. Ascione, F. R. (2008a). Animal abuse and child maltreatment occurrence. In C. M. Renzetti & J. L. Edleson (Eds), Encyclopedia of interpersonal violence (pp. 26–27). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Ascione, F. R. (2008b). Animal/pet abuse. In C. M. Renzetti & J. L. Edleson (Eds), Encyclopedia of interpersonal violence (pp. 27–28). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Atkinson, M. & Young, K. (2005). Greyhound racing and sports-related violence. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 40, 335–356. Beirne, P. (2009). Confronting animal abuse: Law, criminology, and human–animal relationships. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Beirne, P. & South, N. (2007). Issues in green criminology: Confronting harms against environments, humanity, and other animals. Portland, OR: Willan. Berry, B. (1996). Solidarity among the oppressed. The Prism, 9, 23–25. Berry, B. (1997). Human and nonhuman animal rights and oppression: An evolution toward equality. Free Inquiry in Creative Sociology, 25, 155–160. Berry, B. (2002). Animal rights in a time of terror. Animals and Society, 2, 3–4. Berry, B. (2004a). Nonhuman animals as victims: Victimology and the animal rights movement. In C. T. M. Coston (Ed.), Victimizing vulnerable groups: Images of uniquely high risk crime targets (pp. 244–254). Westport, CT: Praeger. Berry, B. (2004b). International progress and regress on animal rights. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 24, 58–75. Berry, B. (2008). Interactionism and animal aesthetics: A theory of reflected social power. Society and Animals, 16, 75–89. Cherry, E. (2016). Culture and activism: Animal rights in France and the United States. New York, NY: Routledge. DeGue, S. & DiLillo, D. (2008). Is animal cruelty a “red flag” for family violence? Investigating co-occurring violence toward children, partners, and pets. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 24, 1036–1054. DeKeseredy, W. S., Schwartz, M. D. & Alvi, S. (2000). The role of profeminist men in dealing with woman abuse on the Canadian college campus. Violence Against Women, 6, 918–935. Flynn, C. P. (1999). Battered women and their animal companions. Society and Animals, 8, 99–127. Furst, G. (2006). Prison-based animal programs: A national survey. The Prison Journal, 86, 407–430. Furst, G. (n.d.). How prison-based animal programs help inmates. Unpublished paper. Herzog, H. (1993). Human morality and animal research. American Scholar, 62, 337–349.

178

A critical interpretation of animal exploitation

Herzog, H. & Arluke, A. (2006). Human–animal connections: Recent findings on the anthrozoology of cruelty. Brain and Behavioral Science, 29, 230–231. Merz-Perez, L. & Heide, K. M. (2004). Animal cruelty: Pathway to violence against people. New York, NY: AltaMira Press. Nibert, D. (2002). Animal rights/human rights: Entanglements of oppression and liberation. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Quinlisk, J. (1999). Animal abuse and family violence. In F. Ascione & P. Arkow (eds.), Child abuse, animal abuse, and domestic violence (pp. 168–175). West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University. Sykes, G. M. & Matza, D. (1957). Techniques of neutralization: A theory of delinquency. American Sociological Review, 22, 664–670. Winders, B. & Nibert, D. (2004). Expanding ‘meat’ consumption and animal oppression. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 24, 76–96. Wolch, J. & Emel, J. (1998). Animal geographies: Place, politics, and identity in the nature-culture borderlands. New York, NY: Verso.

179

14 Crimes of the powerful An agenda for a twenty-first-century criminology1 Dawn L. Rothe and David O. Friedrichs

Introduction The term “crimes of the powerful” has been critiqued for problems of inclusion and exclusion of “crimes”. This extends beyond being marginalized within the field of criminology, and continues to remain a contested topic even within the various fields that fall under the umbrella of white-collar crime. In part this is due to the debate over the expansion of the term “crime” beyond the traditionally accepted state-provided definition (Friedrichs, 2015; Lynch, Stretesky & Long, 2015). But it is also a matter of what harms and crimes should be considered. Are crimes of the powerful the same as what are called white-collar crimes? We suggest that the term “crimes of the powerful” extends beyond those crimes generally considered under the umbrella term of white-collar crime. The term “crimes of the powerful” was put forth by Frank Pearce (1976) in a book with that title, and continues to be invoked – e.g., David Whyte (2009) Crimes of the Powerful: A Reader – in relation to “crimes committed by state institutions and private business organizations or corporations.” The contemporary interest in white-collar crime is reflected in the steady stream of books and articles ranging in focus from research on occupational crimes committed by individuals for their own benefit (e.g., fraud, tax evasion) to organizational crimes committed on behalf of organizational interests and goals (e.g., corporate crime, state-corporate crime, crimes of the state, and crimes of globalization). Critical criminologists have played a key role in the promotion of criminological attention to crimes of the powerful. Recently one of the authors, Dawn Rothe, along with David Kauzlarich (2016), published Crimes of the Powerful: An Introduction that argues that the umbrella term “white-collar crime” is too limited and needs to include other harms. Consider that many crimes and harms are committed by elite or powerful people that do not operate within a corporation, state, or international financial organization. One should not discount the power of organized crime and the symbiotic relationships with corporations, states, and in some cases, international financial institutions. Organized crime operates within a market-like structure, and as one of the authors, Friedrichs (2010a: 193), notes: “business crime and organized crime can be seen as ways of conducting business illegally, and both reflect political processes that dictate that certain forms of entrepreneurship must be constrained and prohibited”. Organized crime is then a “product of and an important ongoing element of a capitalist political economy”. As such, we suggest that 180

Crimes of the powerful

the various divisions – white-collar crime, corporate crime, state-corporate crime, state crime, crimes of globalization, organized crime, and even environmental crimes – should be considered under one umbrella: crimes of the powerful. Prior to discussing this more fully we present a brief overview of the roots of critical criminological attention to crimes of the powerful.

Radical and critical criminology and white-collar crime E. H. Sutherland’s (1940) famous call for attention to white-collar crime was largely – although not wholly – disregarded for several decades. More than 75 years later, attention to white-collar crime remains greatly over-shadowed by positivistic mainstream criminological attention to traditional street crime. Furthermore, criminological writing on white-collar crime in general (and research on occupational crime in particular) fits comfortably within a mainstream social science perspective. Since the maldistribution of power is one of the core themes of critical criminology, the application of a critical criminological perspective to elite and organizational forms of white-collar crime inevitably contributes to the understanding of such crime in ways not readily available through the application of mainstream criminological perspectives. The most common reading of Sutherland’s original 1939 Presidential address stresses a call for a more systematic study of white-collar crime. It is not typically read as a demand for transforming a system that both produces and indulges (or extends excessive lenience towards) white-collar offenders. Sutherland himself was no radical in the conventional sense, but he identified with a Midwest populism which had affinities with progressive political movements. Sutherland is among the few “key thinkers” in criminology who has been an important influence on both mainstream and critical criminologists (Friedrichs, 2016). He is quite commonly cited as providing a basic point of departure for discussions of crimes of the powerful. Sutherland’s legacy here is enduring. The relatively few criminologists who initially took Sutherland up on his call to attend more fully to white-collar crime – including Marshall Clinard, Donald Cressey, and Donald Newman – were not self-identified radicals in any sense. It is interesting to note, however, that Richard Quinney (1962), one of the very few Ph.D. criminology students of the post-Sutherland era who wrote a dissertation focusing on a form of white-collar crime (by pharmacists), emerged within a decade or so as the best-known American radical criminologist (Friedrichs, 1980; Martin, Mutchnick & Austin, 1990). The criminal behavior system typology formulated with Marshall Clinard (Clinard & Quinney, 1973) is one of the contributions to the field for which Quinney is best-known and most frequently cited. During the 1970s an identifiable radical criminology emerged along with more substantial criminological attention to white-collar crime. These two developments were independent in more respects than not, although they also had some common roots. Both radical criminology and the intensified scholarly attention to white-collar crime were in part responding to increased exposure of elite wrong-doing from the late 1960s on, with the Vietnam War and the Watergate Affair simply two of the more conspicuous such events in the political realm (Friedrichs, 1980, 2010a; Simon, 2006). The consumer and environmental movements that emerged during this period generated broad concern with some of the illegal or unethical practices of major corporations. During the 1970s and 1980s a number of criminologists identified with radical criminology started writing about white-collar crime (especially its corporate and governmental forms). Harold Barnett, Steven Box, James Brady, William Chambliss, Ronald Kramer, Ray Michalowski, Frank Pearce, Jeffrey Reiman, and David Simon are among those who come most readily to mind in this context. 181

Dawn L. Rothe and David O. Friedrichs

On the other hand, it should be stressed that radical criminologists devoted much more attention to the analysis of oppressive features of the capitalist system (and some of the consequences for conventional offenders) than to white-collar crime specifically (Lynch & Michalowski, 2006; Schwartz & Hatty, 2003). The 1960s and 1970s radical criminological research remained dominated by instrumental Marxism and pluralistic conflict perspectives. Moreover, some critical criminologists remain resistant to moving beyond white-collar crime to a more expansive view of crimes of the powerful. The following section argues that the direction of the future for scholars and students should begin by reconsidering the often misleading labels under the umbrella of white-collar crime as more broadly encompassed by the term crimes of the powerful. Since the late 1970s and early 1980s, research on organizational forms of white-collar crime has produced fields of inquiry that now stand as recognized areas, and are generally at least briefly touched on in nearly all introductory criminology and criminal justice textbooks. There are many different terms used to describe these types of crimes including suite crime, elite deviance, political crime, corporate crime, state-corporate crime, state organized crime, government crime, and state crime. In some instances, some of the terms refer to the same type of crime (i.e., state crime or government crime). State-corporate crime, first conceptualized by Ronald Kramer and Raymond Michalowski (1990) increasingly came to be seen as taking two forms, although these types often interacted with each other. Accordingly, a distinction emerged between state-facilitated and state-initiated state-corporate crimes (Kramer, Michalowski, & Kauzlarich 2008). Such intersections can work in a myriad of fashions. States can create laws that facilitate corporate wrong-doing and regulatory and advisement agencies can simply fail to do their appointed tasks. States and state actors can also directly collude and conspire with private corporations to violate laws. The field of state crime is one of the newer areas of criminological research. Although such crime had been sporadically addressed by a few criminologists in the latter decades of the twentieth century, William J. Chambliss’s (1989) 1988 presidential address to the American Society of Criminology was a seminal event in placing scholarly attention to such crime on the criminological agenda. Since Chambliss’s speech, the field of state crime has grown significantly and with that the definition of state crime has also expanded. This term incorporates acts that are harmful but are not criminalized by the state (e.g., torture) or by the international political community through international treaties (e.g., crimes of aggression), and includes acts of omission as well. More recently, white-collar crime scholarship has expanded beyond the types noted above to include harms caused by international financial institutions: the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. This new area of research has been coined “crimes of globalization” (Friedrichs & Friedrichs, 2002; Rothe & Friedrichs, 2015). The crimes of international financial institutions have a generic relationship to state-corporate crimes insofar as they are cooperative ventures involving public sector and private sector entities, and in some respects are hybrid public/private sector entities. Additionally, the policies and practices of the international financial institutions are largely driven by the global agenda of powerful developed states such as the United States. These states in turn are strongly oriented toward supporting the interests of corporations.

The symbiotic nature of crimes of the powerful Above we presented several typologies of crimes of the powerful with the caveat that the various divisions – white-collar crime, corporate crime, state-corporate crime, state crime, crimes of globalization, organized crime, and even environmental crimes – separated or as divisions within

182

Crimes of the powerful

divisions – miss the broader symbiotic nature and relationships they have with each other, at times making it nearly impossible to claim one form or another. Simply put, corporate crimes are inter-related with the activities of the state, and in many cases with those of international financial institutions as well. Likewise, environmental crimes are generally committed by states, corporations, international financial institutions and organized crime groups, often acting in concert. State crime can rarely be separated from the complicit roles of corporations, and in some cases international financial institutions or organized crime groups. Organized crime groups also have some sort of implicit or complicit relationship with states and in many cases corporations and international financial institutions as well. As such, typologies that separate out these crimes may be convenient to highlight a primary role of one organization, but in the end this abstract and artificial division within divisions blinds us to the broader problem: the current power and economic structures and their reproduction. Moreover, students and scholars of crimes of the powerful would be remiss in assuming these harms occur within a vacuum devoid of the broader social, political, and economic, and power structures. Likewise, any assumptions that these crimes are the result of individuals devoid of context, assuming pure agency, should be discounted. On the other hand, to assume it is all about capitalism, the political economy or neo-liberalism misses the historical legacy and pattern of crimes of the powerful pre-capitalism and in former non-capitalistic systems. Rather, there is symbiosis between the various types of harms/crimes, the perpetrators, and the structures/systems, where one perpetuates the other in a cyclical fashion. The driving forces behind crimes of the powerful are reproduced and reinforced by the powerful, thus reproducing the conditions that facilitate and legitimate these behaviors, which wax and wane throughout time. Power is primary to the reproduction of relationships (social capital), harms of the powerful, and capital accumulation in a broad sense (i.e., prestige, knowledge, money, political will, ability to create and spread hegemonic discourse and propaganda, pursue or maintain economic or military might, organizational legitimacy, and so forth). In this sense, while recognizing we all have power in varying degrees, power in relation to crimes of the powerful translates to those that have ultimate control and influence over the social order of society and societies including reifying the existing social order to maintain the unequal status quo. The current state of crimes of the powerful are immersed within the trajectory of neo-liberal economic policies and globalization. This combination provides a host of opportunities for accumulation of capital and power. Whether we focus on transnational corporations, international financial institutions, states, organized crime syndicates, or the powerful that hold positions in multiple institutions and situations, their decision-making, policies, and actions are all within the parameters set by the broader structure of the political economy. This structure currently emphasizes privatization, open markets, deregulation of corporations, and transfusion of economic policies and culture from the global North to the global South. Consider that a state’s vested interest is in the growth of the economy which is needed for it to maintain legitimacy and its political, and military power. As such, corporations, their growth and profit, are a primary concern. Additionally, states are impacted by and impact on the international financial institutions in their ongoing push for global open markets and privatization. These financial institutions also play a primary role in facilitating corporate growth, expansion and profit maintenance, generally at the expense of the non-powerful. Corporations need the state for charters, but more importantly to ensure an ongoing healthy market for them to exist without over-regulation that would stymie their “successes”: i.e., realizing profit. Having said this, we do note that corporations do not oppose all regulations; it is only those regulations

183

Dawn L. Rothe and David O. Friedrichs

that could potentially hinder their goals while favouring those that ensure protections from legal rights to financial security in cases of economic meltdowns as we witnessed in the past few years with mega-government bailouts of the banking sector. As noted by Fasenfest (2010, pp. 630–631), perversely, the causes for the current crisis are presented as solutions, and the major culprits are put in charge of the recovery. Within each of these sectors, there is an ongoing revolving door of relationships and power. The current geopolitical and economic sphere conveniently reproduces these symbiotic relationships between states, corporations and international financial institutions. Here again, we note that it is this interdependent relationship that makes the divisions between types of crime (e.g., corporate, state, state-corporate, etc.) artificial and at times misleading – assuming a more monolithic form of criminality. Capital should not be misunderstood, however, as an economic term. Rather, capital can be understood as a site of gaining or maintaining power: social, political, cultural (including knowledge, language), and economic. While the classification of crime and harm can be intellectually useful, the gravest harms are all wrapped up in larger systems of economics, politics, and social order, so that they can all be understood as interdependent and multi-directional. This means that the organizing themes of political economy in the modern world are based on activities such as the constant drive for profit, the buying off and corruption of political systems, and the powerful disproportionally shaping most aspects of law, justice, and social policy. To understand crimes of the powerful means to understand them as epi-phenomenal, or as outcomes of broader economic and political relationships both domestically and internationally.

Conclusion The maldistribution of power across the societal spectrum has always been a central point of departure for all the different strains of radical and critical criminological analysis (DeKeseredy, 2014; Friedrichs, 2009; Ugwudike, 2015). And a huge body of critical criminological literature over the course of many decades has documented – in myriad different ways – how this maldistribution of power works to the disadvantage of the powerless. But it does not follow from this that the active crimes of the powerful per se have been a principal focus of these strains of critical criminological analysis. It is true, of course, that feminist criminology has extensively documented how the traditional (and on-going) power imbalance between men and women has been complicit in crimes committed by men against women (e.g., intimate partner violence), as well as the across-the-board grossly inadequate response of a male-dominated system of social control against such crimes. Parallel work has informed critical race criminology and queer criminology. Much left realist criminology and cultural criminology remains focused upon the generation of, the manifestation of, and the social control response to conventional forms of crime and deviance. Postmodernist criminology has addressed, among other projects, the social construction of reality, with powerful institutions and individuals positioned to shape this reality. The work of peacemaking criminologists has largely been directed toward sensitizing us to the counter-productive, inherently unjust societal responses to conventional forms of crime. We want to be clear here: we regard this whole body of work as a hugely useful and valuable corrective to mainstream criminological analysis. And we anticipate – as many other chapters in this handbook demonstrate – that there is still much to be done within the framework of such critical criminological analysis. But on the other side of this we are making the case here for some realignment of critical criminological priorities, with proportionally an increase of attention to

184

Crimes of the powerful

the specific – and all-too-often intentional – crimes of the powerful, and the formidable challenges involved in more effectively addressing such crimes. Well into the second decade of the present century, attention to conventional (or street) crime and the control of such crime continues to be the dominant focus of the criminological enterprise. But we contend that there is no necessary reason why this should be so. And we have further claimed – as many other contemporary criminologists have now claimed – that ultimately crimes of the powerful are far more consequential than crimes of the powerless. We have here sought to outline briefly the origins of current criminological interest in crimes of the powerful with the establishment of white collar crime criminology, beginning with Sutherland’s 1939 American Sociological Society presidential address as a key point of departure. But we have also sought to demonstrate that over the past quarter of a century or so criminological attention to crimes of the powerful has both expanded significantly in scope beyond white collar crime, as traditionally defined, and that criminological attention to such crime has increased significantly. We also claim that self-identified critical criminologists have been at the forefront of this enterprise. Inevitably, those with a critical criminological orientation and those not wedded to such an orientation will approach the study of crimes of the powerful somewhat differently. Ideally, enhanced attention to, understanding of, and identification of effective strategies to address, or limit, crimes of the powerful emerges out of the collective and complementary attention to such crime by as many criminologists as possible. And serious students of such crime fully recognize that – given the scope and complexity of crimes of the powerful – effectively addressing such crime in the long run requires a massive collective enterprise across a multitude of different disciplines, aligned with a multitude of activist entities in the political realm. It is our premise that the historical and on-going criminological privileging of crimes of the powerless and the control of such crimes over the crimes of the powerful and the control of such crimes is neither sustainable nor morally defensible. Certainly some criminological attention to crimes of the powerless and control of such crimes is both inevitable and warranted. We here affirm our acceptance of the long-standing left realist claim that wholesale disparaging of the very real harms of such crimes – disproportionately to communities of the powerless – has been a mistake on the part of some critical criminologists. The application of a critical criminological interpretation to such crime and its control is a much-needed corrective to mainstream criminological positivist analysis of such crime and its control. But we also have the conviction that there are many evolving developments in our world of the twenty-first century that will render many forms of conventional crime increasingly less feasible, and in some cases virtually obsolete. The rapid, on-gong migration of more and more human activity from “real space” to cyberspace is just one noteworthy dimension of this transformation. Relatedly, on the control side, the dramatic expansion of surveillance, broadly defined, and vast and virtually comprehensive data banks of “information” is part of this as well. Of course, from a critical criminological vantage point conventional crime and the need to control such crime diminishes principally due to progressive transformation of the social, economic and political conditions that have been a core source of inspiration for such crime. And in relation to such conditions one has to acknowledge that significant spikes of conventional crime, broadly defined, could occur as a consequence of intensification of, rather than the alleviation of, criminogenic social, economic, and political conditions, going forward. The dramatic expansion of income inequality over the past several decades, if it continues, is just one potential criminogenic condition – despite the fact that many forms of conventional crime, as measured by standard crime measurement instruments, have declined during this era.

185

Dawn L. Rothe and David O. Friedrichs

Our overall premise here is this: going forward in the twenty-first century crimes of the powerful will overwhelmingly be the principal source of harm to human beings, and the scope of such crime (e.g., in relation to climate change, or the threat of nuclear war) has the potential to expand, not diminish. In an increasingly globalized, inter-connected world the consequences of crimes of the powerful affect exponentially more people. Accordingly, in our view, it is incumbent upon all criminologists – with critical criminologists well-positioned to lead to the way – to place the criminological study of crimes of the powerful and the control of such crime at the top of our collective agenda. We have suggested here that a rich, sophisticated understanding of the symbiotic character of crimes of the powerful is one core foundational project. The long-standing analysis of the on-going forces that shape a false consciousness about crime and its control, and the sources of harm, is another such core project. It is also our conviction that enhanced criminological attention to the expanding forms of globalization in relation to “crime” and its control is another core project for critical criminologists. Altogether, we hope we have succeeded here in making the case for a vigorous and expansive critical criminological enterprise of study of the crimes of the powerful for a twenty-first century criminology.

An epilogue: President Donald Trump and crimes of the powerful The election of billionaire real estate developer and reality TV show star Donald Trump in November, 2016, as President of the United States, was something that was literally unimaginable a year and a half earlier, and indeed unimaginable for many people until it actually happened. Trump was elected president, at least in part, because his claim – along with that of Senator Bernie Sanders – that the “political establishment” of both the Republican and the Democrat political parties was fundamentally corrupt, insofar as its highest priorities were its own political incumbency and the well-being of its largest donors from the corporate world and Wall Street. This claim is one that critical criminologists have long been making: it is absolutely correct and clearly resonated with millions of voters in the United States. That former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – widely described as the most experienced and qualified person to run for President for a first term, in the modern era – was unable to defeat Donald Trump (the least experienced and qualified, in the judgment of many) could at least in part be attributed to the long history of the Clintons in ethically dubious and self-enriching or self-promoting initiatives. That, along with the Democratic National Convention’s favoritism of Clinton and downplay of Sanders, further fueled the feeling of millions that the system is indeed corrupt and broken. That Trump has also been credibly accused of decades of ethically dubious, arguably fraudulent and wholly self-serving initiatives did not deter millions of voters from supporting him. Among many other “crimes of the powerful” that Trump was accused of we have systematic discrimination against minorities and women early in his career in New York City real estate, through the establishment of a blatantly fraudulent enterprise – “Trump University” – at a much more recent stage of his career. The civil lawsuit on Trump University was settled for $25 million shortly after the election, allowing President-Elect Trump to avoid having to testify under oath on the allegations in this case. So Trump is alleged to have been party to a broad range of “white-collar crime” endeavors – cheating taxpayers, investors, contractors, employees and customers – even though he was never formally indicted. And during the course of the 2016 presidential campaign Trump unambiguously stated that he would order

186

Crimes of the powerful

what are effectively “crimes of states” – if elected – including the re-establishment of the use of water-boarding and worse forms of torture, and the deliberate killing of the families of suspected terrorists, along with carpet bombing. Millions of Trump supporters expect and hope that he will “make America great again” by – among other things – creating a booming, expanding economy, and restoring vast numbers of well-paying blue-collar jobs in factories, mills and mines across the United States. Who knows how that will manifest itself, but much intensified suffering of the powerless will surely occur. The “powerless” is not a monolithic entity, of course, but whatever transpires during the course of a Trump presidency it is quite certain that whole classes of the powerless – beginning with undocumented immigrants and would-be immigrants fleeing desperate circumstances – will suffer. Proposed initiatives during his campaign by Trump and his political team – including getting rid of the Dodd-Frank law, tax cuts that will very disproportionately benefit the rich and powerful, and repealing or drastically downsizing the Affordable Care Act – are initiatives that are highly likely to facilitate future crimes of the powerful, and to amplify the suffering of the powerless. It remains to be seen whether “populist” initiatives such as the abolishing of the “carried interest” tax break for wealthy money-managers and the restoration of the Glass-Steagall Act would be put into effect. On the other side of this, a commitment to a dramatically ramped up “tough on crime” approach to conventional crime is sure to impose much suffering on a broad range of powerless – all-too-often innocent – constituencies. Trump’s dismissal of and hostility toward global climate change initiatives (and new treaties) has the potential of contributing to what some critical criminologists regard as the single biggest threat to humanity, going forward. More immediately, the goal of “gutting” the Environmental Protection Agency will certainly facilitate a range of environmental crimes, again with the powerless especially vulnerable to victimization. Trump’s remarks about nuclear issues – including but hardly limited to not taking “first strike” off the table, and openness to expanding the number of countries with nuclear weapons – has the potential to enhance the probability of nuclear war, with millions of lives lost and vast damage to the human environment. And the foregoing merely scratches the surface of the broad range of crimes of the powerful that a Trump administration could either commit directly or facilitate. The observation that “Prediction is difficult, especially about the future” has been attributed to the great physicist Niels Bohr (but also to Yogi Berra). The foregoing epilogue was produced shortly after the 2016 presidential election. Readers may already have some sense of how the Trump presidency will play out. Will unimaginably good things, or unimaginably bad things – or some complex mix of these – occur? But much is at stake in anticipating the worst-case scenarios of what may lie ahead, in the spirit of a “prospective” criminology of crimes of states (Friedrichs, 2010b). Criminological students of crimes of the powerful should have their work cut out for them in the years ahead. Ronald C. Kramer (2016) has argued “that criminologists have a responsibility to act as public criminologists by speaking in the ‘prophetic voice’” concerning such crimes as the “use and threat to use nuclear weapons, the aerial bombardment of civilians, wars of aggression, torture, the failure to mitigate global warming and adapt to climate change ecocide, along with myriad other state-corporate crimes” (p. 520). The dynamic of the dialectical – the stark thesis of the vast harms of autocracy by the rich and powerful giving rise to a progressive anti-thesis – is the biggest hope for critical criminologists and other progressive constituencies opposed to Trump. The prospect of a full-blown legitimacy crisis in the years ahead can hardly

187

Dawn L. Rothe and David O. Friedrichs

be discounted. Whatever transpires, crimes of the powerful will be a hugely consequential challenge for the immediate and regretfully the long-term future.

Note 1

This chapter is partly drawn from David O. Friedrichs (2009) “White Collar Crime and Critical Criminology: Convergence and Divergence,” In Jeffrey Ian Ross (Ed.) Cutting the Edge (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers) and from Dawn L. Rothe and David Kauzlarich (2016) Crimes of the Powerful: An Introductory Text (New York: Routledge).

References Chambliss, W. J. (1989). “State-organized Crime.” Criminology 77: 183–208. Clinard, M. B. & Quinney, R. (1973). Criminal Behavior Systems: A Typology, 2nd edition. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. DeKeseredy, W. S. (2014). Contemporary Critical Criminology. London: Routledge. Fasenfest, D. (2010). “Neoliberalism, Globalization and the Capitalist World Order.” Critical Sociology 36: 627–631. Friedrichs, D. O. (1980). “Radical Criminology in the United States: An Interpretive Understanding.” In J. A. Inciardi (Ed.), Radical Criminology: The Coming Crisis, Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 35–60. Friedrichs, D. O. (2009). “Critical Criminology.” In J. M. Miller (Ed.), 21st Century Criminology: A Reference Handbook. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 210–218. Friedrichs, D. O. (2010a). Trusted Criminals: White Collar Crime in Contemporary Society. 4th edition. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Cengage Learning. Friedrichs, D. O. (2010b). “Toward a Prospective Criminology of Crimes of States.” In W. J. Chambliss, R. Michalowski & R. C. Kramer (Eds), State Crime in the Global Age. Cullompton, UK: Willan, 67–82. Friedrichs, D. O. (2015). “Crimes of the Powerful and the Definition of Crime.” In G. Barak (Ed.) The Routledge International Handbook of the Crimes of the Powerful. London: Routledge, 39–50. Friedrichs, D. O. (2016). “Edwin H. Sutherland: An Improbable Criminological Key Thinker: For Critical Criminologists and for Mainstream Criminologists.” Critical Criminology On-Line First. Friedrichs, D. O. & Friedrichs, J. (2002). “The World Bank and Crimes of Globalization: A Case Study.” Social Justice, 29: 13–36. Kramer, R. C. (2016). “State Crime, the Prophetic Voice and Public Criminology Activism.” Critical Criminology, 24: 519–532. Kramer, R. C. & Michalowski, R. J. (1990). “Toward an Integrated Theory of State-Corporate Crime.” A Paper Presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Society of Criminology, Baltimore, MD, November. Kramer, R. C., Michalowski, R. J. & Kauzlarich, D. (2008). “The Origins and Development of the Concept and Theory of State-Corporate Crime.” In J. F. Wozniak, M. C. Braswell, R. E. Vogel and K. R. Blevins (Eds). Transformative Justice – Critical and Peacemaking Theory Influenced by Richard Quinney. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 63–81. Lynch, M. J. & Michalowski, R. J. (2006). A Primer in Radical Criminology: Critical Perspectives on Crime, Power and Identity. Monsey, NJ: Criminal Justice Press. Lynch, M. J., Stretesky, P. B. & Long, M. A. (2015). Defining Crime: A Critique of the Concept and Its Implications. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. Martin, R., Mutchnick, R. J. & Austin, T. W. (1990). Criminological Thought – Pioneers Past and Present. New York: Macmillan. Pearce, F. (1976). Crimes of the Powerful: Marxism, Crime and Deviance. London: Pluto Press. Pearce, F. & Tombs, S. (1992). “Realism and Corporate Crime.” In R. Matthews and J. Young (Eds), Issues in Realist Criminology. London: Sage, 70–101. Quinney, R. (1962). Retail Pharmacy as a Marginal Occupation: A Study of Prescription Violation. Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Wisconsin. Rothe, D. L. & Friedrichs, D. O. (2015). Crimes of Globalization. New York: Routledge.

188

Crimes of the powerful

Rothe, D. L. & Kauzlarich, D. (2016). Crimes of the Powerful: An Introduction. New York: Routledge. Schwartz, M. D. & Hatty, S. E. (Eds) (2003). Controversies in Critical Criminology. Cincinnati, OH: Anderson Publishing Co. Simon, D. R. (1996/2006). Elite Deviance. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Sutherland, E. H. (1940). “White-Collar Criminality.” American Sociological Review, 5: 1–12. Ugwudike, P. (2015). An Introduction to Critical Criminology. Bristol: Polity Press. Whyte, D. (Ed.) (2009). Crimes of the Powerful: A Reader. Berkshire: Open University Press.

189

15 State violence, women, and gender Victoria E. Collins

Introduction1 As I write this chapter, media headlines have reported on the minimal custodial sentence handed down to former Stanford student Brock Turner for rape and sexual assault. Turner was caught in the act of raping an unconscious woman behind a dumpster following a party on Stanford’s campus. Despite the evidence against him (the two eyewitnesses that interrupted him mid-act), and the powerful victim-impact statement the young woman made to the court, the Judge in the case sentenced Turner to six months, a significantly reduced sentence compared to the six years the Prosecutor requested (Grinberg & Shoichet, 2016). The Judge’s rationale for such a light sentence was “A prison sentence would have a severe impact on him. I think he will not be a danger to others” (Aaron Persky as cited in Fantz & Wills, 2016). This current event is a small representation of the normalization and pervasiveness of not only acts of violence against women, something the United Nations terms “a global pandemic” (United Nations Population Fund, 2014), but the institutionalization of language and culture that minimizes its prevalence and the notably absent understanding that such acts are connected to the direct and/or indirect involvement of state. As a perpetrator of violence against women the state is overrepresented. History, both ancient and recent, is wrought with examples of the state either directly engaging in, or facilitating, acts of violence against women. From the rape of Nanking (Chang, 1997), to the large number of women and children displaced by conflict in Syria (Nasar, 2013), to the rigid legislating of women’s reproductive rights (Buzawa, Buzawa, & Stark, 2011), the extensiveness of the harms caused to women has led the United Nations to call violence against women the “most pervasive yet least recognized human rights abuse in the world” (United Nations Population Fund, 2014). Yet, despite a comprehensive body of work from feminist scholars (Carrington, 2015; DeKeseredy, 2011; Messerschmidt, 1986; Miller, 2001; Smart, 1976), and an established body of work from state crime scholars (Barak, 1991; Green & Ward, 2004; Mullins & Rothe, 2008; Rothe, 2009), there has been relatively little attention paid to the role of the state as a perpetrator of gender-based violence (for exceptions see Ballinger, 2009; Collins, 2015). This applies to state complicity as a direct perpetrator as is most evident when state militaries utilize rape as a strategy

190

State violence, women, and gender

of war (see Buss, 2009; Farr, 2009), and as an indirect perpetrator where states facilitate violence perpetrated against women or omit to act to prevent it. After all, whether the focus is the short sentences received by the perpetrators of gender-based violence crimes (such as in the aforementioned Brock Turner case), or the commission of rape as a strategy of war (as was the case in the conflict in Bosnia/Herzegovina (Faucette, 2012)), the common thread that links them all is that they disproportionately impact women, and are perpetrated overtly by the state or within a state structure that is supposed to protect victims from these types of harm. By drawing on a few select case examples from both Global North and Global South countries, as well as the literature from state crime studies, this chapter will address the topic of stateperpetrated violence with the goal of extending the discussion of women and gender to include state-perpetrated violence during times of conflict and peace. Throughout this exploration I will pay particular attention to the relevance of the structural embodiment of gender-based violence and state power, as after all, it has been repeatedly established that the issue of state-perpetrated violence extends beyond specific types of violence to include deeply embedded forms of violence at the community and structural levels of society.

State-perpetrated gender-based violence: defining the problem To adequately address state-perpetrated violence against women, the institutionalized nature of these forms of violence needs to be acknowledged. O’Toole, Schiffman and Kiter Edwards (2007) argue that “violence toward women and the elaborate social structures that develop around such practices serve to appropriate key aspects of women’s independence and institutionalize patriarchy” (p. 7). Therefore, definitions of gender-based violence that rely on domestic laws are inadequate, especially as the use of violence by men as a tool to maintain power and privilege has been widely demonstrated and legalized by states throughout the course of history. Consequently, gender-based violence is defined here as the “interpersonal, organizational or politically orientated harm perpetrated against people due to their gender identity, sexual orientation, or location in the male-dominated social systems such as families, military organizations, or the labor force” (O’Toole, Schiffman & Kiter Edwards 2007, p. xii). Adopting such a definition is not new, as gender-based violence as defined here, has been the subject of considerable criminological inquiry, which has led to the establishment of a large body of literature, too great to address here, that calls attention to the victimization of women based on their sex and gender, and the larger societal inequities that institutionalize and proliferate the subordination of women and girls.2 However, as the focus here is the role of the state as a perpetrator of violence against women, it is also necessary to detail how state-perpetrated violence is being defined. Kauzlarich, Matthews and Miller’s (2001) definition of state crime provides a framework that allows for the inclusion of gender-based violence as a basis for state-perpetrated harms. They argue that state crime includes “economic, cultural or physical harm, pain, exclusion, or exploitation . . . [caused by] tacit or explicit state actions or policies which violate law or generally defined human rights” (p. 176). This provides a definitional framework for the examination of heteronormative gender as a social structural arrangement and as a mechanism of social control – specifically, by adopting this definition gender then becomes the basis for the social, political, economic and cultural inequities that are afforded women, reinforced and replicated by the state. The remainder of this chapter will address different forms of state-perpetrated violence, both direct and indirect, that are perpetrated against women during times of war and peace. I will begin by examining direct forms of state-perpetrated violence during times of war.

191

Victoria E. Collins

State-perpetrated gender-based violence during times of war War and decisions about conflict have traditionally been made by men. Statistics show that approximately 99 percent of all combat forces are men (Goldstein, 2001), making soldiering universally gendered. Consider that it is only as recently as 2016 that women in the UK and the US have been granted permission to be employed in combat positions on the frontline (Thompson, 2015). In addition, both during times of war and peace being a soldier has been and continues to be, inextricably meshed with masculinity. The dominance of men and maleness revolves around assumptions of gendered ideals and norms that reinforce rigid gender identities during wartime. These gender-based norms underpin structural power relations that simultaneously marginalize women’s experiences and voices, but also legitimize war-time economies (i.e. economic growth), as well as the conflict itself (Enloe, 1989). Ideas about normative gender roles and behaviors, particularly femininity, become key military strategies that provide the justifications for political maneuvers of state. The primacy of traditional concepts of femininity – especially the linkage between the feminine and victimhood – also undergirds traditional understandings of heteronormative masculinity, making gender constructions integral to militarism (Enloe, 2000). However, through the enactment and reinforcement of such traditional gender symbolism, women’s experiences (as do men’s) are reduced to monolithic caricatures (Collins, 2016) that neglect the pluralistic impacts that war has on women. This includes experiences and changes in society as a state builds towards war and the suffering during and after the conflict has finished. Historically, from the Greeks to the Romans, to Colonialism and beyond into contemporary times, state violence perpetrated during times of conflict is inundated with accounts of violence against women, both simultaneously shaped by and shaping broader societal perceptions of masculinity and femininity. From the torture of women in Syria (Nasar, 2013), and the more recent abduction of 276 teenage girls from their school in Chibok, Nigeria by the Islamic extremist group Boko Haram (Faul, 2014), women bear the brunt of some of the most brutal forms of violence perpetrated during war. For example, despite the US occupation of Iraq being the subject of much criticism, there has been little attention paid to the impact the occupation had on civilian populations of women and girls. This is despite there being reports of women as victims of assassinations, targeted abductions, rapes, beatings and honor violence (United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq, 2007a, 2007b). Although the explanations for war-related gender-based violence in Iraq are multifaceted and are a result of complex intersections of religion, politics, war-strategy, cultural and interpersonal motivations, there is little to no acknowledgement that many of the states engaged in the conflict have perpetrated such crimes for the purposes of advancing state interests. Consider that multinational forces have detained women based solely on their connection to individuals of interest (particularly men). These women have been held in United States-run detention facilities without charge and either tortured for potential intelligence or held for ransom for their male associate (MADRE, 2007). Additionally, there were 42 female detainees held at Abu Ghraib, but little attention was paid to the possibility of sexual assault at the facility even after reports emerged substantiating physical abuse, rape and sexual assault against women detainees by occupying forces (Taguba, 2004). To acknowledge these crimes, however, would undermine the US’s justification and moral foundation (i.e., to liberate and protect innocent Iraqis – women and children – from Saddam’s repressive regime; the aforementioned protectionist rhetoric so often applied to women in times of conflict) that has been propagated to legitimate the United States-led occupation of Iraq. What is important to note, is that all stakeholders in Iraq have engaged in gender-based violence having been “enabled by the political and military failure to stabilize post-invasion 192

State violence, women, and gender

Iraq” (Lee-Koo, 2011, p. 1623). Women and girls have not only experienced elevated amounts of violence, but Western protectionist rhetoric has helped silence their stories. A similar argument can be made about the relative global silence surrounding the victimization of women and girls during the conflict in Syria, where despite suffering considerable violence based on their sex and gender, women and girls go largely unmentioned (with the exception of discussions of refugees seeking asylum (Nasar, 2013)). The Syrian conflict began in January 2011, resulting in a broad range of harms being perpetrated against women and girls. There has been indiscriminate shelling against areas populated by civilians, as well as reports of women being subjected to torture and humiliation during detention. Recent media reports have suggested that there are as many as 150,000 people (both men and women) if not more, being held in custody by the Assad regime all of whom faced serious risk of torture or death (Rogin, 2014). However, women are targeted for different forms of violence than men based on their sex and gender, namely sexual violence making the harms gendered in their administration. This includes over 7,500 reported instances of women being raped and tortured in government prisons (Middle East Eye, 2014), as well as the implementation of sex-specific discrimination policies that limit women’s freedom of movement as well as their dress (Human Rights Watch, 2014). In other instances women are executed and buried in mass graves. These events tend to occur as a result of massacres where whole communities are slaughtered including women and children. One such event was perpetrated in Banias Syria where government forces attacked the villages of Al-Baida and Ras-Al-Nabe killing 459 people, 114 being women (Nasar, 2013). Reports of the events indicate that the majority of the women who were killed were also burned, mutilated and/or dismembered before their bodies were discarded in the streets (Syrian Network for Human Rights, 2013). These brutal killings communicate a devaluation of women and children and violate international law (The Geneva Conventions, 1949; The Rome Statute, 1998). Despite the criminal nature of these acts, media and political coverage of the happenings in Syria are relatively quiet about the treatment of women and girls, especially as it relates to the violence they have endured. This is a common theme whereby the prevalence of other forms of conflict-related violence takes precedence over that suffered by women and girls. I now turn to more overt acts of violence against women that occur during times of peace.

Indirect forms of state-perpetrated violence against women and girls There are many forms of indirect state-perpetrated violence that disproportionately impact women and girls. The types of violence vary as to their prevalence rates; however, the common factor that ties these forms of violence together are that women are disproportionately impacted as compared to men. Consider for example, that of all the women killed globally in 2012 approximately half were killed by an intimate partner (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2013). In addition, global data shows that over 700 million women alive today were married as children (under the age of 18 years) with 250 million having been married at the age of 15 years (United Nations Children Fund, 2013). Furthermore, women represent 55 percent of all people trafficked into forced labor and 98 percent of those trafficked for sex work (Pinheiro & Ward, 2008). In addition, results from a 2010 study suggest that 66 percent of women living in New Delhi, India reported experiencing sexual harassment between two and five times during the course of a year (Jagori & UN Women, 2011). Although the behaviors listed above are not directly perpetrated by the state, they are perpetrated by individuals within larger societal gender structures to which the state is central. The state has considerable power over gender construction as well as the resources afforded to 193

Victoria E. Collins

individuals occupying different gender categories. The state oversees the structuring of different groups and individuals throughout society and it too is a social institution that is gendered. As argued by Connell (1994) the state is “an active player in gender politics” (p. 147) and it is therefore necessary to examine the institutional arrangements in society, law, policies and the power relations of states that indirectly cause harm to women and girls. Consider the family as a site of gender oppression.

Shame, dishonor and banishment: the family as a sight of oppression Traditionally conceptualized as being a private rather than public institution, the family has long been a sight of male domination. From domestic violence, to marital rape, to child abuse, to forced marriage, women and girls have long navigated harms perpetrated against them by family members who historically have been granted impunity by the state (Buzawa et al., 2011). Although there are many possible examples to illustrate this point from both the Global North and South, I will draw on a very specific case study of forced marriage in Yemen as the launching point for a more generalized discussion on indirect forms of state-perpetrated violence during times of peace. This in no way diminishes the impact of other forms of violence perpetrated within the context of the family that are largely ignored by the state, rather it allows for an in-depth analysis of a practice that is afforded lesser criminological attention. I start here with the story of Nujood Ali, a Yemeni girl who gained international notoriety after divorcing her 30-plus-year-old husband at age 10 years. Nujood Ali, like many young girls not only in Yemen but across the globe, was first told of her pending marriage by her family. At 10 years old, Nujood was informed she had been betrothed to a delivery man in his thirties, and although her mother had expressed some concerns about the arrangement she did not openly express her objections. Following the ceremony Nujood’s husband forced her to abandon her education as attending school was not an activity befitting of a married woman. Her father, in negotiating the marriage, had requested that Nujood’s husband refrain from entering into sexual relations with Nujood until she was biologically of age (after receiving her first menses), however her husband ignored this and forcibly raped her the night of their marriage. Soon after their marriage Nujood’s husband began to physically assault her, often beating her in front of her in-laws who encouraged him to “hit her even harder” (Ali, 2010, p. 93). Nujood’s response was to run away from her husband and go to the courthouse where she asked a Judge for a divorce. Garnering considerable attention from local journalists who brought international attention to her case, Nujood won her divorce and went on to write and speak about her case (Ali, 2010). Forced marriage is defined as “a marriage where one or both parties do not consent freely to the marriage; entry into the marriage is accompanied by physical, mental, and/or emotional duress and coercion from family members” (Gangoli, Razak, & McCarry, 2006). This includes the marriage of anyone classified as a child – someone under the age of 18 years (see the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989). Forced marriage should be differentiated from arranged marriage as the terms are often conflated especially when people are explaining situations where families are involved in arranging the marriage. However, an arranged marriage refers to situations where both parties fully consent to the arrangement (Uddin & Ahmed, 2000). In many countries where forced marriage is more prevalent (Niger, Chad, Mali, Bangladesh, Guinea, and the Central African Republic), the early marriage of girls is legal and therefore sanctioned by the state. Additionally, in countries where the marriageable age is 18, there often exists conflicts between laws that criminalize underage marriage and localized customs 194

State violence, women, and gender

and traditions that sanction it. It must be noted however, that there are considerable variations in the practices, customs and traditions between states and even within states, as well as state responses to the issues including the passing and enforcement of legislation. However, there are some general patterns that can be attributed to most, if not all societies in which forced marriage is most prevalent. Forced marriages are more likely to occur in societies where there is greater overt gender inequality and gender norms provide that women and girls are more suited to domestic work in and around the home. Domestic work is not valued to the same extent as work outside the home which diminishes both the work women do and the women themselves. As a consequence women are thought to be of lesser value than men and as not having the same skill sets. A direct result of this constructed understanding of gender is that women are afforded fewer resources than men, such as education and/or work training. This directly impacts young women’s wellbeing and their quality of life (and in some cases basic survival) and becomes tied to securing a husband. Compounding this issue are laws that dictate different marriageable ages for men and women as is the case in both Niger and India where girls are legally permitted to be married at younger ages than their male counterparts. These laws exist within a larger patriarchal social structure that affords women little control over their sexual health, reproductive rights and marriage: these rights are held by male family members, as well as members of the larger community (Myers & Harvey, 2011), a process that meets little opposition from the state. Also strongly integrated with the issue of forced marriage is poverty. In societies where there are fewer opportunities for women and girls, such as being barred from receiving education and/ or working outside the home, gender becomes inextricably linked with economics. Without these opportunities women are more likely to be viewed as an economic burden to their families who have to provide basic necessities to sustain them. Marriage, especially when struggling with economic hardship or poverty, becomes not only a way to secure a better life for a child, but also may alleviate the economic burden on an already struggling household. For example, a young woman living in Pakistan explained “My mother decided my marriage because we were homeless. My father died, my mother’s in-laws kicked her out of their home and her parents had died. My marriage helped my mother reduce her responsibilities” (Lane, as cited in Myers & Harvey, 2011). Here, through the necessity of survival a young woman becomes a commodity based on the normalization of a state-sanctioned gender structure that systematically oppresses women, and as a result she has little choice or control over her body, future and even life. Although some states are actively attempting to combat the issue of forced marriage through the passing of legislation (Sabbe et al., 2013), in some cases there are low prosecution rates and poor enforcement. Additionally, the expectation that legislation alone will counter the problem ignores the ingrained and institutionalized acceptance of this practice and how law has been used historically to legitimate violence against women. For example in Bangladesh where approximately 66 percent of all girls are married before the age of 18 years there are very few prosecutions and penalties for the families that arrange the forced marriages or for brokers who accept fees from families to facilitate such arrangements. Furthermore, unlike Najood, navigating the legal system to obtain a divorce is not an option for most women as by design they are not structured to meet their needs and in many cases to do so would mean risking violence, banishment and dishonor (Myers & Harvey, 2011). In countries where forced marriage is prevalent the state allows for, or even has provided for, a asymmetrical power distribution that is then reinforced through the institution of family, economic structures and interpersonal processes. Violation of these established gender structures leaves individual women subject to threats and violence, with violence being the most extreme form of social control. The state therefore, falls short in its protection of women and girls, something that can be understood 195

Victoria E. Collins

as a state crime of omission, something that is also evident in cases of street harassment and cultures of rape. Street harassment is experienced by as many as 80 percent of women and girls around the world and makes reference to a wide range of behaviors often enacted towards females in public spaces motivated by gender or sexual orientation (Kearl, 2010). More specifically, Bowman (1993) argues that street harassment “occurs when one or more unfamiliar men accost one or more women in a public place, on one or more occasion, and intrude or attempt to intrude upon the woman’s attention in a manner that is unwelcome to the woman, with language or action that is explicitly or implicitly sexual” (p. 575). Behaviors that would constitute street harassment include, but are not limited to, abusive leers, cat calling and kissing noises, to gender-policing, sexually charged comments, stalking, flashing, sexual assault, public masturbation, rape and murder (Kearl, 2010). There is considerable variation in both the street harassment behaviors and in how these behaviors are understood and received. This makes street harassment both subjective and difficult to define. For example, some women have reported that being the subject of street harassment was flattering, complimentary and even fun, arguing that the behaviors are not threatening but are instead harmless (Kissling, 1991). Similarly, many men who engage in street harassment behaviors perceive themselves as being complimentary and purely reactionary to what they understand to be attention-seeking behavior from women (i.e., dressing in an attractive manner or spending time on improving their appearance). Alternatively, these behaviors have been viewed as rude, invasive, humiliating, threatening and violent. Irrespective of how these behaviors are intended or received, the underlying social and political implications are far reaching. Central to street harassment is the communication to women by men, that they have clear ownership over public space. The prevailing message is not only that public space is demarcated as men’s space, but that women have no right to privacy. Spatial boundaries are reinforced, relegating women’s space as being separate from the public realm and confining them to what has been referred to as the private sphere. The harassing behaviors therefore serve to communicate a reminder to women of the possible punishment they may suffer if they trespass into the public sphere – a space that has been reserved for and is dominated by men (Gardner, 1980; McAllister, 1978). Street harassment, despite its form and its motivation, acts to reinforce and control constructions of masculinity and femininity. As argued by Gardner (1980) these behaviors normalize and even celebrate sexual aggressiveness in men and simultaneously promote submissiveness and self-restraint in women. Strengthening this argument, these behaviors act to objectify and dehumanize individual women, reducing them to the aesthetics of their sexual parts and the “underlying message is that women are interchangeable” (McAllister, 1978, p. 37). As most recently urged by the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (2013), it is the responsibility of individual states to “increase measures to protect women and girls from violence and harassment, including sexual harassment and bullying, in both public and private spaces.” The state, therefore, has a responsibility to protect women from street harassment behaviors and to delegitimize these behaviors at the structural level. Street harassment is not only a product of sanctioned gender relations within the patriarchal state, but it is also an active ingredient in the production of cultural hostility towards women, also termed rape culture. Consider the 2012 gang rape of a young woman on a bus in New Delhi, India. In this case, 23-year-old Jyoti Singh Pandey boarded the bus with a male companion. Her companion was beaten with metal rods, while she was brutally raped by six men on the bus including the driver, before being dumped on the side of the road. Pandey experienced severe internal bleeding and damage to her small intestines resulting from the perpetrators use of a metal rod during her rape. Due to the serious nature of her injuries, Pandey later died in hospital (Huffington Post, 2014). 196

State violence, women, and gender

This case sparked a national outcry garnering international attention and scrutiny of the safety and security of women in India, especially regarding the intersection of caste oppression, gender inequality, and a culture of impunity that leads to a climate of terror for women traversing public spaces. This case sparked an international outcry and calls for something to be done about the problem of rape in India. Despite extreme anger and national rallying for action, the National Crime Records Bureau (2012) reports that in India a woman gets raped every 22 minutes and UNICEF reported that in 2011, 10.6 percent of those victims were under the age of 14 (RT, 2014). The problem of rape in India is not isolated to a few individual offenders but rather is a product of years of neglecting the issue as being one of serious concern that has created a broader culture that permits this form of violence against women. As indicated by Carrington (2015), state authorities in India have long ignored incidents of rape and police have outright refused to take reports from women who come to them for help. This is particularly the case for women who are poor or occupy the lower caste in Indian society as their victimization is less likely to be taken seriously by the police than victimizations of women who occupy higher castes. The state widely tolerates the physical, sexual, financial and psychological abuse of women and girls in the private sphere, so it is not surprising that such attitudes and behaviors bleed into the public realm. Instrumental to the persistence of such a culture are the many state actors that deny women’s rights to justice therefore indirectly encouraging the perpetration of such violence.

Conclusion Women and girls continue to experience violations of their human rights largely based on their gender and sex. This has occurred and continues to do so, despite the existence and enactment of laws, conventions, policies and regulations at the international and national levels initiated to guard against these very behaviors. Take for example the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (1979) that 188 member states are party to and of which 99 are signatories. The problem of violence against women has therefore garnered significant attention but what is lacking is an acknowledgment that laws, regulations and policies are constructed within a patriarchal global system that, despite recognizing the problem, serves to replicate the existing gender power structures and focus attention on individual offenders. This is especially so given that indirect forms of violence against women occurring during times of peace can be subtle and the state can give the appearance of being gender neutral or protective of women through the enactment of regulations. The state therefore, enacts “formal politics” that are “a dynamic factor in maintaining and strengthening the gender order: the state acts to reinforce masculine norms” (Tosh, 2004, p. 41). By drawing on several case examples of state-perpetrated violence during times of peace and conflict, I have demonstrated the variability of harms perpetrated by the state and its actors against women. These case studies have served to demonstrate that larger historical, social, and political constructions of gender, point to the dominance of men over women as being a product of gender structures that are enforced by the state. Although the examples offered are not comparable in their motivations – i.e. the politics, cultures, traditions, societies vary considerably over the case studies – gender relations are situated within social structures, of which the state is central. The state regulates, controls, enforces and initiates significant characteristics of male and female behavior condoning gender inequities in its various cultural forms, such as the case of forced marriage in Yemen, or the prevalence of rape and sexual aggression as a strategy of war by state militaries. These gender inequities manifest themselves in many different forms and act to control states’ populations, with violence being the most serious application of control. Gender-based 197

Victoria E. Collins

violence, therefore, is not simply a feature of micro level interactions between individual actors, but is deeply embedded in communities, institutions and most importantly, the state.

Notes 1

Portions of this chapter are taken from a previously published book project titled State Crime. Women and Gender (Collins, 2015). 2 Gender-based violence is not a bifurcated category but the focus here is on violence perpetrated against women and girls.

References Ali, N. (2010). I am Nujood, age 10 and divorced. New York, NY: Random House Inc. Ballinger, A. (2009). Gender, power and the state: Same as it ever was? In R. Coleman, J. Sim, S. Tombs & D. Whyte (Eds), State power crime (pp. 20–34). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Barak, G. (Ed.). (1991). Crimes by the capitalist state: An introduction to state criminality. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Bowman, C. G. (1993). Street harassment and the informal ghettoization of women. Harvard Law Review, 106(3), 517–580. Buss, D. E. (2009). Rethinking “rape as a weapon of war”. Feminist Legal Studies, 17(2), 145–163. Buzawa, E. S., Buzawa, C. G., & Stark, E. (2011). Responding to domestic violence: The integration of criminal justice and human services. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications Inc. Carrington, K. (2015). Feminism and global justice. New York, NY: Routledge. Chang, I. (1997). The rape of Nanking: The forgotten Holocaust of WWII. New York, NY: Basic Books. Collins, V. E. (2015). State crime, women and gender. New York, NY: Routledge. Collins, V. E. (2016). “My pain grows as my life dwindles”: Women, poetry, and resisting state violence in Afghanistan. Crime Media Culture, Online first: doi:10.1177/1741659016675486. Connell, R. W. (1994). The state, gender, and sexual politics: Theory and appraisal. In H. L. Radtke & H. J. Stam (Eds.), Power/gender (pp. 136–173). London, UK: Sage. DeKeseredy, W. S. (2011). Violence against women: Myths, facts, controversies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Enloe, C. (1989). Bananas, beaches and bases: Making feminist sense of international politics. London: Pandora. Enloe, C. (2000). Maneuvers: The international politics of militarizing women’s lives. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Fantz, A., & Wills, A. (2016, June 9). Stanford rape case: Who is the judge who gave Brock Turner 6 months? CNN. Retrieved from www.cnn.com/2016/06/08/us/aaron-persky-brock-turner-stanfordrape/index.html. Farr, K. (2009). Extreme war rape in today’s civil-war-torn states: A contextual and comparative analysis. Gender Issues, 26(1), 1–41. Faucette, A. (2012). Improvements in the legal treatment of systematic mass rape in wartime: Where do we go from here? In T. St. Germain & S. Dewey (Eds.). Conflict-related sexual violence (pp. 53–70). Sterling, VA: Kumarian Press. Faul, M. (2014, May 6). Nigerian girl: Kidnappers said they were soldiers. USA Today. Retrieved from www. usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/05/06/nigeria-girls-kidnapped/8756325/. Gangoli, G., Razak, A., & McCarry, M. (2006). Forced marriage and domestic violence among South Asian communities in the North of England. Bristol: University of Bristol and Northern Rock Foundation. Gardner, C. B. (1980). Passing by: Street remarks, address rights, and the urban female. Sociological Inquiry, 50(3–4), 328–356. The Geneva Conventions (1949). Geneva Conventions. International Committee of the Red Cross. Retrieved from www.icrc.org/en/war-and-law/treaties-customary-law/geneva-conventions. Goldstein, J. (2001). War and gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Green, P., & Ward, T. (2004). State Crime: Governments,Violence and Corruption. London: Pluto Press. Grinberg, E., & Shoichet, C. E. (2016, September 2). Brock Turner released from jail after serving 3 months for sexual assault. CNN. Retrieved from www.cnn.com/2016/09/02/us/brock-turner-release-jail/. Huffington Post. (2014, December 26). Delhi bus gang rape victim has intestines removed as shocking details of assault emerge. The World Post. Retrieved from www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/20/delhibus-gang-rape-victim-intestines-shockingdetails_n_2340721.html. 198

State violence, women, and gender

Human Rights Watch. (2014, July 2). Syria: War’s toll on women. Human Rights Watch. Retrieved from www.hrw.org/news/2014/07/02/syria-wars-toll-women. Jagori & UN Women. (2011). Safe cities free of violence against women and girls initiative: Report of the baseline survey Delhi 2010. New Delhi: Jagori & UN Women. Kauzlarich, D., Matthews, R. A., & Miller, W. J. (2001). Toward a victimology of state crime. Critical Criminology, 10, 173–194. Kearl, H. (2010). Stop street harassment: Making public spaces welcoming for women. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger Publishing. Kissling, E. A. (1991). Street harassment: The language of sexual terrorism. Discourse & Society, 2(4), 451–460. Lee-Koo, K. (2011). Gender-based violence against civilian women in postinvasion Iraq: (Re) politicizing George W. Bush’s silent legacy. Violence Against Women, 17(2), 1619–1634. MADRE. (2007). Promising democracy, imposing theocracy: Gender-based violence and the U.S. war on Iraq. Retrieved from www.madre.org (accessed 17 May 2014). McAllister, P. (1978). Wolf whistles and warnings. Heresies, 6, 37–39. Messerschmidt, J. W. (1986). Capitalism, patriarchy, and crime: Toward a socialist feminist criminology. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers. Middle East Eye. (2014, June 6). Opposition: Assad forces torturing women and children in Syria. Middle East Eye. Retrieved from www.middleeasteye.net. Miller, J. (2001). One of the guys: Girls, gangs, and gender. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Mullins, C. W., & Rothe, D. L. (2008). Blood, power, and bedlam: Violations of international criminal law in postcolonial Africa. New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc. Myers, J., & Harvey, R. (2011). Breaking vows: Early and forced marriage and girls’ education. Plan UK. Retrieved from www.plan-uk.org/resources/documents/Breaking-Vows-Early-and-Forced-Marriageand-Girls-Education/. Nasar, S. (2013). Violence against women, bleeding wound in the Syrian conflict. Copenhagen: Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Network. National Crime Records Bureau. (2012). Cases registered under IPC and SLL crimes in India during 2001–2012. Ministry of Home Affairs. Retrieved from http://ncrb.nic.in. O’Toole, L. L., Schiffman, J. R., & Kiter Edwards, M. L. (Eds). (2007). Gender violence: interdisciplinary perspectives. New York, NY: New York University Press. Pinheiro, P. S., & Ward, J. (2008). From invisible to indivisible: Promoting and protecting the right of the girl child to be free from violence. New York, NY: United Nations. Retrieved from www.unwomen.org/en/ what-we-do/ending-violence-against-women/facts-and-figures#notes. Rogin, J. (2014, July 31). Syrian defector: Assad poised to torture and murder 150,000 more. The Daily Beast. Retrieved from www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/31/syrian-defector-assad-poised-totorture-and-murder-150–000-more.html. The Rome Statute. (1998). The Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Retrieved from www. icc-cpi.int/nr/rdonlyres/ea9aeff7–5752–4f84-be94–0a655eb30e16/0/rome_statute_english.pdf. Rothe, D. L. (2009). State criminality: The crime of all crimes, Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. RT (2014, September 6). UNICEF report: 120 million girls, 10% worldwide sexually abused. RT. Retrieved from www.sott.net/article/285212-UNICEF-report-120-million-girls-10-worldwide-sexually-abused. Sabbe, A., Oulami, H., Zekraoui, W., Hikmat, H., Temmerman, M., & Leye, E. (2013). Determinants of child and forced marriage in Morocco: stakeholder perspectives on health, policies and human rights. BMC International Health and Human Rights, 13(1), 1–12. Smart, C. (1976). Women, crime and criminology: A feminist critique. Boston, MA: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Syrian Network for Human Rights. (2013). Four years harvest: The use of cluster ammunition . . . that is still going on. Retrieved from http://sn4hr.org/blog/2015/03/30/5346/. Taguba, A.M. (2004). Article 15–6 investigation of the 800th Military Police Brigade. Retrieved from www.npr. org/iraq/2004/prison_abuse_report.pdf (accessed 17 March 2014). Thompson, M. (2015). Pentagon opens all frontline combat jobs to women. Time. Retrieved from http:// time.com/4134976/pentagon-combat-women/. Tosh, J. (2004). Hegemonic masculinity and the history of gender. In S. Dudink, K. Hagermann, & J. Tosh (Eds.). Masculinities in politics and war (pp. 41–60). Manchester: Manchester University Press. Uddin, B., & Ahmed, L. (2000). A choice by right: The report of the working group on forced marriage. London: Home Office Communications Directorate. United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq. (2007a). Human rights report, 1 April–30 June. Retrieved from www.uniraq.org/docsmaps/undocuments.asp#HRReports. 199

Victoria E. Collins

United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq. (2007b). Human rights report, 1 July–31 December. Retrieved from www.uniraq.org/docsmaps/undocuments.asp#HRReports. United Nations Children Fund. (2013). Ending child marriage: Progress and prospects. UNICEF. Retrieved from www.unicef.org/media/files/Child_Marriage_Report_7_17_ LR.pdf. United Nations Commission on the Status of Women. (2013). Commission on the status of women. United Nations Economic and Social Council. Retrieved from www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc. asp?symbol=E/2013/27. United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. (1989). Convention on the Rights of the Child. United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Retrieved from www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/crc.aspx. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. (2013). Global study on homicide: Trends, contexts, data. Vienna, Italy: United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime. Retrieved from www.unodc.org/documents/gsh/ pdfs/2014_GLOBAL_HOMICIDE_BOOK_web.pdf. United Nations Population Fund. (2014). Gender equality: Ending widespread violence against women. United Nations Population Fund. Retrieved from www.unfpa.org/gender/violence.htm.

200

16 Criminology, war and the violence(s) of militarism Ross McGarry and Sandra Walklate

Introduction The formulation of an agenda for a ‘criminology of war’ derives from the work of Ruth Jamieson (1998). In a seminal chapter entitled, ‘Towards a criminology of war in Europe’, Jamieson (1998) raised four fundamental reasons why the study of war should be of central interest to criminologists. First, war generates, as its main function and purpose, victimisation on a mass scale; second, such victimisation frequently constitutes violations of human rights and is therefore analytically relevant to criminologists as ‘state crimes’; third, war inevitably involves the collusion of groups considered ‘sub-cultural’ to civic life (i.e. militias and militaries) engaging in gendered forms of (masculine) behaviour (i.e. deviance and violence); fourth, warfare creates conditions that impact upon the securitisation of the domestic lives of citizens, both overseas and in domestic contexts, often leading to repressive violations of civil rights through increases in punitiveness, social control and technologies of surveillance (be they digital or policy based) ( Jamieson, 1998). Having outlined this rationale, Jamieson (1998) continued by setting out the following agenda in a bid to provide conceptual and theoretical parameters for how the study of war should be approached by criminologists. For Jamieson (1998, cited in McGarry & Walklate, 2016a, p. 6) this necessitated: i recognition of the specific historical moments in which wars occur; ii deeper philosophical understanding of morality and the social production of immorality by states during war; iii legal and conceptual knowledge of how war and crime are defined politically and how their contingent nature becomes transformative for the everyday lives of citizens (both foreign and domestic); iv a more sophisticated understanding of the ways in which gender is re-ordered during war to prioritise militarised masculinities; v a fuller account of emotion and trauma as pervasive consequences of war violence. Particularly related to a critical view of how essentialist concepts of gender merely assume violence as being reproduced as normative assumptions of masculinity and subjugated femininity.

201

Ross McGarry and Sandra Walklate

With this agenda set we followed some years later with contributions of our own to the criminological study of war (see Walklate & McGarry, 2015; McGarry & Walklate, 2016b). Our intentions were to reinvigorate the importance of ‘war’ as a criminological subject matter worthy of the attention Jamieson (1998) had advocated, and to offer some explanations as to why criminologists may have been less inclined to study war as a critical criminological subject matter (see McGarry & Walklate, 2015), rather than presupposing it to have been practically ignored within the discipline (Hagan et al., 2012; Hagan, 2015). In looking for ‘future directions’ to advance the study of war as an endeavour of critical criminology, DiPierto (2016, p. 845) recently proposed that, Sustained and rigorous criminological studies of war necessitate not only serious engagement with the scholarship of other disciplines, but a return to the discipline’s own intellectual predecessors. Although the criminological study of war has undergone something of a renaissance during recent years, there is further direction to glean from Jamieson’s (1998) original agenda and from the renewed words of DiPierto (2016). Although having different priorities, both advocate strongly for subsequent studies relating to a ‘criminology of war’ to consider the historical contexts from which both war and academic knowledge about war derives, and to embrace an interdisciplinary outlook, with a particular reliance upon sociology. Within this chapter we take this advice and seek to connect the study of war as a critical criminological concern with some of its own academic genealogy. By doing so we intend to make clear our suggestions for how this enclave of the discipline could be further progressed as a sociologically informed undertaking. To do so this chapter is constructed in five interconnected parts. To begin, we ground our argument in the past work of Willem Bonger before connecting this to present criminological literature in which ‘war’ has been comprehended as a concern for critical criminology. Next, we offer a rupture to these prevailing ways of conceptualising war as constituting corporate and state crimes by proposing two ways of thinking about war that are yet to be mined by criminologists. First, we recommend that further criminological studies of war should more fully acknowledge the nature of violence in and of itself. Second, we return to the work of Bonger and the notion of ‘militarism’ as related to criminology and war. With these two important concepts outlined, in the fourth part of this chapter we make connections between ‘violence’ and ‘militarism’ using the example of U.S. nuclear armament and the damage that the ‘violence of militarism’ can cause for what we have termed ‘bodies’ and ‘borders’ as an illustration. We conclude in the fifth and final section with some thoughts for students and scholars of criminology to consider when embarking upon the study of war and war violence(s). We turn first of all to the very origins of the topic of ‘war’ within criminology.

Critical criminology and war: to Bonger and beyond At the time of writing, 100 years have passed since Willem Bonger’s (1916, p. 374) first comments on ‘militarism’ within Criminality and Economic Conditions. Here we are informed that the ‘relation between capitalism and war is always so close that we can find in the economic life the direct causes of wars waged under the empire of capitalism’. For Bonger (1916) the occupation of war was discernible as the pursuit of economic capital, with warfare occurring when the imposition of imperialism was either resisted altogether, or challenged by existing capitalist economies looking to repel the expansion of ‘investment’ seeking states (Bonger, 1916). These comments highlight Bonger’s own sociological outlook on ‘crime’. He believed ‘that what determined whether 202

Criminology of war, violence and militarism

an act classified as criminal, rather than simply immoral or anti-social, was the act’s relationship to the economically determined social order’ (Hebbertecht, 2010, p. 59). This is of course a view that sits comfortably within what broadly constitutes Marxist (or radical) criminology1; a theoretical perspective recognisable as the origins of ‘critical criminology’ (DeKeseredy, 2011). Although DeKeseredy (2011, p. 16) notes that ‘only a few critical criminologists identify themselves as Marxists . . . the majority of them are concerned with how capitalism shapes crime, law and social control’. This particular theme of Bonger’s (1916) conceptualisation of war and militarism has an established and consistent presence within criminological work past and present. For example, and perhaps most notably, Sutherland’s (1949) commentary on illegal trading with enemy forces during World War II has influenced the depiction of more contemporary warfare as white collar and corporate criminality conducted in the pursuit of capital interest (see Ruggiero, 2006, 2016). As DeKeseredy (2011, p. 68) continues however, ‘on top of documenting a host of corporate crimes, critical criminologists do extensive research on government or state crimes’. Despite being contested ground, DeKeseredy (2011) suggests that contemporary studies of state crime within critical criminology include a concern with violations of international humanitarian laws, human rights standards and social harms that often derive from war and conflict. Prominent examples range from Mannheim (1941) advocating for wars conducted outside of the ‘rules of war’ to become a central criminological concern, to Green and Ward’s (2004) more recent layered analysis of war crimes being composed of ‘criminal wars’, ‘criminal armies’ and ‘criminal soldiers’ perpetrated at the respective levels of structure, institutions or individuals. A further substantial body of work has also amassed under the rubric of ‘state crimes’ to address the occurrences of genocides, particularly in the Global South (see Hagan & Rymond-Richmond, 2008; Mullins & Rothe, 2008; Rafter, 2016). Such studies bring to the fore the worst acts of barbarity, criminality and violations of humanity experienced by distinct collective groups, including but not limited to sexual violence as a weapon of war, mass murder and slaughter, forced sterilisation, displacement and the social production of immorality (see Alvarez, 2010, 2016). All of which are gendered (Jamieson, 1998). Addressing mass atrocity in this way raises preponderant questions as to why the discipline of criminology has ‘widely neglected’ to study the Holocaust despite being easily conceivable as the ‘crime of the century’ (Friedrichs, 2000). Furthermore, conceiving of the mass victimisation perpetrated by genocidal behaviour as a criminological problem poses challenges for how the sub-discipline of victimology is to theoretically and conceptually grasp such collective victimisation in extremis (Jamieson, 1999b; Rafter & Walklate, 2012).2 However, there are other nuances within Bonger’s (1916) brief comments on militarism that urge us to consider ways of transgressing the issue of ‘war’ as a critical criminological concern that is not solely tethered at the outset to analyses of corporate and state crime. For Bonger (1916), ‘militarism’ also manifests itself in two fundamental ways during periods of war and peace. At times without war concerns are drawn to the demoralising effects of conscripted and voluntary recruitment into the military; taking on young – largely uneducated – men who are either disinterested in serving or are driven to service due to a lack of competency in other forms of work (Bonger, 1916). Once equipped with recruits, during times of war a nation’s army is suggested as being tasked with a ‘double duty’ to attack or defend the sovereign advances of other nations, and restrain its own civilian domestic (or occupied) labour force when summoned by government (Bonger, 1916). Under such conditions of war a key anxiety for Bonger (1916) was the potential threat that the schooling of young men through criminogenic military service had, not only for the potential perpetration of undocumented war crimes, but also the possibility for such institutionalised behaviour to be ‘exported’ (Currie, 2012) back to the civilian Homefront and become illuminated within criminal statistics. Although less exercised within criminology over the years, the lineage of this trend can be found in more recent work relating to U.S. and UK 203

Ross McGarry and Sandra Walklate

service personnel who have fought in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Beneath the ‘puritanical zeal’ (qua Scraton, 2007, p. 216) of these wars emerged some of Bonger’s (1916) fears relating to ‘criminal armies’ and ‘criminal soldiers’ at war (Green and Ward, 2004). Such criminality has been evidenced within the torturous acts of U.S. soldiers on Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison (see Hamm, 2007), and the actions of British military personnel against ‘enemy’ Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan (see Walklate & McGarry, 2016). Meanwhile, back at home, the further cautionary tales of Bonger (1916, 1936) became evident in the presence of ex-military personnel engaged within the criminal justice process. Although less extreme than Bonger (1916, 1936) had promoted, in England and Wales for example, attention has been drawn to the sustained presence of ex-military personnel within the penal system. While Mannheim (1965) later called for caution in relying upon criminal statistics to accurately record the criminal activities of ex-service personnel from World War II, subsequent contemporary research has been curiously less eager than Bonger (1916) would have liked to lay certain responsibility for the criminality of ex-military personnel at the gates of the criminogenic military institution (see Howard League, 2011). Nevertheless, as Mannheim (1965, p. 598) avers, ‘what is important, however, is the fact . . . that the criminogenic effects of war, as of other social upheavals, may make themselves felt many years after its end.’ We will return to the sentiment of Mannheim’s (1965) point in due course. For now, and to be clear, our concerns within this chapter do not rest with these well-trodden themes evident in the work of Bonger (1916), nor subsequent literature relating to war from within criminology. For our present purposes, we do not intend to address war as corporate or state crimes, the military as a criminogenic institution, nor soldiers and their potential criminality. Instead we wish to exercise another of Bonger’s (1916) apprehensions about the social conditions of war that more directly relate to the term ‘militarism’. It is to this problematique that we turn next, with the purpose of drawing what we have termed the ‘violence of militarism’ into criminological debate regarding war.

Conceptualising war violence When studying war it is difficult not to consider the work of military strategist Carl von Clausewitz (1997). He is perhaps best known for conceptualising the strategic pursuit of war as something which is conducted as a divisive political purpose, rather than as a ‘political’ act or for economic means (Bonger, 1916). He avers, We see, therefore, that war is not a political act, but also a real political instrument, a continuation of political commerce, a carrying out of the same by other means . . . for the political view is the object, war is the means, and the means must always include the object in our conception. (von Clausewitz, 1997, p. 22) This statement encapsulates the popularised notion of war constituting ‘politics by other means’. However, although the above statement is perhaps the most frequently cited extract from On War, von Clausewitz (1997) did, of course, have more to say about the strategy, rather than the causes, of warfare. Although not a social scientist, importantly for our purposes, von Clausewitz (1997) sets war in its most rudimentary of contexts. He states, War therefore is an act of violence intended to compel our opponent to fulfil our will. Violence arms itself with the inventions of art and science in order to contend against violence. . . . Violence, 204

Criminology of war, violence and militarism

that is to say, physical force (for there is no moral force without the conception of states and law), is therefore the means; the compulsory submission of the enemy to our will is the ultimate object. (von Clausewitz, 1997, pp. 5–6; emphasis in original ) Of course, violence is not always considered the ‘means’ by which power is enforced. By contrast, for example, Arendt (1969) avers both ‘power’ and ‘violence’ should be understood as distinct categories. Power (the ability to act in concert) is an end in itself, whereas violence is the desire of those who have no power, using it instead as a mechanism to multiply ‘strength’ for instrumental purposes (i.e. ensuring others succumb to the will of the group) (Arendt, 1969). For Arendt (1969) violence can be used to multiply strength, but power can never derive from violence as von Clausewitz (1997) suggests; instead, the danger of violence is that it can destroy its own ends, as it appears only when power is in jeopardy. Taken in view of Bonger’s (1916) earlier remarks in relation to war, capitalism, imperialism and resistance, Arendt’s (1969) philosophical comments hold a differently constituted weight more closely aligned to the social sciences than military strategy. This is the contestable ground upon which the concept of violence is situated. What these observations draw attention to, however, is that ‘violence’ should be considered a central feature of studying war. Mainstream criminology has been preoccupied with defining ‘violence’ and violent crime as commonplace objective phenomena. If ‘violence’ is conceptualised in this way we might be inclined to agree with scholars such as Steven Pinker (2011), whose dense and sympathetic interpretation of Elias’s (1994) ‘civilizing process’ suggests that interpersonal violence – that is, physical violence enacted from one individual (or group) onto another, including violent crime and war3 violence – has been statistically in decline for decades (Pinker, 2011). For the likes of Buffachi (2005) such narrow interpretations merely constitute a ‘minimalist conception’ of ‘violence’ that simply reduces it to physical force (as per von Clausewitz’s 1997 definition, above). However, the nature and extent of such ‘objective violence’ notwithstanding, following Ray (2011) our intention is to offer a contextual appreciation of violence as related to notions of power, order and structure in the context of militarism. To be clear, we are not advocating for physical forms of violence to be considered distracting or displaced from the centre of analysis as Zˇizˇek (2009) or Bourdieu (2001) would encourage. When discussing violence within the context of war this is an impractical position. Nor do we merely wish to pursue an understanding of war violence in terms of military power as merely a monopolised virtue of the state (Giddens, 1985). Instead, we consider war violence to be a situated event that requires an understanding of both its physical and structural consequences. As Martin Shaw avers, during acts of war, killing is distinctive in its use of bodily harm to destroy definitively the meaning of human lives. The core meaning of violence is the deliberate imposition of harm: the idea of poverty as ‘structural violence’ is derivative of this. To directly deprive others of life is the logical end-point of violence in this sense. While inequality violates lives, people often find ways to struggle with, and overcome, it. In the face of killing, by contrast, people must flee or fight. Physical violence is the point at which power becomes the most unbearable and directly threatening to life. Organised mass killing is a maximum possible conclusion (such as genocide), in some cases viewed quite consciously, and in others hardly perceived, to large-scale inequalities of power. (2003, p. 198, our insert) As such, for the purposes of further advancing the criminological study of war, we are interested in pursuing a more ‘comprehensive’ conceptualisation of ‘violence’ (Buffachi, 2005). A way of 205

Ross McGarry and Sandra Walklate

understanding violence as a ‘violation’ (Buffachi, 2005) comprising avoidable actions that impede human realisation or that violate the rights and integrity of the person (Ray, 2011), whilst keeping the experience of physical violence central to our analysis. This will be articulated within the penultimate section of this chapter through Galtung’s concept of ‘structural violence’: Violence here is defined as the cause of the difference between the potential and the actual, between what could have been and what is. Violence is that which increases the distance between the potential and the actual, and that which impedes the decrease of this distance. . . . In other words, when the potential is higher than the actual is by definition avoidable and when it is avoidable, then violence is present. (1969, pp. 168–169) For Galtung, when human ‘potential realisations’4 are intentionally curtailed from achieving their ‘actual realisation’ then structural violence is said to be a force at work, evident across six ‘distinctions of violence’, all of which are gendered. First however, to more fully explicate our intentions for understanding violence in this way we now return to the work of Bonger and, more specifically, the relevance of violence to the concept of ‘militarism’.

Defining the violence of militarism The term ‘militarism’ is said to have ‘a common meaning, suggesting an influence of military organization and values on social structure’ (Shaw, 1991, p. 11). However, ‘militarism’ does not simply denote public participation in war preparedness, nor does war preparedness merely necessitate the cultivation of militarisation within society (Shaw, 1991). Militarism instead has many pervasive forms, and as Shaw (1991) suggests, denotes the imposition and embedding of military values, interests and imperatives within various social, cultural and structural practices and activities. Such practices are often rendered ‘unseen or unseeable’ (Woodward, 2014) within what are understood as ‘military landscapes’ (Woodward, 2004), a point to which we shall return. However, with this definition of ‘militarism’ in mind, and with our notion of ‘violence’ outlined above, let us now briefly contemplate a different conceptualisation of Bonger and his life as a scholar to help illustrate how we consider these terms to be interconnected.

‘Borders’ and ‘bodies’ as boundary objects In a short written biography within Fifty Key Thinkers in Criminology, not only do we learn of Bonger’s life and intellectual work, but we also come to know of his death. This is an event that is an important point of departure in how to begin further developing criminological studies of war, as Jamieson (1998) and DiPierto (2016) have advocated. Hebbertecht (2010, p. 62) informs us of Bonger: He also steadfastly despised Fascism and National Socialism – indeed his total rejection of its values and totality were embodied in his final act. Five days after the German army crossed the Dutch-German frontier on 15 May 1940, Bonger and his wife committed suicide. It was a well-considered act as is made clear in his suicide note: ‘I don’t see any future for myself and I cannot bow to this scum which will now overmaster us’. From this short extract there are two points for further development and which we return to more fully in our penultimate section. The first relates to ‘borders’ and the second to ‘bodies’. 206

Criminology of war, violence and militarism

Reflecting upon what we have understood of Bonger’s (1916, 1936) work so far the breaching of his own sovereign borders by Nazi German soldiers perhaps indicated an imminent shift to a form of militarism he had previously envisioned in his own intellectual life. From the extract of his suicide note we get the impression that the potential for what this might become was too austere for Bonger to contend with, and so – in lieu of living through Nazi German occupation and the impending violence of militarism that was to unfold during World War II – both he and his wife turned physical violence in on their individual bodies by taking their own lives. Viewed in the context of Bonger’s commentary on ‘militarism’ discussed earlier, we consider these acts to symbolise the violent physical embodiment of Bonger’s (1916) own fears and anxieties of the consequences of war. For Bonger (1916) the conduct of war and its presence within everyday civic, political and economic life had entrenched consequences for all concerned, whether combatant or civilian. He proposed that war made violence commonplace ‘not only in those who take part in it, but in the whole population’ (Bonger, 1916, p. 518). Moreover, the criminogenic effects of militarism felt in this way can, as also noted previously from Mannheim (1965, p. 598), ‘make themselves felt’ many years after the cessation of war. And so, from the death of Bonger and his wife there is further insight into how the study of war may also be conceptualised within critical criminological work. Beneath the macro layers of corporate, white collar and state criminality relating to war operate complex meso- and micro-dimensions of structural and physical harm interconnected to issues of violence and militarism. It is this position that we take as our final point of departure to consider what ‘more there is to be said’ (Jamieson, 1999a) in relation to other ‘borders’ and ‘bodies’ in the context of war violence.

‘Bikini bodies’, contaminated borders and structural violence Finally, we turn our attention to a different set of geographical borders located in the Pacific Ocean in the immediate aftermath of World War II.5 Here, within the Marshall Islands, there is a devastating legacy of militarised violence. Between 1946 and 1958 the Marshall Island of Bikini Atoll became a testing ground for U.S. weapons of mass destruction during the United States’ race to nuclear armament ahead of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. To demonstrate their weaponised capabilities, during July 1946 a 23-kiloton nuclear bomb was detonated in the vicinity of Bikini Atoll. Codenamed Operation Crossroads, this explosion (‘able’ test) was the first of 23 nuclear and hydrogen bombs to be detonated in the Marshall Islands6 over a 12-year period. Later, during 1954, the fourth device to be detonated (‘bravo’ test) under Operation Castle was a 15-megaton hydrogen bomb, a weapon 1,000 times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima by the U.S. during World War II (see Bikini Atoll, 2016). The purpose of these detonations was to test the effects of radiation from these deadly weapons, using military vessels, animals, and the Marshall Islanders as test subjects. But in what ways does this illustrate the violence of militarism? To answer this question we return to the notions of ‘borders’ and ‘bodies’ constituted as the structural violence of war (qua Galtung, 1969).

Irradiated and displaced bodies The devastating consequences of these detonations are acutely illustrated in the bodies affected. Firstly, this is evident via a popular item of clothing, namely the ‘bikini’. This item of women’s swimwear was introduced into contemporary fashion by French engineer Louis Réard during 1946 and is an article of clothing frequently used (particularly in the West) for the objectification of women’s bodies as sexualised symbols of ‘beauty’. However, as a form of ‘paradoxical violence’ (Young, 2007) this item of clothing was named after the initial nuclear detonations 207

Ross McGarry and Sandra Walklate

during Operation Crossroads to celebrate the first successful U.S. nuclear tests. The gendered frame is more than obvious. In the immediate aftermath of the first tests, the people of Bikini Atoll suffered from the effects of radiation sickness such as hair loss, skin conditions and diarrhoea. In the subsequent 70 years since the first detonation of the ‘alpha’ test, women in Bikini Atoll have suffered from thyroid cancer, and future generations of Marshall Islanders have suffered from cancers, sickness and physical and mental disabilities, all of which are a direct result of the testing of nuclear weapons. As such, although symbolic of the ‘beautification’ of women’s bodies, the ‘bikini’ is a cultural artefact indelibly wedded to the (gendered) violence of militarism which masks the irradiation and mutilation of the bodies of the Marshall Islanders. These are bodies that were not only irradiated, they were also displaced as a result of these tests. In preparation for Operation Crossroads, during 1946 to 1948 the Bikini Islanders were relocated from Bikini Atoll to Rongerik Atoll where they were left by U.S. authorities to practically starve. They were relocated several times further before they themselves chose to settle on Kili Island in 1948. This displacement ultimately destroyed their cultural heritage and livelihoods as Bikini Islanders. Twenty years later in 1968, then U.S. President Lyndon Johnson incorrectly declared that Bikini Atoll was safe for the residents to return to. Some Islanders did in 1972, and returned to an island whose land, water and marine life remained contaminated with radiation. A second evacuation took place in 1982; Bikini Atoll has been uninhabitable ever since.

Militarised and contaminated borders Much like the criminogenic effects of war being felt long after fighting has subsided (qua Mannheim, 1965), so too can the effects of military occupation be found in formerly militarised spaces such as Bikini Atoll. Following a prolonged occupation by the U.S. military during the testing of these nuclear and hydrogen weapons, the remaining abandoned military installations in the Marshall Islands leave a heavy footprint of Western military occupation, with a tread resembling the aftermath of World War II and the ensuing Cold War. This alone would render Bikini Atoll a ‘military landscape’, that is, a physical geographical space embodying the practices, cultures and impressions of military values and occupation (Woodward, 2004). However, it is not just within the formerly occupied physical space of Bikini Atoll that militarism of this nature remains evident. It is palpable in the contaminated footprint that such military occupation left behind. During March 1954 a further test of the first U.S. hydrogen bomb known as Castle Bravo was detonated within the vicinity of Bikini Atoll, with a yield of 15-megatons, far exceeding the power expected from the blast. The fallout from this explosion fell on the nearby islands of Rongelap and Utirik. The United States’ authorities took three days to evacuate the residents, leaving them fully exposed to the fallout of radiation from Castle Bravo. The Islanders were returned to these contaminated islands three years later, only to be once again evacuated for good. Known as ‘Project 4.1’, these events are now recognised to have been deliberate acts by the United States’ authorities to test the exposure of radiation on human subjects. Today, 70 years after the ‘alpha’ detonation at the outset of Operation Crossroads, Bikini Atoll remains uninhabitable. These are borders that were occupied by the U.S. authorities following the cessation of World War II and contaminated by the violence of militarism for the purposes of nuclear preparedness during the Cold War.

Militarised violence as structural violence The racialised and gendered nature of rendering geographical and cultural space within the Global South ‘structurally vulnerable’ (see Tombs & Whyte, 2010) by a powerful Western nation 208

Criminology of war, violence and militarism

in order to exploit it for its own militarised purposes is profound in our example of Bikini Atoll. When understood within the social, political and economic context of the Cold War, as a form of violence – in this case militarised violence – it is exposed as having been ‘exported’ via those same practices (i.e. militarism) within and beyond geographical borders and upon physical bodies (qua Currie, 2012). To make clear the ‘structural’ dimensions of this militarised form of violence, the work of Galtung (1969) offers some useful theoretical scaffolding with which to conclude our analysis. Thus the exploitation of the Marshall Islanders by U.S. authorities can be connected with the ‘distinctions of violence’ noted by Galtung (1969). First there is a presence of both ‘personal’ (i.e. physical) and ‘structural’ violence’ – to the person, or physical and cultural environment – evident within the militarised violence enacted in the Marshall Islands. These constitute Galtung’s (1969) general notion of ‘structural violence’. This violence was caused by grotesque acts of militarism, initially facilitated by ‘no object hurt’ glossed and minimised in the gendered association of the ‘bikini’. These acts signified the intended threat of physical militarised violence towards the Soviet Union by the U.S. in the brandishing of nuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands during the Cold War. However, the consequences of this posturing resulted in ‘object hurt’, namely the detonation of weapons of mass destruction in known inhabited areas. These militarised acts, although carried out by ‘acting subjects’ (i.e. U.S. authorities and military personnel participating in the militarised activities and nuclear testing in the region), gave way to both physical and structural violence conducted by ‘non-acting subjects’. This is demonstrated in the geographical and cultural displacement of the Islanders during the testing of nuclear weapons and hydrogen bombs, and the ‘intended’ exposure of the population and natural environment to radiation. All of which was – in Galtung’s (1969) terms – entirely avoidable. The result of this militarism has been a ‘latent’ form of violence, one that has slowly irradiated at least two generations of Bikini Islanders and poisoned the natural environment of the Marshall Islands over a 70-year period.

Conclusion: towards a criminology of war, violence and militarism? Within this chapter we have outlined what we consider to be an important agenda for criminological studies of war to undertake to further advance this work in the discipline. We have grounded our ideas in the historical work of Willem Bonger providing the study of war within critical criminology with some intellectual heritage. We then took this established ground as our point of departure to set an agenda that encourages the violence(s) of war to be understood within their physical and structural dimensions related to ‘violence’ and ‘militarism’. We then developed Bonger’s (1916) observations of ‘militarism’ through an exploration of Cold War U.S. nuclear armament as enacting ‘structural violence’ (Galtung, 1969) upon the ‘bodies’ and ‘borders’ of criminological ‘others’ resident in islands within the Pacific Ocean. To make our argument we have not only situated our thoughts in relevant historical literature relating to war within criminology, but have importantly departed from solely criminological work to draw upon literature from sociology, peace studies and geography (to name but a few). This has been done to provide a ‘sustained and rigorous’ study of war that is embracing of scholarship from both within and without the discipline, as DiPierto (2016) has recently advocated. We acknowledge that concerns regarding nuclear armament are not unique. Most notably, Kauzlarich and Kramer (1998) who – at the same time as Jamieson’s (1998) seminal chapter on a ‘criminology of war’ was published – first considered the production, stock piling, testing and usage of nuclear weapons by U.S. authorities as a state crime. However, although we may in some ways have covered similar critical issues and come to similar conclusions 209

Ross McGarry and Sandra Walklate

to Kauzlarich and Kramer (1998), we consider our route to these discussions to have been achieved through different means. What seems to have been missed within criminological studies of war, including the original work of Jamieson (1998), is a more specific focus on ‘violence’ and a greater attachment to the notion of ‘militarism’. In drawing these issues into criminological debate we have illustrated a further direction for criminological studies of war to pursue. But there is a farther reaching point here too. War and its preparation is seldom reactionary, it has historically been made possible via entrenched political and cultural acts of militarism, and a passivity (or unawareness) of the centrality of militarism within civic life. As a concluding thought, the pursuit of the agenda we have laid out here would be contemporarily well placed, particularly given the tensions relating to nuclear armament and war preparedness that have begun to resurface in the U.S. following the 2016 presidential elections. Criminologists concerned with issues of war must be alert to such renewed violent posturing and be more attentive to the signs and symptoms that accompany these (and many other) forms of violent militarism.

Notes 1

2 3 4 5 6

The point we make here regarding Bonger as a ‘Marxist criminologist’ is intentionally broad to serve the purposes of our argument. Whilst he is regarded as such it is important to note the oftentimes contradictory nature of Bonger as a sociological criminologist whose Marxist writing was frequently deemed to be informed by positivism and notions of individualism (in relation to the social and economic constraints of altruism and egoism in the committing of criminal acts). Both perspectives he had considerable disagreement with, particularly biological positivism/determinism. See chapter 7 in Taylor, Walton and Young (2013) for a thorough overview and critique of Bonger’s Marxist perspective as contrasted with ‘formal Marxism’. See DiPietro (2016) for a further neat overview of some of these core issues and pieces of literature. See Pinker (2011), chapters 5 and 6 in particular. A term not developed in his original concept, but widely interpreted to relate to a variety of things, including, for example, social, economic and physical health, the attainment of life, freedom and security, etc. The information used within this case has been derived from two main sources: the first act of John Pilger’s (2016) documentary film The Coming War on China, and www.bikiniatoll.com. The Marshall Island of Enewatak Atolls also had three devices detonated during the same period as Bikini Atoll.

References Alvarez, A. (2010). Genocidal Crimes. Oxon: Routledge. Alvarez, A. (2016). Genocide in the context of war. In McGarry, R. and Walklate, S. (eds.). The Palgrave Handbook of Criminology and War. Hampshire: Palgrave. Arendt, H. (1969). On Violence. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company. Bikini Atoll (2016). Bikini Atoll, available from: www.bikiniatoll.com. Bonger, W.A. (1916). Criminality and Economic Conditions. Boston, MA: Little Brown and Company. Bonger, W.A. (1936). An Introduction to Criminology. London: Methuen. Bourdieu, P. (2001). Masculine Domination. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Buffacchi, V. (2005). Two concepts of violence. Political Studies Review, 3: 193–204. Currie, E. (2012). Violence and social policy. In W.S. DeKeseredy and M. Dragiewicz. (2012) (Eds.). Routledge Handbook of Critical Criminology. London: Routledge. DeKeseredy, W.S. (2011). Contemporary Critical Criminology. Oxon: Routledge. DiPierto, S.M. (2016). Criminology and war: where are we going and where have we been? Sociology Compass, 10: 839–848. Elias, N. (1994). The Civilizing Process. Oxford: Blackwell. Friedrichs, D.O. (2000). The crime of the century? The case for the Holocaust. Crime, Law & Social Change, 34: 21–41.

210

Criminology of war, violence and militarism

Galtung, J. (1969). Violence, peace, and peace research. Journal of Peace Research, 6(3): 167–191. Giddens, A. (1985). The Nation-State and Violence. Cambridge: Polity Press. Green, P. and Ward, T. (2004). State Crime: Governments,Violence and Corruption. London: Pluto Press. Hagan, J. (2015). While criminology slept: a criminal war of aggression in Iraq. The Criminologist: The Official Newsletter of the American Society of Criminology, 40(6): 2–4. Hagan, J. and Rymond-Richmond, W. (2008). Darfur and the Crime of Genocide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hagan, J., Kaiser, J., Rothenberg, D., Hanson, A. and Parker, P. (2012). Atrocity victimization and the costs of economic conflict crimes in the battle for Baghdad and Iraq. European Journal of Criminology, 9(5): 481–498. Hamm, M. (2007). “High crimes and misdemeanors”: George W. Bush and the sins of Abu Ghraib. Crime Media Culture, 3(3): 259–284. Hebbertecht, P. (2010). Willem Bonger (1876–1940). In Hayward, K., Maruna, S. and Mooney, J. (eds). Fifty Key Thinkers in Criminology. Abingdon: Routledge. The Howard League (2011). Report of the Inquiry into Former Armed Service Personnel in Prison. London: The Howard League for Penal Reform. Jamieson, R. (1998). Towards a criminology of war in Europe. In Ruggiero, V., South, N. and Taylor, I. (eds.) The New European Criminology: Crime and Social Order in Europe. London: Routledge. Jamieson, R. (1999a). Councils of war. Criminal Justice Matters, 34: 25–26. Jamieson, R. (1999b). Genocide and the social production of immorality. Theoretical Criminology, 3(2): 131–146. Kauzlarich, D. and Kramer, R.C. (1998). Crimes of the American Nuclear State. Boston: Northeastern University Press. Mannheim, H. (1941) War and Crime. London: Watts & Co. Mannheim, H. (1965). Comparative Criminology: A Text Book, Volume Two. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. McGarry, R. and Walklate, S. (2015). Introduction: placing war within criminology. In Walklate, S. and McGarry, R. (eds). Criminology and War: Transgressing the Borders. Abingdon: Routledge. McGarry, R. and Walklate, S. (2016a). The criminology of war, what is it good for? In McGarry, R. and Walklate, S. (eds). The Palgrave Handbook of Criminology and War. Hampshire: Palgrave. McGarry, R. and Walklate, S. (eds). (2016b). The Palgrave Handbook of Criminology and War. Hampshire: Palgrave. Mullins, C.W. and Rothe, D.L. (2008). Blood and Bedlham: Violations of International Criminal Law in PostColonial Africa. New York: Peter Lang. Pilger, J. (2016). The Coming War on China. East Sussex: Trinity Creative Partnership. Pinker, S. (2011). The Better Angels of Our Nature: The Decline of Violence in History and its Causes. London: Penguin Books. Rafter, N. (2016). The Crime of All Crimes: Towards a Criminology of Genocide. New York: New York University Press. Rafter, N. and Walklate, S. (2012). Genocide and the dynamics of victimization: some observations on Armenia. European Journal of Criminology, 9(5): 514–526. Ray, L. (2011). Violence and Society. London: Sage. Ruggiero, V. (2006). Understanding Political Violence: A Criminological Analysis. Maidenhead: Open University Press. Ruggiero, V. (2016). Corporate war crimes. In McGarry, R. and Walklate, S. (eds.). The Palgrave Handbook of Criminology and War. Hampshire: Palgrave. Scraton, P. (2007). Power, Conflict and Criminalisation. Abingdon: Routledge. Shaw, M. (1991). Post Military Society: Militarism, Demilitarization, and War at the End of the Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Polity Press. Shaw, M. (2003). War & Genocide. Cambridge: Polity Press. Sutherland, E.H. (1949). White Collar Crime. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Taylor, I., Walton, P. and Young, J. (2013). The New Criminology: for a Social Theory of Deviance. 40th Anniversary Edition. Abingdon: Routledge. Tombs, S. and Whyte, D. (2010). Reflections upon the limits of a concept: ‘victims’ and corporate crime. International Journal of Victimology, 8(2): 184–199. von Clausewitz, K. (1997). On War. Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions.

211

Ross McGarry and Sandra Walklate

Walklate, S. and McGarry, R. (2016). Murderousness in war: from Mai Lai to Marine A. In Walklate, S. and Fitz-Gibbon, K. (eds). Homicide, Gender and Responsibility. Abingdon: Routledge. Walklate, S. and McGarry, R. (2015) (eds). Criminology and War: Transgressing the Borders. Abingdon: Routledge. Woodward, R. (2004). Military Geographies. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Woodward, R. (2014). Military landscapes: agendas and approaches for future research. Progress in Human Geography, 38(1): 40–61. Young, J. (2007). The Vertigo of Late Modernity. London: Sage. ˇ izˇek, S. (2009). Violence: Six Sideways Reflections. London: Profile Books. Z

212

17 Terrorism The problem with radicalization: overlooking the elephants in the room Sandra Walklate and Gabe Mythen

Introduction Since the 9/11 attacks in the United States, Western governments have been in various states of alert against the threat presented by individuals inspired by Islamist extremist groups. Notwithstanding the large numbers of victims of terrorism in the Middle East – most visibly in Syria and Iraq – serious attacks have taken place in countries across Europe over the last 15 years, including France, Germany, Spain, Denmark, Belgium and the United Kingdom. A heightened state of vigilance in Western nations has been accompanied by a panoply of counter terrorism strategies and State security measures designed to counter political and religiously motivated violence (see Walklate & Mythen, 2015; Thomas, 2012). In particular, European intelligence networks have been exercised by the threat of ‘home-grown’ terrorism, whereby citizens become radicalized and motivated to wage attacks in their countries of origin. Following on from the 2015 and 2016 attacks in France and Belgium, widespread concerns have been expressed about individuals fighting with Islamist militants in conflict zones in Syria and Iraq becoming ‘radicalized’ and returning to home countries to commit atrocities (see Francis, 2015). Within this context of anxiety and uncertainty, a prime focus for the State has been the development and implementation of strategies to counter terrorism. These strategies have been multivalent, encompassing new legislation, revised policing techniques, far reaching intelligence and surveillance measures and policies of early prevention (see Mythen, 2014; Schmid, 2013). Behind all of this, approaches to countering terrorism have sought to reveal what it is that motivates individuals to get involved in violent extremism. Put more bluntly by Sedgwick (2010), what happens ‘before the bombs go off ’? Responding to this question has been of paramount importance for security analysts and has driven the development of policies designed to prevent violent extremism. Post 9/11, both State sponsored and independent academic research has sought to illuminate common factors in the cases of individuals that become radicalized (see Borum, 2011; Dalgaard-Nielsen, 2010; Horgan, 2009). In this chapter it is our primary ambition to critically analyze the emergence and consolidation of the discourse of radicalization, its practical impact on counter terrorism processes and strategies post-9/11 and criminological engagement with these processes. We also wish to discuss how it might be possible to engage in a different and potentially more valuable conversation about the root causes of terrorism and the factors that 213

Sandra Walklate and Gabe Mythen

drive individuals to organized violence. The chapter comprises three sections. In the first, we provide an overview of models of radicalization. We then move on to compare and contrast these models with notable aspects of the life biographies of the men involved in recent terrorist attacks in France in order to consider what these models of radicalization do and do not capture. In the third section, we consider some of the wider implications of this discussion both for policy making and critical criminological approaches to the problem of terrorism.

Radicalization: explaining paths into violent extremism? After the 9/11 attacks in the United States, questions regarding the motivations of individuals attracted to violent extremism came to the fore. Despite the pre-existing threat to the West from radical Islamist groups, the 2001 attacks triggered a sea change in counter terrorism strategy. The ‘war on terror’ – presided over by George W. Bush – involved sweeping and draconian changes in domestic security policy and ruinous military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. In other Western nation states, parallel securitization has taken place, albeit often on a smaller scale. For example, the UK response to the threat of international terrorism – dubbed the ‘war against terrorism’ involved root and branch changes to counter terrorism legislation, focused on preventing violent extremism and military engagement alongside the United States and its allies. Other countries, such as France, committed to the wars waged in Iraq and Afghanistan, revised domestic security policies to combat terrorism and bolstered surveillance measures (see Camilleri, 2012; Gregory, 2003). Alongside these material forms of intervention, there has been a need to explain to the public the causes of the threat of Islamist extremism and to demonstrate what the State is doing to combat it. While broad in nature, these efforts have resulted in the development of what Kundnani (2015) refers to as ‘the official narrative’ on terrorism. Within this official narrative, radicalization is understood as the phase through which individuals travel en route to accepting that the use of violence is both just and legitimate. While the causes of terrorism are extremely complex and involve tangled historical, economic and cultural roots, the discourse of radicalization has provided a broad rationale for explaining Islamist political violence (Dalgaard-Nielsen, 2010; Kundnani, 2012). This rationale, developed both by State security analysts and academics working in terrorism studies, has been crucial in driving transformations in counter-terrorism policy. Thus, a multitude of strategies to prevent violent extremism and counter radicalization have emerged (see Lindekilde, 2012; Sedgwick, 2010). As Kundnani (2012) notes, this process has been attended to and supported by a range of experts from within government, the security industries, academia, think tanks and charities. These experts have largely conspired to produce a common discourse and logic of radicalization that focuses on the religious and psychological factors that may be involved in instances where individuals commit to violent extremism. Understood as an ideational process comprising a variety of different stages through which individuals pass, the radicalization thesis assumes that the adoption of extremist beliefs is a crucial factor in motivating individuals to commit indiscriminate violence against fellow citizens. A systematic review of radicalization published by the International Centre for the prevention of Crime in 2015 identifies six radicalization trajectories: the Wiktorowicz model, Stahelski’s five stages of social psychological conditioning, the Moghaddam model, Sageman’s model, the NYPD model and the Danish Security and Intelligence Service (PET) model (see ICPC, 2015, pp. 45–55). Across the piece, models of radicalization tend to break down the temporal landscape and de-compartmentalize key moments leading up to the adoption of extremist values. To this end, the discourse of radicalization depicts a mode of linear travel, with reference being made to ‘pathways’, ‘journeys’ and ‘drivers’ (see Mythen, Walklate & Peatfield, 2017). As Martin (2014) notes, modelling radicalization as a graduated process assumes that particular traits and common 214

The problem with radicalization

characteristics can be identified as emergent during distinct phases. Silber and Bhatt’s (2007) four-phased radicalization journey into violence oriented around ‘jihadist ideology’ is typical of this phased approach. Similarly, Borum’s (2003) ‘step model’ indicates that initially perceiving an event or action to be unfair, may fuel perceptions of injustice which may subsequently trigger resentment against parties deemed to be responsible. These types of mechanical ‘conveyer belt’ approach hypothetically enable the possibility that risk-based decision-making can inform appropriate institutional interventions (see Heath-Kelly, 2013; Thomas, 2016). In identifying a range of religious practices that those ‘at risk’ of violent extremism engage in – and coupling these to psychosocial deficiencies – proactive intervention to prevent violence becomes possible at various stages along a continuum. While models of radicalization may reflect certain aspects of the experiences of some individuals attracted to violent extremism, what is collectively absent is a proper understanding of the structural and material factors that may help us explain how and why people are driven to kill indiscriminately and at will. As Kundnani (2015) notes, the official narrative on terrorism foregrounds the role of ideology in general and religious ideology in particular. In so doing, it follows that modes of prevention and intervention must predominantly take place at an ideational rather than a structural level. Indeed, this is a common premise underpinning counter-radicalization policies in different countries, the United Kingdom Prevent strategy being a case in point (see HM Government, 2011; Mythen, Walklate & Peatfield, 2017; Thomas, 2016). Yet evidence surrounding the foundational role of religion in inspiring attacks associated with followers of radical Islam is complex and points in several directions (see Gunning & Jackson, 2011). What is remarkably absent in both political debate and policy making around counter radicalization is how acts of violent extremism may or may not fit with pathways into crime more generally. In order to explore the tensions foregrounded by these observations we turn now to consider some of the details that have been made public about the young men involved in the three serious terrorist attacks in France – in Paris in January 2015 and November 2015 and in Nice in July 2016.

Cases in point: thinking about France The process of indoctrination and acceptance of extreme interpretations of religion are doubtless part of the picture in instances of terrorist attacks committed by followers of radical Islam. However, there are also other factors to consider, many of which have been largely glossed over by the State and the mainstream mass media. While it is impossible to clinically define and relatively weigh the specific motivations that ‘cause’ terrorism, in examining recent cases it is possible to identify some of the factors that have been elided in discussions about ‘what happens before the bombs go off ’ and to speculate about why these omissions have occurred. Here, information that is publically known about the lives of the perpetrators of the attacks in France during 2015–16 is used to elucidate some of the gaps in the official narrative of terrorism. As we shall see, the three men who committed the January 2015 attacks in Paris – Said Kouachi, Cherif Kouachi and Amedy Coulibaly – shared much in common with Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, the perpetrator of the Nice attacks in July 2016 and the men that attacked various sites of public use in the capital in November 2015. It is worth reflecting a little on some of the details that we know about these lives lived before asking what it is that this approach might tell us about the models of radicalization outlined above. The Kouachi brothers were both born in Paris and were French nationals of Algerian descent. Little is known about their father, but they were initially raised by their mother until she died of a drugs overdose (Irish Times, 2015). Saif, the elder of the two brothers, was registered as unemployed and lived with his wife and two children in a two-bedroomed apartment in a social 215

Sandra Walklate and Gabe Mythen

housing tower block in the Croix Rouge area of Reims, one of the most run down and deprived parts of the city. He was the only one of the three perpetrators of the Charlie Hebdo attack not to have been imprisoned, although he had been subjected to police surveillance in 2005 as a result of an investigation into a suspected radical Islamist group (Hedges, 2015). It was reported that Saif fought for al-Qaida in the Yemen, before being deported back to France in 2012 (Chrisafis, 2015). Both of the Kouachi brothers appeared on the US and UK security intelligence no-fly lists (BBC News, 2015), preventing them from entering these countries. A little more is known about Saif ’s brother, Cherif. Cherif struggled at school and was raised in care homes in Brittany from the age of 12 after the death of his mother (BBC News, 2015). On moving back to Paris in 1988 he lived in the 19th arrondissement and held a number of low skilled, low paid jobs, latterly working as a pizza delivery driver. Television documentary footage of Cherif recorded in 2004 shows him dancing to rap music whilst sporting a baseball cap worn backwards. He claims in the documentary to have become radicalized stating: ‘It’s written in the texts that it’s good to die as a martyr’ (Chrisafis, 2015). By 2005, Cherif had become involved in the so called ‘ButtesChaumont cell’, named after the Park where Kouachi and others met and exercised together. This cell is purported to have acted as a conduit for young men wanting to travel from France to fight in Iraq (Chrisafis, 2015). In 2005 he was detained whilst attempting to board a flight bound for Syria – by which time it is suggested he had come under the influence of a radical preacher, Farid Benyettou. Cherif ’s case came to court 2008 and the court sentenced him to three years in prison, which meant that he was released immediately after the trial, having already spent almost that much time in prison on remand. His time on remand was spent in the largest prison in France, Fleury-Merogis, on the outskirts of Paris. This prison has been subjected to serious criticism about inhumane conditions, poor treatment of prisoners and overcrowding (see Cretenot & Liaros, 2013). It was here that Cherif met Amedy Coulibaly. In 2010 he was arrested again for allegedly being part of a plot to free Smaı¨n Aı¨t Ali Belkacem – an Algerian born Islamist – from prison. He was subsequently released without charge. The third attacker involved in the January 2015 attacks was Amedy Coulibaly. He was born in Juvisy-sur-Orge on the outskirts of Paris, his parents having migrated to France from Mali. The only boy in a family with nine sisters, he grew up on a large housing estate, Le Grande-Borne, 14 miles south of Paris (Irish Times, 2015). This estate was one of the trouble spots – ‘les banlieues’ – that flared up in riots in 2005. It has been characterized in the French national media as a center for drugs and violent crime. Coulibaly was convicted twice for armed robbery. After serving his first prison sentence for armed robbery, he began dealing drugs and was convicted once more, serving another sentence. When Coulibaly was serving his third prison sentence for armed robbery he and Cherif Kouachi met in prison. Coulibaly was one of the inmates who had participated in campaigning against the conditions in Fleury-Merogis. He and Cherif Kouachi not only became friends, they found a mentor in Djamel Beghal, an associate of Abu Hamza and Abu Qatada. After leaving prison, there is evidence to suggest that Coulibaly and Kouachi maintained contact with Beghal, visiting him whilst he was under house arrest in rural France (BBC News, 2015). In July 2009, Amedy Coulibaly married Hayat Boumeddiene in an Islamic ceremony conducted at the home of Mr. Coulibaly’s parents. As Boumeddiene was not present at the wedding, the marriage was not recognized under French law (Meichtry, 2015). Along with Cherif Kouachi, Coulibaly was also accused of being involved in the plot to free Smaïn Aït Ali (Irish Times, 2015). While the case against Kouachi was dropped, Coulibaly received a five-year prison sentence, with a police search having found AK-47 ammunition stored in a paint pot in his apartment. He was released in 2014, being described as a model inmate (Hedges, 2015) and resumed married life with Hayat Boumeddiene. Boumeddiene left France for Syria a few days before the attacks in Paris and was in close contact with Saif Kouachi’s wife in the months prior to the attack. In a video made before 216

The problem with radicalization

the attack, Coulibaly claimed that his forthcoming assault was justified as a response to Western attacks on Islamic State militants. In November 2015, the Bataclan concert hall, a café close to it, and the Stade de France in Paris were attacked by seven men resulting in 137 deaths. The attackers either blew themselves up or were shot by police and security services at the scene. Much less coverage was given to the individuals involved in these attacks by the media with the exception of Salah Abdeslam who fled and went on the run for several days before being arrested by police. Nonetheless from what has appeared in media reports, it is possible to identify some parallels in both background and life experiences with those who committed the Charlie Hebdo attacks. Salah, it would seem, had a life marked by petty crime. It is said that he met Abdelhamid Abaaoud – the assumed orchestrator of the attacks – in prison (BBC News, 2016). He and his brother – who died at the scene – had appeared in several Belgian police files alongside Abdelhamid Abaaoud in relation to criminal cases in 2010 and 2011. Brahim Abdeslam and Abaaoud lived in Molenbeek, a deprived district of Brussels with a substantial Muslim population, described by some Belgian officials as a ‘breeding ground for jihadists’ (BBC News, 2016). Brahim owned a bar in Molenbeek which some reports say was managed by his brother Salah. Reports suggest that those who knew them commented that both men drank alcohol, smoked drugs, went to clubs and were never seen at the local mosque. Of the other attackers, Omar Mostefai appears to have been able to travel to Syria and may have spent time in Algeria. Mostefai was born in the run-down Paris suburb of Courcouronnes and was known to police as a petty criminal. He received eight convictions between 2004 and 2010, but spent no time in jail. Unlike Abdeslam and Abaaoud he regularly attended the mosque with his father but showed no outward signs of extremism (Farmer, 2016). A fourth attacker, Bilal Hadfi, died detonating a suicide bomb at Stade de France. He was a 20-year-old French national, who lived in Nederover Heembeek, Belgium. Hadfi’s Facebook page called for attacks on the ‘infidel dogs’ of the West. It is said that until just before the attack he was a typical teenager who was obsessed with playing and watching football (Farmer, 2016). Sixteen months after the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris in July 2016, Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel – a 31-year-old French-Tunisian delivery driver, who was known to the police – drove a hired lorry into crowds of people who had gathered to celebrate Bastille Day in Nice. Eightyfour people were killed in the attack and dozens more seriously injured. Bouhel was divorced from his wife and is survived by three children. Reports from his neighbours presented a consistent view of a man who was considered a loner, sometimes aggressive, and appearing to suffer from depression. He was not known to have strong religious beliefs. He regularly drank alcohol, took recreational drugs and indulged in casual sex with both men and women (Samuel, 2016). He had a criminal record and was well known to the police. His offences included assault with a weapon, armed robbery, domestic violence and threatening behavior. Nevertheless, unlike the lives of some of the men described above he had no previous convictions for terrorism related offences (Samuel, 2016). Although merely capsule accounts, these pen portraits raise some provocative questions about the extent to which the official narrative of radicalization adequately captures the lived experiences, motivations and conditions endured by young men attracted to violent extremism. While it is important to avoid cherry picking to prop up an argument, there are some commonalities which are worthy of discussion. For example, both Coulibaly and Bouhlel had encountered psychological problems and both seemed in some ways disposed toward the thrill of violence. In terms of the role of religion in becoming disposed to violent extremism, it seems that Coulibaly and Cherif Kouachi became more devout in their time in prison, although it remains an open question as to whether or not this is where they became ‘radicalized’. Significantly, all of the pen portraits above suggest a route to terrorist violence that includes petty crime, drugs, 217

Sandra Walklate and Gabe Mythen

alcohol, quite likely connected to the structural conditions of their lives: glaring economic and social deprivation. If we factor in the seemingly decisive material factors, what might radicalization actually mean in relation to the lives of these men? To what extent was religion a key factor in the unleashing of their anger and hatred? Can such a thing as ‘rapid radicalization’ – as inferred by the French Minister for the Interior in the aftermath of the Nice attack – exist in any meaningful sense, given the disjointed structural backdrop of such strained and challenging lives? Although incomplete, partial and contingent on secondary sources, these biographical accounts are illustrative of fractured lives, characterized by violence and detachment (see Walklate & Mythen, 2016). These lives also reflect different features of well-established knowledge within criminology addressing routes into crime: alienation, exclusion, family size, poverty, disrupted upbringings, pathways from home to care and from to crime to prison, struggles within the education system and so on. All of these are well-established ‘predictors’ of criminal behavior within the criminological canon. The young men discussed above grew up in high crime areas suffering from mass unemployment. They lived in high-density housing amongst largely immigrant populations in socially deprived households. All of these factors would appear to be relevant in piecing together an explanatory framework that might assist us in understanding the reasons why individuals may be willing to terminate their own lives and those of others apparently without moral scruple. Yet it is telling – especially given clear prevalence in accounts of violent crime – that such factors are curiously muted in the discourse of radicalization. Why might this be? Why, instead, is religious ideology accorded such a major role in accounts of radicalization and how might a critical criminological approach render other contributory factors more visible?

Gaps, traps and pick up points for critical criminology Of course, it would be rash to falsify the radicalization thesis on the basis of a cursory examination of three recent cases of terrorism. However, it is possible in the profiles above to identify some foundational points from which a more nuanced understanding of acts of organized violence might begin. The first point requires adequate recognition of the importance of context in explaining the motivations and actions of human beings. In as much as the official narrative of terrorism accents psychological deficiencies and attraction to radical religious values, it is clear that people’s actions are both situated and relational. The ideas and values that shape and influence people’s behaviors are vitally connected to their lived experiences, habitus and institutional engagements. Embedded hostility towards Muslims – vectored through institutional discrimination, Islamophobia, racial profiling and hate crimes – cannot but impact on those it labels and isolates (see Awan, 2013; Mythen & Walklate, 2016). A context in which Muslims are uniformly defined and viewed as risky – and in which they are unable to freely express their political and religious views – is one in which antagonism and hostility is bred, not diminished. Second, it is important to recognize the wide range of factors that lead up to terrorist attacks. The tidy conveyor belt model of radicalization is at odds with the complex factors that may drive people to commit to violence and the often chaotic lives of individuals involved in terrorist attacks. This is underscored by what is known about the biographies of the young men responsible for the French attacks in 2015 and 2016. Third, it is necessary for critical criminologists to be more forthright in pressing home to policy makers the importance of material, structural factors in developing understandings of why people may build up the resentment and frustration that promotes extreme violence as a solution. This is a discussion that is unlikely to be popular with government, amongst politicians and within the institutions and agencies involved in countering terrorism. It infers a dramatic change in focus away from individual shortcomings and toward 218

The problem with radicalization

recognizing how inadequacies in provision and a longstanding inability to deal with structural conditions of poverty, unemployment, poor housing and inadequate welfare support might be an important part of the picture for those attracted to violent extremism. The abject failure to acknowledge the ways in which material social problems may affect individuals, alongside an unwillingness to discuss the role of the State – and State intransigence – in manufacturing the conditions in which violence thrives, is a paramount concern. Fourth, it is vital that the State is able to acknowledge the elephants in the room that are frequently articulated in so called ‘martyrdom videos’ by young men like those discussed above. Unless the State is able to acknowledge that histories of colonialism, neo imperialism and military and foreign policy have produced iatrogenic effects, it is likely that the ‘drivers’ of terrorism will continue to be obscured (see Fraser, 2015; Thomas, 2016).

Conclusion On the basis of the analysis above, we would suggest that a reassessment of the root causes of violent extremism is required. This reassessment would be best served by dispensing with the idea of radicalization as a multi-purpose, catch all concept. The corollary of this is that it may be useful for policy makers to focus more sharply on the systemic and structural factors that shape human motivations and influence (anti) social behaviors. Here we have suggested that the violence of the State and Government policy – enacted domestically and internationally – play an important part in shaping the contexts in which commitments to violence become possible. While an infinitesimally small number of Muslims become involved with extreme Islamist groups – and fewer still become actively involved in terrorism – the generalized construction of Muslims as risky in counter terrorism policies serves to amplify broader social fears and anxieties around dangerous ‘others’. More importantly, this analysis carries with it significant implications for the criminological engagement with these issues. As intimated above, there is much in the conventional criminological canon that helps make sense of these young men’s lives and their various routes to violent extremism, but only if that conventional canon is read critically. For example, what would lifecourse criminology have to say about these young men? In a similar vein what might network analysis have to offer (qua Sageman, 2007; Hamm, 2009)? Cognizant that structural explanations alone do not provide a sufficiently nuanced framework casting considerable doubt on the enthusiasm for strain theory (Agnew, 2010), any explanatory framework would need to be multi-layered. However, as we have argued elsewhere (Walklate & Mythen, 2016), the young men above were, in effect, considered foreigners in their own country. Not considered French even by the French: strangers within. Their liminal lives bear memory traces of immigrants traversing the world, sometimes without papers, and always bearing the weight of French colonial history. Moreover, as Hedges (2015) observes, the failure to connect the events in Paris with the wider engagement – then disengagement – of the West in Iraq and Afghanistan has fuelled anger. This is an anger that is, of course, intrinsically connected with collective despair and poverty, but it is also an anger that the events in Paris and elsewhere suggest is dangerous to ignore. In France, the liminality of these lives and the feelings so generated have been afforded an added dimension over the last decade through renewed French commitment to ‘la Ïcité’: secularity. Thus, rather than rushing to find fresh explanations to what are perceived to be new problems, structure and context need to remain front, square and middle. Criminology, both conventional and critical, has much to say about both. Asking why it is that violent extremism is discussed, studied, and responded to, as though it is separate and separable from all other forms of violence, might be a good place for a critical criminologist to start. 219

Sandra Walklate and Gabe Mythen

References Agnew, R. (2010) ‘A general strain theory of terrorism’, Theoretical Criminology, 14(2): 131–154. Awan, I. (2013) ‘Let’s prevent extremism by engaging communities not by isolating them’, Public Spirit, January Edition. Bristol: University of Bristol. BBC News (2015) ‘Paris attacks: Suspects’ profiles’, January 12. BBC News (2016) ‘Paris attacks: Who were the attackers?’ April 27. Borum, R. (2003) ‘Understanding the terrorist mindset’, FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, 72(7): 7–10. Borum, R. (2011) ‘Radicalisation into violent extremism’, Journal of Strategic Security, 4(4): 7–36. Camilleri, R. (2012) Impact of Counter-Terrorism on Communities: France Background Report. London: Institute for Strategic Dialogue. Chrisafis, A. (2015) Profiles: key suspects in Paris attacks. The Guardian. January 9. Cretenot, M. and Liaros, B. (2013) Prison Conditions in France. European Prison Observatory, Rome, September. Dalgaard-Nielsen, A. (2010) ‘Violent radicalisation in Europe: What we know and what we do not know’, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, 33(9): 797–814. Farmer, B. (2016) ‘Who is Salah Abdeslam and who were the Paris terrorists? Everything we know about the Isil attackers’, The Telegraph, March 18. Francis, M. (2015) ‘If you really could brainwash Muslims, ISIS would have a lot more British recruits’, The Conversation. July 7. Fraser, G. (2015) ‘It’s not the religion that creates terrorists, it’s the politics’, The Guardian, Saturday June 27. Gregory, S.R. (2003) ‘France and the War on Terrorism’, Terrorism and Political Violence, 15(1): 124–127. Gunning, J. and Jackson, R. (2011) ‘What’s so religious about religious terrorism?’ Critical Studies on Terrorism, 4(3): 369–388. Hamm, M. (2009) ‘Prison Islam in the age of sacred terrorism’, British Journal of Criminology, 49(5): 667–685. Heath-Kelly, C. (2013) ‘Counter-terrorism and the counterfactual: producing the ‘radicalisation’ discourse and the UK PREVENT Strategy’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 15(3): 394–415. Hedges, C. (2015) ‘A message from the dispossessed’, The Guardian, January 11. HM Government (2011) PREVENT Strategy. London: TSO. Horgan, J. (2009) ‘Individual disengagement: A psychological analysis’ in T. Bjorgo and J. Horgan, eds. Leaving Terrorism Behind: Individual and Collective Disengagement. Abingdon: Routledge. International Centre for the Prevention of Crime (ICPC) (2015) Preventing Radicalization: A Systematic Review. ICPC. Irish Times (2015) ‘Profile: Amedy Coulibaly, the kosher supermarket gunman’. January 9. Kundnani, A. (2012) ‘Radicalisation: The journey of a concept’, Race and Class, 54(2): 3–25. Kundnani, A. (2015) A Decade Lost: Rethinking Radicalisation and Extremism. London: Claystone Publications. Lindekilde, L. (2012) ‘Neo-liberal governing of “radicals”: Danish radicalisation prevention policies and potential iatrogenic effects’, International Journal of Conflict and Violence, 6(1): 109–125. Martin, T. (2014) ‘Governing an unknowable future: The politics of Britain’s Prevent policy’, Critical Studies on Terrorism, 7(1): 62–78. Meichtry, S. (2015) ‘Paris attacker Amedy Coulibaly’s path to terror’, Wall Street Journal, January 14. Mythen, G. (2014) Understanding the Risk Society: Crime, Security and Justice, London: Palgrave Macmillan. Mythen, G. and Walklate, S. (2016) ‘Counter-terrorism and the reconstruction of (in)security: Divisions, dualisms, duplicities’, British Journal of Criminology, 56(6): 1107–1124. Mythen, G., Walklate, S, and Peatfield, E. (2017) ‘Assembling and deconstructing radicalization: A critique of the logic of drivers’, Critical Social Policy, 37, 180–201. Sageman, M. (2007) Leaderless Jihad: Terror Networks in the Twenty-First Century. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania. Samuel, H. (2016) ‘Who is the Nice terror attack suspect? Everything we know so far about Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel’, Daily Telegraph, July 18. Schmid, A. (2013) Radicalisation, De-Radicalisation, Counter-Radicalisation: A Conceptual Discussion and Literature Review. The Hague: ICCT Research Paper. Sedgwick, M. (2010) ‘The concept of radicalisation as a source of confusion’, Terrorism and Political Violence, 22: 479–494.

220

The problem with radicalization

Silber, M and Bhatt, A. (2007) Radicalisation in the West: The Homegrown Threat. New York: NYPD Intelligence Division. Thomas, P. (2012) Responding to the Threat of Violent Extremism. London and New York: Bloomsbury. Thomas, P. (2016) ‘Youth, terrorism and education: Britain’s Prevent programme’, International Journal of Lifelong Education, 35(2): 171–187. Walklate, S. and Mythen, G. (2015) Contradictions of Terrorism: Security, Risk and Resilience. London: Routledge. Walklate, S. and Mythen, G. (2016) ‘Splintered lives, splintered knowledge? Making criminological sense of the Paris 2015 attacks’, Critical Criminology, 24(3): 333–346.

221

18 Militarizing American police An overview Peter B. Kraska

The military model is as pervasive as the medical model in efforts to colonize the control of crime. Richard Ericson (1994)

Critical criminology has for the most part ignored the trend examined here – police militarization. This wasn’t always the case. In 1975 the “Center for Research on Criminal Justice” wrote an empirically rigorous and scathing analysis of developments in U.S. policing titled, The Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove: An Analysis of the U.S. Police. This publication, authored by a large group of radical academics such as Lynn Cooper, Elliott Currie, and Tony Platt, confronted head on the growing militarization of U.S. policing in the 1960s and early 1970s, as well as the devestating racial and economic implications of this trend (Platt et al., 1982). This topic would lay fairly dormant, however, for another 35 years; despite strong evidence produced in the 1990s that this trend had accelarated significantly, and in highly consequential ways (Kraska, 1993, 1994, 2007). Several reasons might account for this neglect, including critical criminologists focusing primarily on the growth of softer state controls associated with “late-modernity”, intense atttention paid to mass incarceration (a “punishment studies” focus that generally excluded policing), and an assumption by many academics that community policing reforms meant that the police were attempting to democratize as opposed to militarize (despite the punitive war on drugs waged first and foremost by the police) (Kraska, 2001). Today “police militarization” (PM), at least among the public and media, has become mainstream knowledge. The media has covered extensively the rise and normalization of SWAT teams and their tragic fallout as part of the war on drugs (Booth, 1997); along with numerous high-profile police debacles in response to major protests in Seattle (World Trade Organization protests), Feruguson Missouri (protests regarding killing unarmed AfricanAmerican men) and Standing Rock (protests by Native Americans over environmental/ indiginous rights). Both the political left and right recognize PM as a signifcant issue, and even mainstream politicians have attempted to address the issue through legistlation and Congressional Hearings. The United States government and police, as per the historical norm, are failing to enact any kind of real response to this crisis – conflicted between simply strengthening the status quo (“doubling-down”) versus putting in place piece-meal reforms. The future 222

Militarizing American police: an overview

is even more precarious given the election of a U.S. President in 2016 that from all indications favors a militarized police model. This chapter provides an overview of the police militarization phenomenon.

Political and conceptual context Security, both from threats outside and inside national borders, is a central espoused governmental function. The experiences with and the fear of military rule motivated emerging modern democracies such as the United States and Canada to clearly demarcate police forces from military forces. In fact, a distinct and bright line separating police responsible for internal security, and the military responsible for external threats to national security, is a hallmark feature of the modern nation-state. As Austin Turk instructs (1982, p. 21): As military dominance and jurisdiction are achieved in emerging governments, authorities consolidate their position by instituting a system in which internal control is accomplished by the process of policing instead of the more costly, more overt, and less efficient one of military control. Civilian police in a democratic society are meant to keep the domestic peace through protecting and serving local communities and citizens, all the while upholding civil liberties. The military’s core function is to protect our national security from foreign enemies using any means necessary within the confines of waging war (Constitution Project, 2016). U.S. General Dunlap (2001, p. 35), a military analyst deeply concerned about blurring the distinction between the police and military in the U.S., states the difference as such: To put it bluntly, in its most basic iteration, military training is aimed at killing people and breaking things. . . . Police forces take an entirely different approach. They have to exercise the studied restraint that a judicial process requires. Where the military sees enemies of the U.S., a police agency, properly oriented, sees ‘citizens’ suspected of crimes. We have been witness to a momentous shift in the relationship between the U.S. crime control apparatus and the U.S. military: the traditional delineations between the military, police, and criminal justice system have blurred dramatially. In breaking with a long-standing tenet of democratic governance, the traditional roles of the military handling threats to our nation’s external security through threatening or actually waging war, and the police targeting internal security problems such as crime, illegal drugs, and terrorism, have become increasingly intermingled. The military/ police convergance has a long and complicated history; but its most recent shift began with the U.S. military’s heavy involvement in drug law enforcement during the Reagan/Bush drug war, and has only broadened and deepened over the last 15 years (Kraska, 1993). Of course some critical analysts, including myself, are aware that the distinction between police and military can be viewed as mere window-dressing that operates to veil the underlying essence of state power: violence and the threat thereof (Kraska, 2001). It is within this broader socio-political context that we can understand the recent and certain trend toward the militarization of U.S. police (Kraska, 2001). Before examining the empirical evidence documenting the PM trend, we need to establish some conceptual precision. Despite this terms’ pejorative undertones for some, it is used in academe as a rigorous organizing concept. Assessing whether the police institution is becoming “militarized” can be accomplished through rigorous social science research protocols. The integrity of this endeavor hinges on the clarity of our concepts. 223

Peter B. Kraska

Militarization’s companion concept, militarism, is an ideology focused on the best means to solve problems. It is a cultural set of beliefs, values, and assumptions that stress the use of force and threat of violence as the most appropriate and efficacious means to solve problems (citations from early work Bacevich). It emphasizes the exercise of military power, hardware, organization, operations, and technology as its primary problem-solving tools. Militarization is the implementation of the ideology, militarism. It is the process of arming, organizing, planning, training for, threatening, and sometimes implementing violent conflict. To militarize, then, means adopting and applying the central elements of the military model to an organization or particular situation (see Figure 18.1).

Militarization means adopting and applying the central elements of the military model to an organization or particular situation. Police militarization is the process whereby civilian police increasingly draw from, and pattern themselves around, the military model. The figure below illustrates the four central dimensions of the military model that constitute tangible indicators of militarization. Because the police have always been militarized to some degree throughout their history, any analysis of militarization among civilian police has to focus on where the civilian police fall on the continuum and in what direction they are headed. This assessment will vary considerably when viewing not only different police forces around the world, but even different police agencies within decentralized police systems. Low militarization 1

2

High militarization 3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

Material indicators: extent of martial weaponry (e.g., automatic weapons, aromored personnel carriers) and equipment, and use of advanced military-technology. Low militarization 1

2

High militarization 3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

Cultural indicators: extent of martial language, military style in appearance (military battle-dress utilities or BDUs), extent of militarism (military beliefs, values). Low militarization 1

2

High militarization 3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

Organizational indicators: extent of martial arrangements: “command and control” centers (e.g. COPMSTAT), normalized use of elite squads of officers (SWAT teams) patterned after military special operations (e.g., Navy Seals) teams. Low militarization 1

2

High militarization 3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

Operational indicators: extent of operational patterns modeled after the military such as in the areas of intelligence gathering, supervision, handling high-risk situations, highly aggressive and punitive operations such as some zero-tolerance initiatives (e.g. SWAT teams used to conduct no-knock drug warrants).

Figure 18.1 Assessing police militarization using continuums.

224

Militarizing American police: an overview

PM, therefore, is the process whereby civilian police increasingly draw from, and pattern themselves around, the tenets of militarism and the military model. As seen in Figure 18.1, four dimensions of the military model provide us with tangible indicators of police militarization: • • •

•

material – military-grade weaponry, equipment, and advanced technology; cultural – martial language, style (appearance), beliefs, values; organizational – martial arrangements such as “command and control” centers (e.g., COMPSTAT), or elite squads of officers patterned after military special operations patrolling high-crime areas or conducting routine warrant service work; operational – patterns of activity and training modeled after the military, such as in the areas of counter-terrorism, high-risk situations, or militaristic war/restoration programs such as the U.S. Weed and Seed program.

It should be obvious that the police since their inception have been to some extent “militarized.” After all, the foundation of military and police power is the same – the state sanctioned capacity to use violence to accomplish their respective objectives (external and internal security) (Kraska, 1994). Consequently, all police organizations have been modeled to some extent after the military. The real concern when discerning police militarization, thus, is one of degree – or put differently, the extent to which a civilian police body is militarized. Police militarization, in all countries and across any time in history, must be conceived of as the degree or extent of militarization. Assessing the extent of militarization among civilian police has to focus on where the civilian police fall on the continuum – culturally, organizationally, operationally, and materially – and in what direction they are currently headed (Kraska, 1999). It is critical to recognize as well that significant movements down any one of these continuums can have a dramatic impact on the other continuums. For example, I have observed closely numerous medium to small-sized police departments (25175 uniformed officers) that formed a 12–20 officer “Special Response Team” (technically labeled a “police paramilitary unit”) over a six-month to one-year period. Each agency procured a large cache of heavy weaponry, armored personnel vehicles, and paramilitary garb from the U.S. Military (1033 program) and through Department of Homeland Security grants. Within two years of establishing these teams – intended only to be employed for the rare hostage or active-shooter situation – the following changes took place in every agency observed: • • •

Significant cultural changes evidenced by a change in uniforms (BDUs), language, hair style (“high and tight” U.S. Marine look), and a high value placed on hyper-masculinity. Significant organizational changes evidenced by the officers pushing for two police paramilitary units – one for drug raids, and another proactive patrol work. Significant operational and tactical changes evidenced by the rest of the department being trained in “police survival” seminars which led to all officers patrolling in a more tactical (paramilitary) manner. (One of the more popular is offered by Calibre Press, labeled, “Killology.” See Balko (2017) for a good expose on the hazards of this type of training.)

The point here is each of these dimensions of police militarization depend on and are impacted by the others. As discussed below, the PM trend has accelerated dramatically over the last 35 years with each of these PM features mutually reinforcing one another.

225

Peter B. Kraska

The rise of police militarization I’ve conducted research into the PM phenomenon from the late 1980s until today. Fortunately, a large number of academics, non-profit organizations, and investigative journalists have followed up on this line of inquiry and have provided a rich body of work. This research has documented not only significant movement down the militarization continuum, but also a number of troubling consequences of this militarization. My research began in the early 1990s with a two-year long ethnography. It involved being embedded into police agencies that were deeply involved with developing regional SWAT teams (Special Weapons and Tactics) – and then normalizing these SWAT teams into the everyday functions of their police departments. These police units, referred to most often as SWAT teams or special response teams, are tailored after military special operations groups such as the Navy Seals. They have been described elsewhere as follows. Police paramilitary units can be distinguished from what Enloe (1980) calls “cop-on-thebeat policing” most simply by their appearance, their weaponry, and their operations. For a more exact identification we must clarify the term “police paramilitary unit.” We must distinguish between indications that are necessary in applying the PPU label and those which would only contribute to labeling this units and their activities as paramilitaristic. First among the necessary facts, the unit must train and function as a military special operations team with a a strict military command structure and discipline (of the pretense thereof). Second, the unit must have at the forefront of their function to threaten or use force collectively, and not always as an option of last resort (e.g., in conducting no-knock or quick-knock drug raid). Operationally, PPUs are deployed to deal with situations that require a team of police officers specifically trained to be use of force specialists. . . . Finally, the unit must operate under formal state authority. . . . This criterion would exclude common thuggery, militia organizations, and guerilla groups. Contributing indicators include the hardware they employ and their garb. These teams generally outfit themselves with black or urban camouflage BDUs (battle dress uniforms), lace-up combat boots, full body armor, Kelvar helmets, and ninja-style hoods. PPUs’ weapons and hardware include submachine guns (Heckler and Koch brand most popular), tactical shotguns, sniper rifles, percussion grenades, CS and OC gas, surveillance equipment, and armored personnel carriers. (Kraska & Cubellis, 1997, p. 610) I learned a great deal about police militarization at the ground level, and especially police paramilitary culture. I first learned that these paramilitary teams derive their appearance, tactics, operations, weaponry, and culture to a significant extent from elite military special operations units (e.g., Navy Seals). With battle-dress utilities, heavy weaponry, training in hostage rescue, dynamic entries into fortified buildings, and some of the latest military technology, it became clear that these squads of officers fell significantly further down the PM militarization continuums. I also learned that the paramilitary culture associated with SWAT teams is highly appealing to a large segment of civilian police (certainly not all civilian police). The police paramilitary culture – characterized by a distinct techno-warrior garb, heavy weaponry, sophisticated technology, hypermasculinity, and dangerous function – was nothing less than intoxicating for its participants, and those officers that aspired to be paramilitary participants. I then tested, using social science survey research, the extent to which my micro-level findings might have been indicative of a larger trend. Two national-level surveys were sent out to both large and small police agencies yielding definitive data documenting significant movement 226

Militarizing American police: an overview

down the militarization continuums (Kraska & Kappeler, 1997; Kraska & Cubellis, 1997; Booth, 1997). Not only had the number of paramilitary officers and teams increased dramatically, there had been more than a 1,300 percent increase in the total number of deployments of these paramilitary teams between 1980 and the year 2000. Based on follow up research conducted in 2011 there are today an estimated 60,000 SWAT team deployments a year conducted among those departments surveyed; in the early 1980s there was an average of about 3,000 (Kraska, 2007). The rise in police paramilitary deployments was primarily due to no-knock and quick-knock raids on private residences searching for drugs, guns, and cash. However, some of the increase was also accounted for by the police normalizing their paramilitary teams to conduct routine patrol, immerse paramilitary gear and tactics into community policing efforts, and more liberally defining “crisis situations” that allowed for the increased deployment of a police paramilitary team. In other words, the U.S. police institution’s increasing militarization via SWAT teams resulted in a dispersion effect – where the forces of militarization took hold, often unexpectedly, in other aspects of U.S. policing. More than 80 percent of these deployments, and hence 80 percent of the growth of activity, were for proactive drug raids, specifically no-knock and quick-knock dynamic entries into private residences searching for contraband (drugs, guns, and money). The ACLU (2014) came to a similar statistical conclusion in their recent study. They also found that nearly 50 percent of these raids were conducted against African-Americans. This pattern of SWAT teams primarily engaged in surprise night-time contraband raids in private residences holds true for the largest as well as the smallest communities. PPUs have changed from being a periphery and strictly reactive component of police departments to a proactive force actively engaged in “fighting the drug war.” Another important finding sheds additional light on these units’ expanding role. Nearly 40 percent of departments use their unit at least periodically, and some cases routinely, as a patrol force in high crime areas – or what some academics have labeled “hot spots” (Sherman & Weisburd, 1995). One SWAT commander described their approach as such: We’re into saturation patrols in hot spots. We do a lot of our work with the SWAT unit because we have bigger guns. We send out two, two-to-four men cars, we look for minor violations and do jump-outs, either on people on the street or automobiles. After we jumpout the second car provides cover with an ostentatious display of weaponry. (Kraska & Kappeler, 1997, p. 10) While beyond the scope of this chapter, it is worth mentioning a few proximate and distal (ultimate) causes of this phenomenon – based on previous research and scholarship. An important proximate cause of PM growth was the late 1980s and 1990s war on drugs. Police departments, partially due to political/cultural pressure, decided to intensify the “drug war” by deploying their PPUs using the Navy Seal tactic of “dynamic entries” into private residences. Not only does conducting 50–500 of these home raids per year have a great deal of cultural appeal to PPU officers, this tactic was also motivated by the property and cash confiscated. In fact, after I testified about this trend to the U.S. Senate, a high-ranking member of the National Tactical Officer’s Association (a 60,000 SWAT team member non-profit organization) pulled me to the side and said the following: “You know why SWAT took off don’t you? It’s because of civil asset forfeiture. We were generating a ton of new revenue for our departments” (Kraska, 2014). Understanding and delineating the distal forces is of course a monograph-long project. It might help, though, to recognize the parrellel between PM growth and the growth in incarceration. The trends lines, longitudinally, are nearly identical (Kraska, 2016). And of course our field 227

Peter B. Kraska

has a rich theoretical literature explaning the macro-causes of incarceration rates (Tonry, 1999; Garland, 2001a). A few common factors that certainly apply to PM include: • • • • •

•

the state legitimation crisis; an intense punitive turn fueled by law and order politics; a disciplining of the poor for economic reasons (Parenti, 2000); a runaway industrial growth complex dynamic (similar to the military-industrial-complex) (Shelden & Brown, 2000); the rise of a risk-aversive society that views even extreme measures as justifiable given the assumption that militarization leads to saving lives, less crime, and an increase in order, and, uncertainty (Ericson, 2007; Simon, 2007); the media (via information provided by bureaucrats and politicans) sensationalizing the risks caused by crime, drugs, terrorism, and other sources of insecurity (Cavender, 2004).

Problematic consequences of police militarization The central critique of the police militarization trend lies in its consequences. The academic literature usually frames these types of analyses as intended and unintented consequences (Merton, 1936). Intended consequences are found in mainstream narratives justifying PM: PM is necessary due to changes in the threats the police and the public face. These threats include domestic terrorism, a citizen population with greater access to heavy weaponry, an increase in activeshooter situations, and a heightened sensibility among the police and public about the importance of police officer safety. The intended, or hoped-for consequences, are rooted primarily in late-modern safety logic that sees increased militarization enhancing officer and public safety. An unintended consequence (or negative consequence) might be that PM actually decreases officer and public safety due to its aggressive nature. Critiquing PM, however, by focusing on the intentions of public policy fails to account for the extreme difficulty in deciphering what is intentional and what isn’t. A more fruitful analytic relies on the idea of problematic consequences. In this way we can assess whether PM ultimately does more harm than good. The following includes just a sample of problematic consequences I’ve encountered.

The dispersion effect A reoccurring theme with police militarization is that once military gear and tactics take hold, they tend to disperse (or slide down a slippery slope) to other areas of policing resulting in a normalization of PM. A grounded example might help. I’ve witnessed numerous police departments obtain an armored personnel carrier (APC), or fund a fully operational SWAT team, and then struggle to find a use for it. Eventually an officer suggests using the APC at a basketball game where there are racial tensions or as an essential presence during a civil protest. Similarly, SWAT teams were originally established to handle very rare emergency situations. The difficulty was that even larger departments would only experience this type of emergency 1–3 times a year – and smaller agencies might experience such an incident every 50 years. Given their expense, the aforementioned allure of paramilitary culture, and political pressure to wage a more aggressive war on crime/drugs/terrorism – most police departments began using their police paramilitary units for routine police work. Several of the larger police departments I surveyed and interviewed deployed their police paramilitary unit more than 500 times a year (Kraska, 2007), and even in smaller jurisdictions police agencies managed to deploy their units 228

Militarizing American police: an overview

50–75 times a year. Most of these deployments were for no-knock and quick-knock drug raids (ACLU, 2014; Kraska, 2007). Equally problematic is the way in which police are defining a greater range of situations requiring a militarized response. As the police become more risk-averse due to a heightened sense of danger, they tend to define a broader range of situations that constitute a serious lethal threat – thereby necessitating a more militaristic response. To make matters worse, there is also a massive for-profit training industry in the U.S. that generates and exploits this police fear of victimization – and their general solution is for officers to always be on guard, discharge their weapons much earlier in a situation than previously thought, and to unload their clips (Apuzzo, 2015; Balko, 2017).

Negative impact on police culture Police analysts cite changing police culture as the most evident and troublesome unintended consequence of PM (Stamper, 2016). Military special operations training, martial language, an emphasis on being a “warrior,” and being outfitted with military weaponry and garb all contribute to a militarized occupational culture. This culture tends to view the public as a threat, keeps officers on high-alert (i.e., an overblown concern for personal safety), promotes a preoccupation with heavy weaponry and paramilitary culture, cultivates hyper-masculinity, and sees any community policing reforms as a “weak” approach (Kraska, 2001). A recent ACLU study concludes: “Militarization of policing encourages officers to adopt a ‘warrior’ mentality and think of people they are supposed to serve as enemies” (ACLU, 2014, p. 3). This mindset makes it more probable that lethal force becomes an acceptable and readily implemented option – particularly against those minority groups who are already viewed as a “threat.” In 2016 the United States’ police killed between 963 and 1,153 U.S. citizens, nearly half of which were African-American, and 15 percent of those were unarmed (ACLU, 2014; Campbell, Nix & McGuire, 2017). PM no doubt plays a signficant role. The United States Department of Justice (DOJ) has recently acknowledged how PM has shifted the mindset of many police from one of public guardianship to that of a warrior (also referred to as “survival” training) (Meares, 2017). DOJ’s solution is to attempt, through a host of progressive training programs and a ratcheting back of military hardware, to replace the warrior subculture with one that values citizen interaction and approaches police work as “guardians of democracy”. Even the DOJ admits that reversing this trend is unlikely; an easy prediction given the failure of nearly 25 years of community policing reforms. Militarized police culture has a tightening grip on a large segment of U.S. contemporary policing. As stated elsewhere: “the military special operations’ culture – characterized by a distinct techno-warrior garb, heavy weaponry, sophisticated technology, hypermasculinity, and dangerous function – was nothing less than intoxicating for its participants” (Kraska, 2007, p. 6).

A hindrance to community policing Even the U.S. Department of Justice cites police militarization as a leading cause of the failure of community policing reforms (Bickel, 2013). Few police academics acknowledge, though, that police militarization expanded during the so-called “community policing revolution.” These two trends – one representing militarization and the other democratization – seemed to contradict one another (Garland, 2001b). While plausible, this assumption did not hold up to research evidence (Kraska, 2007). Survey research and in-depth interviews with U.S. police administrators revealed little incoherence in the field between the expanding PM and community policing 229

Peter B. Kraska

reform efforts. When asked about the relationship, the following comment from a SWAT commander was typical: We conduct a lot of saturation patrol. We do terry stops and aggressive field interviews. These tactics are successful as long as the pressure stays on relentlessly. The key to our success is that we’re an elite crime fighting team that’s not bogged down in the regular bureaucracy. We focus on quality of life issues like illegal parking, loud music, bums, troubles. We have the freedom to stay in a hot area and clean it up – particularly gangs. Our tactical team works nicely with our department’s emphasis on community policing. In short, police militarization strengthened and grew during the so-called community policing era by coopting the vague logic and rhetoric employed by mainstream police academics. Likewise, the presence and normalized deployment of military-grade arms, appearance, and operations only undermined CP reform efforts to accomplish key tenets of the CP mission: break down the we/they mindset, cultivate the community’s trust, empower the community to police themselves, maintain cultural proximity with the public, and develop a high level of meaningful communication with the public (democratic approach). Of course some critical criminolgists knew all along that CP efforts were doomed from the start, and that in times of crisis or strain the police institution would gravitate toward its core of power – state violence and the threat thereof.

Militarized policing and civil protest A controversial police killing of an unarmed African-American man by a white police officer in Ferguson Missouri sparked massive civil protests, within Ferguson and other U.S. cities.

Figure 18.2 Sniper on APC during Ferguson protest. 230

Militarizing American police: an overview

The Ferguson police department, along with other police departments in Missouri, responded to these peaceful demonstrations with a heavily militarized presence – including the now iconic visual of a police paramilitary officer armed with a military-grade sniper sitting on an Armored Personnel Carrier pointing his weapon at peaceful demonstrators (see Figure 18.2). (They also deployed a .50 calibre machine gun on another APC.) This situation sparked a new round of public debate in the media about the appropriateness of a militarized policing approach to civil disturbances (Bouie, 2014). The previous controversy occurred during the Occupy Movement protests. This event happened within a context of a large segment of the American public – on the political left and right – seriously questioning the legitimacy of the police due to numerous similar high-profile PM incidents. The state rapidly and with little reflection resorting to such an explicit militarized response to situations like Standing Rock or Ferguson reminds critical criminologists that for all the advancements in technology and surveillance it is still the raw use of state violence that forms the foundation of its power. As the early critical criminologists recognized, the velvet glove relies on the iron fist, and the PM trend illuminates the extent to which the State has become much more willing to remove the velvet glove to enforce internal security.

Conclusion Twenty-five years of research has documented conclusively the extant militarization of the U.S. police institution. Police reform efforts over the last 35 years – pushed to a large extent by mainstream criminologists – have predictably not resulted in a more responsive, effective, or democratic policing form. Instead, reforms such as hot spots policing, broken windows, community-oriented policing, or “Weed and Seed” programs have played an important causal role in perpetuating police militarization (Kraska, 2016). My latest research is in fact focusing on criminology’s complicity in furthering this trend. It details the ways in which academic grant-based research has led directly to the police often operating as an occupying force with zero-tolerance for any indication of state-defined disorder – and then benefiting financially either through civil asset forfeiture or extracting the poor’s resources through constrictive sets of regulations, fines, and oversight (Kraska, 2016). Indeed, an important factor fueling the growth of PM is the influence of capital. Given that the the PM trend is wholly consistent with the state’s 50-year effort to wage a war on crime, it should not be surprising that the United States’ military-industrial-complex and the criminal justice entireprise would coalesce – perhaps into a “security-industrial-complex” (SIC) (Kraska, 2001). And as with any growth complex – particularly within rapid neo-liberal exapansion – a quest for capital lies at the heart of its continued perpetuation and yearning for power. We can’t lose sight, though, of the larger historical forces at play here. We tend to forget that the modern democratic nation-state is a fairly new invention, and that its core features may mutate or even be replaced. It could be that we’re simply witnessing the re-convergence of police and military power, along with a state apparatus that begins to wield power internally in a more authoritarian manner. Of course symbolic deliniations will remain, but with the military adopting a policing role externally and domestically, and agencies like the U.S. Border Patrol becoming more military-like – the differences materially, culturally, organizationally, and operationally will likely continue to diminish. The most readily available explanation for this convergance lies in the serious legitimacy crisis in which the modern-nation state finds itself; its two iron-fist entitities must converge to prop up its faltering legitimacy and power. In other words, despite legal 231

Peter B. Kraska

restrictions such as the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, the experiment to demarcate police from the military might inevitably succumb to the power of state-militarism, particularly in a country that has historically and continues today to rely on, and glorify, military might.

References ACLU (2014). War Comes Home The Excessive Militarization of American Policing. Available at www.aclu.org/ feature/war-comes-home. Apuzzo, M. (2015). “Training officers to shoot first, and he will answer the questions later.” Washington Post, August 1. Balko, R. (2017). “A day with ‘killogy’ police trainer Dave Grossman.” Washington Post, February 17. Bickel, K. (2013). “Will the growing militarization of our police doom community policing?” Community Policing Dispatch, 6(12). Online. Available HTTP: https://cops.usdoj.gov/html/dispatch/12-2013/ will_the_growing_militarization_of_our_police_doom_community_policing.asp. Booth, W. (1997). “Exploding number of SWAT teams sets off alarms.” Washington Post, June 17. Bouie, J. (2014). “The militarization of police.” Slate, August 13. Campbell, B. A., Nix, J., & Maguire, E. R. (2017). “Is the number of citizens fatally shot by police increasing in the post-Ferguson era?” Crime & Delinquency, DOI 0011128716686343. Cavender, G. (2004). “Media and crime policy: a reconsideration of David Garland’s The Culture of Control.” Punishment & Society, 6(3), 335–348. The Constitution Project (2016). Demilitarizing America’s Police. Online. Available online: https://consti tutionproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Demilitarizing-Americas-Police-August-2016FINAL.pdf. Dunlap, C. (2001). “The Thick Green Line: The Growing Involvement of Military Forces in Domestic Law Enforcement.” in P. B. Kraska (2001) Militarizing the American Criminal Justice System. New England: Northeastern University Press. Ericson, R. V. (1994). “The division of expert knowledge in policing and security.” British Journal of Sociology, 45(2), 149–175. Ericson, R. V. (2007). Crime in an Insecure World. Cambridge: Polity. Garland, D. (Ed.) (2001a). Mass Imprisonment: Social Causes and Consequences. London: Sage. Garland, D. (2001b). The Culture of Control (Vol. 367). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kraska, P. B. (Ed.) (1993). Altered States of Mind: Critical Observations of the Drug War. New York: Garland Publishing. Kraska, P. B. (1994). “The police and military in the post-Cold War era: streamlining the State’s use of force entities in the drug war.” Police Forum, 4(1): 1–8. Kraska, P. B. (1999). “Questioning the mililtarization of U.S. police: critical versus advocacy scholarship.” Policing and Society, 9(2): 141–155. Kraska, P. B. (2001). Militarizing the American Criminal Justice System: The Changing Roles of the Armed Forces and the Police. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press. Kraska, P. B. (2007). “Militarization and policing—its relevance to 21st century police.” Policing: A Journal of Policy and Practice, 1(4), 501–513. Kraska, P. B. (2014). Personal conversation with National Tactical Officers Association official, September 8. Kraska, P. B. (2016). “Academic complicity in police miltiarization.” Invited paper presentation to the University of London and the London School of Economics. Kraska, P. B., & Cubellis, L. J. (1997). “Militarizing Mayberry and beyond: making sense of American paramilitary policing.” Justice Quarterly, 14(4): 607–629. Kraska, P. B., & Kappeler, V. E. (1997). “Militarizing American police: the rise and normalization of paramilitary units.” Social Problems, 44(1): 1–23. Meares, T. L. (2017). “Policing in the 21st century: the importance of public security: keynote address.” University of Chicago Legal Forum, 2016(1): 2. Merton, R. K. (1936). “The unanticipated consequences of purposive social action.” American Sociological Review, 1(6), 894–904. Parenti, C. (2000). Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis. New York: Verso Books. Platt, T., Frappier, J., Gerda, R., Schauffler, R., Trujillo, L., Cooper, L., Bernstein, S., Currie, E., Poyner, P., Scruggs, J., & Harring, S. (1982). The Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove: An Analysis of the US Police. San Francisco: Crime and Social Justice Associates.

232

Militarizing American police: an overview

Shelden, R. G., & Brown, W. B. (2000). “The crime control industry and the management of the surplus population.” Critical Criminology, 9(1–2): 39–62. Sherman, L. W., & Weisburd, D. (1995). “General deterrent effects of police patrol in crime ‘hot spots’: a randomized, controlled trial.” Justice Quarterly, 12(4): 625–648. Simon, J. (2007). Governing Through Crime: How the War on Crime Transformed American Democracy and Created a Culture of Fear. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stamper, N. (2016). To Protect and Serve: How to Fix America’s Police. New York: Nation Books. Tonry, M. (1999). “Why are US incarceration rates so high?” NCCD News, 45(4), 419–437. Turk, A. (1982). Political Criminality: The Defiance and Defense of Authority. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications.

233

19 Hate crime James J. Nolan, Lee Thorpe Jr. and Andrea DeKeseredy

When I returned to my dorm room that evening, I noticed someone had carved a swastika in the front door. I was terrified and wanted to leave school and go home to my family. When the police responded, they called it a “hate crime.” This made me feel safer knowing that they understood the significance of it. Subsequently, I received lots of support so I decided to stay in school.1

Introduction We open this chapter with the above testimonial given by a university student in class one day because it captures the essence of what has become known as hate crime. It is clear that a carved swastika on a dorm room door may in fact be something more than a simple “destruction of property” criminal offense. Although the offender remains unknown in this case, it is very likely that the swastika was intended as a message to the student that he was not welcome in the dorm because of his Jewish identity. This sort of crime clearly has the potential to instill harm well beyond the annoyance or cost associated with minor property damage. In fact, in this particular case, the property that was actually damaged was owned by the university and not the student. But clearly the victim of this offense was the student, a young Jewish man from New York City who had traveled hundreds of miles away to attend this particular university and was now being sent a message by an anonymous source that he was not welcome. Proponents of hate crime laws generally point to cases like this one to show why it is so important to know the offender’s motive. Let us now consider the case of Dylann Roof and the crimes he committed in South Carolina to further explore the importance of motive in understanding the essence of a crime. On June 17, 2015, Dylann Roof, a disgruntled 21-year-old white man, attended a Bible study at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. His clandestine purpose and dark motives were not immediately apparent, so he was warmly welcomed by a group of African American church members. After about an hour with the prayerful group, Roof stood up and announced his true intention: “to shoot black people.” He opened fire with a Glock 234

Hate crime

.45-caliber handgun that he had purchased legally just months before. During the shooting spree, which included the multiple reloading of 13-round clips, Roof killed nine people including the church pastor. Witnesses reported that during the shooting Roof stated, “you’ve raped our women, and you’re taking over our country. . . . I have to do what I have to do” (Sanchez & Payne, 2016). Roof ’s statements at the scene of the crime reveal extremist beliefs of racial and gender superiority and a dangerous ultra nationalist view. A manifesto he had written and published on his website prior to the shootings further confirmed the racial animus that clearly was the motive for this heinous crime. Dylann Roof was arrested, tried and convicted on multiple charges relating to the church shooting, including hate crime. He has since been sentenced to die by lethal injection for his crimes, so some might ask why the hate crime charge was even necessary. What are the incentives for filing a hate crime charge in this case or others? And, are there disincentives for the police in classifying “regular” crimes such as assault and murder as hate crimes? Taking the last question first, the answer is yes, there are disincentives for classifying a crime as a hate crime. According to the research, the police often report that hate crimes are often difficult to prove and can complicate matters in a criminal prosecution; they are highly political and often bring unwanted and excessive media attention to the incident, and the classification of hate crime sometimes raises tensions in communities and can make things worse (Nolan & Akiyama, 1999). In addition, researchers have argued that hate crime laws cause resentment of minorities, because they may be viewed as receiving special treatment or given special victim status (Gerstenfeld, 2017). Further, researchers have found that the criminal justice system in the United States is so entrenched in racist policies and practices that it is no place to remedy the symptoms of structured inequality. In the United States, African Americans typically get longer prison sentences for similar crimes than do whites (MacDonald & Donnelly, 2016 as an example in one state). And according to official hate crime data, African Americans, who are disproportionally likely to be victims of hate crimes, are also disproportionately likely to be charged as hate crime offenders (Franklin, 2002; Gerstenfeld, 2004). But, in support of filing a charge of hate crime, as was done in the South Carolina case, the police often say that the community wants these crimes recognized and reported because they reflect the true nature of the offense. They also want to know the extent to which hate crimes occur so they can respond appropriately and develop effective strategies for preventing them (Nolan & Akiyama, 2002). As we attempted to demonstrate with the student testimonial at the outset of this chapter, hate crimes are different in observable ways from their underlying criminal offenses. They are more likely to inflict emotional harms, provoke retaliatory crimes, and incite community unrest. Therefore, proponents of hate crime laws argue they are needed to send a clear message to the offenders that their heinous behavior will not be tolerated. Critical criminologists generally view hierarchical social stratification and inequality along class, racial, ethnic, and gender lines as the major sources of crime (Dragiewicz & DeKeseredy, 2014). Therefore, it is no surprise that these criminologists would be interested in the study of hate crimes, like those carried out by Dylann Roof in Charleston or by unknown offender(s) at West Virginia University. But, by focusing the blame and punishment for racist behavior on individual actors and personal prejudices, the structured inequality and supporting culture that provides the foundation for their beliefs and actions become obscured. As we will discuss in the following pages, critical criminologists often prefer a broadening of the traditional hate crime frame to allow for more nuanced and systemic analyses (Chakraborti & Garland, 2011; Whitlock, 2014). It is the broadening of the hate crime frame that will be the primary focus of this chapter. But first we will provide a little background on the emergence of the current hate crime frame. 235

James J. Nolan, Lee Thorpe Jr. and Andrea DeKeseredy

Emergence of the term hate crime Although hate-motivated violence has been part and parcel of the human experience from its earliest days, “hate crime” as a legal category and public policy domain did not emerge until the late 20th century (Jenness & Grattet, 2004; Gerstenfeld, 2004; Potter & Potter, 1998). Sociologists argue that it was the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s in the United States—among other places around the world—that laid the groundwork for the hate crime laws, policies and practices of today (Jenness & Grattet, 2004). In the United States, the first hate crime law was passed in 1980 and by 2010, 45 states and the District of Columbia enacted some form of hate crime legislation (Gerstenfeld, 2017). Very quickly, the term crept into the public consciousness and in the early decades of the 21st century has become highly recognizable in the legal and public policy discourse that often makes it into the news. For instance, consider that a search of the New York Times database found only four articles referencing the term hate crime in 1980. By 2016 there were 323 articles—nearly one per day on average.2 Even more impressive (or perhaps disturbing) is the fact that a search for the term hate crime in global news outlets via Google results in thousands of hits (Gerstenfeld, 2017). The police and other government officials are often the sources of the news, and so it is not surprising that the increase in the use of the term hate crime by these officials coincided with national efforts to get the police involved. The expanded use of the term hate crime can perhaps be traced to a passage of the Hate Crime Statistics Act (HCSA) of 1990 (Nolan, et al. 2004). The HCSA required the U.S. attorney general to establish guidelines and collect data “about crimes that manifest evidence of prejudice based on race, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity, including where appropriate, the crimes of murder; non-negligent manslaughter; forcible rape; aggravated assault, simple assault, intimidation; arson; and destruction, damage, or vandalism of property” (Public Law 101–275 as cited in Levin & Nolan, 2017). At the time the law was passed, the attorney general appointed the director of the FBI to develop the data collection within the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program. Advocates for hate crime laws applauded this decision because it would require police officers throughout the United States to become aware of crimes motivated by bias and to receive training in proper ways to investigate these crimes and provide support to victims. Since its inception the HCSA has been modified several times to include crimes targeting persons for physical and psychological disabilities, gender, and gender identity. The most recent changes made by the FBI to the national hate crime data collection included a vast expansion in types of bias which now include gender, gender identity and a variety of religious biases, such as antiMuslim, anti-Buddhist, and anti-Hindu among other types (FBI, 2016) For the purpose of gathering national statistics, the FBI defines hate crimes as “criminal offenses that were motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender’s bias against a race, gender, gender identity, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity, and were committed against persons, property, or society” (FBI, 2015). Since the early 1990s the FBI has published its counts of hate crimes in the annual report Hate Crime Statistics. See Table 19.1 for a state-by-state summary of hate crimes reported by the police. Sociologists have referred to the widespread reporting of hate crimes as a successful outcome of the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s (McVeigh, Welch, & Bjarnason, 2003). From this perspective, the 2015 national hate crime data in Table 19.1 tell a story of progress. At the time we are writing this chapter, there are nearly 15,000 police agencies (out of about 18,000) participating in the program and these police agencies cover about 88 percent of the U.S. population. Although the participation of law enforcement agencies in the national data collection appears fairly comprehensive, less than 12 percent of these participating agencies actually ever report a hate crime incident. In other words, more than 88 percent of the police agencies which participate in the FBI’s 236

Table 19.1 Hate crime reporting by state, 2015 Participating state

Number of participating agencies

Population covered

Agencies submitting incident reports

Total number of incidents reported

Total Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware District of Columbia Florida Georgia Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota

14,997 34 33 101 279 730 234 95 60 2 38 473 112 741 168 237 345 403 148 184 154 342 617 319 43 628 101 227 53 168 508 18 575 532 112 595 351 130 1,436 49 436 121

283,884,034 1,252,146 734,820 6,622,880 2,754,543 39,137,326 5,445,853 3,399,068 945,934 672,228 5,356,877 7,991,234 1,654,475 12,501,008 3,224,755 3,105,094 2,741,323 4,402,368 3,711,824 1,329,328 6,006,401 6,566,279 9,834,270 5,218,435 763,830 6,079,483 1,023,807 1,821,196 2,890,845 1,267,715 8,956,395 574,972 19,766,342 10,041,690 756,927 9,781,677 3,896,985 1,671,416 12,550,581 1,056,298 4,826,241 782,152

1,742 3 4 21 4 213 42 44 7 2 36 7 19 43 18 5 34 83 15 14 11 85 127 27 0 28 13 3 6 9 123 2 60 52 19 109 29 16 26 8 40 9

5,850 10 8 276 5 837 107 93 11 65 72 44 34 90 63 6 62 188 38 38 41 411 309 109 0 100 45 19 58 13 330 13 500 161 36 416 37 65 64 18 55 16

(Continued)

James J. Nolan, Lee Thorpe Jr. and Andrea DeKeseredy

Table 19.1 (Continued) Participating state

Number of participating agencies

Population covered

Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming

463 1,026 133 90 414 256 229 395 57

6,600,299 27,390,337 2,966,781 626,042 8,380,278 7,163,444 1,494,503 5,580,752 564,577

Agencies submitting incident reports

61 62 22 5 58 79 12 25 1

Total number of incidents reported 221 191 47 8 158 275 41 43 2

Source: FBI (2016).

hate crime reporting program report zero hate crimes, i.e., that none occurred. Critics claim that the high proportion of zero reporting law enforcement agencies is indicative of major problems in the hate crime data collection. In addition, in 2015 there were no hate crimes reported in large cities in the Southern region of the United States, places with deep histories of racial segregation like Baton Rouge, LA and Mobile, AL. And, even in places where hate crimes were reported by police, the numbers look suspiciously low, such as five for the entire year in Birmingham, AL and New Orleans, LA (FBI, 2016). The claim that the FBI data undercount the number of hate crimes is further supported by the other Department of Justice hate crime database, the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), whose methods involve self-report surveys of persons over 12 in a nationally representative sample of households in the United States. In 2012 there were 290,790 hate crimes reported through the NCVS (Wilson, 2014). The FBI reported only 13,022 hate crimes that same year, which is less than 5 percent of the estimated total (FBI, 2013). Many efforts to implement hate crime reporting inside police agencies have been met with resistance—which is ironic as police are usually supportive of laws that give them extra leverage to investigate and enforce the law, especially where penalty enhancements may apply (Nolan, 2001). Early research on police participation in hate crime reporting found that officers had negative views toward hate crime laws because they believed they supported the political agenda of LGBTQ and other minority groups—which was seen as a negative thing. They also observed that many hate crimes were minor offenses, such as harassment and destruction of private property, like the one described at the outset of this chapter. Officers also complained that hate crimes are too political and create too much additional work. And, they argue that enforcing hate crime laws is not “real police work” nor is it given high priority by senior police officials (Nolan & Akiyama, 2002). Ironically, in a recent shift in perspective on hate crimes, national police organizations are now calling on legislatures to pass “Blue Lives Matter” laws which modify hate crime laws to include offenses targeting police officers (Meyerson, 2017).

Expanding the hate crime frame While critical criminologists acknowledge some of the benefits of the current hate crime laws, especially as they relate to helping victims and for raising public awareness about the seriousness of these crimes, they also recognize their limits. Whitlock (2014), for example, questions the 238

Hate crime

“political utility, diagnostic accuracy, and potential of the hate crime frame for helping us address root causes of violence it intends to reduce and prevent.” She argues convincingly that the current hate crime frame is “too confining” and obscures the relationships between individual acts of violence and their systemic roots. For example, the racial biases that are expressed in hate crimes are disconnected from broader social problems such as mass incarceration, violence by the police aimed at minority communities, violence against women by men, racial disparities throughout the criminal justice system, racial disparities in health and education outcomes, and structured economic inequality. In addition, early critics of hate crime laws warned of the problems inherent in using a term like “hate.” Chakraborti and Garland (2011) remind us: Hate is a slippery, emotive and conceptually ambiguous label that can mean different things to different people, and this has important implications for the way in which criminologists conceive of the offences that fall under its umbrella framework and of the actors involved in a hate crime, whether these be victims, perpetrators or criminal justice agencies. (p. 303, emphasis added) Our purpose in the next section is to expand the current hate crime frame, clarifying categories of bias and discrimination and highlighting the interconnectedness of these various forms.

Seeing hate crime3 We know from our ordinary experiences that people do not always see things the same way. Seeing, in fact, is not as clear cut as we might suppose, as if everyone with normal vision sees a thing or an event the same way. It is often our personal experiences, training, perceptions, background, professions, status in an organization or society, among many other things, that enables us to see things a certain way (Goodwin, 1994). So, an organizing question for this section might be something like this: Would you know a hate crime if you saw one? The answer to this question may not be as simple as it appears for there is still much debate about the types of violence that actually constitute hate crimes and why (DeKeseredy, 2009; Nolan, et al., 2004). It is the meaning of the term hate crime that we will now consider. Dewey (1910/1997) wrote the following about the taken-for-granted meaning of words using the word “river” as an example: The river-meaning (or character) must serve to designate the Rhone, the Rhine, the Mississippi, the Hudson, the Wabash, in spite of their varieties of place, length, quality of water; and must be such as not to suggest ocean, currents, ponds, or brooks. (p. 130) As we move forward in this chapter we are seeking the same shared understanding of the term hate crime as we currently have with the word river. To help us in this effort, we employ the insights of American philosopher John Dewey (1910–1997) who recognized long ago that new terms (like hate crime) take on shared meaning through the dual process of intention and extension. Intention means defining the terms so as to mark it out for distinction. Extension, then, is the process of identifying things that do and do not fit the definition. As a rational exercise we will apply Dewey’s method to the term hate crime. Using mathematical set notations, we will try to depict the variety of ways the term hate crime might be defined for criminological, legal, and statistical purposes (i.e., intention). Once defined, we will then examine a few recent events—via the process of extension—to see if we can add new clarity to the topic of hate crime. In other 239

James J. Nolan, Lee Thorpe Jr. and Andrea DeKeseredy

words, we want to see if Dewey’s method will help us broaden the hate crime frame in order to eliminate some of its current shortcomings.

Intention: defining hate crime Hate crimes are acts of discrimination. For our purposes, then, we will note that hate crimes are a subset of the universal set of discriminatory acts depicted as {U} in Figure 19.1. This universal set of discriminatory acts includes interpersonal and institutional forms of bias. It includes systemic forms of bias in employment, law, criminal justice, higher education, among many others. It also includes hate speech which unfairly casts certain groups of people as the “despised other.” The universal set of discriminatory acts also includes acts of interpersonal violence that arise out of systemic inequality. Within this universal set of discriminatory acts, we suggest there are at least three subsets of criminal acts of violence that are commonly referred to as hate crimes. These subsets are labeled {S}, {L}, and {C}for statistical, legal, and conflict, terms which we will define briefly below.

{U} Universal set of discriminatory acts.

1 {C}

5

6 7

3 {S}

2

8

4 {L}

{C} Set of events that fit the conflict definition of hate crime. {L} Set of events that fit the legal definitions of hate crime. {S} Set of events that fit the statistical definition of hate crime. Figure 19.1 Seeing acts of hate. 240

Hate crime

Set {S}: The official statistical definitions of hate crime In Figure 19.1, {S} represents the set of acts that fit the “official” hate crime definition developed by the U.S. Department of Justice in accord with the requirements of the Hate Crime Statistics Act. There are two national data collections on hate crime that define the acts that fit into set {S}. One is the national hate crime database at the FBI, described earlier in this chapter. The other is the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) which is administered by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) and the Bureau of Census. The FBI and NCVS definitions of hate crime are provided below. The FBI defines hate crime as criminal offenses that were motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender’s bias against a race, gender, gender identity, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity, and were committed against persons, property, or society. (FBI, 2015) The NCVS defines hate crime as The act defines hate crimes as “crimes that manifest evidence of prejudice based on race, gender or gender identity, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity.” The NCVS measures crimes perceived by victims to be motivated by an offender’s bias against them for belonging to or being associated with a group largely identified by these characteristics. (Wilson, 2014)

Set {L}: The legal definition of hate crime Next, there are acts defined by Federal, state, and local statute that define hate crime for legal purposes. In Figure 19.1, {L} represents the set of acts that fit the legal definition of hate crime in specific jurisdictions. Below are two examples of state hate crime statutes, one is from the state of California while the other is from West Virginia. California’s Hate Crime Statute: A criminal act committed, in whole or in part, because of one or more of the following actual or perceived characteristics of the victim: 1) disability, 2) gender, 3) nationality, 4) race or ethnicity, 5) religion, 6) sexual orientation, 7) association with a person or group with one or more of these actual or perceived characteristics. (California Penal Code, Section 422.55) West Virginia’s Hate Crime Statute (in pertinent part): (b) If any person does by force or threat of force, willfully injure, intimidate or interfere with, or attempt to injure, intimidate or interfere with, or oppress or threaten any other person in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him or her by the Constitution or laws of the state of West Virginia or by the Constitution or laws of the United States, because of such other person’s race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, political affiliation or sex, he or she shall be guilty of a felony, and, upon conviction, shall be fined not more than five thousand dollars or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both. ( West Virginia Code, Section 61–6–21) 241

James J. Nolan, Lee Thorpe Jr. and Andrea DeKeseredy

Set {C}: The conflict definition of hate crime Finally, there are acts of violence that are rooted in the structured inequality in the existing social order. This is sometimes referred to as a conflict perspective in criminology and so it is depicted in Figure 19.1 as {C}. A popular definition of hate crime from a conflict perspective is presented below. Hate crime . . . involves acts of violence and intimidation, usually directed toward already stigmatized and marginalized groups. As such, it is a mechanism of power and oppression, intended to reaffirm the precarious hierarchies that characterize a given social order. It attempts to re-create simultaneously the threatened (real or imagined) hegemony of the perpetrator’s group. It is a means of marking both the Self and the Other in such a way as to re-establish their ‘proper’ relative positions, as given and reproduced by broader ideologies and patterns of social and political inequality. (Perry, 2001, p. 10) One criticism of the traditional hate crime frame (sets {S} and {L}) is that it often misses the violence rooted in structural inequality which is often the focus of conflict criminologists. For example, violence in patriarchal or racist social systems which manifests in high rates of violence against women (DeKeseredy, 2009) or African Americans at the hands of the police (Levin and Nolan, 2017) not only produces serious harms to members of these historically disadvantaged groups, but also serves as a mechanism for reaffirming and reproducing this disadvantage. Stereotypes that emerge from systemic violence, then, serve as justifications for interpersonal violence against members of the despised group. The reader will notice that although all three of these definitions set forth a meaning of the term hate crime, they are not identical nor are they mutually exclusive. The overlapping sets, then, create regions, numbered 1 through 8, which we describe in Table 19.2 while also providing brief examples.

Table 19.2 Expanding the hate crime frame Region

Description

Example

Region 1

Discriminatory acts not defined as hate crime per se, but which either by intention or consequence result in harm to individuals because of group status.

Region 2

Discriminatory acts that fit the conflict definition but not the statistical or legal definitions. Discriminatory acts that fit the statistical definition but not the conflict or legal definitions.

• Disproportionate sentencing of minority offenders to long terms of imprisonment. • Hate speech which misrepresents the truth in order to disparage members of a group. • Sexual assault on college campuses. • Violence against women by men. • Racial profiling by police. A gay man attacks a heterosexual man because of his bias against straight men (in a state where sexual orientation is not a bias type in the hate crime criminal law, such as in WV).

Region 3

242

Hate crime

Region

Description

Example

Region 4

Discriminatory acts that fit the definition of hate crime as defined by state criminal codes, but which do not fit the conflict or statistical definitions. Discriminatory acts that fit the legal and conflict definitions of hate crime but not the statistical definition.

Assault on a police officer in violation of “Blue Lives Matter” laws where applicable.

Region 5

Region 6

Discriminatory acts that fit the statistical and conflict definitions, but not the legal definition.

Region 7

Discriminatory acts that fit all three definitions – the statistical, conflict, and legal – of hate crime. Discriminatory acts that fit the statistical and legal definitions of hate crime but not the conflict definition.

Region 8

Violations of civil rights laws that are not part of statistical data collection, such as discrimination in housing and employment. Assaults on LGBTQ individuals that are motivated by bias that occur in a state like West Virginia that does not include sexual orientation as a bias type in its criminal statutes. Racially motivated murders such as the ones committed by Dylann Roof in South Carolina. A bias assault committed by racial minority against a racial majority.

The direction of hate violence Although hate crime laws emerge out of concern for members of historically disadvantaged groups who would be likely targets of violence, the statistical and legal definitions of hate crime, {S} and {L}, do not require that victims of these crime actually be from minority groups or the offenders from majority groups. In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court case which upheld the constitutionality of hate crime laws, Wisconsin v. Mitchell, involved African American offenders and a white victim. However, as described above, the conflict definition of hate crime {C} views these acts of violence as a “mechanism of power and oppression, intended to reaffirm the precarious hierarchies that characterize a given social order.” Therefore, the direction of hate motivated violence is almost always in one direction—i.e., against the minority group. In our conceptual model, the acts that fit in region 1 can go in either direction, majority on minority or vice versa. In regions 2, 5, 6, and 7, the violent acts are committed by members of the majority group against the minority. In regions 3, 4, and 8 the reverse is true. These are acts of violence committed by minority group members against the majority (as in Wisconsin v. Mitchell, Gerstenfeld, 2017).

Extension: deciding which acts fit the various definitions According to Dewey’s method, once the meaning of the term has been established via the process of intention—as we have tried to do above—the next step is extension, i.e., identifying the real life things that do and do not fit these definitions. As depicted in Figure 19.1, the set of acts that fit various definitions of hate crimes are nested in subsets within the universal set of discriminatory acts broadly defined. Once it is clear that an act or event fits into this broad universal set {U}, then the work becomes determining whether the behaviors fit into one of the subsets of hate crime, {S}, {L}, or {C}. This approach elucidates the extent to which the various categories of hate crimes have unique and overlapping characteristics. It also helps us see how acts of discrimination 243

James J. Nolan, Lee Thorpe Jr. and Andrea DeKeseredy

that sit outside the borders of the intersecting sets are still connected to hate crimes as defined for various purposes because they are all elements in the universal set of discriminatory acts, again whether they are rooted in individual prejudice or structured inequality or both. At the beginning of this chapter we described two hate crimes, one involving a relatively minor destruction of property case on a college dorm room door at West Virginia University and the other a mass murder at a church in Charleston, South Carolina. We think it is clear that both of these acts are considered violations of criminal law {L}. They also fit the official statistical definition {S}. And, they are acts of oppression which serve as mechanisms to preserve the hierarchy and privilege of the existing social order {C}. Therefore, we think both of these events fit into region 7 of Figure 19.1. For this reason, there is probably wide consensus that both of these incidents, albeit vastly different in terms of level of harm to the victims, number of victims, type of bias, seriousness of underlying criminal act, and more, still fit the meaning of the term hate crime. But, let us now consider a few incidents for which there may be less agreement. We will consider these one at a time and attempt to apply our conceptual model in each case, thus making a determination whether they are hate crimes and why according to our model.

Anti-gay attack in West Virginia While in downtown Huntington, WV, an African American football player from Marshall University observed two men kissing in public. He attacked the men, punching them while shouting homophobic slurs. In May 2017 the West Virginia Supreme Court ruled that this case was not a hate crime (Stern, 2017). Some may argue that if the State Supreme Court says this is not a hate crime, then this is the final word. However, according to our framework it is clear that the violent attack on these two gay men fits into region 6 in that it aligns with both the statistical {S} and conflict {C} definitions of hate crime even though it does not fit the definition in the state criminal code {L}. The crime was motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender’s bias against a sexual orientation as defined by the statistical definition {S} and it was also a mechanism of power and oppression rooted in established sexual hierarchies in American society {C}.

Violence against women on college campuses In 2016 Walter DeKeseredy and his colleagues conducted a quality-of-life survey of students at a large state university and found that about one third of the female respondents had been victims of some form of sexual assault or attempted sexual assault while attending the university (DeKeseredy, Hall-Sanchez, & Nolan, 2016). Although gender is now part of the statistical and legal definitions of hate crimes, widespread violence against women by men such as what was uncovered in the campus survey is generally not considered a hate crime. However, it has been argued by DeKeseredy (2009) and a few others (Ferber, 2004; Perry, 2006; Pendo, 1994) that violence against women by men should be viewed as a hate crime. Their argument, in part, is this: men do not view this violence (sexual assault, sexual harassment, stalking) as breaking a cultural norm, but rather as affirming “a culturally approved masculinity: aggression, domination, and heterosexuality” (Perry, 2003, p. 155). In other words, sexual assault on campus is arguably a way to maintain a particular kind of masculinity, keeping women in their place—much the same as was done by the football player who assaulted two gay men for kissing in public in the above scenario. Therefore, our expanded hate crime frame would consider violence by men against women on campus as hate crimes that fit into region 2 of Figure 19.1. 244

Hate crime

A bias motivated assault with a white victim The incident which led to the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case in support of hate crime laws, Wisconsin v. Mitchell, involved African American offenders and a white victim. Todd Mitchell and a group of African American teenagers were discussing a scene from the movie Mississippi Burning in which a black child was beaten by a white man. Angered by this, Mitchell said to his friends “Do you feel all hyped up to move on some white people?” The group then attacked and assaulted Gregory Riddick, a 14-year-old white boy who happened to be walking on the other side of the street. Riddick was in a coma for four days and suffered permanent brain damage from the beating (Gerstenfeld, 2017). In this case race was clearly a motive for the assault and the facts surrounding the case fit both the FBI definition for statistical purposes {S} and the state’s hate crime law {L}. However, the violence was not intended to “reaffirm the precarious hierarchies that characterize a given social order” as defined by {C}. We believe, therefore, this event fits the criteria of region 8 in Figure 19.1.

Baton Rouge police officers Angered at the death of Alton Sterling, an African American man, at the hands of the Baton Rouge police, Gavin Long armed himself with an assault rifle and shot six Baton Rouge police officers, killing three of them. The state of Louisiana had recently enacted the Blue Lives Matter law which expanded the state’s hate crime law to cover police officers. So an attack on a police officer is now considered a hate crime in Baton Rouge. An attack on police officers is not viewed as a hate crime under official definitions set forth for statistical purposes {S} and it does not fit the spirit or definition of the conflict perspective {C}. Therefore we believe violence targeting police officers fits into region 4 of our expanded hate crime frame.

Excessive force by police against minority groups Over the past several years there have been a number of high-profile cases of police officers using excessive force against unarmed African American men resulting in their death. For example, in Ferguson, MO, 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed by Darren Wilson, a white police officer. Although Brown was suspected of committing a robbery at the time of the confrontation, he was unarmed. Officer Wilson said he feared for his life and had no choice but to shoot Brown multiple times including once in the head (Levin & Nolan, 2017). Then, in Baltimore, MD, 25-year-old Freddie Gray’s back was broken and his spine nearly severed while in police custody. Some speculated this was the result of a “rough ride,” an unsanctioned practice of bouncing handcuffed prisoners around in the police transport van as a form of street justice for unruly behavior (Levin & Nolan, 2017). Around this same time period, Eric Garner was choked to death by New York City police officers during an arrest for selling untaxed cigarettes. A friend of Garner videoed the arrest and shared it widely on social media. In the video, Garner could be heard pleading “I can’t breathe” (Levin & Nolan, 2017). The police officers involved in these incidents were all cleared of criminal wrongdoing, but many believe these acts of violence should be considered hate crime. For our purposes in expanding the hate crime frame, we consider the routine (and excessive) violence by the police disproportionately directed at minority communities to be forms of discrimination. Many of these violent acts, like the ones described above, fit into region 2 of Figure 19.1 as they align with the criteria of {C}, but not {S} or {L}. 245

James J. Nolan, Lee Thorpe Jr. and Andrea DeKeseredy

Discussion and conclusion Although hate and discrimination are as old as the human species, the concept of hate crime is relatively new. Emerging from the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s hate crime was originally defined by legislation for official statistics gathering and for criminal law. Whitlock (2014) argues that narrow focus on interpersonal violence motivated, in whole or in part, by prejudice obscures the relationship between larger organizational, institutional, and societal complicity which is what critical criminologists seek to expose (Dragiewicz & DeKeseredy, 2014). By expanding the conceptual frame, as we have done in the previous pages, we hope to highlight opportunities for better understanding, more meaningful dialogue, and more inclusive research on this critical topic. As we have shown there have been a variety of definitions of hate crimes advanced and for a variety of purposes. First, there is an official definition that enables the establishment of national databases on hate crime, identified as set {S} in our model. There are also definitions of hate crimes that define prohibited acts and penalties under state criminal codes, denoted as set {L}. And, there are violent acts which are directed at members of disadvantaged and marginalized groups that serve as “mechanisms of power and oppression intended to reaffirm precarious hierarchies in a given social order” (Perry, 2001 p.10), denoted in our model as set {C}. Figure 19.1 enables us to see that these three sets of hate crimes are not mutually exclusive and that the overlap produces eight regions which are described in Table 19.2. Space limitation in this chapter precludes an exhaustive exploration of each region, but in the body of the chapter we were able to consider a few specific incidents to see how they would fare in our expanded hate crime framework. As we have shown, region 7 represents high consensus hate crimes because they fit all three definitions in our model, i.e., statistical, legal, and criminological, ({S}, {L}, and {C}. On the other hand, we can see that violence by men against women, such as sexual assault on college campuses, meets the criteria of a region 2 hate crime. And, although it is contested by many for a variety of reasons, we can see in our model that targeted violence against the police may be considered a region 4 hate crime if legislation is enacted making it so. In addition, our model shows how excessive violence by the police aimed at members of minority communities can, under certain circumstances, be considered a region 2 hate crime. Finally, we were able to show how even a state Supreme Court ruling against a hate crime for legal purposes ({L}) does not mean it is not a hate crime for other purposes. As a visual representation of the hate crimes as subsets of the universal set of discriminatory behaviors, Figure 19.1 helps us see and imagine the interrelationships among regions. For example, one might wonder how a rise in hate speech (region 1) might affect hate crimes against racial and ethnic minorities (regions 5, 6, and 7), or retaliatory hate crimes against members of racial and ethnic majorities (regions 3, 4, and 8), or the impact hate speech on rates of violence against women or in rates of violence by the police against members of a minority community (region 2). We believe that the enhanced conceptual framework presented in this chapter could, if adopted, help to untangle some of the cobwebs that have formed around the discourse and research on hate crimes. A handful of leading critical criminologists like Walter DeKeseredy and Barbara Perry have linked their work in critical social theory to the phenomenon of hate crime. We hope our conceptual framework helps others see the value in making this same connection.

246

Hate crime

Notes 1

This account of events was conveyed to the first author during a sociology class at West Virginia University. The student identified himself as being Jewish and from New York City. 2 These numbers were obtained via a search of the Lexis Nexis newspaper database on February 6, 2017. 3 The framework for seeing hate crime was used in previous focusing on policing hate crimes (Nolan et al., 2004). It was modified and applied in this chapter to capture definitions of hate in the broader field of critical criminology.

References Chakraborti, N. & Garland, J. (2011). Hate crime. In W. S. DeKeseredy and M. Dragiewicz (Eds) Routledge Handbook of Critical Criminology (pp. 303–315). London: Routledge. DeKeseredy, W. S. (2009). Male violence against women in North America as hate crime. In Perry, B (Ed.) Hate Crimes: The Victims of Hate (Volume 3) (pp. 151–172). Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger. DeKeseredy, W. S., Hall-Sanchez, A. & Nolan, J. (2016). West Virginia University’s campus quality of life survey: Preliminary results. Morgantown, WV: Research Center on Violence, West Virginia University. Dewey, J. (1910/1997). How We Think. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, Inc. Dragiewicz, M. & DeKeseredy, W. S. (2014). Critical interventions: Engaging social justice. In W. S. DeKeseredy & M. Dragiewicz (Eds). Critical Criminology (pp. 1–6). New York: Routledge. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) (2013). Hate Crime Statistics 2012. Washington, D.C. Retrieved online in May 2017 at https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2012. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) (2015). Hate Crime Data Collection Guidelines and Training Manual, Version 2. Washington, D.C. Retrieved online in May 2017 at https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime-datacollection-guidelines-and-training-manual.pdf. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) (2016). Hate Crime Statistics 2015. Washington, D.C. Retrieved online in May 2017 at https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2015. Ferber, A. L. (2004). Introduction. In A. L. Ferber (Ed.), Home-Grown Hate: Gender and Organized Racism (pp. 1–18). New York: Routledge. Franklin, K. (2002). Good intentions: The enforcement of hate crime penalty-enhancement statutes. American Behavioral Scientist, 46(1), 154–172. Gerstenfeld, P. (2004). Hate Crime: Causes, Controls, and Controversies. Thousand Oakes: Sage. Gerstenfeld, P. (2017). Hate Crime: Causes, Controls, and Controversies, 4th edition. Los Angeles: Sage. Goodwin, C. (1994). Professional vision. American Anthropologist, 94(3), 606–633. Jenness, V. & Grattet, R. (2004). Making Hate a Crime: From Social Movement to Law Enforcement. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Levin, J. & Nolan, J. (2017). Violence of Hate: Understanding Harmful Forms of Bias and Bigotry, 4th edition. New York: Rowman & Littlefield. MacDonald, J. M. & Donnelly, E. A. (2016). Evaluating the Role of Race in the Criminal Justice Adjudications in Delaware. A report to the Chief Justice of the Delaware Supreme Court & Delaware Access to Justice Commission’s Committee on Fairness in the Adult Criminal Justice System. Wilmington, Delaware. McVeigh, R., Welch, M. R. & Bjarnason, T. (2003). Hate crime reporting as a successful social movement outcome. American Sociological Review, 68(6), 843–867. Meyerson, C. (2017, May 23). The case against ‘Blue Lives Matter’ bills. The Nation. Retrieved at www. thenation.com/article/case-blue-lives-matter-bills/ on May 29, 2017. Nolan, J. (2001, April 5). Association decision flawed, ironic. Daily Athenaeum. Retrieved at www.theda online.com/article_2927f5a1–935c-58f4-b1ca-e16a7b374bb3.html on May 29, 2017. Nolan, J.J. & Akiyama, Y. (1999). An analysis of factors that affect law enforcement participation in hate crime reporting. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, 15, 111–127. Nolan, J. J. & Akiyama, Y. (2002). Assessing the climate for hate crime reporting in law enforcement organizations. The Justice Professional, 15(2), 87–103. Nolan, J. J., McDevitt, J., Cronin, S. & Farrell, A. (2004). Learning to see hate crime: A framework for understanding and clarifying ambiguities in bias crime classification. Criminal Justice Studies, 17(1), 91–105. Pendo, E. A. (1994). Recognizing violence against women: Gender and the hate crime statistics act. Harvard Women’s Law Journal, 17, 157–183.

247

James J. Nolan, Lee Thorpe Jr. and Andrea DeKeseredy

Perry, B. (2001). In the Name of Hate: Understanding Hate Crimes. New York: Routledge. Perry, B. (2003). Accounting for hate crime. In M. D. Schwartz & S. E. Hatty (Eds), Controversies in Critical Criminology (pp. 147–160). Cincinnati, OH: Anderson. Perry, B. (2006). Missing pieces: The paucity of hate crime scholarship. In W. S. DeKeseredy & B. Perry (Eds). Advancing Critical Criminology: Theory and Application (pp. 155–178). Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Potter, J. B. and Potter, K. (1998). Hate Crimes: Criminal Law & Identity Politics. New York: Oxford University Press. Sanchez, R. & Payne, E. (2016, December 16). Charleston church shooting: Who is Dylann Roof? CNN. Retrieved online May 2017 at www.cnn.com/2015/06/19/us/charleston-church-shooting-suspect/ index.html. Stern, M. J. (2017, May 10). West Virginia Supreme Court rules anti-gay assaults are not hate crimes. Slate. Retrieved online on May 27, 2017 at www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2017/05/10/west_virginia_ supreme_court_rules_anti_gay_assaults_are_not_hate_crimes.html. Whitlock, K. (2014). Reconsidering hate: Policy and politics at the intersection. In DeKeseredy, W. S. & Dragiewicz, M. (Eds). Critical Criminology: Critical Concepts in Criminology (pp. 172–208). New York: Routledge. Wilson, M. M. (2014). Hate Crime Victimization, 2004–2012 – Statistical Tables. United States Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. Retrieved January 2017 at www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/ hcv0412st.pdf.

248

20 Neoliberalism and the politics of imprisonment Sappho Xenakis and Leonidas K. Cheliotis

Neoliberalism and neoliberal penality Over the last forty years, Western states have seen unprecedented growth in their imprisonment rates. The synchronic rise to hegemony of neoliberal dogma and policy has prompted a wealth of scholarship seeking to uncover the precise relationship between neoliberalism and imprisonment. One important challenge to this endeavor has been the variegated concept of ‘neoliberalism’ itself. Since the mid-1970s and the post-industrial restructuring of Western economies, neoliberalism, with a doctrine of the free market at its core, has come to dominate the objectives and processes of government, eroding Keynesianism and welfarism at home and fostering the shrinking of the state (especially with regard to regulation) in weaker economies. There has, however, been considerable disagreement within neoliberal intellectual currents about how an unfettered market is best achieved and, to this end, the desirability of market regulation and the appropriate size and interventionism of the state (Gamble, 2009). Relatedly and somewhat similarly, whilst neoliberal penality has typically been characterized as comprising at its core the increased use of punishment (and particularly of imprisonment) – alongside the commercialization of criminal justice and the retrenchment of welfare – at least one alternative conceptualization of neoliberal penality has had as a key tenet instead the reduction of imprisonment in favor of monetary fines (even if the latter conceptualization has not achieved ascendancy; see further O’Malley, 2015). As we elaborate below, moreover, a host of scholars have emphasized the contingent and multifaceted manifestation of neoliberal penality across jurisdictional spaces and times. There has thus by no means existed a consensus about the meaning of “neoliberal penality”, even if it has attracted ever greater scholarly study. Our goal in this chapter is to provide an overview of the criminological debates that have flourished in recent years concerning the significance and validity of the notion of “neoliberal penality”. Starting first by briefly acknowledging the political economy forebears of neoliberal penality scholarship, we move on to outline key dimensions of the so-called “neoliberal penality thesis”, before critically reviewing some of the major qualifications and lines of critique that have been raised in response. In particular, we address challenges that have been expressed regarding: the accuracy and implications of the claim that there is a disconnect between crime and

249

Sappho Xenakis and Leonidas K. Cheliotis

incarceration; the need for broader measures of state punitiveness that go beyond imprisonment trends; the importance of domestic institutions in mediating the impact of neoliberalism on penality; and whether trends in economic regulation and welfare provision have been interpreted correctly. In our conclusion, we reflect on the current state of neoliberalism and, drawing on literature exploring dimensions of penal change in the US today, consider the continuing relevance of the concept of neoliberal penality.

The origins of the neoliberal penality thesis Scholarship on the relationship between neoliberalism and penality has emerged from a longer tradition of research into the relationship between systems of production and modes of punishment, a tradition whose inception is typically credited to Rusche and Kirchheimer and their seminal book Punishment and Social Structure (1929 [2003]). Rusche and Kirchheimer argued that the mode and degree of state punitiveness in a society is largely determined, not by crime trends, but by economic and fiscal forces and, for this reason, trends in state punishment tend to reflect the internal relationships of a society’s dominant system of production. Thus, they argue, the advent of industrialization in the 1800s brought with it the imperative of the construction of a mass, compliant labor force, and towards this end, the prison (alongside workhouses and poorhouses) made an important contribution (see also Melossi & Pavarini, 1981). Governments sought to ensure that welfare assistance never “rewarded” welfare recipients; in accordance with the principle of “less eligibility”, assistance would not be of a level that would raise recipients above the standards of living of the working poor. So, too, imprisonment would be such an undesirable fate that it would deter workers from refusing to work under poor conditions although imprisonment, through its enforcement of discipline, could also support the labor market by “rehabilitating” criminals into docile workers. Ultimately, the severity of punishment would depend on the size of surplus labor in a society; as and when a society’s pool of surplus labor increased, harsher forms of punishment would ensue (see further De Giorgi, 2012). Where prior political economy scholarship on penality has received criticism for being overly reductionist, determinist, and instrumentalist, research on the relationship between neoliberalism and penality more particularly has sought to pay due recognition to both the multiplicity of factors shaping the form and magnitude of state punishment, and the diverse outcomes produced by punishment across society in terms symbolic as well as material. Characterization of scholarship on the relationship between neoliberalism and penality is complicated by the very broad range of criminological approaches that have acknowledged its importance. For some writers, such as Garland (2001) and Simon (2007), neoliberalism has been a key backdrop to but not the cause of intensification on penal fronts. For others, such as Lacey (2008), neoliberalism has been a driving factor but one that has been mitigated by a variety of political and institutional factors (see also Sutton, 2012).1 Then there are those writers – most notably, Wacquant (2009a, 2009b) – who have placed primary emphasis for penal developments on neoliberalism as ideology and as policy, even whilst acknowledging the complexity of factors that shape developments in penality. And finally, there are those who have explored neoliberal penality in all but name, such as by highlighting the way in which changes to social structures of accumulation (i.e., with the advent of neoliberalism) can shape imprisonment trends even while the dominant means of production (i.e., capitalism) remains constant (Michalowski & Carlson, 1999), and how the intensified use of imprisonment as compensation for the decline of welfarism has served to both hide and ultimately to expand the pool of unemployed labour (Western & Beckett, 1999). 250

Neoliberalism and the politics of imprisonment

The neoliberal penality thesis In the development of a clear and cogent thesis concerning the relationship between neoliberalism and penality, Wacquant has played a key role, not only within his work but also through the broad and sustained scholarly debate he has thereby helped to galvanize. Wacquant has insisted on the distinctiveness of punishment under neoliberalism from that under capitalism per se, arguing that state punitiveness has been, and continues to be, at its most acute within jurisdictions in which neoliberalism has advanced fastest and furthest, rather than in countries that have more generally been subject to the transformative dynamics of “late modernity”. This point is one that has also been made by Cavadino and Dignan (2006), who have drawn attention to the relationship between punishment, levels of socio-economic inequality, and welfare provision, across a range of national jurisdictions. For Wacquant, neoliberalism entails the articulation of four specific institutional logics: economic deregulation, welfare retrenchment, the cultural trope of individual responsibility, and an ever-more expansive penal apparatus. Rather being tangential to or a deviation from neoliberalism, Wacquant argues that punishment serves an essential function within it: managing the social reverberations of “advanced social insecurity” that neoliberal policies generate amongst the lower and middle classes. At the bottom of the class structure, punishment works to contain the disorders stoked by the “objective insecurity” of the unemployed poor and a flexibilized and welfarelite workforce, and demonstrates a systematic social and ethnoracial bias as it neutralizes, punishes and warehouses the urban (sub)proletariat (rather than disciplining it with a view to enhancing labour exploitability) (Wacquant, 2009b; see, similarly, De Giorgi, 2006). At the same time, “punishing the poor” creates a convenient outlet for the “subjective” insecurity experienced by the middle classes, “whose prospects for smooth reproduction or upward mobility have dimmed as competition for valued social positions has intensified and the state has reduced its provision of public goods” (Wacquant, 2009b: 300). Punishment of the lower socio-economic classes thereby provides a means by which neoliberal political leaders can compensate for legitimacy lost in pursuit of other social and economic policy goals (see also Cheliotis, 2013). Another key dimension of penality under neoliberalism to have been explored by Wacquant is its transnationalism; indeed, for Wacquant, neoliberalism should be understood as a transnational political project, carried out by a global elite comprised of the senior executives of multinational corporations, high-ranking politicians, top officials of international governmental organizations (e.g., the IMF and the World Bank), and their cultural–technical experts (e.g., legal and media professionals), with their goal being to “remake the nexus of market, state, and citizenship from above” (Wacquant, 2009b, pp. 306–307). Moreover, according to Wacquant, it is actors within the United States that have been the progenitors and primary international disseminators of this neoliberal project of which the new “punitive common sense” is a crucial component (Wacquant, 2009a, p. 162; see further Ross, 2013). The importance of transnationalism to neoliberal penality has also been elaborated by reference to international migration and the rise in punitive regulation towards it. Some have argued that since the 1970s, especially in Europe, undocumented migrants have been constituted as criminal subjects by “prohibitionist” immigration policies and, whether through administrative detention or incarceration in conventional prisons, migrants’ treatment has served to discipline low-wage and surplus labour at the same time as helping to divert and expend the anxieties of the region’s middle classes (see, e.g., De Giorgi, 2006; Melossi, 2015; Cheliotis, 2017). It has also been argued that the punitive treatment of migrants is a dramatic performance of sovereignty by neoliberal states seeking to shore up legitimacy they have risked in promoting the outward flow of jobs and inward flow of “job-destroying imports” – from commodities to highly specialized or low-cost labour (Michalowski, 2015). 251

Sappho Xenakis and Leonidas K. Cheliotis

Other scholarship on neoliberal penality has focused on privatization trends in the provision of imprisonment, focusing particularly but not exclusively on United States-based developments. Neoliberal commitment to the privatization of public services, with the purported intention of reducing strains on the public purse, has fuelled an expansion in private provision, even if – or, rather, because – public expenditure has in many cases increased in tandem with the burgeoning of corporate interests in this area (see, e.g., Gilmore, 2007; Bell, 2011). Schlosser (1998) has argued, for instance, that the US has seen the rise of a “prison-industrial complex”, in which a set of bureaucratic, political and economic interests have collaborated to press for increased public spending on imprisonment, effectively fixing a need for a steady supply of prisoners entering the penal system regardless of the legal and moral illegitimacy of the compulsion. The notion of a “prison-industrial complex” has been subject to wide-ranging criticisms for exaggerating the significance of corporate interests in driving prison expansion in the US, and implying the existence of a conspiracy between business and political elites to subvert justice for profit. More nuanced accounts have pointed out that the country’s prison-building boom has served politicians seeking to stimulate weak local economies in their constituencies (even if such economies have not always benefited to the extent expected; see further Gilmore, 2007), as much as it has rewarded the diverse array of businesses involved in the provision of imprisonment in the US. Gilmore’s account of the largest prison construction programme in the history of the world – in California, between 1982 and 2000 – shows how a concatenation of local, national and international developments produced surpluses of capital, labour and land, which local power blocs chose to invest in carceral expansion with a view to making financial and political gains (Gilmore, 2007). Yet other writers have pointed to the fact that neoliberalism has not only driven privatization in the form of expanding private provision, but also in the hybridization of public prisons as they have contracted out the provision of select services (e.g., catering, security, medical and furniture supplies) to other firms, have themselves allowed private and state-owned firms to exploit their prisoners’ labour for profit, and have increasingly charged prisoners for costs related to their containment (from room and board to medical expenses; De Giorgi, 2015; see further Parenti, 1999; Kilgore, 2013). Overall, although the volume and range of published research on the neoliberal penality thesis has amply demonstrated its attractiveness, and whilst such research has arguably been valuable in terms of furthering scholarship on the political economy of punishment more broadly, the thesis has also faced a barrage of criticisms from a host of penological perspectives. It is to these criticisms that we now turn.

Crime and state punitiveness Although proponents of the neoliberal penality thesis have so far tended to presume that rising levels of imprisonment have little, if anything, to do with trends in crime, official and other available evidence on crime trends in neoliberal and other contexts often suggests otherwise, thus casting doubt on the notion that neoliberalism is causally related to penal expansion in a simple linear fashion. Lacey and Soskice (2015), for instance, have demonstrated that the US stands out from other similarly neoliberal economies not just in terms of its use of imprisonment, but also in terms of its officially recorded levels of serious violent crime. In much the same vein, international comparative research on rates of self-reported victimization has placed neoliberal England and Wales top and social democracies in Scandinavia the lowest, which is, as Nelken (2010, p. 335) suggests, “just where you would expect them to be in terms of prison rates”. It nevertheless remains possible that the general thrust of the neoliberal penality thesis is salvageable so long as it can be demonstrated that state punishment under neoliberalism has risen at 252

Neoliberalism and the politics of imprisonment

a substantially faster pace than crime itself (see, e.g., Lynch, 2007). Indeed, the argument can be taken a step further: insofar as crime is generated, maintained or exacerbated by neoliberal socioeconomic policies themselves (because, for example, they deepen poverty and widen inequality gaps), then crime growth in neoliberal environments qualifies as one of the various self-inflicted “crises” through which the neoliberal apparatus actually derives strength. In this vein, it has been argued that governing elites may twist to their own advantage what are essentially the criminogenic outcomes of neoliberalism, evoking concrete realities of criminal victimization to lend semblances of legitimacy to their distractive prioritization of crime in the public domain and, by extension, to the politically expedient punitive criminal justice policies they pursue in the name of security (see further Cheliotis, 2013). Crime trends aside, critics of the neoliberal penality thesis are also concerned about the fact that the punitive outcomes of neoliberalism are typically assessed by reference to imprisonment rates alone. Conceptualizations of state punitiveness that stretch beyond imprisonment, critics go on to argue, problematize the notion that the ascent of neoliberal socioeconomic policies has brought about an expansion and harshening of the penal operations of the state, whether because such conceptualizations indicate that levels and patterns of state punishment under neoliberalism do not necessarily represent a break with past experiences, or because they draw our attention to trends that may be taken to signify penal moderation. Harcourt’s (2010) account of different forms of detention in the US from the 1930s onwards, for instance, has shown that the rapid rise in the use of custodial punishment as of the 1970s was preceded by comparably high rates of confinement in mental institutions. This enables Harcourt to suggest that what is commonly referred to as “neoliberal penality” is actually not distinct to recent decades, insofar as the capitalist state has always sought to maintain order in the marketplace by criminalizing and locking away in one site or another any and all violators of the market. Newburn (2010, p. 344) meanwhile cautions (contra Wacquant) that, whilst imprisonment rates in England and Wales have undergone unprecedented growth since the mid-1990s, US-style “zero tolerance” policing has largely been eschewed in actual practice, even if not in terms of political rhetoric. Efforts to gauge state punitiveness solely by reference to rates of imprisonment, furthermore, have by no means necessarily yielded findings supportive of the neoliberal penality thesis. Indeed, there is evidence to suggest that prison rates can vary both between and within neoliberal economies. In the cases of Russia and South Africa, for instance, neoliberalization in terms of their respective socio-economic arrangements has been argued to have coincided with a reduction in their use of imprisonment (Nelken, 2009). And in relation to the United States, it has been noted that imprisonment has typically been much more prevalent in the South, especially as compared to the Northeast (Newburn, 2010). It is possible to turn this line of critique on its head, however, and argue that a broadened conceptualization of state punitiveness, one attentive to the array of institutions that may have punitive effects, would allow for unearthing evidence in support of the neoliberal penality thesis. We shall return to this point later on.

The role of institutions Even if one takes the neoliberal penality thesis on its own terms, there is little clarity as to the precise ways in which public concerns about crime, however valid or constructed they may be, translate into punitive penal policies and practices. Ironically, important clues can be found in scholarship that has complicated linear cause-and-effect accounts of the relationship between the rise of neoliberalism and intensified state punitiveness, especially scholarship that has sought 253

Sappho Xenakis and Leonidas K. Cheliotis

to trace the institutional bases of penal evolution in neoliberal and other contexts. Most notably, Lacey’s (2008, pp. 51–52) international comparative research suggests that if neoliberal economies are more likely to pursue punitive penal policies, this is good in part because they tend to have two-party majoritarian electoral systems. This is, on one hand, because such systems encourage parties to focus on attracting the “floating” median voter through exploiting salient single issues such as crime and its control, and on the other hand, because they produce governments relatively unconstrained by the need to negotiate and compromise with the opposition (see also Miller, 2008; Barker, 2009; Lynch, 2010). Institutionalist insights could be thought of as filling an important “procedural” gap in the neoliberal penality thesis but leaving its essential core intact. It is also possible, however, to interpret institutionalist findings as cautions against overestimating the generative role of neoliberalism in the field of punishment. The latter possibility is especially likely when institutionalist analyses highlight the historical embeddedness of penal policies and practices recently or currently observed in the context of neoliberal economies (see, e.g., Gottschalk, 2006). Viewed from this angle, neoliberal states may have actually been exploiting and building on existing penal infrastructures and techniques, just, in fact, as they may be aggravating ongoing penal strategies as a means of managing the reverberations of regressive socio-economic policies initiated in the preneoliberal period (see further Cheliotis & Xenakis, 2010). These continuities and their outcomes are by no means insignificant. To the extent that they pertain, however, they are hardly expressive of the mono-causal efficacy neoliberal penality scholars so commonly bestow, whether openly or implicitly, upon neoliberalism. Methodologically, moreover, they suggest that any account of the relationship between neoliberalism and state punitiveness must be incomplete unless sufficient consideration is paid to the mediating role played by local contingencies in general, and domestic institutional structures in particular.

Neoliberalism in theory and practice Although, as we have seen, the penal efficacy attributed to neoliberalism has been questioned or at least qualified from a range of analytic angles, a priori assumptions regarding the existence and specific elements of neoliberalism as such have usually been taken at face value. Once, however, a distinction is drawn between the rhetoric of neoliberalism and its practical manifestations, there emerge a range of important contradictions – even, or perhaps especially, in the United States, the presumed archetype of neoliberalism and its supposed originator and major exporter. Upon close inspection, for example, both market deregulation and welfare retrenchment in the US turn out to be less self-evident than neoliberal penality scholars have tended to portray. As Harcourt (2010) argues, the spread and dominance of free market ideology should not be taken to indicate the degree to which free market principles are applied on the ground; in lived reality, the neoliberal market is subject to systematic state intervention through an extensive web of complex regulations and intricate rules. In Harcourt’s view, the gap between neoliberalism-intheory and neoliberalism-in-practice is part of a political trick whereby evocation of the discourse of neoliberalism to describe its implementation serves to mask both the neoliberal state’s own regulatory role in the market and the enormous wealth distributions occurring daily therein (see also Gamble, 2009). Soss, Fording and Schram (2011) raise a similar point in relation to social welfare provision in the US under neoliberalism. In this case, too, the state is argued not to have abandoned its traditional interventionist role, despite its rhetoric essentially suggesting the contrary. Indeed, Soss et al. claim that the neoliberal state has actually expanded social programmes that target the poor, although this rollout of welfare provision has also been marked by important if subtle 254

Neoliberalism and the politics of imprisonment

qualitative shifts. In particular, welfare programmes are no longer aimed at “decommodifying” labor through aid that alleviates market pressures. The welfare system has instead been redesigned (at least in part according to penal rationales) to immerse the poor into “new incentive systems, modes of pedagogy, and reformative experiences of market relations” (Soss et al., 2011, p. 8) so as to press or otherwise incline them into accepting exploitative conditions of work in low-wage labour markets. Implicit in these observations is the fundamental political problem of being unable to overturn or resist a given trend without knowledge of the forces that gave or may give rise to it in the first place. Unless, that is, one accurately charts the coordinates of neoliberalism, one cannot realistically expect to reverse or prevent its disciplinary effects, penal or otherwise. The problem is additionally compounded when misinterpretations of neoliberal rhetoric as actually existing neoliberalism in the context of a given country or jurisdiction are arbitrarily extended to account for penal and other developments in foreign environments. The obvious example here – and one commonly found in scholarship supportive of the neoliberal penality thesis – concerns the purported “Americanization” of the world, whereby the arch-neoliberal United States is thought effectively to export their economic dogma and related policies around the globe (see, e.g., Wacquant, 2009a). Leaving aside the occidentalist undercurrent of this notion, it also obscures the fact that US-style neoliberalism, be it in the sense of an ideal type or an empirical reality, is problematically applied to states with very different economic trajectories. That Greece, for example, has long known both insufficient provision of social welfare and widespread flexibility in labor relations is due to its stubbornly semi-peripheral position in the capitalist world economy. When neoliberalism proper did eventually emerge in the country, its role was largely restricted to exacerbating ongoing trends and tensions. Ironically, discourses from progressive circles that have sought to critique the continuing regression of the Greek economy by reference solely to its recent neoliberalization in line allegedly with the US and other similar Western models, have risked deflecting attention from the culpability of local elites and deeply ingrained structural weaknesses of the national economy, as well as giving succour to nationalist agendas that conveniently locate the cause of all domestic malaise with foreign pressures (see further Cheliotis & Xenakis, 2010). None of the above is meant to dismiss the utility of neoliberalism as a concept in penological analysis. It is clear, however, that greater attention needs to be devoted, first, to establishing the fact of neoliberalism, and then, to clarifying its precise contours, susceptible as it is to both quantitative and qualitative variation according to local economic history and other domestic or regional specificities. It is only once these analytic tasks are accomplished that one can proceed with gauging the degree and ascertaining the forms of neoliberalism’s penal efficacy in different environments.

Conclusion: whither neoliberal penality? One important but as yet unexplored conundrum hanging over the continued utility of the concept of neoliberal penality is the fate of neoliberalism itself. Neoliberalism’s future has received heightened critical scrutiny over recent years, primarily as a result of the financial crisis that struck the US and much of Europe between 2008–9, and the reactions of governments to this crisis. On one hand, the crisis itself is argued to have provided incontrovertible evidence of the ideological and institutional failure of neoliberalism, particularly with regard to neoliberal faith in the self-correcting mechanisms of the market. On the other hand, the depth and persistence of commitment by Western governments to neoliberal principles appeared undone by the speed 255

Sappho Xenakis and Leonidas K. Cheliotis

with which such governments were willing to openly abandon key tenets of the doctrine to intervene, with massive bail-outs and stimulus packages, so as to avert the collapse of banking and financial institutions in their countries (Birch & Mykhenko, 2010). Although much analysis has argued that in the aftermath of the crisis it has effectively been “business as usual” for neoliberalism (Birch & Mykhenko, 2010; Gamble, 2009), at the current moment of writing, doubts about the future of neoliberalism have been reinvigorated once more by the imminent arrival into office of an avowedly anti-free-trade US president. Trump’s pledge to withdraw from the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade agreement (TPP) on his first day of office has been but one striking manifestation of the more general anti-neoliberal sentiment that is believed to have brought him to power, whose ramifications for the continuing neoliberal direction of US policy and, by extension, of international regulatory institutions and regimes, are now a matter of considerable uncertainty. At the same time questions have also been raised recently about the continuing relevance of the neoliberal penality thesis itself. Some writers have pointed to evidence that prison populations have plateaued or have even begun to decline in the US. It has been suggested that this may be heralding a shift in penal practice that reflects crime drops and the fading of public memories of high-crime eras, as well as the pressures of budget constraints that have made the ever-expanding use of confinement increasingly prohibitive (see, e.g., Greenberg & West, 2001; Dagan & Teles, 2014). Hopes and expectations have consequently been expressed that apparently emergent decarcerative trends in the United States will not only persist, but will lead to the replacement of mass incarceration with parole and probation, the return of a rehabilitative emphasis in penal practices, or liberal modification along the lines of “Justice Reinvestment Initiative” reforms (Martin, 2016).2 These are prospects that have been argued to have the combined potential to be “one of the most equality-enhancing institutional shifts” of our times (Phelps & Pager, 2016, p. 198). As Aviram (2015) has argued, however, signs of penal moderation in the United States – from declining prisoner numbers to the closing of prisons and the reduced reliance on solitary confinement within traditionally punitive states – have not been accompanied by an overall move away from a “tough on crime” mentality. Indeed, in other respects, there have been indications of continuing and growing state punitiveness. Half of the US states, for example, still saw increases in their prison populations between 2009 and 2013. It has been underscored that approximately 70 percent of the US drop in imprisonment between 2009 and 2014 stemmed from the reduced use of imprisonment in California, which came about as the result of a policy change effectively forced on that particular state by the US Supreme Court in 2011 (Kubrin & Seron, 2016; Simon, 2015); the drop in imprisonment has thus been more case-specific than reflective of a general trend. Furthermore, whilst the drop in imprisonment achieved between 2009 and 2012 in the US represented a decline of less than 3 percent in the total imprisoned population, and the number of prisoners rose once more in 2013 and in 2014, thereby seeming to confirm the resilience of the trend in mass incarceration after all (Martin, 2016; De Giorgi, 2015). It has also been argued that the recent apparent decline in the US prison population has been more an exercise in the decentralization of corrections, and the diffusion of penal control, than an illustration of decarceration per se (Sundt, Salisbury & Harmon, 2016). Cate (2016), for instance, points out that, notwithstanding fanfare given by NGOs, politicians and media outlets in the US to reductions in the number of juveniles sent to state-run correctional institutions, the size and treatment of the detained juvenile population across the country have, respectively, neither declined nor improved. Rather, responsibility for juvenile corrections has been devolved and dispersed from the state level to local and private authorities. 256

Neoliberalism and the politics of imprisonment

Beckett, Reosti and Knaphus (2016) also suggest that the recent enactment of more lenient drug and parole reforms in the US has actually subtly served to justify increasingly severe punishment for those who do not qualify for more lenient treatment under such legislative amendments. Likewise, Cadora (2014) has pointed to the way in which Justice Reinvestment Initiative reforms can work paradoxically to reinforce high rates of incarceration by producing minor successes that can nonetheless be interpreted as fulfilling reform goals in this area, ultimately forestalling pressures for more extensive decarceration (see also Gottschalk, 2015). Finally, optimistic prognoses for reduced state punitiveness have been argued to be fundamentally misplaced, not only because state correctional budgets have seen negligible reductions, but also, more importantly still, since state controls designed to monitor the poor and unruly have actually been expanding in the community, through the use of surveillance technologies and new programmes of supervision and psychosocial regulation (especially pharmacological interventions) rolled out in cooperation with non-profit actors (Martin, 2016). In sum, it seems that no matter how multifaceted and contradictory notions of neoliberalism are, the designation “neoliberal penality” still holds considerable purchase in analyses of penal trends in the US. Indeed, the relevance of this denomination is maintained whether penality continues to evolve, as some have projected, towards greater devolution – a model that has been termed “transcarceration” (see further De Giorgi, 2015), the acme of which is embodied by fully marketized prison environments found in Southern jurisdictions (see, e.g., Whitfield, 2015) – or whether it transpires that, for the foreseeable future, the business of punishment continues in much the way that it has done over recent decades. What seems equally likely, moreover, is that the variety of neoliberal imperatives and their differential manifestation and implementation in distinct political and institutional settings will also continue to ensure diversity in penal practice internationally.

Notes 1 2

Lacey is nevertheless critical of the concept of neoliberalism as such. “Justice Reinvestment Initiative” reforms have been formally intended to reduce prison populations and budgets by diverting funding away from prison construction and reinvesting savings in health- and social services-related programmes, and potentially also programmes relating to education, housing and employment, with a view to reducing recidivism (Martin, 2016).

References Aviram, H. (2015) Cheap on Crime: Recession-Era Politics and the Transformation of American Punishment. Oakland, CA: University of California Press. Barker, V. (2009) The Politics of Imprisonment: How the Democratic Process Shapes the Way America Punishes Offenders. New York: Oxford University Press. Beckett, K., A. Reosti and E. Knaphus (2016) ‘The End of an Era? Understanding the Contradictions of Criminal Justice Reform’, ANNALS AAPSS 664: 238–259. Bell, E. (2011) Criminal Justice and Neoliberalism. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Birch, K. and V. Mykhnenko (eds) (2010) The Rise and Fall of Neoliberalism: The Collapse of an Economic Order? London: Zed Books. Cadora, E. (2014) ‘Civic Lessons: How Certain Schemes to End Mass Incarceration Can Fail’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 651(1): 277–285. Cate, S. (2016) ‘Devolution, not Decarceration: The Limits of Juvenile Justice Reform in Texas’, Punishment & Society [Online First], 1–32. Cavadino, M. and Dignan, J. (2006) Penal Systems: A Comparative Approach. London: Sage. Cheliotis, L. K. (2013) ‘Neoliberal Capitalism and Middle-Class Punitiveness: Bringing Erich Fromm’s “Materialistic Psychoanalysis” to Penology’, Punishment & Society 15(3): 247–273. 257

Sappho Xenakis and Leonidas K. Cheliotis

Cheliotis, L. K. (2017) ‘Punitive Inclusion: The Political Economy of Irregular Migration in the Margins of Europe’, European Journal of Criminology 14(1): 78–99. Cheliotis, L. K. and S. Xenakis (2010) ‘What’s Neoliberalism Got to Do with It? Towards a Political Economy of Punishment in Greece’, Criminology & Criminal Justice 10(4): 353–373. Dagan, D. and S. Teles (2014) ‘Locked in? Conservative Reform and the Future of Mass Incarceration’, ANNALS AAPSS 651(1): 266–276. De Giorgi, A. (2006) Re-thinking the Political Economy of Punishment: Perspective on Post-Fordism and Penal Politics. Aldershot: Ashgate. De Giorgi, A. (2012) ‘Punishment and Political Economy’, in J. Simon and R. Sparks (eds) The Sage Handbook of Punishment and Society, pp. 40–59. London: Sage. De Giorgi, A. (2015) ‘Five Theses on Mass Incarceration’, Social Justice 42(2): 5–30. Gamble, A. (2009) The Spectre at the Feast. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Garland, D. (2001) The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Gilmore, R. W. (2007) Golden Gulag. Berkeley: University of California Press. Gottschalk, M. (2006) The Prison and the Gallows: The Politics of Mass Incarceration in America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gottschalk, M. (2015) Caught: The Prison State and the Lockdown of American Politics. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Greenberg, D. F. and V. West (2001) ‘State Prison Populations and their growth, 1971–1991’, Criminology 39(3): 615–653. Harcourt, B. E. (2010) ‘Neoliberal Penality: A Brief Genealogy’, Theoretical Criminology 14(1): 1–19. Kilgore, J. (2013) ‘Confronting Prison Slave Labour Camps and Other Myths’, Social Justice Blog, 28 August. Kubrin, C. and C. Seron (2016) ‘The Prospects and Perils of Ending Mass Incarceration in the United States’, ANNALS AAPSS 664: 16–24. Lacey, N. (2008) The Prisoners’ Dilemma: Political Economy and Punishment in Contemporary Democracies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lacey, N. and D. Soskice (2015) ‘Crime, Punishment and Segregation in the United States: The Paradox of Local Democracy’, Punishment & Society 17(4): 454–481. Lynch, M. (2007) Big Prisons, Big Dreams. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Lynch, M. (2010) Sunbelt Justice: Arizona and the Transformation of American Punishment. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Martin, W. G. (2016) ‘Decarceration and Justice Disinvestment: Evidence from New York State’, Punishment & Society 18(4): 479–504. Melossi, D. (2015) Crime, Punishment and Migration. London: Sage. Melossi, D. and M. Pavarini (1981) The Prison and the Factory: Origins of the Penitentiary System. London: Macmillan. Michalowski, R. (2015) ‘Security and Peace in the US–Mexico Borderlands’, in L. Weber (ed.) Rethinking Border Control for a Globalizing World: A Preferred Future, pp. 44–63. Abingdon: Routledge. Michalowski, R. and S. Carlson (1999) ‘Unemployment, Imprisonment, and Social Structures of Accumulation: Historical Contingency in the Rusche-Kirchheimer Thesis’, Criminology 37(2): 217–249. Miller, L. L. (2008) The Perils of Federalism: Race, Poverty, and the Politics of Crime Control. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nelken, D. (2009) ‘Comparative Criminal Justice: Beyond Ethnocentricism and Relativism’, European Journal of Criminology 6(4): 291–311. Nelken, D. (2010) ‘Denouncing the Penal State’, Criminology & Criminal Justice 10(4): 331–340. Newburn, T. (2010) ‘Diffusion, Differentiation and Resistance in Comparative Penality’, Criminology & Criminal Justice 10(4): 341–352. O’Malley, P. (2015) ‘Rethinking Neoliberal Penality’, Legal Studies Research Paper 67(15): 1–24. Parenti, C. (1999) Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis. London: Verso. Peck, J. (2010) Constructions of Neoliberal Reason. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Phelps, M. and D. Pager (2016) ‘Inequality and Punishment: A Turning Point for Mass Incarceration?’, ANNALS AAPSS 663(1): 185–203. Ross, J. I. (ed.) (2013) The Globalization of Supermax Prisons. New Brunswick, NJ.: Rutgers University Press. Rusche, G. and O. Kirchheimer (1929 [2003]) Punishment and Social Structure. New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers. Schlosser, E. (1998) ‘The Prisons-Industrial Complex’, Atlantic Monthly, December. 258

Neoliberalism and the politics of imprisonment

Simon, J. (2007) Governing through Crime: How the War on Crime Transformed American Democracy and Created a Culture of Fear. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Simon, J. (2015) Mass Incarceration on Trial: A Remarkable Court Decision and the Future of Prisons in America. New York: The New Press. Soss, J., R. C. Fording and S. F. Schram (2011) Disciplining the Poor: Neoliberal Paternalism and the Persistent Power of Race. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. Sundt, J., E. Salisbury and M. Harmon (2016) ‘Is Downsizing Prisons Dangerous? The Effect of California’s Realignment Act on Public Safety’, Criminology & Public Policy 15(2): 315–341. Sutton, J, (2012) ‘Imprisonment and Opportunity Structures: A Bayesian Hierarchical Analysis’, European Sociological Review 28(1): 12–27. Wacquant, L. (2009a) Prisons of Poverty, expanded edition. Minneapolis, MN and London: University of Minnesota Press. Wacquant, L. (2009b) Punishing the Poor: The Neoliberal Government of Social Insecurity. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press. Western, B. and K. Beckett (1999) ‘How Unregulated is the U.S. Labor Market? Penal System as Labor Market Institution, 1980–1995’, American Journal of Sociology 104(3): 1030–1060. Whitfield, J. (2015) ‘Other Neoliberal Penalities: Marching Powder and Prison Tourism in La Paz’, Theoretical Criminology 20(3): 358–375.

259

21 Private prisons, the criminal justice–industrial complex and bodies destined for profitable punishment Paul Leighton and Donna Selman

Introduction Privatization refers to outsourcing government functions to private, usually for-profit business under a contract. The aggregate of businesses that profit from criminal justice expenditures is the criminal justice–industrial complex. Although criminologists do not often follow the money trail to understand criminal justice policy, firms that make money from the current system have revenue streams they want to protect – and enhance. This dynamic is a problem when businesses make a profit from policy and practices that are marked by many injustices, especially by targeting the poor and minorities. Indeed, businesses lobby and make political donations to influence public policy in ways that privilege their profitability over the public interest and requirements of justice. Such distortions can be substantial when expenditures for criminal justice and security are hundreds of billions of dollars a year. Further, private interests make criminal justice policy less accountable to the public. While people can file Freedom of Information Act or similar requests to find out about many operations of government, the law does not cover businesses. Companies that are traded on the stock market (“public” companies) must file some information with the Securities and Exchange Commission (Selman & Leighton, 2010, Appendix A) or a government regulator, but privately-held companies are not required to make public disclosures. In addition, both public and private companies prevent the disclosure of a variety of information by labelling it a trade secret or another assertion that the information is proprietary. For example, one Scottish parliamentary commission stated: “You can imagine how exasperating it is to be told continually that information is commercially confidential, because it means that we cannot compare” essential features of public and private prisons (Justice 1 Committee, 2002). Recently, criminal justice agencies have been purchasing software that is marketed as helping officials make decisions about someone’s future risk to help with decisions about bail or sentencing. However, the algorithm in such products is a trade secret, so defendants cannot even know which pieces of information were considered and how they were weighed, much less cross examine the propriety of the algorithm (Angwin, Larson, Mattu & Kirchner 2016). Additionally, 260

The criminal justice–industrial complex

non-disparagement clauses in contracts hinder the ability of public officials to publicly critique the products and services of contractors (Selman & Leighton, 2010, p. 172). Currently, the most privatized aspect of criminal justice is punishment in general, and prisons in particular. Private prisons are a high-profile example, especially after they donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Presidential campaign and inaugural of Donald Trump, who campaigned on an agenda of being tough on crime and immigration. These policies promise larger incarcerated populations and the stock prices of private prisons have risen greatly after his election. Private prison companies both operate facilities owned by the government and manage inmates in a prison the company owns. In some countries, such arrangements may be called Public Private Partnerships (PPP) or Private Finance Initiatives (PFI). Private prisons emerged in the 1980s in response to two powerful forces. First, since the 1970s, the United States has been waging a relentless “tough on-crime” campaign that focuses on harsher punishments for crimes of the poor rather than crime prevention. The demand for prison space outstripped the ability of government to fund construction and renovation, especially when politicians also like to promise tax cuts. Second, President Ronald Reagan declared that “government was the problem” and set out to privatize as many government functions as possible to take advantage of the supposed efficiencies of businesses that compete in the market. In 1983, two politically active businessmen at a Republican presidential fund-raiser hit upon the idea of privatized prisons “to solve the prison problem and make a lot of money at the same time” (in Selman & Leighton, 2010, p. 56). They created the Corrections Corporation of America, which proposed to design, build, and/or manage prisons for all levels of government. It charged a per diem (daily) fee for inmates, with revenue based on the number of “compensated man days.” The highest profits come from running the prison at close to maximum occupancy, much like the hotel industry, and CCA received venture capital and advice from Jack Massey, who also built the Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise. Private prisons are now a multi-billion dollar, multi-national industry, with the two largest firms – Core Civic (formerly Corrections Corporation of America [CCA]) and GEO Group (formerly Wackenhut) – traded on stock exchanges. While private prisons are a visible and relatively easily understood aspect of privatization and the prison– or criminal justice–industrial complex, the problems of “bodies destined for profitable punishment” (Davis, 1999) are substantially larger. The investigations and analysis of these problems have been done by academics, journalists and activists from criminal justice, economics, social work, criminology, political science/public administration and others. The next two sections review the critical literature. The first section examines the process and propriety of contracting out a function like punishment. The reality of inmates currently being held in private prisons does not negate the question of whether government should be searching for the lowest bidder to administer that government’s coercive power. The second section examines the prison– and criminal justice–industrial complex, an outgrowth of the incarceration binge; it describes the concerns with profit interests in a high and/or increasing prison population. As the complex gets larger, public policy about criminal justice and public safety is made increasingly in the interests of profits and shareholders rather than the public.

The moral concerns about private prisons Up to the 1980s, most privatization had been “nominal privatization,” which includes contracting with private companies for services like the construction of prisons, provision of food services, medical care and commissary supplies. “Operational privatization” means contracting out of the day-to-day management of prisons to private for-profit companies who employ guards 261

Paul Leighton and Donna Selman

and a warden, sometimes in a prison the company owns. The first contracts for operational privatization involving illegal immigrants attracted little attention, and the debate over private companies managing prisons really started when CCA made a bid to manage the entire troubled prison system of Tennessee even though they had almost no actual experience of running prisons (Selman & Leighton, 2010, p. 60). One important body of literature to arise in response concerned issues of morality, legitimacy and accountability. These issues were never widely discussed by politicians, and when private prisons looked like they were going to be permanent fixtures of the criminal justice system, debate became focused largely on cost-effectiveness. But conservative John DiIulio asks, “Who ought to administer justice?” (1988, p. 72). This question gets at what sociologist Max Weber has described as a fundamental characteristic of the modern state – the claim by the state to exercise a monopoly over the use of legitimate force. DiIulio’s main argument is two-fold: first, the delegation of authority to private contractors delegitimizes both the practice and message of punishment; and second, it undermines the moral writ of the community. Many critics ground the argument of the state retaining the power to punish in the social contract (through which the people give power to government), which DiIulio’s (1988, p. 79) point also reflects more indirectly: The administration of prisons and jails involves the legally sanctioned exercise of coercion by some citizens over others. This coercion is exercised in the name of the offended public. The badge of the arresting policeman, the robes of the judge, and the state patch on the uniform of the corrections officer are symbols of the inherently public nature of crime and punishment. Those who favor privatizing prisons suggest that the imposition of punishment through the sentencing power of the courts is the core function that must be retained by the state, but actual incarceration involves an administration or service in support of incarceration that can be contracted out (Le Vay, 2016). But DiIulio (1988, p. 82) argues that “it is simply unclear how one can distinguish morally between private and public courts, and between private and public policing, and yet see no moral difference between private and public corrections.” Indeed, if the distinction between imposing and administering punishment is valid, then Schwartz and Nurge satirically ask: “If states can assign a private firm to imprison an offender, why not allow states to just turn over prisoners to the Executions Corporation of America, a group of former Texas officials who have put to death a great many people in the past and have now built on speculation their own execution chamber to which they offer to import death row inmates? Why not?” (2004, pp. 147–8). Le Vay, who has worked for the British government and firms contracting with the government for operational prison privatization, is pragmatic in wanting the best prison for the money. While he is willing to see privately run prisons as subcontracting the implementation of punishment, “contracting prison services is acceptable if, and only if, the State rigorously prescribes proper standards, and rigorously polices them, and there are robust systems for accountability and transparency” (2016, p. 224). He believes privatization in England reaches that threshold, but he notes “substantial weaknesses” in areas and that low standards and weak accountability have applied to both government and privately run prisons – problems that favor transformations in government prisons rather than privatization. Further, certain aspects of managing a prison can change the experience and duration of incarceration, like disciplinary decisions involving solitary confinement or loss of good-time credits that extends an inmate’s stay (and may generate more income for a private prison). 262

The criminal justice–industrial complex

Advocates of privatization argue it can be structured so imposition decisions are not made by private companies, but the reality is that contracts often do not control such practices. More generally, contracts feature inadequate monitoring arrangements and token penalties for contract non-compliance (Selman & Leighton, 2010, p. 112; Andrew, 2007; Gran & Henry, 2007). Many of the critiques of privately-run prisons apply to many nations because the American companies that developed the idea spread it globally, while other companies mimicked the contracting out model developed in the U.S. However, in developing a PFI program in corrections, Japan took a different approach. Private financing of construction and operation applied to “rehabilitation centers” and not to prisons in an effort to develop a “model prison for the next 50 years” and one “the public could understand and support” (Leighton, 2014). The Warden and a series of Deputy Wardens are employees of the government, and they oversee many private contractors who provide intensive rehabilitation and security in a high-tech setting. While having the look and feel of prisons, the Japanese emphasis on rehabilitation with government control of the facility minimizes many of the traditional concerns about privately-run prisons. American-style contracts between government and private prisons break the “chain of command” (Roth, 2004, p. 52) between the correctional officer and elected public officials that undermines the legitimacy of punishment. The sincere efforts to provide education, vocational training and rehabilitative services in Japan is different from where privately run prisons are trying, more through public relations than substantive changes, to embrace reentry programs. The show of embrace of rehabilitation is an effort to reposition the industry in the moral debates, but in the U.S. the scale of change is not enough to change the reality that privately run prisons are merely an attempt to maintain an excessively large system of warehouse prisons at perhaps a slightly reduced cost. When the High Court of Justice in Israel struck down a law allowing for privately run prisons, they did so for reasons similar to those discussed in this section, although they stand alone among developed nations to make such a statement. They said, “the human rights of prison inmates are violated ipso facto by the transfer of powers to manage and operate a prison from the state to a private concessionaire that is a profit-making enterprise.” Transferring the “invasive” powers that go along with managing a prison to a private profit-making corporation “violates the human dignity of the inmates of that prison, since the public purposes that give imprisonment legitimacy are undermined and the inmates becomes a means for the private corporation to make profits” (Academic Center of Law and Business v. Minister of Finance, HCJ 2605/05 [2009]).1

The prison and criminal justice–industrial complex Another related body of research examines private prisons in the context of a prison– and criminal justice–industrial complex. This research draws together ideas about control of the surplus population, the incarceration binge in the United States, Christie’s Crime Control as Industry (2000) and President Eisenhower’s warning of a military–industrial complex that was driving policy outside of public scrutiny and accountability with “the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power” (1961). Scholars, journalists and activists try to “follow the money” to examine the variety of interests that benefit from mass incarceration and thus have an interest in continuing it. The prison–industrial complex is more than private prisons and includes suppliers of goods and services to jails, prisons, parole and probation. The Corrections Yellow Pages provides a starting point for conceptualizing the prison–industrial complex, as do the vendors who would attend conferences of corrections officials. (Private prisons add in Wall Street bankers and lawyers plus millions of shareholders.) The criminal justice–industrial complex includes the prison–industrial complex plus all those who supply goods or services to police and courts. Politicians who exploit 263

Paul Leighton and Donna Selman

concerns about crime for votes are part of the criminal justice–industrial complex, as are those who take contributions from other participants in the complex. Media that sensationalize crime for ratings and corporate profits are part of the complex, as are communities that desired prison construction for economic development. Expanding further, a security–industrial complex includes terrorism, immigration (Le Vay, 2016; Golash-Boza, 2015), surveillance schools (Taylor, 2013), private security and those who profit off the fears the older generations have of youth. The security–industrial complex expands on the criminal justice–industrial complex to include an examination of military, intelligence, immigration and Homeland Security agencies. It would include the sale to non-criminal justice entities of metal detectors, security devices and services, surveillance systems, drug testing, facial recognition technology, and a variety of products and services to help “manage risk.” The terms prison– and criminal justice–industrial complexes are derived from the idea of the military–industrial complex that U.S. President (and former General) Eisenhower warned of. He noted (1961) that until World War II, “the United States had no armaments industry” – other businesses converted to manufacture them as necessary – but having a permanent armaments industry of “vast proportions” (including millions of employees and substantial military spending) was new and troubling. The “economic, political, even spiritual” influence of these interests was: felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together. Eisenhower saw the military–industrial complex as a new phenomenon and warned that its acquisition of too much influence could threaten democracy and liberty. Similarly, while prisons and the criminal justice system have had contracts with businesses for supplies and consultants for much of their history, the nature of these relationships and the amount of money involved has hit a critical mass because of the war on crime. As more companies generate revenue from corrections, there is increasing concern that misplaced power in the multi-billion-dollar industrial complex leads to distorted policy: the interests of corporate shareholders become increasingly important at the expense of public safety and accountability. For the businesses involved, the goal is profit; basic free market principles dictate that public and private companies have a duty to make money for their owners. Under this widely accepted analysis, businesses involved in incarceration, for example, have no duty to balance their desire for ever-increasing profits with, say, crime-prevention funding or money for schools. Indeed, sentencing reform and declining crime rates are listed as “risk factors” in various Securities and Exchange Commission filings. Consider the statement in the GEO Group’s annual report for 2008: the demand for our correctional and detention facilities and services could be adversely affected by changes in existing criminal or immigration laws, crime rates in jurisdictions in which we operate, the relaxation of criminal or immigration enforcement efforts, leniency in 264

The criminal justice–industrial complex

conviction, sentencing or deportation practices, and the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by criminal laws or the loosening of immigration laws. For example, any changes with respect to the decriminalization of drugs and controlled substances could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, sentenced and incarcerated, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them. Similarly, reductions in crime rates could lead to reductions in arrests, convictions and sentences requiring incarceration at correctional facilities. Immigration reform laws which are currently a focus for legislators and politicians at the federal, state and local level also could materially adversely impact us. (2009) Their more recent filings are less specific about the factors that could cause reduced demand for their services, but the same concerns still apply to their business, as evidenced by the statement in CoreCivic’s 2016 annual report: The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by criminal laws. For instance, any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them. Immigration reform laws are currently a focus for legislators and politicians at the federal, state, and local level. Legislation has also been proposed in numerous jurisdictions that could lower minimum sentences for some non-violent crimes and make more inmates eligible for early release based on good behavior. Also, sentencing alternatives under consideration could put some offenders on probation with electronic monitoring who would otherwise be incarcerated. Similarly, reductions in crime rates or resources dedicated to prevent and enforce crime could lead to reductions in arrests, convictions and sentences requiring incarceration at correctional facilities. (2017, p. 33) Readers will have a variety of reactions to the reforms listed above based on notions of just deserts, public safety, etc. But debates over mandatory minimums, alternatives to incarceration and immigration now happen in a policy environment where a multibillion dollar industry wants to maintain existing policies and increase incarceration rates because their growth depends on securing more inmates and more money from government. CoreCivic states in their filing that they do not lobby government on any of the issues listed in the quote above, although historically they have (Ollson, 2002); it seems surprising that Wall Street financial institutions would lend hundreds of millions of dollars and hold millions of shares in a company that was not managing key risk factors for its business. Christie argues that “the raw material is prisoners and the industry will do what is necessary to guarantee a steady supply” (2000, p. 87), and Davis (1999) highlights the racism behind “bodies destined for profitable punishment” whose disappearance from society is supposed to convey the illusion of solving social problems. Instead, the “prison industrial system materially and morally impoverishes its inhabitants and devours the social wealth needed to address the very problems that have led to spiraling numbers of prisoners” (in Andrew, 2007, pp. 881–2). The prison–industrial complex is “not a conspiracy” but “a confluence of special interests” who see the billions spent each year on “corrections not as a burden on American taxpayers but as a lucrative market” (Schlosser, 1998). What emerges as an aspect of the industrial complex is a “subgovernment,” which exists when the “decision making within a given policy arena rests 265

Paul Leighton and Donna Selman

within a closed circle or the elite of government bureaucrats, agency heads, interest groups or private interests that gain from the allocation of public resources” (Lilly & Knepper, 1993, p. 151). Subgovernments have the potential to determine public policy free from scrutiny with far-reaching economic, political, and social consequences. As the subgovernment becomes stable, “the line between the public good and private interest becomes blurred as governmental and nongovernmental institutions become harder to distinguish” (Lilly & Knepper, 1993, p. 153). Further, because much policy-making is routine, “decision making is normally invisible” and “the closed, low-profile operations of a subgovernment are not noticed by the public, the media, nor other governmental agencies” (ibid). Finally, subgovernment participants “work to isolate the mutually beneficial alliance” from outside influence and accountability – thus creating the notion of the “iron triangle” – especially as “policymakers and private participants come to share the assumption that they are not only acting in their own interests, but the general interest as well” (Lilly & Knepper, 1993, pp. 153–4). The expansion of criminal justice fines and fees should lead to a reconsideration of the traditional view of the criminal justice–industrial complex, in which the private sector extracted money from government. Dyer, for example, describes how prison-oriented “trade shows, mailorder catalogs, newsletters, and conventions, and literally thousands of corporations are now eating at the justice-system trough” (2000, p. 11). But by 2011, the Conference of State Court Administrators issued a policy paper Courts Are Not Revenue Centers, where they state that the use and structure of fees “has recast the role of the court as a collection agency for executive branch services” (2011, p. 9). The process frequently involves aggressive policing of sub-misdemeanor infractions and issuing citations that carry a fine plus a court fee. People who cannot afford to pay often do not show up, whereupon the court issues an arrest warrant, which carries another fee (Reiman and Leighton, 2017, pp. 123, 205). In response to the police shooting of an unarmed black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri, a Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation found that the City Finance Director and City Manager asked the Police Chief to aggressively issue citations so that revenue from court fees could be increased because of other budget shortfalls. Management carefully monitored police “productivity” (number of citations issued), so DOJ found that “many officers appear to see some residents, especially those who live in Ferguson’s predominantly African-American neighborhoods, less as constituents to be protected than as potential offenders and sources of revenue” (2015, p. 2). They found further that “this emphasis on revenue has compromised the institutional character of Ferguson’s police department, contributing to a pattern of unconstitutional policing, and has also shaped its municipal court” (p. 2). The court works to “advance the City’s financial interests” and “does not act as a neutral arbiter of the law or a check on unlawful police conduct” (p. 3). These practices especially harm the poorer residents, because “minor offenses can generate crippling debts, [and] result in jail time because of an inability to pay” (p. 4). Unfortunately, the problem is not confined to Ferguson, and the government also collects revenue in hidden ways from businesses that engage in unfair practices. In one southern jurisdiction, for example, being released on bail required wearing an electronic monitoring device that costed $300 a month, and while the fee was payable directly to the monitoring company, the company shared part of its revenue with the government. Trial can take a year or more, so fees pile up and strain the budgets of already poor households. The failure to pay means a return to jail, so “people are pleading guilty because it’s cheaper to be on probation than it is to be on electronic monitoring” (Markowitz, 2015). Thus, government and the criminal justice system itself are part of the problem of distorting policy and public safety in the name of revenue. By engaging in predatory finance and abusive collection practices, the criminal justice system has become a key player in the revenue-generating aspect of the criminal justice–industrial complex. 266

The criminal justice–industrial complex

Conclusion Private prisons may be a small part of a prison– and criminal justice–industrial complex, but they are large global business. Understanding “corrections” in many developed nations is incomplete without an understanding of privatization, and understanding criminal justice increasingly requires the study of related private businesses and the flow of money. Critical analysis needs to critique privatization and society’s unwillingness to deal with the sources of crime (Reiman and Leighton, 2017). Ultimately, crime control through policing and mass incarceration is like “mopping the water off the floor while we let the tub overflow. Mopping harder may make some difference in the level of the flood. It does not, however, do anything about the open faucet” (Currie, 1985, p. 227). Private prisons have a vested interest in selling what they claim are better and cheaper mops while diverting attention from the faucet; others in the prison–industrial complex have a vested interest in managing the flood rather than preventing it. Further, because the incarceration binge has led to racial injustice, broken communities and diverted resources from social justice projects, “private prisons and the criminal justice–industrial complex were born from a social movement that has fostered injustice and that these entities, pursuing their own economic interests rather than the public good, perpetuate policies that cause further injustice because they profit from them” (Selman & Leighton, 2010, p. 21; Hallett, 2006). Private prisons pursuing their economic self-interests easily conflict with numerous public interests and have substantial resources to prevail. Privatization may sound like it offers public benefits because of the forces of the “free market.” But with private prisons there are two big firms (not many sellers), one buyer (government) and high barriers to entry, all of which violate assumptions of free market theory and leads Le Vay (2016) to call them quasi-markets. The benefits accrue to the executives of private firms, who get richer because the poor are getting prison (Reiman and Leighton, 2017). Executives make more than their government counterparts and – to the extent they compete on price and quality – extract a profit by suppressing the pay of people who work in the prisons (Taylor & Cooper, 2008; Selman & Leighton, 2010, p. 131; Le Vay 2016). Because of the many injustices inherent in American-style private prisons and in the criminal justice–industrial complex more generally, all countries that have privately run prisons and where corporations engage in substantial (if hidden) lobbying on criminal justice policy also have opposition movements. Resistance to powerful, moneyed interests is difficult, especially where it dovetails with racism and additional forms of othering. While some of the industry’s biggest setbacks have been self-inflicted, activism obviously matters, but no one has collected these accounts of resistance and analyzed tactics. The question is, what works under what circumstances – and what should be considered given the changing nature of privatization and social, political, economic and technological environment in the near future?

Note 1

Translation from Hebrew provided by Cardozo Law School, http://versa.cardozo.yu.edu/opinions/ academic-center-law-and-business-v-minister-finance.

References Andrew, J. (2007). Prisons, the profit motive and other challenges to accountability. Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 18(8), 877–904. Angwin, J., Larson, J., Mattu, S., & Kirchner, L. (2016). Machine Bias. ProPublica, May 23. www.propublica. org/article/machine-bias-risk-assessments-in-criminal-sentencing. Christie, N. (2000). Crime Control as Industry, 3rd ed. New York: Routledge. 267

Paul Leighton and Donna Selman

Conference of State Court Administrators (2011). Courts Are Not Revenue Centers. https://csgjusticecenter. org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/2011–12-COSCA-report.pdf. CoreCivic (2017). Form 10-K. Filed with Securities and Exchange Commission February 23. Currie, E. (1985). Confronting Crime: An American Challenge. New York: Pantheon. Davis, A. (1999). Globalism and the Prison Industrial Complex. Race and Class, 40, 2–3. DiIulio, J.J., Jr. (1988). What’s wrong with private prisons. The Public Interest, 92 (summer), 66–83. Department of Justice (2015). Investigation of the Ferguson Police Department. www.justice.gov/sites/default/ files/opa/press-releases/attachments/2015/03/04/ferguson_police_department_report.pdf. Dyer, J. (2000). The Perpetual Prisoner Machine. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Eisenhower, D. (1961). Farewell address. Wikisource. Retrieved from http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/ Eisenhower%27s_farewell_address. GEO Group. (2009). Form 10-K. Filed with Securities and Exchange Commission February 18. Hallett, M. (2006) Private Prisons in America: A Critical Race Perspective. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press. Golash-Boza, T. (2015). Deported: Immigrant Policing, Disposable Labor and Global Capitalism. New York: New York University Press. Gran, B. & Henry, W. (2007). Holding private prisons accountable: A socio-legal analysis of prison contracts. Social Justice, 34(3–4), 173–194. Justice 1 Committee (Scottish Parliament). (2002). Prison estates review. May 22 Hearings. Retrieved from http:// web.archive.org/web/20070304142545/http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/business/committees/ historic/justice1/or-02/j102–2102.htm. Le Vay, J. (2016). Competition for Prisons: Public or Private? Bristol: Policy Press. Leighton, P. (2014). “A model prison for the next 50 years”: The high-tech public–private Shimane Asahi Rehabilitation Center. Justice Policy Journal, 11(1). Lilly, R. & Knepper, P. (1993). The corrections-commercial complex. Crime & Delinquency, 39(2), 150–66. Markowitz, E. (2015). Chain Gang 2.0: If You Can’t Afford This GPS Ankle Bracelet, You Get Thrown in Jail. International Business Times, September 21. www.ibtimes.com/chain-gang-20-if-you-cant-affordgps-ankle-bracelet-you-get-thrown-jail-2065283. Ollson, K. (2002). Ghostwriting the law. Mother Jones, October. Retrieved from www.motherjones.com/ news/outfront/2002/09/ma_95_01.html. Reiman, J., & Leighton, P. (2017). The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison, 11th ed. New York: Routledge. Roth, L. (2004). Privatization of Prisons. NSW Parliamentary Library Research Service. Retrieved from http://web.archive.org/web/20080908103240/http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/prod/parlment/ publications.nsf/0/ED4BA0B9D18C2546CA256EF9001B3ADA/$File/bg03–04.pdf. Schlosser, E. (1998). The prison-industrial complex. The Atlantic. December. Retrieved from www.theatlantic. com/doc/199812/prisons. Schwartz, M. & Nurge, D. (2004). Capitalist punishment: Ethics and private prisons. Critical Criminology, 12, 133–156. Selman, D. & Leighton, P. (2010). Punishment for Sale: Private Prisons, Big Business and the Incarceration Binge. Lanham (MD): Rowman and Littlefield. Taylor, E. (2013). Surveillance Schools. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Taylor, P. & Cooper, C. (2008). It was absolute hell: Inside the private prison. Capital & Class, 32(3), 3–30. DOI: 10.1177/030981680809600101.

268

22 Power and accountability Life after death row in the United States Kimberly J. Cook and Saundra D. Westervelt

Central to critical criminology is the examination of the unequal distribution and application of power in modern society (DeKeseredy, 2011). In this chapter, we examine applications of power and accountability as experienced by exonerated death row survivors in the United States. Since 2003, we have conducted 18 life history interviews with exonerated death row survivors in the United States. Our participants include 17 men and one woman who were wrongfully convicted of capital crimes, sentenced to death, and later exonerated and released from prison (see Table 22.1; Westervelt & Cook, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2012a, 2012b, 2013, forthcoming; Baumgartner, Westervelt & Cook, 2014; Cook, Westervelt & Maruna, 2014). Through this work, we have documented the devastating toll that wrongful capital convictions have on the social, psychological, and physical health of exonerated death row survivors and their families. We examine the extensive challenges to re-entry faced by exonerees: finding employment; searching for a place to live; rebuilding family and friend relationships; on-going conflict with the state over financial compensation; expungement of their wrongful convictions; and learning to cope with the social and psychological impact of life on death row (Westervelt & Cook, forthcoming). In addition to this academic work and in the spirit of public sociology (Buroway, 2004), we currently volunteer with non-profit organizations that provide peer-support to people directly impacted by wrongful convictions.1 This work enhances our opportunities to learn more from exonerees and shape supportive remedies for those whose lives have been shattered by wrongful convictions. Here, we take a step back to examine how power is exercised by the state, how accountability is pursued in cases where innocent people are sentenced to death for murders they did not commit, and to offer some ideas for remedy and redress. In previous publications, we have explicitly used critical and feminist criminological frameworks for analyzing these events (Westervelt & Cook, 2007, 2010, 2012a). We argue that wrongful convictions establish a relationship to the state that is potentially lethal and perpetual; once an exoneration occurs, the battle against the state is not over. Exonerees continue to fight the state for the wrongful conviction to be expunged and for compensation to be awarded. In this paper, we document some of the consequences of wrongful capital convictions, through the voices of our research participants.

269

Kimberly J. Cook and Saundra D. Westervelt

Stolen lives The state exercises power in such a way that wrongly convicted and condemned people feel abandoned and rejected by society. Exonerated death row survivors first felt the power of the state during the investigatory and trial stages of their cases when their voices were mostly unheard and their innocence overlooked (if not actively disregarded). “Prosecutors are relatively well-funded and have broad discretionary authority to bring charges against defendants. The average defendant in capital cases is poor and relies on an under-funded attorney, often courtappointed, with a heavy caseload and limited time, resources, and knowledge to adequately represent his/her client. . . . It is not a level playing field” (Westervelt & Cook, 2010, p. 261). After exoneration, the playing field remains uneven as exonerees face ongoing conflict with the state to regain their reputations, expunge their records, and gain access to limited resources to aid their reintegration (Westervelt & Cook, 2012a). Many are not successful because they lack the resources to wage these fights or to pay others to fight for them. Still, the state continues to have relatively unlimited resources to inhibit their reintegration by limiting which, if any, exonerees have access to compensation or reparations. The state also has a more powerful voice in the court of public opinion often by continuing to question an exoneree’s actual innocence (Westervelt & Cook, 2012a). Christie (1977, p. 4) argues that the state steals conflicts away from stakeholders and that “[c]onflicts become the property of lawyers.” Lawyers represent the state and act on behalf of the state; they engage police to carry out the will of the state in order to “protect and serve” the public. As such, conflicts are “immensely more valuable” (p. 7) than the supposed property that might have been lost in the conflict, because doing so provides a platform for the state to reinforce its own power. Christie’s concept can be extended to those who are wrongly convicted as they are themselves “stolen” by the state without resources to defend themselves against the powerful prosecution and death sentence imposed on them. In a recent gathering of exonerated death row survivors, for instance, one exonerated death row survivor referred to his 22 years of wrongful incarceration as being “held hostage” by the state. He was, in essence, “stolen” from his family, friends, community, and lost his independence and capacity to live his life.2 He saw his life as “irreparably disrupted” (Westervelt & Cook, 2012a, p. 54) due to the state’s accusations against him. Upon sentence of death, and thus being “expelled from humanity” (Westervelt & Cook, 2012a, p. 171), our exonerees’ lives were stolen from them by the state. A vivid and terrifying example is Greg Wilhoit’s experience when the judge made it clear that he was to be executed: “‘[We’ll kill you by] lethal injection, but if that fails, we’ll kill you by electrocution. If the power goes out, we’ll hang you. If the rope breaks, we’ll take you out back and shoot you . . .’. And I just about shit! It was just me and the prosecutor, and the judge in this big giant courtroom . . . I’ve realized this was the most sobering moment in my life” (Westervelt & Cook, 2012a, p. 108). Perry Cobb tries to convey that moment in this way: “It’s a little hard to describe. . . . I guess it’s like a mother giving birth and the child dies at birth. I don’t know. I really don’t know. But I do know that it’s a pain that no artist can draw if a person’s able to give it to him in words. I don’t believe that they can put it on a, a canvas . . . you talking about self. . . . It’s like a, a dry, rotten weed in the wind. It’s gone. It’s a dusting, and you’ll never see ’em again. . . . It’s really hard to give you that. I can’t give it to you. . . . That moment was my whole life. That was my life” (Westervelt & Cook, 2012a, p. 171). In some cases, facing their actual execution date cemented their despair. Sabrina Butler believed she was to be executed in 1990, but did not understand that the execution had been stayed pending appeal. When the day arrived, she was “the scaredest person in the world. . . . This is a 270

Power and accountability

feeling I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. . . . That is the most humiliating, scary thing that any person could ever go through. I was scared to death because I thought that they was gonna kill me for something that I didn’t do, and I couldn’t tell nobody to help me. Wasn’t nobody there” (Westervelt & Cook, 2012a, p. 116). Shabaka Brown came within 15 hours of his execution in Florida. While being measured for his burial suit, he lashed out at the guards and lost some teeth in the brawl. Adding to the pain of having one’s life being stolen is witnessing the extermination of stolen lives of others who are condemned to death alongside them. Greg Wilhoit’s close friend on death row in Oklahoma, Chuck Coleman, was executed during Greg’s confinement. “Eleven minutes after midnight, [they] announced that Charles Troy Coleman had been pronounced dead. And, like I said, I really didn’t think it’d bother me. So nobody could have been more surprised than I was when instead of indifference I was overwhelmed with grief ” (Westervelt & Cook, 2012a, p. 115). The grim reality that everyone confined on death row has been snatched up by the state and housed for extermination is sobering.

Victims of state harm We have argued elsewhere (Westervelt & Cook, 2010) that exonerated death row survivors are, in fact, victims of state harm. According to Kauzlarich, Matthews and Miller (2001, p. 176), victims of state crime have “experienced economic, cultural, or physical harm, exclusion, or exploitation because of tacit or explicit state actions or policies which violate the law or generally defined human rights.” We argue that exonerated death row survivors share the following characteristics with other victims of state crime: 1 2 3 4 5 6

They are among the least socially powerful actors. The state fails to recognize how harmful its institutional policies are. Any acknowledgment of harm by the state is neutralized by a sense of state entitlement. Victims of state harm are blamed for their own suffering. Victims of state harm must rely on the victimizer (the state) for redress. Victims of state harm are easy targets for repeat victimization. Illegal state policies and practices are an attempt to achieve organizational or institutional goals.3 (Westervelt & Cook, 2010)

As the most powerful actor in wrongful convictions, the state creates and recreates harm to exonerated death row survivors in many ways – by refusing to acknowledge an exoneree’s actual innocence, by ignoring exonerees’ needs post-release, and by exculpating the state and its officials of responsibility for the wrongful conviction. The catalogue of harms suffered by death row survivors is lengthy and includes being released from prison, often quite suddenly, without assistance finding a place to live, difficulty finding employment because the wrongful conviction is not expunged or because of significant gaps in their work record or obsolete job skills, on-going health problems rooted in poor prison conditions and inadequate health care, and difficulty repairing family bonds ruptured by their wrongful incarceration. The battles against the state continue as they fight for record expungement, compensation, and official recognition of innocence through certificates of innocence or gubernatorial pardon. These battles further exacerbate the trauma of the wrongful conviction and contribute to the many reintegration obstacles they encounter. Exonerated death row survivors also struggle with the social stigma of being on death row, attempting to regain their 271

Kimberly J. Cook and Saundra D. Westervelt

reputations as respectable citizens. They face compound grieving processes over loved ones lost while incarcerated and myriad losses of time with family, children they could have had or known better, grandchildren they could have loved, work opportunities they could have pursued to build security for the future, to name only a few (Westervelt & Cook, 2012a). While some consider the trauma of the wrongful conviction to end at exoneration and release, we argue that exonerated death row survivors experience continuing traumatic stress as they work through the process of reintegration (Westervelt & Cook, forthcoming).

Post-exoneration remedies While wrongfully condemned to death and incarcerated, most exonerated death row survivors who participated in our research imagined that once they proved their innocence and were released, the legal nightmare would end. For instance, Alan Gell said, “I just made all kinds of plans on how wonderful it would be once I was released. What I didn’t realize is I had forgotten what it was like to be free. I forgot what reality was to be in a society. You know? A lot of the things that I said I was gonna do took money to do” (Westervelt & Cook, 2012a, p. 58). But as noted above, their expectations are often shattered as they confront the reality of life after exoneration. Researchers and advocates have recommended changes to several practices that could reduce the obstacles exonerees face as they attempt to reintegrate. An automatic expungement of the wrongful conviction from their record would provide the exonerated death row survivor with a cleared background, smoothing their reentry into society after prison. Given the widespread use of criminal background checks for everything from employment to public housing to college admission, expungement of the wrongful conviction may help to remove some barriers to resources needed for reintegration. Research documents that expunging the wrongful conviction varies widely from state to state (Shlosberg, Mandery, & West, 2012, 2014). For instance, while “New York law permits the sealing of cases where charges have been dismissed, vacated, set aside, not filed, or otherwise terminated” (Shlosberg et al., 2012, p. 1232), most states do not provide an automatic expungement in such cases. For example, they found that two thirds of Florida exonerees whose cases were studied did not receive an expungement of their wrongful convictions. “Generally speaking, expungement laws are restrictive” (Shlosberg et al., 2014, p. 354). In many states, procuring an expungement is nearly impossible if the innocent person pled guilty. A guilty plea by an innocent person is not uncommon but extremely difficult to overcome. It often is a consequence of intense pressure from police and prosecutors in a bargain to reduce charges and avoid court. Therefore, Shlosberg et al. (2012, p. 1232) write that “this data suggests that expungement after exoneration is often more myth than reality.” In addition to the many barriers that must be overcome if their record is not expunged, failure to expunge a wrongful conviction has been shown to increase the likelihood of post-exoneration criminal offenses committed by exonerated individuals (Shlosberg et al., 2014). Thus, denying an exonerated person an expungement of the wrongful conviction creates a greater risk to public safety. The state that restricts accesses to expungement may be culpable, at least in part, for additional harms. Overall, Shlosberg and her colleagues found that 61.9 percent of exonerees had no record of post-exoneration offending, but that 38.1 percent did (Shlosberg et al., 2014, p. 373). Furthermore, “[e]xpungement is significantly associated with post-exoneration offending” where those who had received expungements were significantly less likely to criminally offend post-exoneration (Shlosberg et al., 2014, p. 375). Griffiths and Owens argue that “society owes a civic debt to exonerees for unjustly taking their freedom (and sometimes labor), be it intentionally or accidentally” (2014, p. 267). That debt, 272

Power and accountability

we argue, should include a financial compensation plan/package to assist exonerees with their needs after release. Scholars have developed an extensive body of research on financial compensation for the wrongly convicted (see Baumgartner et al., 2014; Bernhard, 1999, 2004, 2009; Kahn, 2010; Mandery et al., 2013; Mostaghel, 2011; Norris, 2012; Owens & Griffiths, 2012). Baumgartner et al. (2014, p. 260) point out that “a common misperception is that compensation is provided automatically by the state;” however, only 31 states have compensation laws in place, and statutes that exist are riddled with obstacles rather than avenues to compensation (Norris, 2012). The majority of the exonerated death row survivors we interviewed received no compensation (see Table 22.1). In fact, the most common answer we received when asked what they got after exoneration is summed up by Alan Gell: “No state help. No federal help. No nothing. I had to pay out of pocket every step of the way” (Westervelt & Cook, 2012a, p. 201). Some pursued compensation without success. For instance, Greg Wilhoit pursued compensation from Oklahoma after his release from death row and shared this with us, “you ought to see this application for compensation! And, the first hoop you gotta jump through to be eligible for this money . . . is you gotta be pardoned by the governor, get an official pardon. So [my attorney Mark Barrett] went in front of this board and all this stuff. And they said that they don’t have the authority to pardon somebody who hasn’t been convicted of anything. See I got acquitted in [my retrial]; I got a directed verdict. I’m not eligible for a pardon because I’m not guilty of anything. Now what kind of shit is that? See fortunately, I got a good sense of humor, otherwise I’d go crazy. It’s a catch-22, you know. I’m convinced they did it on purpose; they knew what they were doing” (Westervelt & Cook, 2012a, pp. 225–226). Exonerated people can pursue three avenues for compensation: a state compensation statute, civil litigation, and specific state legislation (often called a private bill) (Baumgartner et al., 2014; Norris, 2012; Westervelt & Cook, 2012a). In most cases, the exoneration is not enough on its own to warrant compensation; the exonerated person needs to prove his/her innocence over and above the exoneration and release from prison. Proving a negative, as this requires, often results in exonerated former inmates being denied relief. When pursuing reparations through litigation, courts often require exonerated plaintiffs to prove that the state acted with intent to knowingly wrongly convict them, establishing fault for the purposes of calculating recompense. In our adversarial system, this puts the state in a position to defend itself vigorously against claims by exonerated plaintiffs in order to minimize damages and cost to the state. Finally, winning financial redress through specific state legislation creates an imposing challenge for an exoneree with limited resources and political clout, and is the least frequently pursued and successful mechanism for getting compensation (Innocence Project, 2009). Each avenue to financial assistance from the state comes with its own set of obstacles and difficulties and on average takes many years to complete, making compensation for exonerees far from automatic. Three of our research participants were awarded compensation through state statutes: Kirk Bloodsworth in Maryland, Perry Cobb in Illinois, and Sabrina Butler in Mississippi. Bloodsworth received his compensation about six months after his exoneration in 1993 while Cobb and Butler’s took much longer. Cobb’s compensation came more than 14 years after his exoneration and Butler’s almost 20 years later (Westervelt & Cook, 2012a, p. 202). Six of our research participants were awarded financial settlements after suing the states, counties, and/or municipalities where they were wrongly convicted. The awards from such litigation produced much higher amounts than those compensated via state statute, though again the cases took many years to wind through the courts and inflicted additional damage (stress and frustration) on the exonerees in the process. Nine of our participants received no assistance from the state post-exoneration. These findings from our small sample of death row survivors mirror recent findings from a study of all 156 death row exonerees listed by the Death Penalty Information Center.4 According 273

Kimberly J. Cook and Saundra D. Westervelt

to Merritt (2017), only 37 percent of death row exonerees have received any form of financial redress via the avenues open to them. Other studies have shown that, for those few who receive it, this redress can take many years on average to be awarded, leaving the exoneree with nothing in the immediate aftermath of their exoneration (Innocence Project, 2009). And while compensation can provide options for a comfortable life, it also can generate unexpected problems, such as managing money with little to no financial planning experience and the arrival of “friends” who try to take advantage of the exonerees (Westervelt & Cook, 2012a, pp. 201–206).

Accountability Doyle (2014) employs a medical metaphor of “iatrogenic injuries” (p. 57) to outline how wrongful convictions occur in the criminal justice system. The errors that occur in the criminal justice system are, from a critical criminology perspective, more than merely unfortunate mistakes; they are a consequence of choices to review (or not), to charge (or not), to use specific evidence (or not), at every step in the criminal justice process. When decisions are made, the potential for errors are present. He argues that these errors are not merely a result of “bad apples” as much as they are holes (like “swiss cheese”) in the organizational structures in which these events occur. Doyle writes that “[e]ven in those situations where a ‘bad apple’ can be identified – the cases of a corrupt forensic scientist who writes a report without testing the sample, for example, or a prosecutor who buries plainly exculpatory evidence – the bad apple approach is radically incomplete. Standing to the left and the right of the bad apple are the raft of officials and practitioners who hired the bad apple, and failed to catch his or her mistakes” (Doyle, 2014, p. 60). In other words, bad apples are essentially ratified by the system, and the system becomes what Westervelt and Cook (2010, p. 274) call a “contaminated orchard.” We contend that the contaminated orchard encompasses both the individual and system failures that lead to the wrongful conviction, as well as the reluctance and/or refusal of system officials to acknowledge and be accountable for the trauma caused to those harmed by the wrongful conviction. System officials who continue to publicly assert an exoneree’s guilt after exoneration, who become obstacles to an exoneree receiving reparations to assist with reintegration, and who are unwilling to examine their role in the wrongful conviction are also rooted in a contaminated orchard. Rarely have prosecutors been held accountable for misconduct that leads to wrongful convictions. Among our 18 participants, we know of only one case in which a prosecutor received any repercussions for his/her official recognized misconduct. In the case of Alan Gell, the prosecutors who had withheld exculpatory evidence received a letter of reprimand in their bar file. Many in the community were outraged by how light the “punishment” was, especially as compared to Gell’s ten years in prison (4.5 of it spent on death row) (Neff, 2004). Another such example can be found in the case of Michael Morton,5 wrongfully convicted of killing his wife Christine in Texas. His wrongful conviction was based in large part on prosecutorial misconduct. Morton spent more than two decades incarcerated, and later was exonerated based on DNA evidence. The prosecutor, Ken Anderson, went on to become a judge in Texas.6 But in an interesting and unusual twist after Morton’s exoneration, Anderson was disbarred and spent three days (of a tenday sentence) in jail for suppressing the exculpatory evidence that lead to Morton’s decades of wrongful incarceration. This made national headlines because of the rarity of this final outcome. Our exonerated death row survivors had a lot to say about holding the system accountable for the harms they have suffered. They argue that a first step towards repairing the harms of wrongful capital convictions is for the state to acknowledge the terrible mistake that was made. Juan Melendez told us, “You talking about men that know I was innocent before going to trial and still wanted to kill me. Why?! . . . If he say, ‘Hey, I was wrong’ then . . . I would embrace him, shake 274

Power and accountability

his hand, . . . because it take a man to do that. It’s that simple. But these people, they don’t admit it when they do wrong. They cannot afford to admit that they do wrong. How the hell are they gonna say that, ‘We almost killed an innocent man in there,’ and they for the death penalty. It’s political!” (Westervelt & Cook, 2012a, p. 207). Our participants also want to hold specific officials accountable in their cases. As Scott Taylor said, “We should be able to hold corrupt cops, judges, and state’s attorneys accountable when we find out they framed me or planted false evidence and knew and intentionally tried to kill me” (Westervelt & Cook, 2012a, p. 226). Some might argue that exonerations and the limited repercussions some system officials incur are evidence that the system works to prevent and correct wrongful convictions. But, the most angry responses from the exonerated death row survivors we interviewed came when we asked if their exonerations were proof that the system works. Greg Wilhoit succinctly replied, “Baloney!” while Kirk Bloodsworth insisted, “No sir! No ma’am! No way! No how! The system didn’t work! I worked. I got myself out” (Westervelt & Cook, 2012a, p. 208). Several of our participants also recognized how original crime victims were betrayed by the system when the crimes they experienced resulted in the wrong person being convicted. Alan Gell received a letter of apology from the surviving son of Mr. Jenkins, whom he had been accused of killing. “He apologized for hating me all them years and told me that he was sorry I went through all the things that I did because of them motherfuckers, talking about the police and prosecutors. And he just seemed real bitter and hateful toward them . . . It felt real good because I was, all that time, [thinking] the victim’s family [was] hating me and wanting me dead. I wanted somehow to let them know that I didn’t do it and they got the wrong person and that you might want to pursue it because they got me and not the right person. That means you’re not getting justice” (Westervelt & Cook, 2012a, p. 164). As is likely not surprising, most of our participants argue that the final expression of accountability for their wrongful capital convictions would be the abolition of the death penalty. As Kirk Blooksworth has often said, “I want to kill the thing that tried to kill me.” Having survived these harrowing ordeals, many have transformed their experiences into object lessons for the broader debates around crime and punishment in the United States. In fact, research shows that raising awareness about wrongful convictions in death penalty cases has resulted in a reduction in public support for the death penalty (Baumgartner, De Boef, & Boydstun, 2008).

Conclusion We agree with other scholars who argue that the system is “broken” (Liebman, Fagan, & West, 2000). The system has failed to protect the human rights of the accused, resulting in thousands of people wrongfully convicted and hundreds condemned to death. To think that no innocent person has been executed in the United States is misguided (Harmon & Lofquist, 2005; Radelet & Bedau, 1998; Radelet, Bedau, & Putnam, 1994). Critical criminologists have been right to examine state power in order to expose its abuses and the impacts on those who are the targets of that power. In the cases of exonerated death row survivors, those abuses of power have led to years lost to wrongful incarceration and ongoing struggles with the state to acknowledge its mistakes and responsibilities to those harmed.

Notes 1

Saundra Westervelt serves on the Board of Directors for Witness to Innocence (www.witnesstoin nocence.org) which serves the needs and interests of those impacted by wrongful capital convictions. Kim Cook serves on the Board of Directors for Healing Justice (www.healingjusticeproject.org) which 275

Kimberly J. Cook and Saundra D. Westervelt

2 3 4 5 6

provides restorative justice peer-support for exonerated individuals and original crime victims/survivors in cases that resulted in exonerations. Personal communication with an exonerated death row survivor who participated in a gathering sponsored by Witness to Innocence in Cleveland, Ohio, October 2015. Stratton (2015) uses the state crime framework to examine the many causes of wrongful convictions, providing a fruitful typology for critical criminologists to pursue in future research. www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/innocence-and-death-penalty (last visited on January 3, 2017). www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2012/12/michael_morton_s_wrongful_ conviction_why_do_police_and_prosecutors_continue.html. www.law360.com/articles/487677/former-texas-judge-jailed-disbarred-for-hiding-evidence (last visited on January 3, 2017).

References Baumgartner, F.R., De Boef, S.L. & Boydstun, A.E. (2008). The Decline of the Death Penalty and the Discovery of Innocence. New York: Cambridge University Press. Baumgartner, F.R., Westervelt, S.D. & Cook, K.J. (2014). Public policy responses to wrongful conviction. In A. Redlich, J. Acker, R. Norris, & C. Bonventre (Eds), Examining Wrongful Convictions: Stepping Back, Moving Forward (pp. 251–266). North Carolina: Carolina Academic Press. Bernhard, A. (1999). When justice fails: Indemnification for unjust conviction. University of Chicago Law School Roundtable, 6, 73–112. Bernhard, A. (2004). Justice still fails: A review of recent efforts to compensate individuals who have been unjustly convicted and later exonerated. Drake Law Review, 52, 703–738. Bernhard, A. (2009). A short overview of the statutory remedies for the wrongly convicted: What works, what doesn’t, and why. Public Interest Law Journal, 18, 403–425. Buroway, M. (2004). Public sociologies: Contradictions, dilemmas, and possibilities. Social Forces, 82(4), 1603–1618. Christie, N. (1977). Conflicts as property. British Journal of Criminology, 17(1), 1–15. Cook, K.J., Westervelt, S.D. & Maruna, S. (2014). The problem of fit: Parolees, exonerees, and prisoner reentry. In A. Redlich, J. Acker, R. Norris, & C. Bonventre (Eds), Examining Wrongful Convictions: Stepping Back, Moving Forward (pp. 237–250). North Carolina: Carolina Academic Press. DeKeseredy, W. (2011). Contemporary Critical Criminology. New York, NY: Routledge. Doyle, J.M. (2014). An etiology of wrongful convictions: Error, safety, and forward-looking accountability in criminal justice. In M. Zalman, & J. Carrano (Eds), Wrongful Conviction and Criminal Justice Reform: Making Justice (pp. 56–72). New York, NY: Routledge. Griffiths, E. & Owens, M.L. (2014). Remedying wrongful convictions: Societal obligations to exonerees. In A. Redlich, J. Acker, R. Norris, & C. Bonventre (Eds), Examining Wrongful Convictions: Stepping Back, Moving Forward (pp. 267–280). North Carolina: Carolina Academic Press. Harmon, T.R. & Lofquist, W.S. (2005). Too late for luck: A comparison of post-Furman exonerations and executions of the innocent. Crime & Delinquency, 51(4), 498–520. Innocence Project (2009). Making up for lost time: What the wrongfully convicted endure and how to provide fair compensation. An Innocence Project Report, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University. Kahn, D.S. (2010). Presumed guilty until proven innocent: The burden of proof in wrongful conviction claims under state compensation statutes. University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform, 44, 123–168. Kauzlarich, D., Matthews, R. & Miller, W. (2001). Toward a victimology of state crime. Critical Criminology, 10(3), 173–194. Liebman, J., Fagan, J. & West, V. (2000). A broken system: Error rates in capital cases 1973–1995. Retrieved from www2.law.columbia.edu/instructionalservices/liebman/. Mandery, E., Shlosberg, A., West, V. & Callaghan, B. (2013). Compensation statutes and post-exoneration offending. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 103(2), 553–583. Merritt, T. (2017). Factors affecting financial redress for death row survivors. Master’s thesis, University of North Carolina Greensboro. Unpublished. Mostaghel, D. (2011). Wrongfully incarcerated, randomly compensated – How to fund wrongful-conviction compensation statutes. Indiana Law Review, 44, 503–544. Neff, J. (2004). NC bar hearing provokes more anger. The News & Observer, October 21.

276

Power and accountability

Norris, R.J. (2012). Assessing compensation statutes for the wrongly convicted. Criminal Justice Policy Review, 23(3), 352–374. Owens, M.L. & Griffiths, E. (2012). Uneven reparations for wrongful convictions: Examining the state politics of statutory compensation legislation. Albany Law Review, 75(3), 1283–1327. Radelet, M.L. & Bedau, H.A. (1998). The execution of the innocent. Law and Contemporary Problems, 61, 105–217. Radelet, M.L., Bedau, H.A. & Putnam, C.E. (1994). In Spite of Innocence: Erroneous Convictions in Capital Cases. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press. Shlosberg, A., Mandery, E. & West, V. (2012). The expungement myth. Albany Law Review, 75(3), 1229–1241. Shlosberg, A., Mandery, E. & West, V. (2014). Expungement and post-exoneration offending. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 104(2), 353–388. Stratton, G. (2015). Wrongfully convicting the innocent: A state crime? Critical Criminology, 23, 21–37. Westervelt, S.D. & Cook, K.J. (2007). Feminist research methods in theory and action: Learning from death row exonerees. In S. Miller (Ed.), Criminal Justice Research & Practice: Diverse Voices from the Field (pp. 21–38). Boston: University Press of New England. Westervelt, S.D. & Cook, K.J. (2008). Coping with innocence after death row. Contexts, 7(4), 32–37. Westervelt, S.D. & Cook, K.J. (2010). Framing innocents: The wrongly convicted as victims of state harm. Crime, Law and Social Change, 53(3), 259–275. Westervelt, S.D. & Cook, K.J. (2012a). Life after Death Row: Exonerees’ Search for Community and Identity. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. Westervelt, S.D. & Cook, K.J., (Eds) (2012b). Albany Law Review: Revealing the Impact & Aftermath of Miscarriages of Justice, 75(3). Westervelt, S.D. & Cook, K.J. (2013). Life after exoneration: Examining the aftermath of a wrongful capital conviction. In C.R. Huff & M. Killias (Eds), Wrongful Conviction and Miscarriages of Justice: Causes and Remedies in North America and European Criminal Justice Systems (pp. 261–281). New York: Routledge. Westervelt, S.D. & Cook, K.J. (forthcoming). Continuing trauma and aftermath for exonerated death row survivors. In J. Acker, H. Toch, & V. Bonventre (Eds), Living on Death Row, Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

277

Sex

M M M F M M M M M M M M M M M M M M

Name

Beeman Bloodsworth Brown Butler Cobb Fain Gauger Gell Howard James Keaton Krone McMillian Melendez Rivera Taylor** Tibbs Wilhoit

W W B B B W W W B B B W B L L B B W

Race

23 24 24 19 37 35 41 23 23 23 19 35 47 33 25 29 35 32

Age at conviction

Table 22.1 Biographical details of participants

Appendix

OH MD FL MS IL ID IL NC OH OH FL AZ AL FL NC IL FL OK

State where tried

3 8 13 5.5 7 18 3 6 26 26 2 9.5 5 17.5 2 13 2 4

Yrs in prisoni

2.5 1.5 13 2.5 4 17.5 0 4.5 1 1 1 2.5 5 17.5 1.5 10 1.5 4

Yrs on death rowii

1979 1993 1987 1995 1987 2001 1996 2004 2003 2003 1973 2002 1993 2002 1999 2003 1982 1993

Yr of exoneration

No Yes No No No Yes No No No No No Yes No No No No No No

DNA?

Yes Yes No No Yes No Yes Yes No No Yes Yes No Yes Yes No No No

Actual offender[s] identified?iii

No Yes No Yes Yes No No Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes No No Yes No No

Compensation received?iv

**

This exoneree prefers to remain anonymous. We have assigned this pseudonym to him.

iv Of those receiving compensation, only three–Bloodsworth, Butler, and Cobb–were provided compensation via compensation statutes in their states. The others were compensated as a result of litigation pursued against local, county, and/or state officials and agencies.

iii This category includes cases in which the actual perpetrator of the crime for which the exoneree was wrongfully convicted either has been tried and convicted for that crime or has been publicly acknowledged in some way as the actual offender, even if not convicted.

ii The number of years spent on death row may not equal the years spent in prison. Several exonerees received retrials after appellate review, were reconvicted on the same charges, but were sentenced to life in prison rather than death. At that point, they were moved from death row into the general population of prison until their eventual exonerations.

Notes: i This category includes only the years in prison for this wrongful conviction and does not include any prior years of incarceration on other charges. In addition, several participants were not released from prison immediately after exoneration as they completed sentences on other, unrelated charges. That time is not included here. This category also does not include any time they spent in jail or prison awaiting trial, which in some instances was two to three additional years. Numbers (for years in prison and years on death row) are not exact and may have been rounded slightly up or down by one to three months.

23 Thinking critically about contemporary adult pornography and woman abuse Walter S. DeKeseredy and Amanda Hall-Sanchez

Introduction1 [T]he range of what we might include as extreme pornography needs to be recalibrated; insertions of objects, gagging and vomiting resulting from forceful oral sex, simulated rape, strangulation, anal sex and spitting have become merely choices from drop-down menus on many popular porn websites. As Gossett and Byrne (2002) observe, the interactivity of these sites also heightens feelings of masculine control and excitement. (Atkinson & Rodgers, 2016, p. 1298)

We live in a “post-Playboy world” (Jensen, 2007), one featuring the degradation, abuse and humiliation of women in ways never seen before in the mass media. However, critical criminological work on adult pornography and its violent consequences is limited compared to the amount of progressive intellectual and political attention given to other major harms, such as environmental crime and mass incarceration. Actually, criminologists in general have paid scant attention to Internet porn and other forms of hurtful sexual imagery. This is due, in part, to the fact that numerous academics and university/college administrators view pornography as a topic unfit for academic inquiry (Ullen, 2014; Tarrant, 2015). This chapter is one of a rapidly growing body of scholarly materials on pornography that challenges this mainstream belief.2 Pornography requires in-depth, interdisciplinary analyses for reasons provided here and in other sources (Atkinson & Rodgers, 2016; DeKeseredy & Corsianos, 2016; Foubert, 2017; Sullivan & McKee, 2015). The main objective of this chapter is to: (1) briefly review the extant critical criminological literature on the linkage between pornography and woman abuse and (2) to suggest new directions in critical criminological understandings of the relationship between these two harms. It is first necessary to define pornography.

What is pornography? Translated from Greek, pornography means “writing about prostitutes” (Katz, 2006). Not to be confused with erotica, which is “sexually suggestive or arousing material that is free of sexism, racism, and homophobia and is respectful of all human beings and animals portrayed” (Russell, 280

Contemporary adult pornography

1993, p. 3), pornography is injurious on numerous levels. Our conceptualization focuses squarely on what the pornography industry defines as “gonzo.” Such images and writings are the most profitable in the industry and have two primary things in common. First, females are characterized as subordinate to males and the primary role is the provision of sex to men (DeKeseredy & Funk, 2017). Second, as Dines (2010) puts it, gonzo “depicts hard core, punishing sex in which women are demeaned and debased” (p. xi). These images are not rare. A routine feature of contemporary gonzo videos is painful anal penetration, as well as brutal gang rape and men slapping or choking women or pulling their hair while they penetrate them orally, vaginally, and anally (DeKeseredy & Hall-Sanchez, 2017). Bridges et al.’s (2010) study of 304 scenes in 50 of the most popular pornography DVDs confirms the claim that gonzo is now mainstream porn. Nearly 90 percent contained physical aggression (mainly spanking, gagging, and slapping), and roughly 50 percent included verbal aggression, primarily name-calling. Not surprisingly, males constituted most of the perpetrators and the targets of their physical and verbal aggression were “overwhelmingly female.” Furthermore, the female targets often showed pleasure or responded neutrally to male aggression. To make matters worse, as the porn industry grows and attracts an ever-growing consumer base, it is generating even more violent materials featuring demeaning and dehumanizing behaviors never before seen (Atkinson & Rodgers, 2016). It is not only anti-porn scholars and activists who assert that violent sex is now a normal part of the industry. Even porn producers admit that is the status quo (Abowitz, 2013; Dines, 2010; DeKeseredy & Funk, 2017). Porn director Jules Jordan revealed to Jensen (2007) that, “So many fans want to see more extreme stuff that I am always trying to figure out ways to do something different . . .” (p. 70). Consider what Dines told Guardian journalist Julie Bindel (2010) about her interview with a prominent pornographer in 2010. A film was then playing in the background and it included a scene of a woman being anally penetrated while kneeling in a coffin. What is the point of such imagery? A producer interviewed by Jensen (2007) said that anal sex featured in his videos helps male viewers fantasize about debasing women through violent sexual submission and that films like the one Dines observed are specifically crafted to show women not enjoying anal sex. The consequences of watching videos featuring painful anal penetration and other types of violence are not trivial. Note the results of a recent qualitative, longitudinal study of young people’s experiences with heterosexual anal sex. Conducted at three different sites in England, this project involved individual and group interviews with 130 men and women aged 16–18. The main reason respondents gave for having such sex was that men wanted to imitate what they saw in pornography, and it often appeared, especially for women, “painful, risky, and coercive” (Lewis, 2014, p. 1). In response to the common statement, “One can only wonder what is in store next,” some critical criminologists, such as Atkinson and Rodgers (2016), point us to the rapid emergence of the “gorno” or “gore porn” genre of movies, such as Hostel and Saw. These films combine sadism, torture, and porn, and they generate huge revenues for their producers and distributors. That there are sequels to the above and similar movies is a powerful commentary on how violent pornography has seeped into mainstream popular culture. Racism is another central element of much of today’s pornography (DeKeseredy & HallSanchez, 2017). Ponder the following titles of videos uncovered by DeKeseredy (2015a) during a Google search using the words “racist porn” on September 3, 2014. His hunt produced 22,000,000 results in 0.40 seconds and two salient examples of the titles listed are Racist Bitch is Forced to Have Sex with a Black Man and Coco gets Interracial Facial. Many of the bigoted videos offer stereotypical images of the “sexually primitive black male stud” (Jensen, 2007, p. 66). Men and women of color are certainly not the only people to be racially exploited by pornographers. 281

Walter S. DeKeseredy and Amanda Hall-Sanchez

There is much consumer demand for videos featuring Latinas and Asian women (DeKeseredy, 2015b).3 Note these films featured on the widely-used site Xvideos.com: Latina Signs Up to Do a Rough Porn Tape with Some Mean White Guys, Sexy Latina Rides a Black Bull in Front of Her Husband, and My So Asian. Most, if not all, anti-pornography feminists would agree with Dines’ (2010) claim that, “Irrespective of the ethnic group, the framing of the narrative is the same – the women’s race makes them that bit sluttier than ‘regular’ white porn women” (p. 131). Lower-class rural people are also routinely stereotyped in contemporary pornography (Donnermeyer & DeKeseredy, 2014). The rural women featured in numerous pornographic websites typically have large breasts, wear halter tops and frayed denim short-shorts, and are usually portrayed as farmers’ daughters. As well, like characters in scores of rural horror movies (e.g., The Hills Have Eyes), rural people featured in cyber porn comics or cartoons are often characterized as inbreeds or “hicks.” Essentially, incest is a common theme that runs throughout numerous rural farm girls cartoon sites. One prime example is Jab Comix’s cartoon Real Hicks Get Naughty, which depicts a nephew having sexual intercourse with his aunt and then having anal sex with his sister. Additionally, the characters generally have stereotypical southern Appalachian names that imply they are illiterate, like Jezebel, Boo, Clem, and Luke (DeKeseredy, Muzzatti, & Donnermeyer, 2014). Thousands of what DeKeseredy and Schwartz (2009) refer to as “the false images of rural life” are found on countless cyber porn sites. Simply conduct a Google search using the words “rural gonzo porn.” On September 11, 2012, DeKeseredy et al.’s (2014) hunt uncovered 108,000,000 results, with most of the videos being freely and easily accessible. Examples of the video titles listed in their search are Rural Discipline, Fuck Rural Milf, Raunchy Rural Granny Creamed, Rural SW Michigan Milfs, Rural Japanese Milfs, Rural Southern Wife Gets Ebony Cock, and Maturefarm. One more common gonzo theme is revenge porn sex. DeKeseredy and Schwartz’s (2016) Google search using this term uncovered 2,730,000 results on April 4, 2016, with numerous videos also being freely and easily accessible. A few examples of the titles uncovered in this search are Submit Your Bitch, Cheerleader Revenge, Hubbie Revenge, and Revenge Time. Some scholars go as far as to assert that a substantial amount of other types of porn videos are also “exercises in revenge” (DeKeseredy & Corsianos, 2016; Dines, 2010; Jensen, 2007). Based on his interviews with young men who watch porn, Kimmel (2008) argues that the following captures the mind-set of many of them: “You don’t have sex with women because you desire them: sex is the weapon by which, you get even with them, or, even humiliate them” (p. 182). He adds: They’re not getting mad; they’re vicariously getting even. Getting back at a world that deprives them of power and control, getting even with those haughty women who deny them sex even while they invite desire, getting back at the bitches and “hos” who, in the cosmology of Guyland,4 have all the power. (p. 188) Many men not only watch revenge porn, but they also produce it, causing much harm to their female ex-partners through the electronic distribution of naked pictures of them without their consent (DeKeseredy et al., 2017). Yet, for McGlynn, Rackley, and Houghton (2017), “The term ‘revenge porn’ . . . neither adequately describes the activities for which it is used, nor does it convey the nature and extent of the harms perpetrated” (p. 6). These feminist legal scholars prefer the term image-based sexual abuse over revenge porn and what is also coined in some academic and legal circles as nonconsensual pornography or involuntary pornography (Franks, 2014). McGlynn et al.’s (2017) rationale for using the term image-based sexual abuse is as follows. First, it is not only ex-partners seeking revenge who nonconsensually share sexual images. There are people who do 282

Contemporary adult pornography

so for a variety of other reasons, such as to make money, for a “joke,” or for no particular reason at all. McGlynn et al. additionally state that the term revenge porn puts too much emphasis on the perpetrators’ motives at the expense of the damage done to victims. To boot, images created without prior consent are often shared. As Salter (2017) discovered in his focus group research with young Australians aged 18–20: Gathering, showing and distributing nude images of girls and women was recognized as a method by which boys and men can accumulate status and respect among their peers. This can encourage predatory behavior as boys and men solicited pictures from girls and women with the promise of keeping them private while intending to “collect” and show them to others. (p. 108) Salter’s finding tells us much about the role of male peer support. This is attachments to male peers and the resources they provide that encourage and legitimate woman abuse (DeKeseredy, 1988). Another example of nonconsensual sharing of sexual imagery related to male peer support is the case of a highly publicized sexual assault in Steubenville, Ohio. Two high school football players were convicted of raping a girl, while she was drunk after attending several parties held on August 11, 2012 right before the new school year began. Bringing the incident to light was the posting of videos and photographs of the rape on YouTube, Instagram, and Facebook by those who were there. It was news and “grist for the rumor mill” throughout the area by the next day (DeKeseredy et al., 2014). For McGlynn and Rackley (2016), the concept of image-based sexual abuse also emphasizes the connection between the nonconsensual use of private sexual images and other forms of sexual violence such as what the aforementioned young woman endured in Steubenville. Similar to the pioneering conceptual work of Kelly (1998, 2012), McGlynn and Rackley situate imagebased sexual abuse: on the continuum of sexual violence, alongside other forms of abuse attacking women’s sexual autonomy, identities and integrity. Labeling and understanding these practices as sexual offenses is also vital to ensuring appropriate support and protections for victims, such as the need to reform the law to grant victims anonymity to encourage them to come forward to report practices to the police. (p. 1) Regardless of which term or definition one prefers, the images and videos we are discussing here are typically made by men with the consent of the women they were intimately involved with, but then distributed online without their consent following women’s termination of a relationship (Salter & Crofts, 2015). Image-based sexual abuse websites and blogs first appeared on the Internet in 2000 and started to gain U.S. national attention in 2010 following the creation of IsAnyoneUp.com. In their history of revenge porn, Lamphere and Pikciunas (2016) note: The creator, Hunter Moore, a 25-year-old man from Sacramento, California, began the website which features sexually explicit photos, a link to the person in the photo’s Facebook, Twitter, and/or Tumblr, as well as personal information about the person. The site allowed anonymous submissions of photos of any person to its database, and at one point it had reached a rate of over 30 million views per month. (p. 148) 283

Walter S. DeKeseredy and Amanda Hall-Sanchez

Sexting is now a common practice, and it is sometimes a method of image-based sexual abuse (DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 2016). Sexting involves sharing compromising photos, videos, or written information with other people via texts or other electronic means (Klein, 2012). Generally, though, it is done with a smartphone or tablet (Lamphere & Pikciunas, 2016; Weins, 2014). In most cases, the original aim of the person sending out the photos, particularly for adolescents, is to share flirty or sex-themed pictures with intimate friends, under the presumption that they will not be shared. This is usually exactly what happens, but sometimes the photo gets shared with others in an attempt to ruin the life of the sender, often in revenge for breaking up the relationship (DeKeseredy et al., 2017). More will be said about image-based sexual abuse later in this chapter. But, prior to ending this discussion on conceptualizing image-based sexual abuse, it is necessary to emphasize that the harm done by it is irreparable, as demonstrated by Holly Jacob’s experiences. She is the founder of the advocacy group End Revenge Porn, and her ex-boyfriend hacked into her Facebook profile and posted sexually explicit images for relatives and friends to see prior to disseminating more material through revenge porn websites and emailing material to her employers (Miller, 2013). Revenge porn sites were then used by groups of men to harass and abuse Jacobs. She stated on her website5: Due to this act, I have had to legally change my name, stop publishing in my field (I am a Ph.D. student), stop networking (giving presentations, going to conferences), change my email address four times and my phone number three times, change jobs, and explain to human resources at my school that I am not a sexual predator on campus. (cited in Salter & Crofts, 2015, p. 236) Pornography transcends videos, pictures, and adult novels. On top of living in a “post-Playboy world” (Jensen, 2007), we also exist in a “striptease culture” (McNair, 2002). The sexual objectification and degradation of women occurs in a wide range of contexts, including strip bars, live sex shows, pubs, and even advertising (DeKeseredy & Hall-Sanchez, 2017; Fileborn, 2016; Jeffreys, 2011; Stella, 2011). McNair (2002) reminds us on the back cover of his book that “sex and sexual imagery now permeate every aspect of culture.” Unfortunately, much of what he is referring to causes much harm, including that uncovered by DeKeseredy & Hall-Sanchez’s (2017) rural southeast Ohio study. Their work supports earlier research showing a strong association between violence against women and perpetrators’ involvement in the sex industry outside the realm of electronic pornographic media (Simmons, Lehmann, & Collier-Tennison, 2008).

Summary Pornography moved in a few decades from a lucrative underground business with ties to organized crime to a huge corporate-capitalist industry that operates openly and that is an integral part of a rape-supportive culture (DeKeseredy et al., 2017; Dines, 2010). The rapid growth of the Internet has also globalized access to violent and degrading pornographic materials of women and other potentially vulnerable groups (e.g., children) in converged online and off-line environments. Such media can be diffused to millions of people in only seconds due to faster ways of disseminating digital media productions, and the Internet facilitates access for those seeking pornographic content whether it is legally recognized or not (DeKeseredy & Corsianos, 2016; DeKeseredy & Olsson, 2011). What used to be rather difficult to obtain and a secret phenomenon is now accessible for larger groups and has subsequently became a huge business with operations around the world. The Internet not only facilitates 284

Contemporary adult pornography

accessing previously inaccessible materials, but it also buttresses social patriarchy and helps create an environment that normalizes hurtful sexuality, racism, and even seeking revenge on female ex-partners (Boyle, 2010; DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 2016; Salter, 2017; Shariff & DeMartini, 2016). Of course, it is essential not to conflate all types of sexual media into one type and researchers need to be sensitive to what McClintock (1993) calls “porn’s kaleidoscopic variorum” (p. 115), or what Burstyn (1987) refers to as the “large and various discourse we call, all inclusively, pornography” (p. 163). To be sure, there are racist, sexist, and “hard core” variants of pornography that are not gonzo in style (DeKeseredy & Hall-Sanchez, 2017; Sullivan & McKee, 2015). One major example is a “feature,” which resembles a Hollywood movie (Bridges & Jensen, 2011). Still, gonzo has “come to dominate the Internet” (Dines, 2010, p. xiii).

Understanding pornography and woman abuse: critical criminological contributions Of all the scholars who brand themselves as critical criminologists or who could be categorized as such, radical feminists, such as Gail Dines (2010) and Robert Jensen (2007), are the most actively involved in the study of and struggle against pornography. Radical feminists contend that the most important set of social relations in any society is found in patriarchy and that, throughout the world, females are the most oppressed social group while, regardless of their race/ethnicity and social class, men always have more power and privilege (Renzetti, 2013). Pioneering radical feminist scholars Catharine MacKinnon (1983, 1989), Susan Brownmiller (1975), Andrea Dworkin (1981), and Diana Russell (1990, 1993) made an argument that many feminists still agree with today: porn is violent, eroticizes male dominance and female submission, and “thereby reinforces and causes women’s subordination” (Bart, 1985, p. 284). Radical feminists also contend that pornography “lies about women’s sexuality” (Lacombe, 1988, p. 41). While these claims are shared by most anti-porn feminists,6 there is no consensus about the development and implementation of policies that target porn and conflicting feminist policies have existed for decades (DeKeseredy, 2015a). Nonetheless, the early work of radical feminists advanced how pornography is now perceived in many academic and other circles. Even so, radical feminism is frequently criticized for overlooking how gender inequality intersects with other types of oppression, such as racism and social class inequality (Burgess-Proctor, 2006; Potter, 2015; Renzetti, 2013). This is true for some radical feminists but the most prominent present-day ones who study porn, such as Dines (2010) and Jensen (2007), cannot be accused of this. On the contrary, race/ethnicity is an integral part of their analyses. Furthermore, there is another group of critical criminologists – male peer support theorists (DeKeseredy & Olsson, 2011; DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 2013, 2016; Hall-Sanchez, 2014) – who address both the influence of broader patriarchal forces and micro-level determinants. These scholars are also more involved in empirical projects than most traditional radical feminist scholars in the field.

Pornography and woman abuse Here, woman abuse means the physical, sexual, psychological, spiritual, and economic abuse of a woman by her current or former male partner. Woman abuse also includes persistent threats or forcing women to witness violence against their children, other relatives, friends, pets, and/ or cherished possessions by their current or ex-partners. Woman abuse is integrally linked to the social/economic/political structures, values, and policies that create and perpetuate gender inequality (DeKeseredy & MacLeod, 1997). 285

Walter S. DeKeseredy and Amanda Hall-Sanchez

There is an unsettling truth that even many feminist anti-violence activists and practitioners rarely discuss: pornography plays a key role in women’s experiences of male violence in private places (DeKeseredy & Funk, 2017; Foubert, 2017). What is more, among the large, international group of woman abuse scholars, very few of them research and theorize the connection between porn and intimate adult violence. In the words of Shope (2004), “the paucity of research on the effects of pornography on battered women is disturbing in light of the research findings linking pornography to sexually aggressive behavior, especially among angered men” (p. 66). The bulk of early studies were not conducted by critical criminologists, employed experimental designs in laboratory settings, and uncovered that exposure to more graphic and violent images changed people’s attitudes toward women and rape (e.g., Briere & Malamuth, 1983; Linz, 1989). Until the 1990s, there was little information on the extent to which graphic sexual imagery affects men’s aggressive or violent behavior outside the lab setting. Nonetheless, there were some attempts at imaginative alternative methodology. Feminist journalism scholar Robert Jensen (1995, 1996), for example, used personal histories and narrative accounts of men who used porn as a masturbatory aid, some of whom were sex offenders. Diana Russell (1982, 1990) sparked a movement to conduct feminist surveys of the relationship between male porn consumption and woman abuse in North America. Male peer support theorists DeKeseredy and Schwartz (1998) were among the first critical criminologists to follow in her footsteps by conducting a Canadian national representative sample survey of male and female undergraduate students. Now, there is an international body of survey work that should be commended for extending porn beyond the artificial realm of the lab and demonstrating a strong correlation between such media and various types of physical and sexual forms of violence against women.7 Again, image-based sexual abuse is a type of pornography that causes much harm and we are beginning to see the emergence of feminist survey research on this problem. For example, in Australia, Powell and Henry (2015) surveyed 3,000 Australians aged 18 to 54 and found that one in ten stated that someone had posted online or sent to others nude or seminude pictures of them without their permission and 9.6 percent reported that someone threatened to post such images to others. These data are alarming, but Powell and Henry state that their survey was not specifically designed to focus on image-based sexual abuse and thus there is no way of knowing the motives behind the threats and actual sharing. Nor were they able to determine whether the images were shared by a current or former intimate partner, relative, friend, acquaintance, or stranger. It is also unknown whether the images were accompanied by personal or identifying information for the purpose of humiliating or harassing victims. “Real world” recent critical criminological research on adults’ experiences with pornography use and its violent consequences, however, is still in short supply. The bulk of the empirical work done so far involved feminist scholars gathering data from rape crisis workers who conducted face-to-face and phone interviews with sexual and physical assault survivors, and from abused women who sought support from battered women’s services (Bergen & Bogle, 2000; Shope, 2004; Simmons, Lehmann, & Collier-Tennison, 2008). Collectively, this research reveals a strong linkage between men’s porn consumption and female victimization. One exception to the above is the focus group work recently done by Salter (2017) showing that sexualized social media is a powerful tool used by young men to abuse women. Another exception is DeKeseredy and Hall-Sanchez’s (2017) project involving face-to-face interviews with 55 rural southeast Ohio women who were sexually abused during the period when they wanted to or were trying to end a relationship with a husband or live-in partner, or where such a relationship had already ended. They uncovered that 34 of their interviewees experienced porn-related sexual abuse. DeKeseredy and Hall-Sanchez also identified five key themes related 286

Contemporary adult pornography

to men’s porn consumption and intimate partner sexual violence: learning about sex through pornography; comparison and imitation; the introduction of other sexual partners; surreptitious videotaping; and the overall culture of pornography. Critical criminological theoretical developments have not kept pace with the empirical literature on the relationship between adult pornography and woman abuse. Even leading contemporary feminist experts, such as Dines (2010), pay scant attention to theorizing this problem. This is not to say, however, that her work and those of others who share her analysis (e.g., Jensen, 2007) is completely a-theoretical because it is heavily influenced by radical feminism. All the same, the time is now for critical criminological offerings that link broader macro-level forces with microlevel determinants. It is not enough to assert that porn and its harmful consequences are simply functions of capitalism, racism and patriarchy. How do these problems shape individual behavior and group dynamics? The male peer support theories crafted by DeKeseredy and Olsson (2011) and DeKeseredy and Schwartz (2013) attempt to answer this question. There has never been a study specifically designed to test their perspectives, but preliminary evidence provided by DeKeseredy and Schwartz (2013) strongly suggest that the correlation between Internet pornography, male peer support and face-to-face forms of woman abuse is an emerging problem, one that will only get worse in the future. Recently, DeKeseredy and Schwartz (2016) crafted a male peer support theory of image-based sexual abuse and there is some support for their offering (e.g., Atkinson & Rodgers, 2016; Kimmel, 2008; Salter, 2017; Salter & Crofts, 2015). Yet, considerably more research is necessary. Still, if male peer support is associated with various types of face-to-face woman abuse as demonstrated by 25 years of quantitative and qualitative empirical work (see DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 2013), what reason is there to believe that it would not be associated with image-based sexual abuse? As Dragiewicz (2011) concluded in her brief review of the scholarly evidence for male peer support for violence against women: Studies have documented the influence of patriarchal peer support for men’s violence at the mesosystem8 level in a variety of contexts, including studies of battered wives, dating violence, batterer narratives, campus sexual assault, and woman abuse in representative samples. (p. 113)

New directions in critical criminological research and theory Given the paucity of research on pornography and violence against women, it is not difficult to suggest new progressive avenues of inquiry, some of which involve “looking backward to move forward” (DeKeseredy, 2016). For instance, there has yet to be another national representative sample victimization survey of adult women that incorporates questions about their current and former male partners’ porn consumption. Smaller-scale representative sample surveys are also conspicuously absent. It is true that “population surveys, in which random samples of women are interviewed about their experiences of violence using detailed behaviorally specific questions, yield more valid and reliable estimates of the prevalence of these phenomena in the population” (Jacquier, Johnson, & Fisher, 2011). Self-report surveys of men, too, are much needed because they yield better data on the factors that motivate men to use porn and harm women (DeKeseredy & Rennison, 2013). The lack of survey research on the linkage between porn and both men and women’s experiences with intimate violence is somewhat surprising because there is a sizeable portion of surveys that examine other risk factors associated with woman abuse (e.g., separation/ divorce, income, male peer support, etc.) (Renzetti, Edleson, & Kennedy Bergen, 2018). 287

Walter S. DeKeseredy and Amanda Hall-Sanchez

More qualitative studies of men and women are necessary. Replicating or slightly revising the personal history and narrative account research done by Jensen (1995, 1996) would be fruitful. In fact, a variety of qualitative methods enhance critical criminological understandings of how porn is related to women woman abuse and some new techniques are promising. One in particular – back-talk interviews – seems innovative. The back-talk approach is a recent development in qualitative social science (Hall-Sanchez, 2013). Yet, “back-talk” as a display of resistance or form of opposition in narrative has deep roots in African-American slavery history (Collins, 2000; Hall-Sanchez, 2014). It meant “speaking as an equal to an authority figure . . . daring to disagree and sometimes it just meant having an opinion” (hooks, 1989, p. 5). As a form of testimony, it meant, “to bring forth, to claim and proclaim oneself as an intrinsic part of the world” (Collins, 2000, p. 2). Therefore, the roots of “talking back” date back prior to the end of slavery, yet the use (and validation) of this participatory action component in qualitative research is relatively new (DeKeseredy & Hall-Sanchez, 2017). In this current era, back-talk interviews are becoming known as useful means of collecting rich contextual data. Typically used in feminist community-based studies, researchers “go back” to the community to present their results as an attempt to get more feedback from a sample of community members. As Hall-Sanchez (2014) puts it, in back-talk studies: [R]esearchers “go back” to communities, presenting their results to obtain reactions and additional questions/concerns/suggestions for future research. These discussions generate rich qualitative interactive data to supplement a previous or on-going study or as new data to be further analyzed on its own (Wilkinson, 1998). Back-talk interviews are empowering to participants, providing an opportunity to exercise a greater role in research processes. Researchers can also reasonably disseminate sensitive issues to potentially diverse and highly politicized audiences, contributing to a more reflexive and socially responsible research culture (Frisina, 2006) (p. 5). To date, Hall-Sanchez (2014) is the first feminist criminologist to use this method in a rural woman abuse study. Ten years after DeKeseredy and his colleagues completed their rural Ohio separation/divorce sexual assault project (see DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 2009; DeKeseredy et al., 2006), she presented their results to a purposive sample of 12 women and though she did not specifically ask about the influence of pornography, with the aid of DeKeseredy (see DeKeseredy & Hall-Sanchez, 2017), a close examination of her interview data reveal that it was a recurring topic mentioned by some women during discussions about the ways in which their ex-partners’ male peers contributed to their abusive conduct. Dana, for example, said, “He always had a fantasy of doing a threesome and talked me into it. Porn was a big factor. He wasn’t always interested in me per se. It seemed like it was always with others.” Pornography is not only heterosexual in nature and there is a growing body of research on intimate violence in LGBTQ communities (Messinger, 2017). Is pornography a powerful correlate of such violence? Thus far, there are no reliable answers to this question, which is not surprising since much of criminology is heteronormative (Buist & Lenning, 2016). Queer criminology is a new variant of critical criminology and perhaps some much needed empirical and theoretical work on porn will be generated by scholars in this field, such as the contributors to Chapter 7. This is not to say, however, that examining the relationship between porn and violence in LGBT communities should be ghettoized. Critical criminologists of all walks of life potentially have something to say about this issue.

288

Contemporary adult pornography

Turning to some theoretical issues, as a variant of critical criminology, cultural criminology pays much attention to how media images shape public perceptions of social problems, “thereby reflecting and recreating the unequal social and economic relations that are the hallmark of advanced capitalism” (Muzzatti, 2012, p. 141). What about gender relations and what about porn? Despite offering rich insights into media dynamics and popular culture, cultural criminologists have yet to carefully examine the issues raised in this paper.9 They are fully capable of doing so and DeKeseredy et al.’s (2014) analysis of the horrification and pornification of rural culture reveals that a rich understanding of highly degrading and grossly distorted media representations of sexuality and male-to-female violence can be obtained merging cultural criminology’s concerns with those of feminists. Hopefully, one of cultural criminology’s next steps is to make porn one of its central topics of inquiry. Much progressive theoretical food for thought can also be drawn from other types of critical criminologists. For example, though too detailed and complex to summarize in a few sentences, Atkinson and Rodgers’ (2016) analysis of Internet pornography and violent video games reveals much utility in revisiting Elias’ (1939) “civilising process theory.” They assert that these technologies: provide alluring and experimental landscapes. In these spaces the outward veneer of our culture as intrinsically “civil” or pacified is seen also to reveal anti-social forms of real and simulated conduct. Such experiences, available through certain strands of gaming and extreme pornography, necessitate a deepened criminological sensibility prepared to discuss physical and imagined forms of harm as they are enacted within – or bound up with – online and game spaces. (Atkinson & Rodgers, 2016, pp. 1291–1292) Sociological theories of online abuse are in short supply and most of those that have been applied are conservative (DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 2016). On the other hand, like Atkinson and Rodgers (2016), Salter (2017) compels us to revisit theoretical work of the past and he offers a critical theory of online abuse. Guided by the writings of members of the Frankfurt School,10 his perspective, as well, is too detailed and complex to summarize here. Yet, Salter should be commended for offering a novel critical criminological way of explaining a major contemporary social problem and helping us move beyond mainstream ways of thinking about image-based sexual abuse. Although he does not discuss violence, critical criminologist Simon Winlow (2014) proposes another way of thinking about porn. Guided by Badiou (2009, 2012), a French philosopher heavily influenced by Althusserian Marxism and Lacanian psychoanalysis, he states that porn consumption: reflects a historic drive towards an atonal world (Badiou, 2009) that lacks the structuring logic of a master signifier capable of imposing meaning on a world of perpetual flux and imponderable diversity. In the sociological sense, it functions as an outcome of selfish individualism: a withdrawal into the cocoon of subjectivity, free from the threats and obligations that pertain to a genuine intersubjective encounter. Contemporary postmodern sexuality is then an increasingly selfish and solitary activity. (2014, p. 168) The critical criminological theories reviewed here are not likely to be the last of their kind and new ones will surely be crafted. To advance a better understanding of pornography use and its effects, more than just accurate data are required. We need to explain why people consume violent and abusive porn.

289

Walter S. DeKeseredy and Amanda Hall-Sanchez

Conclusion Critical criminological understandings of contemporary adult porn and its relationship to woman abuse are in a state of infancy and much more scholarly and political contributions are needed. Even so, work cited throughout this chapter shows that progressive criminologists are now adjusting to the “hypothesis that pornography should be studied in exactly the same way that film has been productively studied” (Lehman, 2006, p. 2). Outlined in this chapter is a blueprint for moving forward. The recommendations are not exhaustive but worth pursuing. Though we may not know as much as we would like about the violent consequences of porn consumption, production and distribution, what we do know is that, like violence against women, pornography is deeply entrenched in our society. How could it be such a lucrative business if only a small number of people used it (DeKeseredy & Hall-Sanchez, 2017; Lehman, 2006)? The pornography industry is an “economic juggernaut” and “we are so steeped in the pornographic mindset that it is difficult to imagine what a world without porn would look like” (Dines, 2010, p. 163). Still, due to the efforts of progressive anti-porn activists and scholars, some radical changes are occurring. For example, in the winter of 2013, Iceland drafted legislation limiting Internet access to violent porn. Iceland already has legislation forbidding the printing and distribution of porn but it does not cover the Internet. The porn industry, too, may contribute to its own collapse. Possibly, the producers of violent and racist sexual media might cross a line that results in outraging most people and politicians around the globe, leading to strict regulation and highly punitive responses (Bridges & Jensen, 2011). Regardless of what radical changes happen and when they transpire, critical criminologists involved in the anti-porn movement still “have a lot of work to do” (Jensen, 2007, p. 184), some of which is suggested in Chapter 37.

Notes 1

2

3 4 5 6 7 8

9 10 290

This chapter includes modified sections of work published previously by DeKeseredy (2015a, 2015b), DeKeseredy, Dragiewicz, & Schwartz (2017), DeKeseredy and Funk (2017), DeKeseredy and HallSanchez (2017), and DeKeseredy and Schwartz (2016). We would like to thank Roland Atkinson, Kerry Carrington, John Foubert, Rus Funk, Steve Hall, Michael Salter, Martin Schwartz, and Simon Winlow for their comments and assistance. See Comella and Tarrant (2015), DeKeseredy and Corsianos (2016), Dines (2010), Foubert (2017), Sullivan and McKee (2015) for reviews of the recent extant social scientific literature on pornography production, distribution, and consumption. There is also much growing demand for gonzo videos featuring female members of other racial/ethnic groups, including those that feature Middle-Eastern women (DeKeseredy, 2015b). Members of “Guyland” are, according to Kimmel (2008), men between the ages of 16 and 26. This quotation was on www.endrevengeporn.org/my-letter-to-legislators.html. This page, however, no longer exists. Some conservative researchers (e.g., Foubert, 2017) make the same claims. See DeKeseredy and Corsianos (2016) and DeKeseredy and Funk (2017) for reviews of international survey research on porn and violence against women. The mesosystem is a level of influence included in ecological models of violence (Carlson, 1984; Heise, 1998; World Health Organization, 2002). Other levels included are individual, interpersonal, community, and culture. Dragiewicz (2011) asserts that “the mesosystem is the more important part of the ecological model because it describes the cumulative interaction of all of the other levels upon a person” (p. 20). Note that the word “pornography” only appears twice in the second edition of Ferrell, Hayward, and Young’s (2015) Cultural Criminology: An Invitation. Habarmas (1989) is one major example of a leading scholar affiliated with the Frankfurt School.

Contemporary adult pornography

References Abowitz, R. (2013, April 21). Rob Black, porn’s dirty whistleblower, spills trade secrets. The Daily Beast. Retrieved from www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/04/21/rob-black-porn-s-dirty-whistlebowerspills-trade-secrets.html. Atkinson, R. & Rodgers, T. (2016). Pleasure zones and murder boxes: Online pornography and violent video games as cultural zones of exception. The British Journal of Criminology, 56, 1291–1307. Badiou, A. (2009). Logic of words. London: Continuum. Badiou, A. (2012). In praise of love. London: Verso. Bart, P. (1985). Pornography: Institutionalizing woman-hating and eroticizing dominance and submission for fun and profit. Justice Quarterly, 2, 283–292. Bergen, R. K. & Bogle, K. A. (2000). Exploring the connection between pornography and sexual violence. Violence and Victims, 15, 227–234. Bindel, J. (2010, July 2). The truth about the porn industry: Gail Dines, the author of an explosive new book about the sex industry, on why pornography has never been a greater threat to our relationships. The Guardian. Retrieved from www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/jul/02/gail-dines-pornography. Boyle, K. (Ed.) (2010). Everyday pornography. London: Routledge. Bridges, A. J. & Jensen, R. (2011). Pornography. In C.M. Renzetti, J.L. Edleson & R. Kennedy Bergen (Eds), Sourcebook on violence against women (2nd ed.) (pp. 133–148). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Bridges, A. J., Wosnitzer, R., Scharrer, E., Sun, C. & Liberman, R. (2010). Aggression and sexual behavior in best-selling pornography videos: A content analysis. Violence Against Women, 16, 1065–1085. Briere, J. & Malamuth, N. (1983). Self-reported likelihood of sexually aggressive behavior: Attitudinal versus sexual explanations. Journal of Research in Personality, 17, 315–323. Brownmiller, S. (1975). Against our will: Men, women, and rape. New York: Simon & Schuster. Buist, C. L. & Lenning, E. (2016). Queer criminology. London: Routledge. Burgess-Proctor, A. (2006). Intersections of race, class, gender, and crime: Future directions for feminist criminology. Feminist Criminology, 1, 27–47. Burstyn, V. (1987). Who the hell is “we”? In L. Bell (Ed.), Good girls, bad girls: Sex trade workers and feminists face to face (pp. 163–172). Toronto: Women’s Press. Carlson, B. E. (1984). Causes and maintenance of domestic violence: An ecological analysis. Social Services Review, 58, 569–587. Collins, P. H. (2000). Black feminist thought (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge. Comella, L. & Tarrant, S. (Eds). (2015). New views on pornography: Sexuality, politics, and the law. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger. DeKeseredy, W. S. (1988). Woman abuse in dating relationships: The relevance of social support theory. Journal of Family Violence, 3, 1–13. DeKeseredy, W. S. (2015a). Critical criminological understandings of adult pornography and woman abuse: New progressive directions in research and theory. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 4, 4–21. DeKeseredy, W. S. (2015b). Patriarchy.com: Adult Internet pornography and the abuse of women. In C.M. Renzetti & R. Kennedy Bergen (Eds), Understanding diversity: Celebrating difference, challenging inequality (pp. 186–199). Boston: Pearson. DeKeseredy, W. S. (2016). Looking backward to moving forward: Revisiting some past feminist contributions to the study of violence against women. Violence and Gender, 3, 177–180. DeKeseredy, W. S. & Corsianos, M. (2016). Violence against women in pornography. London: Routledge. DeKeseredy, W. S. & Funk, R. E. (2017). The role of adult pornography in intimate partner sexual violence perpetrators’ offending. In L. McOrmond-Plummer, J.Y. Levy-Peck & P. Easteal (Eds), Perpetrators of intimate partner sexual violence: A multidisciplinary approach to prevention, recognition, and intervention (pp. 134–142). London: Routledge. DeKeseredy, W. S. & Hall-Sanchez, A. (2017). Adult pornography and violence against women in the heartland: Results from a rural southeast Ohio study. Violence Against Women, 23, 830–849. DeKeseredy, W. S. & MacLeod, L. (1997). Woman abuse: A sociological story. Toronto: Harcourt Brace. DeKeseredy, W. S. & Olsson, P. (2011). Adult pornography, male peer support, and violence against women: The contribution of the “dark side” of the Internet. In M. Vargas Martin, M. Garcia-Ruiz & A. Edwards (Eds), Technology for facilitating humanity and combating social deviations: Interdisciplinary perspectives (pp. 34–50). Hershey, PA: IGI Global. DeKeseredy, W. S. & Rennison, C. M. (2013). New directions in the social scientific study of separation/ divorce assault. In K. Richards & J. Tauri (Eds), Crime, justice and social democracy: Proceedings of the 291

Walter S. DeKeseredy and Amanda Hall-Sanchez

2nd international conference, 2013, volume 1 (pp. 47–57). Brisbane, AU: Crime and Justice Research Center, Queensland University of Technology. DeKeseredy, W. S. & Schwartz, M. D. (1998). Woman abuse on campus: Results from the Canadian national survey. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. DeKeseredy, W. S. & Schwartz, M. D. (2009). Dangerous exits: Escaping abusive relationships in rural America. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. DeKeseredy, W. S. & Schwartz, M. D. (2013). Male peer support and violence against women: The history and verification of a theory. Boston: Northeastern University Press. DeKeseredy, W. S. & Schwartz, M. D. (2016). Thinking sociologically about image-based sexual abuse: The contribution of male peer support theory. Sexualization, Media, & Society. doi: 10.1177/2374623816684692. DeKeseredy, W. S., Dragiewicz, M. & Schwartz, M. D. (2017). Abusive endings: Separation and divorce violence against women. Oakland, CA: University of California Press. DeKeseredy, W. S., Muzzatti, S. L. & Donnermeyer, J. F. (2014). Mad men in bib overalls: Media’s horrification and pornification of rural culture. Critical Criminology, 22, 179–197. DeKeseredy, W. S., Schwartz, M. D., Fagen, D. & Hall, A. (2006). Separation/divorce sexual assault: The contribution of male support. Feminist Criminology, 1, 228–250. Dines, G. (2010). Pornland: How porn has hijacked our sexuality. Boston: Beacon Press. Donnermeyer, J. F. & DeKeseredy, W. S. (2014). Rural criminology. London: Routledge. Dragiewicz, M. (2011). Equality with a vengeance: Men’s rights groups, battered women, and antifeminist backlash. Boston: Northeastern University Press. Dworkin, A. (1981). Pornography: Men possessing women. New York: Perigee. Elias, N. (1939). The civilizing process: Sociogenetic and psychogenetic investigations. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Ferrell, J., Hayward, K. & Young J. (2015). Cultural criminology: An invitation (2nd ed.). London: Sage. Fileborn, B. (2016). Reclaiming the night-time economy: Unwanted sexual attention in pubs and clubs. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Foubert, J. D. (2017). How pornography harms: What today’s teens, young adults, parents, and pastors need to know. Bloomington, IN: LifeRich Publishing. Franks, M. A. (2014). Drafting an effective “revenge porn” law: A guide for legislators. Retrieved from http:// papers.ssrn.com/so13/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2468823. Frisina, A. (2006). Back-talk focus groups as a follow-up tool in qualitative migration research: The missing link? Forum, 7, 12–25. Gossett, J. & Byrne, S. (2002). “Click here”: A content analysis of Internet rape sites. Gender and Society, 16, 689–709. Habarmas, J. (1989). The structural transformation of the public sphere: An inquiry into a category of bourgeois society. Cambridge: Polity Press. Hall-Sanchez, A. (2013). Talking back: Rural Ohio women’s reflections on violent intimate relationships (Doctoral dissertation). Department of Sociology, University of Hawaii, Manoa. Hall-Sanchez, A. (2014). Male peer support, hunting, and separation/divorce sexual assault in rural Ohio. Critical Criminology, 22, 495–510. Heise, L. L. (1998). Violence against women: An integrated, ecological framework. Violence Against Women, 4, 262–290. hooks, b. (1989). Talking back: Thinking feminist, thinking black. Cambridge, MA: South End Press. Jacquier, V., Johnson, H. & Fisher, B. (2011). Research methods, measures, and ethics. In C. M. Renzetti, J. L. Edleson & R. K. Bergen (Eds), Sourcebook on violence against women (2nd ed.) (pp. 23–45). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Jeffreys, S. (2011). Live pornography: Strip clubs in the international political economy of prostitution. In M. Tankard Reist & A. Bray (Eds), Big porn inc.: Exposing the harms of the global pornography industry (pp. 136–143). North Melbourne, AU: Spinifex Press. Jensen, R. (1995). Pornographic lives. Violence Against Women, 1, 32–54. Jensen, R. (1996). Knowing pornography. Violence Against Women, 2, 82–102. Jensen, R. (2007). Getting off: Pornography and the end of masculinity. Cambridge, MA: South End Press. Katz, J. (2006). The macho paradox: Why some men hurt women and how all men can help. Naperville, IL: SOURCEBOOKS. Kelly, L. (1988). Surviving sexual violence. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Kelly, L. (2012). Standing the test of time? Reflections on the concept of the continuum of sexual violence. In J. Brown & S. Walklate (Eds), Handbook on sexual violence (pp. xvii–xxv). London: Routledge. Kimmel, M. (2008). Guyland: The perilous world where boys become men. New York: Harper. 292

Contemporary adult pornography

Klein, J. (2012). The bully society: School shootings and the crisis of bullying in America’s schools. New York: New York University Press. Lacombe, D. (1988). Ideology and public policy: The case against pornography. Toronto: Garamond Press. Lamphere, R. D. & Pikciunas, K. T. (2016). Sexting, sextortion, and other Internet sexual offenses. In J.N. Varro, S. Clevenger & C.D. Marcum (Eds), The intersection between intimate partner abuse, technology, and cybercrime: Examining the virtual enemy (pp. 141–165). Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press. Lehman, P. (2006). Introduction: “A dirty little secret”: Why teach and study pornography? In P. Lehman (Ed.), Pornography: Film and culture (pp. 1–24). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Lewis, C. M. (2014). Anal heterosex among young people and implications for health promotion: A qualitative study. BJJ Open, 4. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2014–004996. Linz, D. (1989). Exposure to sexually explicit materials and attitudes toward rape: A comparison of study results. Journal of Sex Research, 26, 50–84. MacKinnon, C. (1983). Feminism, Marxism, method, and the state: Toward feminist jurisprudence. Signs, 8, 635–658. MacKinnon, C. (1989). Sexuality, pornography, and method: Pleasure under patriarchy. Ethics, 99, 314–436. McClintock, A. (1993). Gonad the barbarian and the venus flytrap: Portraying the female and male orgasm. In L. Segal & M. McIntosh (Eds), Sex exposed: Sexuality and the pornography debate (pp. 111–131). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. McGlynn, C. & Rackley, E. (2016, February 15). Not “revenge porn,” but abuse: Let’s call it image-based sexual abuse. Inherently Human: Critical Perspectives on Law, Gender & Sexuality, 41. Retrieved from https://inherentlyhu man.wordpress.com/2016/02/15/not-revenge-porn-but-abuse-lets-call-it-image-based-sexual-abuse/. McGlynn, C., Rackley, E. & Houghton, R. (2017). Beyond “revenge porn”: The continuum of image-based sexual abuse. Feminist Legal Studies. doi: 10.1007/s10691–017–9343–2. McNair, B. (2002). Striptease culture: Sex, media, and the democratisation of desire. London: Routledge. Messinger, A.M. (2017). LGBTQ intimate partner violence: Lessons for policy, practice, and research. Oakland, CA: University of California Press. Miller, M. (2013, October 17). Revenge porn victim Holly Jacobs “ruined my life,” ex says. Miami New Times. Retrieved from www.miaminewtimes.com/news/revenge-porn-victim-holly-jacobs-ruined-mylife-ex-says-6393654. Muzzatti, S. L. (2012). Cultural criminology: Burning up capitalism, consumer culture and crime. In W. S. DeKeseredy & M. Dragiewicz (Eds), Routledge handbook of critical criminology (pp. 138–149). London: Routledge. Potter, H. (2015). Intersectionality and criminology: Disrupting and revolutionizing studies of crime. London: Routledge. Powell, A. & Henry, N. (2015). Digital harassment and abuse of adult Australians: A summary report. Retrieved from https://research.techandme.com.au/wp-content/uploads/REPORT_AustraliansExperiencesofDigital HarassmentandAbuse.pdf. Renzetti, C. M. (2013). Feminist criminology. London: Routledge. Renzetti, C. M., Edleson, J. L. & R. Kennedy Bergen, R. (Eds). (2018). Sourcebook on violence against women (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Russell, D. E. H. (1982). Rape in marriage. New York: Macmillan. Russell, D. E. H. (1990). Rape in marriage (2nd ed.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Russell, D. E. H. (1993). Against pornography: The evidence of harm. Berkeley, CA: Russell Publications. Salter, M. (2017). Crime, justice and social media. London: Routledge. Salter, M. & Crofts, T. (2015). Responding to revenge porn: Challenging online legal impunity. In L. Comella & S. Tarrant (Eds), New views on pornography: Sexuality politics and the law (pp. 233–253). Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger. Shariff, S. & DeMartini, A. (2016). Cyberbullying and rape culture in universities: Defining the legal lines between fun and intentional harm. In H. Cowie & C. A. Myers (Eds), Bullying among university students: Cross-national perspectives (pp. 172–190). London: Routledge. Shope, J. H. (2004). When words are not enough: The search for the effect of pornography on abused women. Violence Against Women, 10, 56–72. Simmons, C. A., Lehmann, P. & Collier-Tenison, S. (2008). Linking male use of the sex industry to controlling behaviors in violent relationships: An exploratory analysis. Violence Against Women, 14, 406–417. Stella (2011). Dancing pornography. In M. Tankard Reist & A. Bray (Eds), Big porn inc.: Exposing the harms of the global pornography industry (pp. 144–149). North Melbourne, AU: Spinifex Press. Sullivan, R. & McKee, A. (2015). Pornography. Cambridge: Polity. 293

Walter S. DeKeseredy and Amanda Hall-Sanchez

Tarrant, S. (2015). Pornography and pedagogy: Teaching media literacy. In L. Comella & S. Tarrant (Eds), New views on pornography: Sexuality politics and the law (pp. 417–430). Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger. Ullen, M. (2014). Pornography and its critical reception: Toward a theory of masturbation. Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media. Retrieved from www.ejumpcut.or/archive/jc51.2009/UllenPorn/. Weins, W. J. (2014). Concepts and context. In T. Helstand & W. J. Weins (Eds), Sexting and youth (pp. 63–76). Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press. Wilkinson, S. (1998). Focus groups in feminist research: Power, interaction, and the coconstruction of meaning. Women’s Studies International Forum, 21, 111–125. Winlow, S. (2014). Pornography. In R. Atkinson (Ed.), Shades of deviance: A primer on crime, deviance and social harm (pp. 166–168). London: Routledge. World Health Organization (2002). World report on violence and health: Summary. Geneva: Author.

294

24 Critical issues in intimate partner violence against women Shana L. Maier and Raquel Kennedy Bergen

Introduction Critical criminologists have played a pivotal role in shaping the research on violence against women. Critical criminology, including feminist criminology, has contributed to the study of woman abuse through a broad based, mixed method, and contextualized approach to research. Critical criminologists have provided methodological improvements to measuring the prevalence and incidence of woman abuse. They have also contributed greatly to our understanding of the dynamics and contributing factors to violence. Through theoretical work on the causes of violence, critical criminologists have also shaped our awareness of best practices. Importantly, such criminologists have been among the most active participants in debates about the positive and negative implications of justice system interventions for women who experience violence in their lives. This chapter highlights critical criminologists’ contributions to some of the most important issues and debates within the field of woman abuse. The chapter will address research on sexual violence in intimate partnerships; the debate about women’s use of violence; mandatory arrest; and the need for better responses to particularly atrisk populations, including women of color, and rural women. The past four to five decades have seen an explosion of information about the serious problem of violence against women. It is now commonly understood that women and girls across the globe experience a wide range of violence from female infanticide to sexual trafficking of young girls, to rape as a weapon of war. Women’s experiences of violence are myriad and complex and it is beyond the scope of this chapter to describe every form of violence experienced. Instead, this chapter focuses on woman abuse in intimate relationships. According to research by the World Health Organization, sexual and physical violence against women remains a pervasive problem. In fact, 30 percent of all women who have been in a relationship have experienced physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner, and 38 percent of the murders of women worldwide are committed by intimate partners (World Health Organization, 2013, p. 2). There was variation among reports of lifetime prevalence between countries, incidence was higher in countries with low or middle income levels compared to countries with higher income levels. For example, the lifetime prevalence of intimate partner violence in Africa

295

Shana L. Maier and Raquel Kennedy Bergen

was 36.6 percent compared to 23.2 percent in high income regions (p. 17). Evidently the average income level of the region influences intimate partner violence. The critical research on woman abuse is interdisciplinary, and there have been critical contributions by experts in the fields of public health, psychology, sociology, criminology, and women’s studies to our understanding of the implications of these numbers on the lived reality of women and girls worldwide. As critical criminologists have repeatedly argued, the sheer volume of violence against women challenges the assumption that women and girls rarely experience violence, and demands that we investigate the cultural factors contributing to gendered forms of violence.

The intersection of physical and sexual violence: rape in intimate partnerships Sexual violence in intimate partnerships is a prevalent and serious problem which has been the focus of increasing study over the past 40 years. A variety of factors contribute to men’s perpetration of sexual assault against female intimate partners including: men’s sense of entitlement to sex on demand; cultural expectations of what constitutes “wifely” duty; and most importantly, rape is frequently used as a form of control in abusive relationships (Bergen, 1996). Prior to legal reforms promoted by the women’s movement in the 1970s, rape laws in the United States included spousal exemptions that made the idea of wife rape unthinkable. Marriage was considered to constitute women’s intractable consent to sex with their husbands (Bergen, 1996; Caringella, 2009). It is now widely acknowledged that rape by one’s partner is often part of sexual and physical violence against women in intimate relationships. Diana Russell’s (1982) landmark study found that 14 percent of women who had ever been married had experienced sexual assault or rape by their partners. Recent research by the Center for Disease Control (2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey) indicates rape by intimates continues to be a prevalent problem in the United States. One in ten women surveyed reported being raped by an intimate partner during their lifetime and when the definition was broadened to include other acts of sexual violence, approximately 17 percent of women reported this experience at least once with an intimate partner (Brieding et al., 2014). Recent research has raised awareness about the need to understand women’s experiences of violence from a global perspective (Yllo & Torres, 2016). For example, it is important to recognize that marital rape is treated quite differently worldwide. Marital rape has been illegal in all 50 states in the United States since 1993. However, it remains legal in 49 countries, including India (Sachdev, 2016). The World Bank reports that of the 100 countries surveyed, most (62) do not have explicit laws that criminalize rape or sexual assault within marriage. If there is no marital rape exemption in those countries, marital rape can be handled like any other rape (i.e. rape by acquaintance or stranger) (Klugman et al., 2014). Unfortunately, numerous changes to rape laws have not ended the difficulties faced by survivors of sexual assault in the criminal justice system. Special requirements for the prosecution of marital rape continue to limit the efficacy of criminal justice responses to sexual violence against women in law and practice. Poor treatment of survivors continues in the courts and in the media. As a result, critical criminologists advocate continued work against sexual violence including broad based cultural and legal changes (Bergen, 2000; Caringella, 2009; Yllo & Torres, 2016). The threat of sexual assault does not necessarily end with the demise of an abusive relationship. Research by DeKeseredy et al. (2004) drew attention to the serious problem of separation violence and the reality that ending a relationship is a particularly risky time for sexual violence against women. While the threat of lethal violence against women during the dissolution of relationships has been documented for years (Frieze, 1983; Wilson & Daly, 1993) attention to the 296

Intimate partner violence against women

prevalence of separation assault, including non-lethal physical and sexual violence, has been more recent. Catalano (2012) found that 20 percent of all individuals stalked in the U.S. are stalked by a former intimate partner. Research in Canada found that separated women experienced nine times the prevalence of intimate partner violence when compared to married women, and divorced women experienced four times the prevalence of intimate partner violence when compared to married women (Brownridge, 2006; Basile & Black, 2010). Recent research including a sample of college women found that over half (51.8 percent) experienced stalking by an abusive ex-partner after they ended the relationship, and the stalking victimization contributed to symptoms of post traumatic stress and interpersonal sensitivity, such as feelings of inferiority or feeling very self-conscious around others (Edwards & Gidycz, 2014). As DeKeseredy and Schwartz (2005, 2009) and Bergen (1996) have argued, the sense of entitlement in an intimate partnership does not necessarily end when a relationship dissolves but in fact, can increase the likelihood of women’s experiences of violence by their partners.

Perpetrators or victims? The ongoing debate about women’s use of violence in intimate relationships Statistics from Canada and the United States indicate that women are much more likely than men to be victims of both fatal and nonfatal intimate partner violence (Catalano, 2013; Catalano et al., 2009; Sinha, 2013). According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey, in 2011 the rate of serious intimate partner violence against women was 1.6 per 1,000 and 0.4 per 1,000 for men (Catalano, 2013). In Canada, women are most likely to be victimized by intimate partners (45 percent) compared to friends and acquaintances (27 percent), strangers (16 percent), and other family members (12 percent) (Sinha, 2013). Women also continue to be less likely than men to be killed by an intimate partner (Sinha, 2013). Despite these statistics and ample research indicating that women are more likely than men to be victims of intimate partner violence, some scholars continue to downgrade the importance of gender in understanding intimate violence. Proponents of the “gender symmetry” thesis argue that women are as likely as (Straus, 2006), or more likely than men to victimize their intimate partners (Dutton, 2006; Dutton & Nicholls, 2005; Hettrich & O’Leary, 2007). Support for the gender symmetry perspective comes almost exclusively from research based on the Conflict Tactics Scales (CTS) developed by Straus and Gelles in the 1970s. The CTS and CTS2 rely on self-reports of the use of “conflict tactics” (from calm discussion through physical violence) by intimate partners (Straus & Gelles, 1985). The CTS and similar measures have been met with frequent and persistent criticism. While the CTS provides a tool for measuring the prevalence of intimate partner aggression, it fails to adequately contextualize it. For this reason, when the CTS is used on its own, it is often impossible to interpret results in such a way as to determine key contextual factors such as whether violent acts were defensive or offensive (DeKeseredy & Dragiewicz, 2007). Quite simply, over-reliance on the CTS as a stand-alone tool obscures the many ways that abuse in intimate relationships is gendered, the reasons why men and women use violence in intimate relationships, and the highly gendered outcomes of violence (DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 1998; Kimmel, 2002; Melton & Belknap, 2003). In order to ameliorate these shortcomings and contribute to our understanding of key factors for the prevention of violence, critical criminologists have advocated the use of broad definitions and multiple methods to study the myriad forms of violence against women (DeKeseredy & Dragiewicz, 2007; DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 1998). Criminologists using representative samples and contextualized measures of violence have produced results indicating the high prevalence 297

Shana L. Maier and Raquel Kennedy Bergen

of woman abuse and also documented its gendered dynamics (DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 1998; Melton & Sillito, 2012; Schwartz & DeKeseredy, 1997). Critical criminologists argue that research which omits many types of violence that are central to abusive relationships provides an inadequate and inappropriate basis for recommendations about prevention or intervention. When considering the context of violence, research concludes that when women use or are arrested for domestic violence, it is more likely to be an act of self-defense (Allen, Swan, & Raghavan, 2009; DeKeseredy, 2006; DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 1998; Melton & Belknap, 2003; Miller, 2001, 2005; Miller & Meloy, 2006; Swan & Snow, 2003). When mutually violent couples are included in research, findings indicate that women tend to be more likely than men to experience more severe, negative effects of domestic violence (Frieze, 2005). Women’s violence against men may also be less severe than men’s violence against women (Hester, 2013; Hettich & O’Leary, 2007). For example, Hester (2013) looked at 96 cases of domestic violence (32 men only, 32 women only, 32 both men and women) recorded by the police in England over a six-year period and found that men were not only more likely than women to be repeat offenders but their violence against women was much more severe than women’s violence against men. National research from Brieding et al. (2014) indicates that women had a significantly higher lifetime rate of “severe” physical violence by intimate partners when compared to men. While women were more likely than men to use weapons, narratives recorded by the police indicate that they use weapons for protection. Men may be more likely than women to initiate violence against their intimate partners because of the support they receive from other men. This finding is supported by patriarchal peer support, which refers to the legitimacy, justification, or encouragement that males provide to their male peers who abuse or victimize female intimate partners (DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 2013; DeKeseredy et al., 2006).

Mandatory arrest Historically, police tended to be reluctant to make arrests in domestic disputes and treated domestic violence as a private matter that should be ignored by the criminal justice system. In the late 1970s, officers were criticized for their lack of action in responding to domestic violence incidents. Due to such criticism and lawsuits against police for failure to adequately address intimate partner violence, the Minneapolis Police Department conducted a randomized experiment to determine the best police response to domestic violence. The key finding was that arrest was more likely than mediation or separation to reduce future incidents of domestic violence (Sherman & Berk, 1984). Although many police departments in the United States adopted mandatory arrest policies for domestic violence incidents, based on these initial findings, it is important to recognize that “mandatory” arrest policies do not always mandate arrest. In reality, arrest is conditional upon cause and policies may better be described as pro-arrest policies where officers are encouraged to arrest, but still have discretion whether to do so. Since the mid-1980s, research has found that mandatory arrest policies have resulted in victims also being arrested (Durfee, 2012; Miller 2001, 2005; Miller & Meloy, 2006). When women are arrested for domestic violence, it is more likely to be a consequence of dual arrest (both partners arrested) rather than a single arrest (of the woman only) (Melton & Belknap, 2003; Roark, 2016). Furthermore, recent research that included interviews with 18 women who were arrested and ordered by the court to attend an educational group on intimate partner violence concluded that women used violence against their intimate partners for several reasons: in self-defense, because they were retaliating against some previous victimization, to show their partner that they will not stand for abuse, or to protect someone such as their children (Li, Levick, Eichman, & Chang, 2015). 298

Intimate partner violence against women

Additional research supports that women arrested in a dual arrest have a history of intimate partner violence victimization (Fraehlich & Ursel, 2014). As critical criminologists have suggested, women who are marginalized or disenfranchised are a diverse population who may face additional challenges in their decision-making and their experiences of violence by their partners (Renzetti, 2010).

Violence against women of color and other understudied populations It is imperative to consider the complex intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, domination, privilege and identity—what is commonly understood as intersectionality—when we consider experiences of violence (Sokoloff, 2008). While a comprehensive and thorough treatment of this issue is beyond the scope of this chapter, it is important to acknowledge that experiences of violence and diverse risks for experiencing violence are worthy of critical consideration. Most research concludes that women of color are significantly more likely than White women to be victims of intimate partner violence (Brieding et al., 2014; Cho, 2012; Caetano et al., 2005). Brieding et al. (2014) indicated that approximately 44 percent of Black women, 46 percent of American Indian or Alaskan Native women, and more than 50 percent of multiracial nonHispanic women report experiencing rape, physical violence or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime. Despite their higher likelihood of experiencing violence, women of color are likely to encounter services that tend to take a mainstream (White) approach, ignoring the unique experiences and challenges such as racism and fear/distrust of the police within the community (Gillum, 2008; Lee, 2013). Research with African American survivors of intimate partner violence indicate the need for culturally specific services given the frequent perception that mainstream programs often fail to understand the unique experiences African American women and men have encountered as they work to end the violence (Gillum, 2009). Research indicates that women of color may face a variety of barriers when seeking services. Lack of information about available services within the community due to language barriers may pose a serious problem (Bonilla-Santiago, 2002). Other barriers include financial instability, fear of losing custody of children, and the belief that criminal justice and medical systems will discriminate against them (Acevedo, 2000; Bauer et al., 2000; Cho, 2012; Sokoloff, 2008). In addition, women who are immigrants may face serious challenges. In general, Latina immigrants are less likely than non-immigrants to reach out for help from formal agencies and one important factor for many is fear of deportation (Ingram, 2007). An area of research that is receiving increasing attention is the experiences of violence by Alaskan Native and American Indian women given their high risk for victimization (Brieding et al., 2014; Hamby, 2004). Barriers to disclosure and reporting the violence that are frequently faced by American Indians and Alaskan Natives include a lack of anonymity given the small size of many tribal communities, distrust of “white” organizations affiliated with the federal government and law enforcement, and lack of available resources for assistance (Wahab & Olson, 2004). A further consideration raised by Hamby (2004) is that there is often a conflict between the values of survivors and outsiders including an emphasis on prosecution and disclosure of details about experiences of violence which may be considered private. Further cultural clashes may occur if there is a failure of organizations to provide culturally sensitive programs and validate healing practices. While the experiences of women of color vary significantly, important recommendations include the development of culturally sensitive resources and outreach within diverse communities in a variety of locations such as religious institutions and community health centers to better address the challenges women of color face in ending intimate partner violence (Cho, 2012; Hamby, 2004). 299

Shana L. Maier and Raquel Kennedy Bergen

Importantly, it is not only race and ethnicity than shape women’s experiences of violence but as research over the past two decades indicate, a variety of factors such as social class, sexuality, and geographic location must also be considered. Criminologists have long studied the importance of social class and as Renzetti and Maier (2002) argued, social class is a critical factor in women’s experiences of violence and how they are able to cope with the violence in their lives. Women facing poverty, unemployment and/or housing insecurity experience higher rates of victimization in general and also violence by their intimate partners (Briedling et al., 2014; Renzetti & Maier, 2002) Housing and financial insecurity greatly impacts the choices that women have in terms of ending the violence as well as accessing resources for the myriad of physical and mental health consequences of violence (Hamby, 2016). Another important consideration is the experiences of violence in the LGBTQ community and criminologists are increasingly questioning the intersection of gender, sexual orientation, and violence against women (Perry, 2014). This is a critical area of inquiry given that lesbians and bisexual women report extremely high rates of physical violence, stalking, and rape by their intimate partners (Brieding et al., 2014). All victims of domestic violence face challenges, but the unique experiences of victims living in rural areas who do not have the same access to services as victims living in suburban or urban areas cannot be overlooked. While some research finds little difference in the frequency of victimization of rural women compared to urban women (Lanier & Maume, 2009), research has indicated high rates of domestic violence and sexual assault in rural communities, particularly in impoverished areas (Rennison, DeKeseredy & Dragiewicz, 2013; DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 2009; Lewis, 2003). It has been called a “hidden epidemic” given the relative silence around the issue and the high prevalence of violence against women in rural areas (Lewis, 2003; Royse, 1999). Research has highlighted these victims’ additional challenges, such as poverty, lack of employment and economic opportunities, adequate housing options, transportation, awareness of available services, and inability to travel long distances to seek help (DeKeseredy & Joseph, 2006; DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 2008; Grama, 2000; Van Hightower & Gorton, 1998; Websdale, 1998).

Conclusion Violence against women is a critically important problem for criminologists and critical scholars have been at the forefront of research in this area. Most notably, critical criminologists have contributed to our understanding of violence by advocating for contextualized, intersectional understandings of violence against women; contributing to methodological advances in defining and measuring woman abuse; studying under-investigated forms of violence, including in marginalized communities; and constructing and testing theories of violence against women. One of the most important recent contributions from critical criminology is advocating the need for a complex understanding of the various forms of violence against women. In particular, the most significant challenges to the gender symmetry paradigm have come from critical criminologists. They have raised serious questions about how violence is defined, both in theoretical terms as well as in women’s personal experiences, and challenged the larger community of researchers to consider the complexities and context of women’s experiences of violence. Another significant contribution is that critical criminology maintains a reflexive perspective on the assessment of the intended and unintended outcomes of policy and practice. These researchers have been at the forefront in raising questions about the justice system and the consequences for women who experience violence in their lives. Critical criminologists have also contributed greatly to our understanding of the causal factors of violence against women, particularly with regard to marginalized and frequently ignored populations. There is a need for further theory development within the field, particularly with 300

Intimate partner violence against women

regard to understanding the experiences of marginalized populations and the influence of ethnic/ racial/social class/sexual orientation variation on women’s experiences of violence and men’s use of violence. While there are substantial data indicating that impoverished women and women of color are high risk populations, a more complex theoretical understanding of the causes and consequences of violence in these communities is needed. Rather than looking at violence in marginalized communities from a deficit-based perspective, there is a need to explore the cultural strengths and identity that can serve as protective factors (Crooks et al., 2010). This is particularly relevant when considering prevention and best practices within a cultural context. Another area in need of greater research is violence in LGBTQ communities. In the field of critical criminology and beyond, this is a topic that has been largely understudied and there is a significant need for greater understanding of men and women’s experiences of violence with their partners and the response of the criminal justice system. In general, greater qualitative work with survivors and perpetrators of violence is needed to develop best practices and contribute to a richer understanding of preventative measures and how best to end violence against women.

References Acevedo, M.J. (2000). Battered immigrant Mexican women’s perspectives regarding abuse and help-seeking. Journal of Multicultural Social Work, 8, 243–282. Allen, C.T., Swan, S.C. & Raghavan, C. (2009). Gender symmetry, sexism, and intimate partner violence. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 24, 1816–1834. Basile, K. & Black, M. (2010). Intimate partner violence against women. In C. Renzetti, J. Edleson & R. Bergen (Eds) Sourcebook on violence against women (pp. 111–133). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Bauer, H.M., Rodriguez, M.A., Quiroga, S.S. & Flores-Ortiz, Y.G. (2000). Barriers to health care for abused Latina and Asian immigrant women. Journal of Health Care for the Poor & Underserved, 11, 33–44. Bergen, R.K. (1996) Wife rape: Understanding the response of survivors and service providers. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Bergen, R.K. (2000). Rape laws, spousal exemptions. In N.H. Rafter (Ed.), Encyclopedia of women and crime (pp. 223–225). Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Press. Bonilla-Santiago, G. (2002). Latina battered women: Barriers to service delivery and cultural considerations. In A.R. Roberts (Ed.), Handbook of domestic violence intervention strategies: Policies, programs, and legal remedies (pp. 464–471). New York: Oxford University Press. Brieding, M.J., Smith, S.G., Basile, K.C., Walters, M.L. & Chen, J. (2014). Prevalence and Characteristics of Sexual Violence, Stalking, and Intimate Partner Violence Victimization—National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, United States, 2011. Atlanta, GA: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Retrieved November 28, 2016 from www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss6308a1. htm?s_cid=ss6308a1_e. Brownridge, D.A. (2006). Violence against women post-separation. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 11, 514–530. Caetano, R., Field, C.A., Ramisetty-Mikler, S. & McGrath, C. (2005). The 5-year course of intimate partner violence among White, Black, and Hispanic couples in the United States. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 20, 1039–1057. Caringella, S. (2009). Addressing rape reform in law and practice. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Catalano, S. (2012). Stalking victims in the United States – Revised. (NCJ 224527). U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. Retrieved October 28, 2016 from www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/svus_rev. pdf. Catalano, S. (2013). Intimate partner violence: Attributes of victimization, 1993–2011. (NCJ 243300). U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. Retrieved October 28, 2016 from www.bjs.gov/ content/pub/pdf/ipvav9311.pdf. Catalano, S., Smith, E., Snyder, H. & Rand, M. (2009). Female victims of violence (NCJ 228356). U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. Retrieved February 9, 2010 from http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/ content/pub/pdf/fvv.pdf. Cho, H. (2012). Racial Differences in the Prevalence of Intimate Partner Violence Against Women and Associated Factors. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 27, 2, 344–363. 301

Shana L. Maier and Raquel Kennedy Bergen

Crooks, C.V., Jaffee, P.G., Wolfe, D.A., Hughes, R. & Chiodo, D. (2010). School-based dating violence prevention: From single events to evaluated, integrated programming. In C.M. Renzetti, J. L. Edelson & R.K. Bergen (Eds), The Sourcebook on Violence Against Women, 2nd edition (pp. 327–347). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. DeKeseredy, W.S. (2006). Future directions. Violence Against Women, 12, 1078–1085. DeKeseredy, W.S. & Dragiewicz, M. (2007). Understanding the complexities of feminist perspectives on woman abuse: A commentary on Donald G. Dutton’s Rethinking Domestic Violence. Violence Against Women, 13, 874–884. DeKeseredy, W.S. & Joseph, C. (2006). Separation and/or divorce sexual assault in rural Ohio: Preliminary results of an exploratory study. Violence Against Women, 12, 301–311. DeKeseredy, W.S. & Schwartz, M. D. (1998). Woman abuse on campus: Results from the Canadian National Survey. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. DeKeseredy, W.S. & Schwartz, M. D. (2005). Masculinities and interpersonal violence in North America. In R.W. Connell, J. Hearn & M. Kimmel (Eds), The handbook of studies on men and masculinities (pp. 353–366). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. DeKeseredy, W.S. & Schwartz, M.D. (2008). Separation/divorce sexual assault in rural Ohio: Survivors’ perceptions of collective efficacy. Journal of Prevention and Intervention in the Community, 36, 105–120. DeKeseredy, W.S. & Schwartz, M.D. (2009). Dangerous exits: Escaping abusive relationships in rural America. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. DeKeseredy, W.S. & Schwartz, M.D. (2013). Male peer support & violence against women: The history & verification of a theory. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press. DeKeseredy, W.S., Rogness, M. & Schwartz, M.D. (2004). Separation/divorce sexual assault: The current state of social and scientific knowledge. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 9, 675–691. DeKeseredy, W.S., Schwartz, M.D., Fagen, D. & Hall, M. (2006). Separation/divorce sexual assault: The contribution of male peer support. Feminist Criminology, 1, 228–250. Durfee, A. (2012). Situational ambiguity and gendered patterns of arrest for intimate partner violence. Violence Against Women, 18(1), 64–84. Dutton, D.G. (2006). Rethinking domestic violence. Vancouver, Canada: University of British Columbia Press. Dutton, D.G. & Nicholls, T.L. (2005). The gender paradigm in domestic violence research and theory: Part 1 – The conflict of theory and data. Aggression and Violent Behavior, 10, 680–674. Edwards, K.M. & Gidycz, C.M. (2014). Stalking and psychosocial distress following the termination of an abusive dating relationship: A prospective analysis. Violence Against Women, 20(11), 1383–1397. Fraehlich, C. & Ursel, J. (2014). Arresting women: Pro-arrest policies, debates, and developments. Journal of Family Violence, 29, 507–518. Frieze, I.H. (1983). Investigating the causes and consequences of marital rape. Signs, 8, 532–553. Frieze, I.H. (2005). Female violence against intimate partners: An introduction. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 29, 229–237. Gillum, T.L. (2008). Community response and needs of African American female survivors of domestic violence. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 23, 39–57. Gillum, T.L. (2009). Improving services to African American survivors of IPV: From the voices of recipients of culturally specific services. Violence Against Women, 15, 57–80. Grama, J.L. (2000). Women forgotten: Difficulties faced by rural victims of domestic violence. American Journal of Family Law, 14, 173–189. Hamby, S. (2004). Sexual violence in Indian country: Barriers and resources for Native women seeking help.VAWNet. Applied Research Document. Retrieved December 13, 2016 from http://vawnet.org/material/sexualviolence-indian-country-barriers-resources-native-women-seeking-help. Hamby, S. (2016). Battered women’s protective strategies: Stronger than you know. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hester, M. (2013). Who does what to whom? Gender and domestic violence perpetrators in English police records. European Journal of Criminology, 10(5), 623–637. Hettrich, E.L. & O’Leary, K.D. (2007). Females’ reasons for their physical aggression in dating relationships. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 22, 1131–1143. Ingram, E.M. (2007). A comparison of help seeking between Latino and non-Latino victims of intimate partner violence. Violence Against Women, 13, 159–171. Kimmel, M.S. (2002). “Gender symmetry” in domestic violence: A substantive and methodological research review. Violence Against Women, 8, 1332–1363.

302

Intimate partner violence against women

Klugman, J., Hanmer, L., Twigg, S., Hasan, T., McCleary-Sills, J. & Santamaria, J. (2014). Voice and agency: Empowering women and girls for shared prosperity. Washington, D.C.: The World Bank. Retrieved October 5, 2016 from http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/586221468335982164/pdf/9116 10PUB0Box300see0also0881790Oct1.pdf. Lanier, C. & Maume, M.O. (2009). Intimate partner violence and social isolation across the rural/urban divide. Violence Against Women, 15, 1311–1330. Lee, M. (2013). Breaking barriers addressing structural obstacles to social service provision for Asian survivors of domestic violence. Violence Against Women, 19(11), 350–1369. Lewis, S. (2003). Sexual assaults in rural communities. VawNet. Retrieved October 23, 2009 from www. vawnet.org. Li, S., Levick, A., Eichman, A. & Chang, J.C. (2015). Women’s perspectives on the context of violence and role of police in their intimate partner-violence arrest experiences. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 30(3), 400–419. Melton, H.C. & Belknap, J. (2003). He hits, she hits: Assessing gender differences and similarities in officially reported intimate partner violence. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 30, 328–348. Melton, H.C. & Sillito, C.L. (2012). The role of gender in officially reported intimate partner abuse. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 27(6), 1090–1111. Miller, S.L. (2001). The paradox of women arrested for domestic violence: Criminal justice professional and service providers respond. Violence Against Women, 7, 1339–1376. Miller, S.L. (2005). Victims as offenders: The paradox of women’s violence in relationships. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Miller, S.L. & Meloy, M.L. (2006). Women’s use of force: Voices of women arrested for domestic violence. Violence Against Women, 12, 89–115. Perry, B. (2014). I don’t know where it is safe: Transwomen’s experiences of violence. Critical Criminology, 22(1), 48–63. Rennison, C.M., DeKeseredy, W.S. & Dragiewicz, M. (2013). Context matters: Violence against women and reporting to police in rural, suburban, and urban areas. American Journal of Criminal Justice, 38, 141–159. Renzetti, C. (2010). Economic issues and intimate partner violence. In C. Renzetti, J. Edleson & R. Bergen (Eds) Sourcebook on violence against women (pp. 171–187). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Renzetti, C.M. & Maier, S.L. (2002). “Private” crime in public housing: Violent victimization, fear of crime, and social isolation among women public housing residents. Women’s Health and Urban Life, 1, 46–65. Roark, J. (2016). Predictors of dual arrest for offenders involved in heterosexual domestic violence arrests. Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management, 39(1), 52–63. Royse, B. (1999). Non-stranger sexual assault: Rural realities. National Non-Stranger Sexual Assault Symposium, Proceedings Report. Denver Sexual Assault Interagency Council. Russell, D.E.H. (1982). Rape in Marriage. New York, NY: Macmillan Press. Sachdev, C. (2016). Rape is a crime in India – But there are exceptions. National Public Radio. Retrieved October 4, 2016 from www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/04/13/473966857/rape-is-a-crimein-india-with-one-exception. Schwartz, M.D. & DeKeseredy, W.S. (1997). Sexual assault on the college campus: The Role of male peer support. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Sherman, L.W. & Berk, R.A. (1984). The specific deterrent effects of arrest for domestic assault. American Sociological Review, 49, 261–272. Sinha, M. (2013). Measuring violence against women: Statistical trends. Statistics Canada, Canadian Centre for Justice Statistics, Catalogue no. 85-002-X. Ottawa. Retrieved October 28, 2016 from www.statcan. gc.ca/pub/85-002-x/2013001/article/11766-eng.pdf. Sokoloff, N. (2008). Expanding the intersectional paradigm to better understand domestic violence in immigrant communities. Critical Criminology, 16(4), 229–255. Straus, M.A. (2006). Future research on gender symmetry in physical assaults on partners. Violence Against Women, 12, 1086–1097. Straus, M.A. & Gelles, R.J. (1985). Societal change and change in family violence from 1975 to 1985 as revealed by two national surveys. Journal of Marriage and Family, 48, 465–479. Swan, S.C. & Snow, D.L. (2003). Behavioral and psychological differences among abused women who use violence in intimate relationships. Violence Against Women, 9, 75–109. Van Hightower, N.R. & Gorton, J. (1998). Domestic violence among patients at two rural health care clinics: Prevalence and social correlates. Public Health Nursing, 15, 355–362.

303

Shana L. Maier and Raquel Kennedy Bergen

Wahab, S. & Olson, L. (2004). Intimate partner violence and sexual assault in Native American communities. Trauma,Violence, & Abuse, 5(4), 353–366. Websdale, N. (1998). Rural woman battering and the justice system: An ethnography. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Wilson, M. & Daly, M. (1993). Spousal homicide risk and estrangement. Violence and Victims, 8(1), 3–16. World Health Organization (2013). Global and regional estimates of violence against women: Prevalence and health effects of intimate partner violence and non-partner sexual violence. Retrieved September 12, 2016 from http:// apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/85239/1/9789241564625_eng.pdf?ua=1. Yllo, K. & Torres, M.G. (2016). Marital rape: Consent, marriage and social change in global context. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

304

25 Image-based sexual abuse Anastasia Powell, Nicola Henry, and Asher Flynn

Introduction Advances in digital communications technologies have substantially and positively transformed how we connect and interact with one another professionally, socially, and intimately. At the same time, however, digital technologies are being increasingly used by perpetrators as tools of abuse, harassment, and violence. One manifestation of abuse and harassment in the digital era is the phenomenon known as “revenge pornography,” which refers to the non-consensual distribution of intimate images. While prior to the internet and the proliferation of digital imagery, perpetrators used a range of more conventional means of maliciously distributing intimate images, such as street posters and letterbox drops, today the non-consensual taking, distribution, or threat of distribution of intimate images is facilitated by online platforms – email, social media, and purpose-built websites – as well as the ready availability of compact cameras and camera-enabled smartphones with instant internet access. The non-consensual sharing and distribution of images has become a growing issue due to a number of factors, including the ease with which intimate or sexual images (by which we mean videos and photographs) can be created, uploaded, and downloaded; the difficulties associated with removing these images once they are online; and the variety of platforms that popularize and support the trade and consumption of non-consensual images. In this chapter, we provide an overview of emerging research into the nature and harms of image-based sexual abuse, as well as a feminist criminological account of this new, yet somewhat familiar, harm. We begin by first problematizing the popular terminology of “revenge pornography,” and provide a rationale for why “image-based sexual abuse” is a preferable term to describe these behaviors. We then consider the (limited) available empirical research to date, before presenting results from our own Australian national survey on image-based sexual abuse in order to examine the prevalence and nature of these harms.1 Finally, we explore a feminist criminological analysis of the gendered nature of image-based sexual abuse and conclude the chapter by suggesting some directions for future research in this field.

From revenge pornography to image-based sexual abuse “Revenge pornography” is a media-generated term used to describe the non-consensual distribution of nude, sexual, or sexually explicit images in the digital era. The paradigmatic scenario 305

Anastasia Powell, Nicola Henry, and Asher Flynn

is of jilted ex-lovers who distribute intimate images of a partner or ex-partner as a way to seek vengeance for something they perceive has been done to them, such as rejection or infidelity. Although there are many such instances reported in the mainstream media, the term itself is a misnomer since not all perpetrators are motivated by revenge and not all content constitutes or serves the purpose of pornography (Franks, 2015; McGlynn & Rackley, 2016; Powell & Henry, 2017). For example, images may be taken during a sexual assault and the distribution, or the threat of distribution, may serve to further humiliate, abuse, and silence the victim. Images may be taken in the context of intimate partner violence, in either consensual or non-consensual circumstances, and used as a further tool of control and intimidation. Sexual, intimate, or nude images may be stolen or obtained through trickery and coercion, and then their distribution used as a threat to obtain further images, or to carry out a sexual assault by strangers and intimate partners alike (see Powell & Henry, 2016a, 2017). While some scholars have coined alternative terms in order to highlight the sexual violation involved in image-based harms, such as “non-consensual pornography” (Citron & Franks, 2014; Franks, 2015) or “involuntary pornography” (Burns, 2015), we suggest that such terminology is inadequate in terms of capturing the range of abusive behaviors involving intimate imagery and their impacts on victims. For instance, labelling non-consensual imagery “pornography” focuses attention on the content of the image rather than on the abusive impacts of the behavior, or the perpetrator’s actions as a form of sexual violation, abuse, or exploitation. As such, we prefer the term “image-based sexual abuse” as used by other scholars in this field (McGlynn & Rackley, 2016; McGlynn, Rackley & Houghton, 2017), which has the benefit of explicitly naming the sexually abusive harms experienced by many victims. First, this term mirrors that of “child abuse material” as a replacement for “child pornography,” which distinguishes the material from pornography, yet at the same time highlights the harmful circumstances of its production and the continued harm in its dissemination. Second, while the term “revenge pornography” has been mostly associated with the distribution of images without consent, image-based sexual abuse encompasses a broader set of behaviors, including the non-consensual creation of nude or sexual images, the non-consensual distribution of those intimate images, and the threat of distributing intimate images – all behaviors which can and do cause multiple and intersecting harms. Third, “image-based sexual abuse” can apply to a range of perpetrator motivations or incentives beyond that of revenge, including social notoriety, monetary gain, voyeurism, and sexual gratification. Finally, image-based sexual abuse recognizes the harms associated with creating and disseminating (and threatening to distribute) nude, sexual, or sexually explicit images of another person, without their consent, as a form of exploitation, violation and/or abuse.

A typology of image-based sexual abuse Image-based sexual abuse encompasses an array of behaviors which include the following types: (1) relationship retribution, where revenge is a motivation within the context of a current or past intimate relationship; (2) sextortion, where the perpetrator seeks to obtain further images, money, or unwanted sexual acts using existing images, or the threat of images, regardless of whether or not they exist; (3) sexual voyeurism, where perpetrators are seeking to create or distribute images as a form of sexual gratification, including (but not limited to) “upskirting” and “down-blousing”; (4) sexploitation, where the primary goal is to obtain monetary benefits through the trade of non-consensual imagery; and (5) sexual assault, where perpetrators and/or bystanders record sexual assaults and rapes on mobile phones or other devices and then distribute those images via mobile phone or online (Powell & Henry, 2017). Images may be “selfies” taken by the victim, images taken by another person, stolen images, or images that are manipulated in order to depict the victim’s face or body 306

Image-based sexual abuse

in a sexual way. Images may be distributed originally by the victim, or by another person. In some cases, the victim may have no knowledge that images of them are being either created or shared. In our typology, we exclude non-sexual image-based harms, such as images of atrocity, injury, or death; “coercive sexting” (being pressured into sending intimate images) (see Englander, 2015; Drouin & Tobin, 2014; Drouin et al., 2015); and the receipt of unsolicited nude or sexual images (e.g. “dick pics”) (see Rusciano, 2016; Vitis & Gilmour, 2016), which we instead categorize as forms of “online sexual harassment” (see Powell & Henry, 2017). Finally, for the purposes of this chapter, we also exclude forms of commercial pornography, including extreme pornography involving simulated rape (see DeKeseredy & Corsianos, 2016, for a detailed discussion of pornography and violence against women).

Prevalence, nature and impacts of image-based sexual abuse To date, very little is known about the prevalence of image-based sexual abuse, the nature of these behaviors, or the impacts on victims. In fact, the majority of empirical research in the broader field has been on “sexting” among children and adolescents, which can be broadly defined as the sending of nude or sexually explicit images or text via mobile phone or the internet (see, for example, Crofts et al., 2015; Mitchell et al., 2012; Stanley et al., 2016). For instance, in one study of young people aged between 14 and 17 across five European countries (n = 4,564), Wood et al. found relatively high rates of respondents reporting a partner having shared an image of them with someone else (e.g. in England 42% of females and 13% of males reported this experience) (Wood et al., 2015). While sexting itself appears to be relatively common among children and adolescents (see, for example, Crofts et al., 2015; Mitchell et al., 2012; Patrick et al., 2015), these studies vary in terms of the prevalence of either sharing an image with another person, or sending images to another person, without consent. Thomas Crofts et al. (2015) in their study (n = 2,243), for instance, found that although 20% of young people showed another person an image without the person’s consent, only 6% of respondents reported sending an image to another person without consent. To date, only a small number of studies have sought to capture the prevalence of imagebased sexual behaviors among adults (Gámez-Guadix et al., 2015; Hudson, Fetro, & Ogletree, 2014; McAfee, 2013; Morelli et al., 2016; Powell & Henry, 2016a, 2016b; Strohmaier, Murphy, & DeMatteo, 2014; Thompson & Morrison, 2013). These studies use variable sample sizes and none to date have been exclusively focused on image-based sexual abuse. Moreover, some studies ask respondents questions only about perpetration behaviors (e.g. whether they have shared an image with another person), and as such may underestimate the extent of these harms with respect to victimization. For example, a US study on “technology-based coercion” (n = 795) found that 16% of men had shared a sexually suggestive message or picture of someone else without their consent (Thompson & Morrison, 2013). In our previous study on digital harassment and abuse (Australia: n = 2,956; UK: n = 2,842), we measured prevalence on the basis of self-reported rates of victimization (Powell & Henry, 2016b, 2017). We found that approximately 1 in 10 Australian and UK adults had experienced a nude or semi-nude image being taken without their consent, with similar rates for both the distribution and threat of distribution of a nude or semi-nude image (Powell & Henry, 2016b, 2017). While the findings from these few international studies indicate that image-based sexual abuse is relatively common, the context in which such images are being shared, by whom, what, and where, was not investigated in any of this quantitative research. In order to address this gap in knowledge, in 2016 we conducted further quantitative research with the aim of providing a further understanding of the prevalence, nature, and impacts of image-based sexual abuse specifically based on our typology (see discussion above). We used 307

Anastasia Powell, Nicola Henry, and Asher Flynn

an online panel sample of Australian adults aged 16 to 49 years (n = 4,274), comprising 2,406 women (56.3%) and 1,868 men (43.7%) of which 3,764 (88.0%) identified as heterosexual and 510 (12.0%) identified as sexuality diverse (e.g. lesbian, gay, bisexual).2 Our survey, called the Sex, Tech & Relationships Survey, asked respondents a range of questions about their experiences online, including questions about experiences relating to their own image-sharing behaviors, as well as both victimization and perpetration of various forms of image-based sexual abuse. Respondents were asked about images (including both videos and photographs) that were either taken, sent onto others and/or distributed, or were threatened to be distributed, without their permission in a set of nine circumstances. These circumstances included images where the victim was: (1) partially clothed or semi-nude; (2) showering, bathing, or toileting; (3) completely nude; (4) with their genitals visible; (5) engaged in a consensual sex act; (6) engaged in an unwanted sex act; (7) breasts exposed with nipples visible; (8) “downbloused”; and/or (9) “upskirted”.

Sexual self-image sending behaviors Respondents were first asked about their own sexual self-image sharing behaviors. Overall, sharing a nude or sexual self image was a relatively common experience for our sample with almost half (45.6%) of participants (aged 16 to 49) doing so. Men (49.6%) were significantly more likely than women (42.4%) to have engaged in any sexual self-image sending behaviors.3 Moreover, when women did share a nude or sexual self-image, it was more commonly with a current sexual partner (22.0 to 34.5%) than with an “online only” (20.9%) or “new” acquaintance (17.1%). By contrast, men were similarly likely to send a nude or sexual self image to a current sexual partner (33.9% to 40.8%), a person they knew online only (36.9%), or to someone they just met (31.4%). In particular, men (31.4%) were almost twice as likely as women (17.1%) to send a nude or sexual self-image to someone they had just met.

Lifetime prevalence of image-based sexual abuse Our study found that approximately 1 in 5 (22.7%) Australian adults surveyed had experienced at least one form of image-based sexual abuse (see Table 25.1). Most common were sexual or nude images being taken without the respondent’s consent (20.2%), followed by sexual or nude images being sent onto others or distributed without consent (10.6%), and finally, experiencing threats that a sexual or nude image would be sent onto others or distributed without consent (8.6%).4 Overall victimization of lifetime experience of at least one form of image-based sexual abuse did not differ significantly by gender, though these findings do not preclude a gendered analysis of the phenomenon (discussed further below).

Table 25.1 Lifetime prevalence of image-based sexual abuse, by victim gender Women (%) (n = 2,406)

Men (%) (n = 1,868)

Total (%) (n = 4,274)

Any sexual/nude images taken without consent

462 (19.2%)

402 (21.5%)

864 (20.2%)

Any sexual/nude images distributed without consent

221 (9.2%)

233 (12.5%)

454 (10.6%)

Any sexual/nude images threatened to distribute without consent

170 (7.1%)

198 (10.6%)

368 (8.6%)

Any image-based sexual abuse

524 (21.8%)

445 (23.8%)

969 (22.7%)

308

Image-based sexual abuse

Gendered nature of image-based sexual abuse While the overall lifetime prevalence of image-based sexual abuse was not found to differ significantly by gender, there were some significant differences in the gendered nature of image-based sexual abuse particularly with regards to perpetration and impacts of the abuse. Overall, a majority of perpetrators of image-based sexual abuse were reported by both male and female victims to be male/s only: with 59.0% for taking an image, 55.0% for distributing an image, and 47.1% for threats to distribute. Female perpetrators meanwhile, accounted for 29.5% for taking an image, 31.7% for distributing an image, and 36.3% for threats to distribute an image. A further substantial proportion were reported to be either gender unknown or a mixed group of males and females (as shown in Table 25.2). While perpetrators overall were more likely to be males, this was particularly true for female victims. Meanwhile, the nature of the relationship between the victim and the perpetrator was also gendered in particular ways. For example, women (37.9% to 45.1%) were more likely than men (22.8% to 39.3%) to experience each of the three categories of image-based sexual abuse from a current or former intimate partner. Finally, there were differences reported by female as compared with male victims regarding the impacts of image-based sexual abuse behaviors. Men (80.8%) for instance, were significantly more likely than women (47.7%) to say that their most recent experience of a nude or sexual image being taken without their permission was funny, that they were flattered, or that they were okay with it.5 Meanwhile women (80.8%) were significantly more likely than men (72.9%) to report a range of negative impacts including feeling annoyed, humiliated, depressed, angry, or fearful as a result of their experience.6 Table 25.2 Perpetrator characteristics by gender Perpetrator sex

Relationship to victim

Male

Female

Mixed/ unknown

Partner/ ex-partner

Other known person

Strangers

Any sexual/nude images taken without consent (n = 458)

298 (65.1%)

110 (24.0%)

50 (10.9%)

206 (45.1%)

197 (43.0%)

54 (11.8%)

Any sexual/nude images distributed without consent (n = 220)

117 (53.2%)

73 (33.2%)

30 (13.6%)

74 (33.6%)

126 (57.3%)

21 (10.0%)

Any sexual/nude images threatened to distribute without consent (n = 169)

91 (53.8%)

54 (32.1%)

24 (14.2%)

64 (37.9%)

95 (56.2%)

9 (5.3%)

Any sexual/nude images taken without consent (n = 402)

207 (51.5%)

144 (35.8%)

51 (12.7%)

158 (39.3%)

220 (55.0%)

20 (5.0%)

Any sexual/nude images distributed without consent (n = 231)

129 (55.8%)

70 (30.3%)

32 (13.9%)

59 (25.5%)

161 (69.7%)

11 (5.0%)

Any sexual/nude images threatened to distribute without consent (n = 197)

81 (41.1%)

79 (40.1%)

37 (18.8%)

45 (22.8%)

136 (69.0%)

16 (8.1%)

Female victims

Male victims

309

Anastasia Powell, Nicola Henry, and Asher Flynn

Framing image-based sexual abuse: a feminist criminological analysis A feminist criminological conceptual framework can significantly assist an understanding of the causes, nature, and impacts of image-based sexual abuse. Although research to date on imagebased sexual abuse among children, adolescents, and adults has indicated that in some country contexts males may be equally or more likely than females to report experiencing image-based sexual abuse more broadly, our survey results lend further support to the idea that the phenomenon of image-based sexual abuse is gendered in particular and complex ways. In summary, what our recent research suggests is that consensual sexual self-image sharing itself is a relatively common experience for many men and women; but that one in five Australians (aged 16 to 49) experience either the taking, distribution or threat of distribution of a nude or sexual image without their permission. Both men and women experience image-based violations more so from male perpetrators, with women particularly more likely to be victimized by a male perpetrator, and by a current or former intimate partner. However, it is important to bear in mind that for a substantial proportion of victims of an image-based sexual violation, the reported harms experienced may be minimal, while for other victims the impacts of the violation may be much more serious. In short, many image-based violations appear to be experienced as relatively innocuous, while a core sub-group of victims report experiencing serious harms including humiliation, depression and fear. A starting point for the conceptualization of image-based sexual abuse therefore should include an acknowledgement of the shifting practices of self-image taking (selfies) and selfrepresentation, including sexual self-representation, in a digital age. These practices are not themselves inherently negative or harmful, and indeed can be experienced as self-exploratory, liberatory, and empowering (see Dobson, 2015). That taking sexual selfies may be increasingly common and, importantly, does not always or even most often result in the image being further distributed, serves as a crucial context within which to consider the nature and impacts of image-based sexual abuse. We suggest it is vital not to concentrate discussions of harm, risk and responsibility onto the emerging culture of sexual self-image taking itself, in part because to do so is to displace the analysis, and additionally because not all harms arise from a consensual selfimage (e.g. images taken without permission at all for instance). Theorising image-based sexual abuse also requires an understanding of hierarchical gender power relations (Connell, 1987), the “cultural scaffolding” of sexual violence more generally (Gavey, 2005), and the continuum and complexity of gender inequality in the increasingly blurry and indistinct online/offline experience of digital life (McGlynn, Rackley & Houghton, 2017; Powell & Henry, 2017). There are differential meanings attached to men’s and women’s bodies, and likewise, to their sexual self-expression. Men’s nude or sexual images appear to be taken and/or shared largely (though not exclusively) by other men; often in the context of family, friends, and other peers; and with the majority of victims’ self-reported impacts including humor and flattery. Women’s nude and sexual images meanwhile are similarly taken and/or distributed largely by men; though in the context of current or former intimate relationships, and with many victims reporting experiencing negative impacts. Some studies have similarly highlighted the individual impacts on particularly women victims, such as low self-esteem, depression, anxiety, social withdrawal, and suicidal ideation (Citron & Franks, 2014; Bates, 2016). This suggests that it is not the nude or sexual images per se that are inherently harmful, but rather the differential social meanings attributed to men’s and women’s bodies and sexuality that results in women experiencing disproportionate blame, shame and humiliation. Indeed, not unlike sexual violence generally, victims may be blamed for engaging in certain behaviors, particularly those who consent to 310

Image-based sexual abuse

having their photograph or video taken by another person, those who take the image of themselves, or those who share images with another person. Frequently in the aftermath of high profile “revenge pornography” incidents, women particularly are warned not to share, or even take, sexual self images in the first place so as not to expose themselves to the risk of victimization (see Powell & Henry, 2017). Arguably the public discourse of risk and responsibility for image-based sexual abuse is far more gendered than the actual prevalence of victimization; at least as reported in our own recent research. Feminist criminological and social justice frameworks can also assist in providing an understanding of the collective harms associated with image-based sexual abuse or, perhaps more particularly, with public discourse and responses to it. For example, the public blaming, shaming and humiliation of women victims of image-based sexual abuse produce and reproduce gendered social subordination, preventing the full civic participation and digital citizenship of individual group members (Fraser, 2007). Socially constructed values around gender and sexuality are further consolidated through the shame and humiliation that victims often experience. Such acts reduce victims to bodily objects and contribute to their further subjugation. These are embodied harms – further expressions of gender power inequalities enacted in and through the sexed body of the victim through the medium of the visual image. As Dodge (2016) claims, rather than becoming crucial evidence of sexual violence, these images instead become tools for victimblaming and “slut-shaming”. Anne Burns (2015) also argues that notions of “choice” are used to blame victims for the original production of the image. She claims that this serves a dual purpose of providing sexual gratification as well as serving to condemn and degrade victims who choose to take explicit images of themselves. A feminist analysis of image-based sexual abuse takes into account public discourse and responses to victims within a broader context of socially constructed values around both gender and sexuality, the fixation on the feminized “other,” and the relational, embodied, and affective experiences of victims, perpetrators, and bystanders alike (Powell & Henry, 2017).

Toward a technofeminist criminology? Within feminist criminology there has been a long history in uncovering men’s violence against women, and critiquing the ways in which a patriarchal society (including patriarchal or “malestream” criminology) have routinely neglected, minimized, and/or ignored this violence. While it is widely recognized that technological development largely remains male-dominated and blind to the ways in which gender and other privilege shapes the industry (Wajcman, 1991), so too has the discipline of cybercriminology largely ignored technology-facilitated sexual violence, where the focus has been predominantly on issues such as cybertheft, identity fraud, and child exploitation material (Powell & Henry, 2017; Powell, Stratton & Cameron, 2018; Stratton, Powell & Cameron, 2017). There are several side-effects, we suggest, including a misrecognition of the neutrality of technology as a mere tool in the hand of the cybercriminal; a preoccupation with the ways these tools enable an extension of reach for cybercriminals, comparable to “physical” crimes; an associated technological determinism, focusing foremost on the effects of technology in creating opportunities for crime, as opposed to analyses of socio-cultural and socio-structural factors; and a gender blindness which precludes utility for a feminist analysis of crimes that are inherently gendered (Powell & Henry, 2017). Influenced by both technofeminism and feminist criminological accounts of men’s everyday sexual violence against women, we thus suggest that an analysis of the technosocial practices of sexual violence is necessary to account for the changes that manifest in the digital age. We 311

Anastasia Powell, Nicola Henry, and Asher Flynn

advocate moving beyond an understanding of technologies as either driving changes in crime or mere “tools” used by individual motivated offenders, and towards a more comprehensive account of the ways in which technology and unequal power relations are mutually shaping cultures of both sexual self-expression as well as sexual violence and harassment. In other words, just as technologies can be understood as both reflecting/embedding and reproducing/producing the gender and heteronormative relations of our societies more broadly, so too can technologies be understood as simultaneously reflecting/embedding and reproducing/producing cultures and practices of sexual violence as experienced by diverse men and women. Overall, image-based sexual abuse can be understood through a technofeminist criminological account as inherently technosocial practice of gendered violence. On the one hand, these harms replicate the gender and sexuality based power relations that pre-exist digital technologies. On the other, there are unique manifestations and impacts of these harms, owing to a complex interplay of factors, such as anonymity, amplification of effects, and the permanence of material once online (Franks, 2012). The implications of such an account are to highlight the combination of technical, legal and social (both cultural and structural) responses that will ultimately be necessary to prevent the harms associated with image-based sexual abuse. Whilst short term measures (such as industry co-operation to reduce the ease and impunity with which non-consensual images can be circulated, and legal protections for victims) are important, longer-term challenges lie in shifting the gendered inequalities and sexual double-standards that impact on both women and men, albeit in differential ways.

Conclusion and future research Image-based sexual abuse is a significant and serious problem, warranting substantial legislative reform and non-legal remedies in order to both respond to, and ultimately prevent, such harms. As we have argued in this chapter, the creation, distribution, or threat of distribution of intimate images without consent should be recognized as a violation and, in many instances, as a form of abuse rather than pornography. While there is increasing legal, media, and academic attention to the phenomenon of “revenge pornography,” there has been little analysis to date of the extent, nature, and impacts of the harms of image-based sexual abuse. As such it is vital that more research is undertaken to shed light on the harms of these acts in order to generate knowledge on the scope and adequacy of existing responses, and identify what reforms are needed to address intersecting psychological, social, and legal implications. To further deepen knowledge and understanding of the phenomenon of image-based sexual abuse as one of many forms of “technology-facilitated sexual violence” (Powell & Henry, 2017), there are a number of key directions for future research and practice. First, it is important to understand the nature and impacts of such harms, including recognition that much of the emerging terminology itself is inherently problematic, and that these behaviors can cause harm to victims albeit within particular gendered contexts and differential impacts. Second, further empirical and cross-national research that investigates prevalence, as well as victim and perpetrator experiences of image-based offenses, will help to guide the development of future interventions and responses. Third, more research into the scope and adequacy of existing legal and non-legal responses to the problem of image-based sexual abuse will help to shed light on both the prevention of behaviors, and justice to victims of such harms. Above all, an understanding of image-based sexual abuse must be undertaken from diverse perspectives. Future research and practice should involve collaboration among researchers, practitioners, law enforcement, corporations, government, educational institutions, and community and victim-support advocates in 312

Image-based sexual abuse

order to contribute to a digital sexual ethics that is characterized by equal social and political participation in all aspects of social life. Further theorization, informed by empirical research, is equally important to address the phenomenon of image-based sexual abuse. In this chapter we have sought to conceptualize image-based sexual abuse as taking place in a broader context of image-sharing and selfrepresentation, including sexual self-representation in a digital age. While the sharing of sexual self-images itself may be becoming more normalized, and some image-based violations carry minimal impacts for some victims, there is nonetheless a substantial minority of victims of image-based sexual abuse who report experiencing serious and negative harms. The nature of this victimization and its impacts is itself gendered in particular ways, such that women experienced victimization foremost from male perpetrators, and from a current or former intimate partner, as well as being more likely than male victims to report experiencing negative impacts. Image-based sexual abuse is thus, at least in part, a manifestation of the complex intersection between gender and sexuality that is beset by masculine entitlement, female objectification, and the stigma and shame around female and non-hegemonic forms of sexuality. Finally, while the sub-fields of critical, feminist and cyber criminologies have rarely engaged with one another, we advocate for a technofeminist criminology that draws together these disparate fields in order to provide a more holistic account of the intersections of technology, gender and violence against women.

Notes 1 The research upon which this chapter draws has been supported by funding from La Trobe University, an Australian Criminology Research Council Grant (CRG 08/15–16) and an Australian Research Council Discovery Project Grant (DP130103094). 2 A further 29 respondents identified as transgender, intersex or a non-binary gender identity. However due to the small numbers for this population which preclude any statistically valid comparable analyses, this group has been excluded from the data presented here. 3 This result was statistically significant (c2 (1, n = 1948) = 21.914, p < 0.01). Chi-square tests of independence on individual items further indicated that this was true for each of the sexual self-image behaviors surveyed (data not shown). 4 Chi-square tests of independence on individual categories indicated that males rather than females were more likely to have experienced images being sent onto others or distributed without consent: c2 (1, n = 454) = 11.973, p < 0.01), as well as threats of distribution of images c2 (1, n = 368) = 16.689, p < 0.01). These relationships were nonetheless extremely weak with Phi coefficients of less than 0.1 (Φ = 0.053 and 0.062 respectively). Furthermore, given that men were significantly more likely than women to have sent a nude or sexual image to someone else, it might be anticipated that their risk of that image being distributed, or threats to distribute it, might be higher. 5 Chi-square tests indicated that males were significantly more likely than females to report the taking of a nude or sexual image without their permission was funny, flattering, or okay (c2 (1, n = 537) = 99.725, p < 0.01). 6 Chi-square tests indicated that females were significantly more likely than males to report the taking of a nude or sexual image without their permission as having a negative impact (including annoyance, humiliation, depression, anger and fear) on them (c2 (1, n = 656) = 7.413, p < 0.01).

References Bates, S. (2016). Revenge porn and mental health: A qualitative analysis of the mental health effects of revenge porn on female survivors. Feminist Criminology, 12(1), 22–42. Burns, A. (2015). In full view: Involuntary porn and the postfeminist rhetoric of choice. In C. Nally & A. Smith (Eds), Twenty-First Century Feminism: Forming and Performing Femininity (pp. 93–118). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

313

Anastasia Powell, Nicola Henry, and Asher Flynn

Citron, D. & Franks, M. (2014). Criminalizing revenge porn. Wake Forest Law Review, 49(2), 345–391. Connell, R.W. (1987). Gender and Power: Society, the Person and Sexual Politics. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press. Crofts, T., Lee, M., McGovern, A., & Milivojevic, S. (2015). Sexting and Young People. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. DeKeseredy, W., & Corsianos, M. (2016). Violence Against Women in Pornography. New York: Taylor & Francis. Dobson, A.S. (2015). Postfeminist Digital Cultures: Femininity, Social Media, and Self-Representation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Dodge, A. (2016). Digitizing rape culture: Online sexual violence and the power of the digital photograph. Crime, Media, Culture, 12(1), 65–82. Drouin, M., & Tobin, E. (2014). Unwanted but consensual sexting among young adults. Computers in Human Behavior, 31, 412–418. Drouin, M., Ross, J., & Tobin, E. (2015). Sexting: A new digital vehicle? Computers in Human Behavior, 50, 197–204. Englander, E. (2015). Coerced sexting and revenge porn among teens. Bullying, Teen Aggression & Social Media, 1(2), 19–21. Franks, M.A. (2012). Sexual harassment 2.0. Maryland Law Review, 71(3), 655–704. Franks, M.A. (2015, June 22). How to defeat “revenge porn”: First, recognize it’s about privacy, not revenge. Huffington Post. Retrieved from www.huffingtonpost.com/mary-anne-franks/how-to-defeat-revengeporn_b_7624900.html. Fraser, N. (2007). Reframing justice in a globalizing world. In D. Held and A. Kaya (Eds), Global Inequality (pp. 252–272). Cambridge: Polity Press. Gámez-Guadix, M., Almendros, C., Borrajo, E., & Calvete, E. (2015). Prevalence and association of sexting and online sexual victimization among Spanish adults. Sexuality Research and Social Policy, 12(2), 145–154. Gavey, N. (2005). Just Sex? The Cultural Scaffolding of Rape. London: Routledge. Henry, N., Powell, A., & Flynn, A. (2017, forthcoming). Stripped bare: On the harms of “revenge pornography”. Theoretical Criminology. Hudson, H.K., Fetro, J.V., & Ogletree R. (2014). Behavioral indicators and behaviors related to sexting among undergraduate students. American Journal of Health Education, 45(3), 183–195. McAfee (2013, February 4). Lovers beware: Scorned exes may share intimate data and images online. McAfee, ww.mcafee.com/au/about/news/2013/q1/20130204-01.aspx. McGlynn, C., & Rackley, E. (2016, February 15). Not “revenge porn,” but abuse: Let’s call it image-based sexual abuse. Inherently Human, https://inherentlyhuman.wordpress.com/2016/02/15/not-revenge-porn-butabuse-lets-call-it-image-based-sexual-abuse/. McGlynn, C., Rackley, E., & Houghton, R. (2017). Beyond “revenge porn”: The continuum of image-based sexual abuse. Feminist Legal Studies, 25(10): 25–46. Mitchell, K.J., Finkelhor, D., Jones, L.M., & Wolak, J. (2012). Prevalence and characteristics of youth sexting: A national study. Pediatrics, 129(1), 13–20. Morelli, M., Bianchi, D., Baiocco, R., Pezzuti, L., & Chirumbolo, A. (2016). Not-allowed sharing of sexts and dating violence from the perpetrator’s perspective: The moderation role of sexism. Computers in Human Behavior, 56, 163–169. Patrick, K., Heywood, W., Pitts, M.K., & Mitchell, A. (2015). Demographic and behavioural correlates of six sexting behaviours among Australian secondary school students. Sexual Health, 12(6), 480–487. Powell, A., & Henry, N. (2016a). Policing technology-facilitated sexual violence against adult victims: Police and service sector perspectives. Policing and Society, 1–17. Powell, A., & Henry, N. (2016b). Technology-facilitated sexual violence victimization: Results from an online survey of Australian adults. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 1–29. Powell, A., & Henry, N. (2017). Sexual Violence in a Digital Age. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Powell, A., Stratton, G., & Cameron, R. (2018). Digital Criminology: Crime and Justice in Digital Society. New York: Routledge. Rusciano, E. (2016, June 16). If someone sends you a picture of their penis is it OK to publicly shame them? News.com.au, www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/wtf/if-someone-sends-you-a-picture-of-theirpenis-is-it-ok-to-publicly-shame-them/news-story/95160cae66b6de6ce5e093310a8e7cc7. Stanley, N., Barter, C., Wood, M., Aghtaie, N., Larkins, C., Lanau, A., & Överlien, C. (2016). Pornography, sexual coercion and abuse and sexting in young people’s intimate relationships a European study. Journal of Interpersonal Violence.

314

Image-based sexual abuse

Stratton, G., Powell, A., & Cameron, R. (2017). Crime and justice in a digital society: Towards a ‘digital criminology’? International Journal of Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 6(2), 17–33. Strohmaier, H., Murphy, M., & DeMatteo, D. (2014). Youth sexting: Prevalence rates, driving motivations, and the deterrent effect of legal consequences. Sexuality Research and Social Policy, 11(3), 245–255. Thompson, M.P., & Morrison, D.J. (2013). Prospective predictors of technology-based sexual coercion by college males. Psychology of Violence, 3(3), 233–246. Vitis, L., & Gilmour, F. (2016). Dick pics on blast: A woman’s resistance to online sexual harassment using humour, art and Instagram. Crime, Media, Culture. Online. DOI: 10.1177/1741659016652445. Wajcman, J. (1991). Feminism Confronts Technology. Cambridge: Polity Press. Wood, M., Barter, C., Stanley, N., Aghtaie, N., & Larkins, C. (2015). Images across Europe: The sending and receiving of sexual images and associations with interpersonal violence in young people’s relationships. Children and Youth Services Review, 59, 149–160.

315

26 Child sexual abuse Michael Salter

Introduction Child sexual abuse (CSA) engages the core themes of critical criminology, namely power and harm. It is therefore surprising that child sexual abuse has drawn relatively little attention from critical criminologists, other than as an illustration of ‘moral panic’. This is, to my knowledge, the first dedicated chapter on child sexual abuse in a critical criminology handbook or encyclopaedia. After providing an overview of the major characteristics of child sexual abuse, the chapter begins by reflecting on the neglect of child sexual abuse in critical criminology and the dominance of a dismissive ‘moral panic’ account. It goes on to summarise analyses of child sexual abuse advanced by feminist criminologists and scholars, for whom child sexual abuse is situated within, and reflective of, the structural and cultural forces at work in contemporary societies. The chapter then discusses critical and psychosocial perspectives on child sex offending, emphasising the interplay of psychological and social dynamics in abuse and responses to it. The latter half of the chapter identifies four key areas of future research and theorising for critical criminologists, namely 1) accounting for the full spectrum of child sexual abuse, 2) attention to power and intersectionality, 3) developing more nuanced analyses of collective responses to child sexual abuse and 4) critiquing and advancing justice responses. The chapter concludes by emphasising the centrality of child sexual abuse to contemporary power relations and structures. It suggests that critical criminology has an important, if not fully realised, role to play in interrogating the contradictions, inequalities and hypocrisies evident in the commission of child sex offences and broader social and legal responses to it.

The response of critical criminology to child sexual abuse Child sexual abuse is a common and impactful crime with significant implications for child victims, adult survivors and the community at large. A recent meta-analysis of 65 prevalence studies covering 22 countries found that 19.7 percent of women and 7.9 percent of men had experienced child sexual abuse before the age of 18 (Pereda et al., 2009). Child sex offenders are overwhelmingly male and there are between two-and-a-half and three females for every male victim (Pereda et al., 2009). Children in all social classes are vulnerable to sexual abuse; however, 316

Child sexual abuse

institutionalised children and children in care, located at the intersections of poverty, racism, state harm and clerical crime, have been at particular risk (Middleton et al., 2014). The frequency of sexual abuse in the lives of children living with disability highlights how sexual abuse flourishes in spaces of powerlessness and vulnerability, amplifying pre-existing differentials in status and opportunity (Kendall-Tackett, Lyon, & Taliaferro, 2005). The life trajectory of sexual abuse victims includes a disproportionate risk of mental and physical illness, financial insecurity and criminal victimisation and perpetration (Gilbert et al., 2009), at which point adult survivors may find themselves entangled within the criminal justice system and other punitive institutions in a range of ways. Survivors of child sexual abuse are over-represented amongst incarcerated populations of men and women (Johnson et al., 2006; Moloney, van den Bergh, & Moller, 2009) and as the clients of alcohol and drug services and child protection agencies (Salter & Breckenridge, 2014). Across jurisdictions, child victims of sexual abuse and adult survivors alike face systematic barriers to the prosecution of the offences committed against them (e.g. Connolly & Don Read, 2006; Cossins, 2006) and struggle to access appropriate health care and social supports (Middleton et al., 2014). They are frequently stigmatised by the community and in psychiatric contexts for their mental health needs (Warner, 2009). State responses to child sexual abuse are highly inconsistent, as vocal denunciations of child sex offenders and a focus on harsh sentencing distracts attention from ongoing epidemic levels of sexual abuse and the neglect of abused children and adult survivors. Expert and popular discourses of child sexual abuse reflect power relations that structure and limit how sexual abuse can be understood and acted upon (Kitzinger, 2004; Whittier, 2009). On the face of it, the study of child sexual abuse would appear to be an excellent fit within the critical criminological tradition. Sexual abuse is characterised by differentials in power between victims and offenders in terms of age, while other axes of domination including gender, race and ability are frequently evident. However, critical criminology has played a limited role in explicating these issues. This neglect can be traced back to the origins of critical criminology in the Marxist theory and left idealism of the 1970s, which produced a strongly sceptical stance in relation to state intervention and expert discourse (DeKeseredy, 2010). Sexual violence against children did not accord with the naïve left view of crime as a form of resistance against state and social control, and so it was largely ignored by critical criminologists. During this period, the norms of sexual liberation tilted some left intellectuals towards the normalisation of child sexual abuse, with Michel Foucault insisting children can ‘consent’ and are ‘delighted’ when they ‘throw themselves at an adult’ (Foucault cited in Howe, 2009, p. 5). These arguments provided a counter-weight to rising feminist and public concern about child sexual abuse during the 1970s, and was reflected by criminologists such as Wilson (1981) calling for the decriminalisation of adult sexual activity with minors.1 Such sentiments became less acceptable in the 1980s and 1990s as empirical evidence of the prevalence and harms of child sexual abuse accumulated, and public awareness and sentiment turned strongly against the abuse of children (Olafson, Corwin, & Summit, 1993). However, transgressive suggestions that child sexual abuse is politically radical and pleasurable for children and adults continue to surface as part of what Ruddick (2015) calls the ‘bad boy’ style of ‘academic cool’, encapsulated by Zizek’s (2008) nostalgic reference to the ‘heyday of the Sexual Revolution’ when ‘child sex was celebrated as overcoming the last barrier’ of the ‘ideologically enforced desexualization of children’. While most critical scholarship does not go so far, post-Foucauldian approaches to sexuality have been underpinned by a strong suspicion that efforts to critique any form of sexual expression, including child sexual abuse, are part of a conservative ‘anti-sex’ backlash (Alcoff, 1996). This suspicion informs the civil libertarian strain within criminology and sociology, characterised by assertions that state agencies and society tends towards ‘panic’ and ‘hysteria’ in responding to sexual abuse. 317

Michael Salter

This is encapsulated in the ‘moral panic’ literature on sexual abuse, which brings together a suspicion of state control and media discourse with a disparaging view of public concern about sexual abuse as disproportionate (e.g. Jenkins, 1992). Moral panic literature shares a common set of claims, namely that society and the authorities have become ‘hysterical’ and over-reactive to child sexual abuse, to the point that baseless allegations are believed without question, children are being removed from their families with insufficient evidence, and men are being prosecuted on the flimsiest of pretexts. The evidence offered for these claims are predominantly case studies. Attempts in the 1980s and early 1990s to prosecute allegations of organised and ritual abuse in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and elsewhere have been presented as symptoms of a sexual abuse ‘witch hunt’ (Cheit, 2014; Salter, 2016). Such analyses have been influential in the criminological literature, where therapists and child protection workers have been accused of implanting false memories of abuse, and anti-abuse activists have come under fire for their supposed ignorance of childhood sexuality and intolerance of sexual difference (Pratt, 2005). Despite its popularity amongst critical criminologists, the empirical basis of the moral panic account of sexual abuse has been shown to be substantially untrue. There is no evidence of an increase in reckless or baseless sexual abuse prosecutions during the 1990s, which was supposedly the height of the ‘moral panic’ (Cross et al., 2003). Child sexual abuse, whether recent or historical, remains very difficult to prosecute, with low rates of reporting, high rates of attrition, and low rates of prosecution across jurisdictions (e.g. Connolly & Don Read, 2006; Fitzgerald, 2006; Kelly, Lovett, & Regan, 2005). In order to establish the narrative that innocent men have been the victims of an epidemic of false allegations, ‘moral panic’ advocates have misrepresented child protection interventions and legal cases in significant ways (Cheit, 2014; Kitzinger, 2004; Salter, 2016). These have included championing the cause of convicted sex offenders despite overwhelming evidence of guilt (Cheit, 2014, 2001; Olio & Cornell, 1998). Furthermore, characterisations of anti-abuse activism as driven by reactionary and prurient forces do not accord with social movement scholarship, which suggests that pro-survivor groups have advanced complex and constructive critiques of social, legal and psychological responses to child sexual abuse (Whittier, 2009). There are, of course, important criminological insights to be gleaned from studying the excesses of public and legal responses to child sexual abuse. Harsh sentencing and treatment regimes for sex offenders, ethically problematic legislative measures such as offender registries and extended supervision orders, and the hypocrisies of media coverage have all been the subject of sustained critical comment. For instance, Grealy (2014) provides a fine-grained analysis of collective responses to high-profile Australian child sex offender Dennis Ferguson, whose post-release harassment from the mass media and the community triggered political intervention and drove the development of new legislation and approaches to sex offender management. However these highly visible and emotive mobilisations around child sexual abuse co-exist alongside entrenched inaction and silence, as well as a considerable bulwark of resistance to interventions into families and institutions where sexual abuse is taking place. It is clear that ‘panic’ is an insufficient descriptor of social responses to child sexual abuse, and captures only the most visible tabloid responses to child sex offending. While the ‘moral panic’ literature advances a view of society united in condemnation, the social and legal response to child sexual abuse remains uncertain and contradictory. Most abused children do not disclose at the time because it is unsafe to do so, and those who disclose are routinely disbelieved and left unprotected (Swingle et al., 2016). When child or adult survivors of sexual abuse disclose, they can face a hostile response from families or communities who rally in support of the alleged or convicted offender (e.g. Adcock, 2016; Salter 2017a). Daly (2014) offers a compelling explanation 318

Child sexual abuse

of polarised responses to sexual violence, suggesting that ‘a minimization of sex offending and victimization, on one hand, and a demonization of certain groups as “sex offenders”, on the other hand’ are ‘mutually reinforcing’ (pp. 378–379). Stereotypes of the ‘monstrous’ child sex offender reinforce the division between child sexual abuse and normative forms of (masculine) sexuality, and offenders who ‘fit’ this stereotype are demonised. However, since ‘most sex offending bears no relationship to the monstrous sex offender’, the majority of incidents of sexual abuse are overlooked by the media and public (Daly, 2014, p. 379). An over-reliance on moral panic theory can blind scholars to the power dynamics, vested interests and discursive struggles that shape public understanding and responses to child sexual abuse. In contrast, feminism and the school of left realism has promoted engagement with the lived experience of crime and victimisation as well as its social construction and legal regulation (DeKeseredy, 2010). Situating child sexual abuse within the everyday world of gender relations and inequality, feminist scholars conceptualised child sexual abuse as an expression of male power comparable to adult sexual assault and domestic violence (Kelly, 1988; Rush, 1980). Smart’s (1991) pioneering work on the challenges of prosecuting sexual violence paid particular attention to the specificities of children’s experiences in the criminal justice system. A number of key fracture points identified by Smart (1991) are still evident today, in particular:

a.

The persistence of cultural and legal traditions that privilege accused men over children

Smart (1991) makes the crucial point that the criminal justice system does not function as a child protection mechanism and indeed tends to further harm victimised children. Cultural myths that minimise the harms and prevalence of sexual abuse, diffuse perpetrator responsibility and promote stereotypes of both perpetrators and victims are widespread, and inhibit victim disclosure or the likelihood that a complaint will be taken seriously in court (Cromer & Goldsmith, 2010).

b.

The conflict between mental health and criminal justice approaches to child abuse

Smart (1991) emphasised how recent shifts in mental health discourse in the 1980s attributed increased credibility to children’s disclosures of sexual abuse, which had the effect of bringing therapeutic work into direct conflict with the courts. Therapeutic practices that support children and adults to disclose abuse to professionals are at odds with the criminal justice systems’ demand for ‘uncontaminated’ testimony and high burden of proof. A significant body of literature has exaggerated the likelihood that false sexual abuse complaints are being elicited in therapy, contributing to myths that false allegations are common (Brown, Scheflin, & Hammond, 1998).

c.

The manipulation of criminal, civil and family law by child abusers

Absent a criminal conviction, Smart (1991) observed that fathers accused of sexual abuse frequently use other legal means to assert their parental rights to contact with their child and to demand compensation for criminal investigations. From the 1980s, lawyers and legal experts began to specialise in defending men against criminal allegations of sexual abuse while ensuring access to their children through the family courts, and using civil law to sue therapists, welfare agencies and police in sex abuse cases. Attempts to sue therapists specialising in child sexual abuse 319

Michael Salter

during the 1990s had a chilling effect on the provision of mental health care to this population, and gave ‘abusers a weapon to use against their victim’ (Bowman & Mertz, 1996, p. 551). The manipulation of family law by men accused of domestic violence and sexual abuse remains a major problem that has been neglected in criminology (Dragiewicz, 2014). Smart’s (1999) historical research on early twentieth-century English campaigns to criminalise sexual activity with children troubled the oft-repeated claim that child sexual abuse had been ‘discovered’ in the 1980s. Indeed, archival analyses of legal proceedings and media coverage demonstrate that sexual offences against children have frequently been prosecuted in previous centuries and have been the recurrent focus of media attention (e.g. Featherstone & Kaladelfos, 2016; Finnane & Smaal, 2016). However, historical scholarship demonstrates that public acknowledgement and recognition of child sexual abuse is not an inherent good per se, since it has frequently been attended by the construction of sexual abuse complainants as liars seeking financial or some other compensation. This work resonates in the contemporary context where, in the wake of ongoing abuse scandals, stereotypes of abuse victims as vengeful fantasists or blackmailers have been resurgent in some quarters. Criminologists have formed alliances with advocacy networks of people accused of sexual abuse to promote theories of ‘wrongful allegations’ (e.g. Hoyle, Speechley, & Burnett, 2016). The labelling of a complaint of sexual abuse as ‘wrongful’ or ‘false’ if it is not substantiated by investigation, if the defendant is found not guilty, or a conviction overturned on appeal, is not a neutral or scientific act, but a highly partisan one within ongoing conflicts over the credibility of sexual abuse testimony, and the well-known challenges of prosecuting recent or historical child sexual abuse. The outsized role of criminal defence lawyers and academics who routinely act as paid defence witnesses as authors of ‘false’ or ‘wrongful allegation’ literature is indicative of ongoing conflicts of interest in sexual abuse debates that call for increased ethical scrutiny and critical awareness (Freyd & Quina, 2000). There is a need for more reflection on the potential complicity of critical scholarship in discourses of denial and victim-blaming (Bray, 2009).

Critical criminological theories of child sex offending The previous section emphasises a clear divergence between feminist and post-Foucauldian views of sexuality and hence child sexual abuse. Foucauldian theory has generally repudiated the view that ‘pleasures can and should be open to political and moral evaluation and assessment’, since this ‘would simply increase the hegemony of dominant discourses’ to intervene in everyday life (Alcoff, 1996, p. 111). In contrast to Foucault’s (1979) privileging of ‘bodies and pleasures’ as an emancipatory sphere beyond political critique, feminist scholarship has emphasised the enmeshment of desire and sexual expression within systems of domination that includes the sexual subordination of children.2 Feminist theories have observed the continuity between sexual abuse in childhood and other forms of sexual violence, including sexual harassment and rape (Kelly, 1988) as well as the embeddedness of sexual abuse within patriarchal family and institutional arrangements (Herman, 1981). A point of overlap between these two approaches is evident in their shared scepticism regarding the psychiatric and social construction of ‘paedophilia’. The psychiatric diagnostic category of ‘pedophilic disorder’ describes someone who experiences, for at least six months, ‘recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors involving sexual activity with a prepubescent child or children (generally age 13 years or younger)’ (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). While originally formulated as a clinical diagnosis, ‘paedophilia’ entered public parlance where it is often used as a descriptor and explanation of all acts of child sexual abuse. Scholars influenced by Foucault have paid particular attention to paedophilia as a hegemonic 320

Child sexual abuse

form of expert knowledge and discursive categorisation, and also as a stigmatising label for a sexual orientation and practice (Alcoff, 1996). Feminist scholars have also voiced concern over the use of ‘paedophilia’ to pathologise child sex offending, although from a somewhat different perspective. They have argued that notions of paedophilia have been over-generalised in ways that ignore ‘the relevance of gendered power relations in sexual violence’ and silences, perhaps intentionally, feminist insights into child sexual abuse (Cowburn & Dominelli, 2001, p. 400). Kelly (1996) was an early critic of this shift: Paedophilia returns us to the medical and individualised explanations which we have spent so much time and energy attempting to deconstruct and challenge. Rather than sexual abuse demanding that we look critically at the social construction of masculinity, male sexuality and the family, the safer terrain of ‘abnormality’ beckons. (p. 45) It may well be the case that some individuals meet the diagnostic criteria for paedophilia, however the evidence suggests that the majority of men who sexually offend against children do not (Cossins, 2000). The prevalence of child sexual abuse cannot, therefore, be explained in terms of the psychopathology of individual offenders. Child sex offenders are a heterogeneous group with a range of motivations, and critical analysis suggests a strong link between child sex offending and the socially shaped formation of masculine sexuality. Since the early 1990s, critical criminologists have made important contributions to understanding the causes and motivations behind child sex offending. A key dilemma addressed by this scholarship has been the predominance of male child sex offenders, a fact that has been largely ignored by genderneutral explanations focused on paedophilia and mental illness. As the following section will show, explaining child sex offending requires a psychosocial perspective that acknowledges why most offenders are men, why the majority of victims are girls, and why various sites of male power (such as the family, churches and other institutions) are so conducive to the abuse of children. An article by Liddle (1993) provided the foundation for subsequent critical interventions into the study of child sexual abuse. Liddle (1993) largely accepted the radical feminist position that sexual violence against children was a (predominantly) masculine practice linked to gender inequality. However, he rejected the proposition that men engaged in sexual violence with the specific intention of ‘buttressing’ an ‘oppressive gender structure’ (Liddle, 1993, p. 109). Drawing on Connell’s (1987) sociology of masculinity, Liddle (1993) developed a psychosocial account of child sexual abuse as a product of the social structures by which masculine sexuality is ordered and desire is focused. He argued that the gendered and sexual structures of contemporary society prioritised sexual expression and dominance as over-riding indices of masculine identity and accomplishment. Such idealised masculine norms produce anxieties over dependency, adequacy and power in men, and encourage the resolution of those anxieties through sexual release. While this tension most often resolves in the production of an aggressive and compulsory heterosexuality, it also incites the desire to abuse children in some men, and creates the contexts in which this might take place. In short, children become objects of arousal amongst some men at the intersection of desire, vulnerability and powerlessness, an unsettling but normative feature of masculine sexual formation (Liddle, 1993). A focus on male sexual embodiment in child sexual abuse continued with Messerschmidt’s (1999, 2000) life history interviews with adolescent sex offenders, which framed sexual violence as a way of ‘doing masculinity’. Messerschmidt’s interview research suggested that sexual offending often occurs against a backdrop of anxiety about masculine status and honour, in 321

Michael Salter

which sexually dominating and manipulating younger children provides a sense of ‘masculine accomplishment’. In the familial and peer environments of his interviewees, masculinity was constructed in terms of ‘male power, control of others, and the use of physical violence to solve interpersonal problems’ as well as fears over sexual proficiency (Messerschmidt, 2000, p. 297). Bodily and sexual performances are integral to meeting these gendered expectations, constituting sexual violence against children as a potential albeit deviant pathway to masculine identification. This is particularly the case for those boys and men whose own experiences of humiliation and victimisation produced an intolerance of mutuality and vulnerability in relationships. Sexually victimising younger children enabled them to position themselves as dominating, rather than dominated, and seek sexual release without risk of rejection or embarrassment. The argument that child sexual abuse shares both congruent and contradictory elements with normative masculine sexuality is continued by Cossins (2000). Her ‘power/powerlessness theory’ of child sex offending suggests that male sexuality forms in the context of fluid gendered hierarchies, in which the social fact of male dominance is complicated by masculine experiences of peer harassment, insecurity and feelings of inadequacy. In conditions of gender inequality, boys and men are frequently subject to attempts at subordination by others in their collective efforts to live up to idealised and ultimately unachievable masculine ideals. The perpetual threat of humiliation and inadequacy plays a crucial role in the aetiology of child sex offending. Cossins (2000) argues that sexual abuse is a practice through which boys and men can accrue experiences of sexualised domination, in accordance with hegemonic sexual scripts, without the risks of rejection or shame that attend consensual adult sexual relations. An over-reliance on socio-structural explanations for male violence have been criticised for conflating normative masculinity with deviant conduct that is reviled precisely because it is considered ‘unmasculine’ (Jefferson, 2002). In bridging the gap between the structural and the psychological, I have argued that psychoanalytic theory is important in understanding how hegemonic norms of masculinity are internalised and reworked via transgressive acts such as child sex offending (Salter, 2013b). Drawing on feminist theories of intersubjectivity, I suggest that experiences of interpersonal dependency and vulnerability, so integral to intimate and sexual relations, can become intolerable for boys and men in contexts where masculinity is defined by autonomy and sexual self-assertion. Sexual violence thus becomes a means by which boys and men can ‘ward off the intolerable tensions that are produced in the intersubjective process’ (Salter, 2013b, p. 21). Children can be constituted as sexual objects for those whose gendered subjectivity is orientated around the avoidance of mutuality (and therefore vulnerability) in sexual relations and towards the control and manipulation of the less powerful. Such propensities are formed with, and intensified by, social and institutional structures of masculine domination where prerogatives of control and power are readily instrumentalised for the purposes of sexual domination (Salter, 2017a). Indeed, child sexual abuse takes on the organisational qualities of the contexts in which it takes shape, reinforcing gendered, classed and other inequalities and dynamics (Salter, 2017a).

Future areas of research and theorising Critical criminological scholarship has developed a robust and practical theoretical account of child sexual abuse. As the knowledge base surrounding child sexual abuse continues to unfold, it is important that critical scholarship is responsive and engaged as new (or suppressed) dimensions of the phenomena come to light. This section flags four areas that would benefit from ongoing critical criminological examination, and calls for increased attention to the diversity 322

Child sexual abuse

of sexual abuse including its severe forms, more sophisticated theorising of the contexts and dynamics of abuse and responses to it, and finally further interrogation of justice mechanisms and processes.

a.

Accounting for the full spectrum of child sexual abuse

Critical scholarship on child sexual abuse has often focused on ‘boundary cases’ that illustrate the contradictions of criminalisation and public morality. For instance, the emergence of consensual nude or sexual image-making by minor teenagers (often called ‘sexting’) has prompted calls for law reform, since such acts may be criminalised under child pornography legislation (Salter, Crofts, & Lee, 2013). Public concern over the purported sexualisation of children in artwork and advertising has also been subject to critical analysis (Faulkner, 2011). However, the majority of instances of child sexual abuse are not so morally or legally ambiguous. Indeed, the global demand for child abuse images and video provides evidence of widespread sexual interest in children that includes their rape and torture. For instance, a content analysis of 43,762 child abuse images and videos reported to Canadian authorities from 2008–2015 found that almost 50 percent of children in the images appeared to be under 8 years old and a further 27 percent appeared to be between 8 and 11 years old (Canadian Centre for Child Protection, 2016, p. 14). Approximately 48 percent involved explicit sexual activity and assaults, with 2.23 percent involving extreme abuse such as bestiality, bondage, the use of weapons, and defecation/urination (p. 16). The younger the victim, the more likely they were to be subject to more serious abuse and violation (p. 17). This underscores the point made in the previous section that the age differential in child sexual abuse is linked to the desire for domination and control, albeit one that can extend to acts of outright sadism. Feminist scholarship provides a useful link between child sexual abuse, the desire for control and the infliction of pain, particularly in relation to incest. Kelly (1988) observes that ‘incest is usually thought of as a particular form of child sexual abuse but the actual dynamics of incestuous abuse are, in some ways, more like those in domestic violence’. This is well illustrated in Herman’s (1981) pioneering research, which found that sexually abused daughters are routinely conscripted by their fathers into domestic servitude, where they are expected to meet his needs in a range of ways and their lives outside the home are heavily prescribed. Subsequent research by Goodwin (1993) into the sadistic abuse of children identified a cohort of sexual abusers, frequently fathers, for whom sexual arousal was synonymous with feelings of control over the child, exemplified by acts of torture. I’ve found a similar dynamic at work in my interviews with survivors of prolonged incest and organised abuse. For instance, in one interview, ‘Grace’ (a pseudonym) described being sexually abused by her father from childhood into her mid-20s (Salter, 2013a). She recounted how her father’s obsessive need to control her life, and shape both her subjectivity and sexuality, prompted him to move her family from the city to an isolated country compound. Once there, he worked methodically to alienate her from her mother and siblings and limit her contact with the outside world to ensure that his sexual abuse of her could not be interrupted or detected for two decades. He continued abusing her until her mid-20s. The prolonged incestuous abuse of girls into adulthood is a largely overlooked but disturbing form of sexual abuse (Middleton, 2013; Salter, 2017c). Fathers engaged in persistent and long-term incest are frequently networked with other offenders to whom they make their child/ren available on quid-pro-quo or commercial basis (Middleton, 2013; Salter, 2013b). In such cases, sexual abuse is structured and facilitated by larger illicit markets. Indeed, offending fathers and abusive families are major sites for the manufacture of child abuse material and child sexual exploitation more generally. A recent survey of 128 survivors 323

Michael Salter

of child abuse imagery found that a parent was the single or primary abuser in 60 percent of cases (Canadian Centre for Child Protection, 2017). Fifty-two percent of survivors identified as victims of organised abuse, in which multiple adults (most often a parent) conspired to sexually exploit them and others, including ‘possible involvement of sadistic, torture-related and ritualistic abuse’ (Canadian Centre for Child Protection, 2017, p. 5). This research correlates with clinical and interview data emphasising the overlap between incest, organised abuse and the manufacture of child abuse material (Itzin, 2001; Salter, 2013b; Salter & Richters, 2012). Ritual abuse, in which children are sexually abused in a ceremonial fashion, is a recurring feature of reports of organised abuse and the manufacture of child abuse material (Salter, 2012b, 2013b; Scott, 2001). While allegations of ritualistic abuse have proven to be particularly controversial, clinicians have argued that ritual abuse plays an important role in maintaining child and adult victims of organised abuse in a state of compliance and fear (Schwartz, 2013). The impact on victims is catastrophic, resulting in traumatic and dissociative psychological disorders that have been poorly understood by criminologists (Sachs, 2015). Despite accumulating evidence of serious child abuse, and a significant cohort of severely impacted victims and survivors, the role of gendered domination and illicit markets in child sexual abuse has been widely overlooked. An expanded exploration of the motives of sexual abuse perpetrators that encompasses control, as well as the accumulation of various forms of capital (whether economic or ‘subcultural’ in the context of abuse networks), is a logical and productive extension of existing critical criminological accounts of child sex offending, and can offer new insights into perpetrator, victim and survivor experiences.

b.

Power and intersectionality in child sexual abuse

For critical criminologists, moving beyond the sexual to address an expanded repertoire of motives amongst child sexual offenders raises questions about the contexts and discourses in which such motives take shape. The chapter has previously emphasised how normative masculine expectations and gendered structures of power are entangled within the production of adult sexual desire and practice with children. However, gender and age do not intersect in isolation from co-structuring systems of power such as capitalism and discourses of neoliberalism. Haug’s (2001) insightful study of the notorious Belgian criminal Marc Dutroux suggests that certain aspects of child sexual abuse will remain beyond understanding without consideration of the instrumentalising, objectifying rationality of global capital. Dutroux was arrested in 1996 for the abduction of a teenage girl, which triggered the discovery of a concealed dungeon in which, over a period of years, he had held a number of abducted teenage girls and women. There is considerable evidence to indicate that Dutroux was paid to source victims to cater for a politically-connected network of abusers and sadists (Haug, 2001). Haug (2001) observed how the attempts of the European media to brand Dutroux a ‘paedophile’ and ‘pervert’ ultimately failed to articulate the full scope and implications of his crimes. By assuming that Dutroux was motivated by sexual pathology rather than profit, journalists were unable to grasp that he was catering to a large and pre-existing market in the sexual abuse of children, structured much like other free markets. Indeed, Haug (2001) asserted that child sexual abuse is congruent with the underlying logics of neoliberalism and draws on its ordering principles: the degradation of people to mere objects of desire and lust is no longer viewed as a structural problem of capitalist societies which, through the release of market forces and the letting-go of ethically based preventative measures designed to regulate market forces, has 324

Child sexual abuse

turned the whole world into a warehouse of raw materials for the benefit of investmentready capital. Within this, the trade in human beings, child pornography and prostitution becomes a fertile ground where individual entrepreneurs as well as organized gangs may reap profits on a grand scale. (p. 76) The reduction of the child to ‘raw material’ in the context of global capitalism is also noted in O’Connell Davidson’s (2005) work on children in the ‘sex trade’ of the Global South, where she argues that global inequalities and macro-economic conditions can position prostitution as the most viable form of income. She criticizes campaigns that focus on ‘saving’ children from prostitution in developing countries for their individualistic focus on the Western sex tourist as the source of the problem. While not disputing the wrongfulness of child sex tourism, O’Connell Davidson (2005), like Haug (2001), suggest that an individualised focus on the deviant offender is obscuring the larger structural inequalities within which child sexual abuse and exploitation takes form. Militarisation, imperialism and colonisation have played a formative role in the development of child sexual exploitation in many parts of the globe, and these uncomfortable histories are erased in the focus on individual offenders rather than structural and historical contributors. The role of class and social status in creating zones of impunity for child sexual offending is a recurrent feature of abuse scandals over the last 20 years. A watershed moment occurred in 2002, when media revelations about the sexual abuse of children by priests in a Boston diocese became one of the media stories of the decade, earning the journalists involved a Pulitzer Prize (Rezendes, 2002). Across the world, revelations of systemic clergy sexual abuse, as well as the inaction and complicity of church officials, police and others, have foregrounded institutionalised power and masculine authority structures in enabling and covering up child sexual abuse (Keenan, 2012). The role of social status and power in sexual abuse has also been evident in recent revelations of child sexual abuse by various celebrity or ‘VIP’ offenders, notably Jimmy Savile and Rolf Harris in the UK, Jerry Sandusky and Jeffrey Epstein in the US, and Robert Hughes in Australia (Salter, 2014). At the level of the individual offender, these examples demonstrate how the power differentials that characterize child sexual abuse can take on very concrete forms for privileged offenders, who enjoy multiple points of influence, compliance and even complicity within institutions and authorities. However they also raise discomforting questions about a subterranean tradition of sexually transgressive masculinity that is implicated in child sexual abuse and the power structures of liberal democracies, requiring further critical interrogation. Race and ethnicity are also important factors in shaping how sexual abuse takes place, and the likely response of authorities (Whittier, 2015). For instance, a series of so-called ‘sex grooming’ scandals in the United Kingdom have brought to light the mass sexual exploitation of teenage girls in a number of locales (Cockbain, 2013). The disinterest of state and police authorities in the safety of teenage girls in institutional care has been prominent in a number of cases, where victims and advocates have found a range of agencies unresponsive to evidence of the sexual assault and prostitution of girls in care (Salter & Dagistanli, 2015). However, the systemic factors that made the mass abuse of these children possible were overshadowed in public and political discourse by the religious and ethnic background of groups of perpetrators, some of whom were of Asian and Muslim heritage. My research with Dagistanli (Salter & Dagistanli, 2015) has emphasised how the debates over ‘sex grooming’ were framed by issues of migration and multiculturalism, while the protection of vulnerable children was second order issue. The ethnic status of the perpetrators had a significant role in how the allegations against them were interpreted, and 325

Michael Salter

linked to pre-existing controversies and racist agitation by far-right groups. In contrast, similar allegations against white perpetrators have been overlooked or else cast as unbelievable and confabulated (Salter & Dagistanli, 2015). Research that is attuned to the gendered, classed and racial dynamics of sexual abuse and their contextual intersections may generate new insights into how sexual abuse can be prevented before it occurs.

c.

Problematising collective responses to child sexual abuse

As discussed, much of the work of critical criminologists on child sexual abuse has been focused on discourse and its impact on law and public policy. Such analyses have been advanced, largely, via moral panic theory, which has generated a basic asymmetry in literature on the topic. While moral panic scholarship seeks to contest and politicise collective responses to child sexual abuse, it typically advances a common sense and ‘depoliticised’ view of child sexual abuse (Bray, 2009). The occurrence of child sexual abuse is accepted as a ‘bare fact’ that is not interrogated in any depth, and moral panic discourse largely sidesteps the ‘messy political question’ of what to do about sexually abused children and sexual offenders, casting many, if not most, interventions into sexual abuse as an over-reaction and intrusion into private life and personal choice (Bray, 2009 p. 175). While delegitimising the political theorising of child sexual abuse, moral panic theorists cast responses to child sexual abuse as the only appropriate subject of critical theory (Bray, 2009). This asymmetry in critical criminological literature tends to reproduce a problematic form of liberalism that veils sexual relations within the ‘private’ sphere, and any harms that occur therein as ‘natural’ and beyond the reach of state intervention (Tomsen & Salter, 2017). By framing child sexual abuse as an ‘apolitical’ fact, moral panic theory is unable to adequately conceptualise its relationship with political discourse and public culture. Other variants of critical theory have proven to be more sensitised to the vested interests that determine the boundaries of public discourse and disallow subaltern perspectives and experiences from entering into representation and circulation. For instance, Fraser’s history of the public sphere emphasised how the dominance of bourgeois, white, heterosexual men had a determinative impact on what issues were included on the public agenda, and how those issues were framed and understood (Fraser, 1990). She uses domestic violence as an example of an issue that was thematised in the hegemonic public sphere as a ‘private’ issue until it was reformulated and forcibly placed on the public agenda by the women’s movement (Fraser, 1990). Likewise, the emergence of child sexual abuse to public awareness is primarily the result of feminist agitation. However, the ongoing masculine dominance of the public sphere has been apparent in the contours of public debate on child sexual abuse. Research on attitudes to child sexual abuse finds a consistent gender divide, in which men as a group are less likely to see child sexual abuse as a serious issue, and are more likely to engage in victim-blaming (Smith, Fromuth, & Morris, 1998). The over-representation of men as journalists and editors has been reflected in their sceptical and at times hostile framing of child sexual abuse allegations, and the privileging of narratives of ‘false memories’ and ‘moral panics’ (Kitzinger, 2004). As ‘old’ or ‘mass’ media fragments with the advent of the internet and social media, the power dynamics that have regulated the public sphere are changing with significant consequences for the social construction of child sexual abuse. For instance, abuse survivors and experts have been able to use social media to directly contest media discourses of ‘moral panic’ and ‘false memories’, forcing apologies and retractions from journalists in some cases (Salter, 2017b). Social media has also provided a forum through which anti-abuse activism can take international forms, developing far-reaching critiques of the role of social status and power in sexual 326

Child sexual abuse

violence against children (Salter, 2017b). New media technologies have also been implicated in the promulgation of polarising gender stereotypes and hyper-sexual ‘scripts’ that shape children’s and young people’s sexualisation and agency in powerful ways (Salter, 2016). These technologies and the constructions of sexuality that circulate through them are contributing to unwanted or coercive sexual interactions amongst young people, as well as technologically-facilitated forms of abuse (Salter, 2017b). As public culture and media technologies shift, it’s incumbent on critical criminologists to interrogate their impacts on young people, and practices and representations of sexual harm.

d.

Improving justice responses

The pathway of child sexual abuse allegations into and through the criminal justice system is fraught for child and adult complainants. Victim-blaming stereotypes are frequently mobilised in the court process, media coverage and in the community against children or adults who report sexual abuse to the authorities, mirroring much of the shame and humiliation of the original crime. Herman (2005, pp. 572–573) summarised this dynamic when she said: Crimes of dominance have a ritualized element designed to isolate the victim and to degrade her in the eyes of others. The crime is intended to defile the victim, so that she will be publicly stigmatized and scorned should the crime be disclosed. It is this dishonoring of the victim that renders crimes of sexual and domestic violence so intractable and so impervious to the formal remedies of the law. Any form of abuse disclosure is a fraught process, often triggering a crisis for the child or adult complainant, as well as for the accused and their families and communities. This crisis, and the investigation which follows, tends to disproportionately burden the complainant with informal pressures and formal requirements that, as they accumulate, can undermine the quality of their evidence, increase the likelihood they will pull out of the process, and lower the rate of prosecution. This arguably has a feedback effect insofar as child sex offending is rarely sanctioned, constituting a failure of deterrence, and contributing to high rates of sexual violence against children more generally. Increased sensitivity of the dynamics of abuse and the impact of investigations can have a positive effect on victims and court outcomes. For instance, Staller and Faller (2010) documented an American community-based protocol for the management of child sexual abuse cases that has increased rates of prosecution. The protocol included a rapid response to abuse disclosure, in which sexual abuse cases are prioritised and investigated immediately, with close cooperation between law enforcement and child protection. The thorough interviewing of the child victim on video tape provided an authoritative account of the child’s version of the facts and aimed to prevent any re-interviewing. When interviewing the alleged offender, police would present the child’s evidence and ask the offender to respond to the child’s narrative of abuse. This practice resulted in offenders ‘co-constructing a legal narrative account of what happened that was integrated with the child’s account’ (Staller & Faller, 2010: 10) from the outset of the investigation. This is distinct from the more common scenario, in which the accused offender developes their own competing narrative of what occurred, whereupon the two accounts are adjudicated in an adversarial fashion at trial. The effect of this is to further expose victims of sexual abuse to the denials, trivialisations and justifications of the offender. Encouraging the ‘coconstruction’ of testimony around the child’s immediate recollection of events could forestall this eventuality. 327

Michael Salter

While not all aspects of this particular protocol will be acceptable across jurisdictions, it is grounded in awareness of the explicit and implicit factors at work in sexual abuse investigations that tend to disempower the victim. Victims and their advocates have expressed frustration where they feel that there is a lack of effort to develop a rapport with child or adult victims to facilitate their evidence (Salter, 2011; Salter, 2013b). Police representatives have highlighted the restrictions placed on abuse investigations and called for law reform in order to improve the gathering of evidence (Newbury, 2014). Research on specialisation in sexual assault responses – particularly specialist police teams and crisis services that combine support with forensic evidence gathering and police liaison – finds that they improve the victim experience (Daly & Bouhours, 2011). Specialist courts for child victim cases have reduced delay and increased guilty pleas, at least in some jurisdictions (Daly & Bouhours, 2011). However, despite a range of measures designed to protect child witnesses to give evidence to the best of their ability, adversarial and traumatising forms of cross-examination persist (Raitt, 2010). Adult complainants also report being retraumatised through the court process, where the lack of a contemporaneous complaint (or, at least, a complaint that was believed and acted upon by adults at the time) is frequently construed as evidence that they are lying (Shead, 2014). There is a clear need for further research into how criminal justice interventions can address and remedy the power imbalances that persist throughout police and court processes, and avoid reproducing those imbalances. In recognition of the shortcomings of the criminal justice system, restorative justice and conferencing processes have been promoted by some scholars as potentially appropriate in the context of child sexual abuse. For instance, Daly and Wade (2017) have emphasised the potential utility of conferencing the case of sibling sexual violence, where perpetrators are often minors, and some ‘restoration’ of the relationship between perpetrator and victim would seem appropriate given their familial bond. However, their analysis found that victims were typically too young to participate in the conference, and invalidating conduct from the perpetrator or other family members, and other kinds of problematic family dynamics were observed in the conference setting. Cossins (2008) questions whether restorative justice practitioners or processes can mediate the power dynamics inherent in child sexual abuse, typified by repeated violation and manipulation over time. Research with adult survivors of child sexual abuse supports Cossins’ concerns. For instance, Jülich (2006) found that adult survivors of child sexual abuse were sceptical about the prospect of restorative justice, due to their concern that the emotional dynamics and power imbalances of abuse would be re-enacted in conferencing. When offered, most survivors of clergy sexual abuse reject the prospect of ‘meeting’ with church representatives since, ‘far from being a way to “process the trauma”, such meetings carry significant risks of re-traumatisation’ (Ellis & Ellis, 2014, p. 37). Recognition of the limitation of both criminal and restorative justice for child sexual abuse and sexual violence has prompted scholars to reflect on what justice means to victims. For example, McGlynn and Westmarland (2014) argue for a victim-centred and ‘kaleidoscopic’ vision of justice with multiple elements, including the principles of social and cultural change, prevention, voice, recognition, consequences, dignity and support. Daly (2017) has formulated a set of victims’ justice ‘interests’, specifically: participation, voice, validation, vindication and offender accountability/taking responsibility. These principles provide broader ways of building and assessing justice processes according to the needs and wishes of victims of sexual violence. Invalidation and the denial of personal experience is a core feature of child sexual abuse (Salter, 2012a) and hence it is no surprise that, when asked about their understanding of justice, abuse survivors emphasise the importance of telling their story in a public forum, and having their experiences of abuse and its impacts on them heard and affirmed (Herman, 2005; Jülich, 2006; McGlynn, Downes, & Westmarland, 2016). Even where victims pursue civil suits or compensation 328

Child sexual abuse

by other means, their primary motive is often for public validation for the harms they have suffered, rather than for financial gain (Daly & Bouhours, 2011). For abuse survivors, perpetrator accountability does not necessarily require a criminal conviction, but they often express a strong desire for the perpetrator (as well as complicit bystanders) to show remorse and bear some consequences for their actions (Herman, 2005; Jülich, 2006; McGlynn, Downes & Westmarland, 2016). Ideally for some survivors, this would catalyse some transformation of relationships that had been lost to abuse and its impacts, and the restoration of a sense of community. A sense of the collective restoration of the survivor’s dignity and worth is crucial to their understanding of substantive justice (Herman, 2005). However, Herman (2005) provides a note of caution here, observing that the supportive ‘community’ that survivors seek does not exist, and can only be created through ongoing political organising and activism. Indeed, many of the expressed desires of survivors of sexual abuse and violence arguably outstrip any particular justice process or mechanism and instead constitute a wish for a more equitable and just society that can only be accomplished through political agitation and social transformation.

Conclusion Child sexual abuse has presented something of a conundrum for critical criminology. It does not fit well into left idealist views of criminal offending as a form of resistance and rebellion. Concern about ‘expert’ discourse and state intervention, particularly in relation to sexuality and sexual life, has lent inquiries into sexual abuse a highly sceptical tone. The result is that critical criminologists have largely focused on interrogating the social and legal construction of child sexual abuse while failing to apply a critical lens to the practice itself. Nonetheless, this chapter has foregrounded influential work by a group of critical criminologists on the formation of abusive sexualities and practices linked to structures and discourses of masculinity, sexuality and age. Male psychosexual development within gendered family and peer hierarchies, with their contradictory gendered ideals and expectations, were a recurring theme in critical explanations for child sex offending. The chapter foregrounded future areas of critical research and theorising that involves asking uncomfortable questions about the recurrence of child sexual abuse within contemporary social and economic contexts. This includes an expanded criminological vision that accommodates all forms of child sexual abuse, including its most extreme and traumatising manifestations. I’ve argued that this work should be informed by drawing on critical theories that situate child sexual abuse within localised, national and global power structures. Shifts in power relations and the media landscape have significant implications for the social construction of child sexual abuse, and attention should be paid to what is silenced, as well as what is said, in public discourses around child sexual abuse. The scale of the challenge that child sexual abuse presents to criminology is evident in its ongoing epidemic levels after 30 years of law and policy reform. This calls for the development of criminal justice and other interventions that address the dynamics of abuse and the needs and wishes of survivors. As Herman (2005) reminds us, this work cannot be accomplished without political engagement and critical thought, which critical criminologists are well positioned to provide.

Notes 1 2

Wilson was recently convicted and imprisoned for child sex offences (Condon, 2016). Many feminist criminologists and scholars have found Foucauldian theory useful in their studies on sexual violence while recognising his disinterest in gendered power (e.g. Howe, 2009). A more detailed analysis of the divergences and similarities in feminist and Foucauldian analyses of sexuality is beyond the scope of this chapter, but is addressed more fully by Tomsen and Salter (2017). 329

Michael Salter

References Adcock, B. (2016, 11 December). Sis, we’ve got your back, Background Briefing, ABC Radio National, www. abc.net.au/radionational/programs/backgroundbriefing/2016-2012-2011/8082314. Alcoff, L. (1996). Dangerous pleasures: Foucault and the politics of pedophilia. In Susan Hekman (Ed.), Feminist interpretations of Foucault (pp. 99–135). Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State Press. American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM-5). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Pub. Bowman, C. G., & Mertz, E. (1996). A dangerous direction: Legal intervention in sexual abuse survivor therapy. Harvard Law Review, 109(3), 549–639. Bray, A. (2009). Governing the gaze: Child sexual abuse moral panics and the post-feminist blindspot. Feminist Media Studies, 9(2), 173–191. Brown, D., Scheflin, A. W., & Hammond, D.C. (1998). The contours of the false memory debate. In D. Brown, A. W. Scheflin & D.C. Hammond (Eds), Memory, trauma treatment and the law (pp. 21–65). New York and London: W. W. Norton and Company. Canadian Centre for Child Protection (2016). Child sexual abuse images on the Internet: www.protectchil dren.ca/pdfs/CTIP_CSAResearchReport_2016_en.pdf. Canadian Centre for Child Protection (2017). Survivor’s survey preliminary report. Cheit, R. E. (2001). The legend of Robert Halsey. Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, 9(3/4), 37–52. Cheit, R. E. (2014). The witch-hunt narrative: Politics, psychology and the sexual abuse of children. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cockbain, E. (2013). Grooming and the ‘Asian sex gang predator’: the construction of a racial crime threat. Race & Class, 54(4), 22–32. Condon, M. (2016). Criminologist Paul Wilson wrote controversial book on pedophile Howard-Osborne and ‘man–boy love’, Courier Mail, www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/crime-and-justice/ criminologist-paul-wilson-wrote-controversial-book-on-pedophile-howardosborne-and-manboylove/news-story/e6dfb85456137287b85456137285fcad85456137047f85456137282e854561372 83c85456137288. Connell, R. (1987). Gender and power: Society, the person and sexual politics. Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Connolly, D. A., & Don Read, J. (2006). Delayed prosecutions of historic child sexual abuse: Analyses of 2064 Canadian criminal complaints. Law and Human Behavior, 30(4), 409–434. Cossins, A. (2000). Masculinities, sexualities and child sexual abuse. The Hague: Kluwer Law International. Cossins, A. (2006). Prosecuting child sexual abuse cases: Are vulnerable witness protections enough. Current Issues in Criminal Justice, 18, 299–317. Cossins, A. (2008). Restorative justice and child sex offences: The theory and the practice. British Journal of Criminology, 48(3), 359–378. Cowburn, M., & Dominelli, L. (2001). Masking hegemonic masculinity: Reconstructing the paedophile as the dangerous stranger. British Journal of Social Work, 31, 399–415. Cromer, L. D., & Goldsmith, R. E. (2010). Child sexual abuse myths: Attitudes, beliefs, and individual differences. Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, 19(6), 618–647. Cross, T. P., Walsh, W. A., Simone, M., & Jones, L. M. (2003). Prosecution of child abuse: A meta-analysis of rates of criminal justice decisions. Trauma,Violence, & Abuse, 4(4), 323–340. Daly, K. (2014). Reconceptualizing sexual victimization and justice. In I. Vanfraechem, A. Pemberton and F. Mukwiza Ndahinda (Eds), Justice for victims: Perspectives on rights, transition and reconciliation (pp. 378–395). London and New York: Routledge. Daly, K. (2017). Sexual violence and victim’s justice interests. In E. Zinsstag & M. Keenan (Eds), Sexual violence and restorative justice: Legal, social and therapeutic dimensions. London and New York: Routledge. Daly, K., & Bouhours, B. (2011). Conventional and innovative justice responses to sexual violence: Australian Centre for the Study of Sexual Assault, Australian Institute of Family Studies. Daly, K., & Wade, D. (2017). Sibling sexual violence and victim’s justice interests: A comparison of youth conferencing and judicial sentencing. In E. Zinsstag & M. Keenan (Eds), Sexual violence and restorative justice: Legal, social and therapeutic dimensions. London: Routledge. DeKeseredy, W. S. (2010). Contemporary critical criminology. London and New York: Routledge. Dragiewicz, M. (2014). Domestic violence and family law: criminological concerns. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 3(1), 121–134. Ellis, J., & Ellis, N. (2014). New model for seeking meaningful redress for victims of Church-related sexual assault, A. Current Issues in Criminal Justice, 26, 31. 330

Child sexual abuse

Faulkner, J. (2011). The importance of being innocent: Why we worry about children. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press. Featherstone, L., & Kaladelfos, A. (2016). Sex crimes in the fifties. Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing. Finnane, M., & Smaal, Y. (2016). Some questions of history: Prosecuting and punishing child sexual assault. In Y. Smaal, A. Kaladeflos & M. Finnane (Eds), The sexual abuse of children: Recognition and redress (pp. 7–19). Clayton, Victoria: Monash University Publishing. Fitzgerald, J. (2006). The attrition of sexual offences from the New South Wales criminal justice system Crime and Justice Bulletin: Contemporary Issues in Crime and Justice Number 92. Sydney: NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research. Foucault, M. (1979). The history of sexuality: 1, the will to knowledge. London: Allen Lane. Fraser, N. (1990). Rethinking the public sphere: A contribution to the critique of actually existing democracy. Social Text, 25/26, 56–80. Freyd, J., & Quina, K. (2000). Feminist ethics in the practice of science: The contested memory controversy as an example. In M. Brabeck (Ed.), Practicing feminist ethics in psychology (pp. 101–124). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Gilbert, R., Widom, C. S., Browne, K., Fergusson, D., Webb, E., & Janson, S. (2009). Burden and consequences of child maltreatment in high-income countries. The Lancet, 373(9657), 68–81. Goodwin, Jean. (1993). Rediscovering childhood trauma: Historical casebook and clinical applications. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Publishing. Grealy, L. (2014). Menacing Dennis: representing ‘Australia’s most hated man’ and popular protests for policy change. Crime, Media, Culture, 10(1), 39–57. Haug, F. (2001). Sexual deregulation or, the child abuser as hero in neoliberalism. Feminist Theory, 2(1), 55–78. Herman, J. L. (1981). Father–daughter incest. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Herman, J. L. (2005). Justice from the victim’s perspective. Violence Against Women, 11(5), 571–602. Howe, A. (2009). Sex, violence and crime: Foucault and the ‘man’ question: New York and London: Routledge. Hoyle, H., Speechley, N. E., & Burnett, R. (2016). The impact of being wrongly accused of abuse in occupations of trust:Victim’s voices. Oxford: University of Oxford, Centre for Criminology. Itzin, C. (2001). Incest, paedophilia, pornography and prostitution: Making familial abusers more visible as the abusers. Child Abuse Review, 10, 35–48. Jefferson, T. (2002). Subordinating hegemonic masculinity. Theoretical Criminology, 6(1), 63–88. Jenkins, P. (1992). Intimate enemies: Moral panics in contemporary Great Britain. Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers. Johnson, R. J., Ross, M. W., Taylor, W. C., Williams, M. L., Carvajal, R. I., & Peters, R. J. (2006). Prevalence of childhood sexual abuse among incarcerated males in county jail. Child Abuse & Neglect, 30(1), 75–86. Jülich, S. (2006). Views of justice among survivors of historical child sexual abuse Implications for restorative justice in New Zealand. Theoretical Criminology, 10(1), 125–138. Keenan, M. (2012). Child sexual abuse and the Catholic Church. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kelly, L. (1988). Surviving sexual violence. Oxford: Blackwell. Kelly, L. (1996). Weasel words: Pedophiles and the cycle of abuse. Trouble and Strife, 33, 44–49. Kelly, L., Lovett, J., & Regan, L. (2005). A gap or a chasm? Attrition in reported rape cases. London: Child and Woman Abuse Studies Unit, London Metropolitan University. Kendall-Tackett, K., Lyon, T. D., & Taliaferro, G. (2005). Why child maltreatment researchers should include children’s disability status in their maltreatment studies. Child Abuse & Neglect, 29(2), 147–151. Kitzinger, J. (2004). Framing abuse: Media influence and public understanding of sexual violence against children. London; Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press. Liddle, M. (1993). Gender, desire and child sexual abuse: Accounting for the male majority. Theory, Culture & Society, 10(4), 103–126. Messerschmidt, J. W. (1999). Making bodies matter: Adolescent sexualities, the body and varieties of violence. Theoretical Criminology, 3(2), 197–220. Messerschmidt, J. W. (2000). Becoming “real men”: Adolescent masculinity challenges and sexual violence. Men and Masculinities, 2(3), 286–307. McGlynn, C., & Westmarland, N. (2014). Kaleidoscopic justice: Making sense of the lived complexities of justice for sexual violence victim-survivors. Paper presented at the Paper presented at ‘Exploring the potential of restorative justice for sexual violence’, University of Leuven. 331

Michael Salter

McGlynn, C., Downes, J., & Westmarland, N. (2016). Seeking justice for survivors of sexual violence: Recognition, voice and consequences. In Keenan and Zinsstag (Eds). Sexual Violence and restorative justice: Legal, social and therapeutic dimensions. London and New York: Routledge. Middleton, W. (2013). Ongoing incestuous abuse during adulthood. Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 14(3), 251–272. Middleton, W., Stavropoulos, P., Dorahy, M. J., Krüger, C., Lewis-Fernández, R., Martínez-Taboas, A., Sar, V., & Brand, B. (2014). Institutional abuse and societal silence: An emerging global problem. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 48(1), 22–25. Moloney, K. P., van den Bergh, B. J., & Moller, L. F. (2009). Women in prison: The central issues of gender characteristics and trauma history. Public Health, 123(6), 426–430. Newbury, M. (2014). Historical child sexual abuse investigations: A case for law reform. Current Issues in Criminal Justice, 26, 43. O’Connell Davidson, J. (2005). Children in the global sex trade. Cambridge: Polity Press. Olafson, E., Corwin, D. L., & Summit, R. C. (1993). Modern history of child sexual abuse awareness: Cycles of discovery and suppression. Child Abuse & Neglect, 17, 7–24. Olio, K. A., & Cornell, W. F. (1998). The facade of scientific documentation: A case study of Richard Ofshe’s analysis of the Paul Ingram case. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 4(4), 1182–1197. Pereda, N., Guilera, G., Forns, M., & Gomez-Benito, J. (2009). The prevalence of child sexual abuse in community and student samples: A meta-analysis. Clinical Psychology Review, 29(4), 328–338. Pratt, J. (2005). Child sexual abuse: Purity and danger in an age of anxiety. Crime, Law and Social Change, 43(4–5), 263–287. Raitt, F. E. (2010). Judging children’s credibility – cracks in the culture of disbelief, or business as usual? New Criminal Law Review: In International and Interdisciplinary Journal, 13(4), 735–758. Rezendes, M. (2002, January 6). Church allowed abuse by priest for years, Boston Globe, www.bos tonglobe.com/news/special-reports/2002/2001/2006/church-allowed-abuse-priest-for-years/ cSHfGkTIrAT2025qKGvBuDNM/story.html. Ruddick, Lisa. (2015). When nothing is cool. In Bammer, A. and Boetcher, R. E. (Eds) The future of scholarly writing: Critical interventions. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 71–85. Rush, F. (1980). The best kept secret: Sexual abuse of children. New York: McGraw Hill. Sachs, A. (2015). Who done it, actually? Dissociative identity disorder for the criminologist. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 4(2), 65–76. Salter, M. (2011). Organised abuse and testimonial legitimacy. Paper presented at the ANZCCC: The Australian and New Zealand Critical Criminology Conference 2010, Proceedings. http://ses.library.usyd.edu.au/ bitstream/2123/7372/1/Salter_ANZCCC2010.pdf. Salter, M. (2012a). Invalidation: A neglected dimensions of gender-based violence and inequality. International Journal for Crime and Justice, 1(1), 3–13. Salter, M. (2012b). The role of ritual in the organised abuse of children. Child Abuse Review, 21(6), 440–451. Salter, M. (2013a). Grace’s story: Prolonged incestuous abuse from childhood into adulthood. Violence Against Women, 19(2), 146–165. Salter, M. (2013b). Organised sexual abuse. London: Glasshouse/Routledge. Salter, M. (2014, May 31). Why celebrated males think they are licensed to offend, Sydney Morning Herald, www. smh.com.au/nsw/why-celebrated-males-think-they-are-licensed-to-offend-20140530-20140399kx. html. Salter, M. (2016). Privates in the online public: Sex(ting) and reputation on social media. New Media & Society, 18(11), 2723–2739. Salter, M. (2017a). Abuse and cruelty in religious bureaucracy: The case of the Anglican Diocese of Newcastle, Journal of Australian Studies, forthcoming. Salter, M. (2017b). Crime, justice and social media. London and New York: Routledge. Salter, M. (2017c). Organized abuse in adulthood: Survivor and professional perspectives. Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, 18(3), 441–453. Salter, M., & Breckenridge, J. (2014). Women, trauma and substance abuse: Understanding the experiences of female survivors of childhood abuse in alcohol and drug treatment. International Journal of Social Welfare, 23(2), 165–173. Salter, M., & Dagistanli, S. (2015). Cultures of abuse: ‘Sex grooming’, organised abuse and race in Rochdale, UK. International Journal of Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 4(2), 50–64. Salter, M., & Richters, J. (2012). Organised abuse: A neglected category of sexual abuse with significant lifetime mental healthcare sequelae. Journal of Mental Health, 21(5), 499–508. 332

Child sexual abuse

Salter, M., Crofts, T., & Lee, M. (2013). Beyond criminalisation and responsibilisation: Sexting, gender and young people. Current Issues in Criminal Justice, 24(3), 301–316. Schwartz, H. L. (2013). The alchemy of wolves and sheep: A relational approach to internalized perpetration in complex trauma survivors. London: Routledge. Scott, S. (2001). Beyond disbelief: The politics and experience of ritual abuse. Buckingham: Open University Press. Shead, K. (2014). Responding to historical child sexual abuse: A prosecution perspective on current challenges and future directions. Current Issues in Criminal Justice, 26, 55. Smart, C. (1991). Feminism and the power of law. London: Routlege. Smart, C. (1999). A history of ambivalence and conflict in the discursive construction of the ‘child victim’ of sexual abuse. Social and Legal Studies, 8(3), 391–409. Smith, H. D., Fromuth, M. E., & Morris, C. C. (1998). Effects of gender on perceptions of child sexual abuse. Journal of Child Sexual Abuse, 6(4), 51–63. Staller, K. M., & Faller, K. C. (2010). Seeking justice in child sexual abuse: Shifting burdens and sharing responsibilities: Columbia University Press. Swingle, J. M., Tursich, M., Cleveland, J. M., Gold, S. N., Tolliver, S. F., Michaels, L., Kupperman-Caron, L. N., Garcia-Larrieu, M., & Sciarrino, N. A. (2016). Childhood disclosure of sexual abuse: necessary but not necessarily sufficient. Child Abuse & Neglect, 62, 10–18. Tomsen, S., & Salter, M. (2017). Sexuality, victims and crime. In P. Davies, P. Francis & C. Greer (Eds), Victims, crime and society. London: Sage. Warner, S. (2009). Understanding the effects of child sexual abuse: Feminist revolutions in theory, research and practice. London: Routledge. Whittier, N. (2009). The politics of child sexual abuse: Emotion, social movements, and the state. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Whittier, N. (2015). Where are the children? Gender & Society, 30(1), 95–108. Wilson, P. R. (1981). The man they called a monster: Sexual experiences between men and boys. Melbourne: Cassell Australia. Zizek, S. (2008). The prospects of radical politics today. International Journal of Baudrillard Studies, 5(1), 77–105.

333

27 Antifeminism and backlash A critical criminological imperative Molly Dragiewicz

Introduction1 Trump: Yeah, that’s her. With the gold. I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her. You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful—I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Bush: Whatever you want. Trump: Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything. (New York Times transcript, 2016)

The 2016 presidential campaign, culimating with the election of reality television personality Donald Trump over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, pushed vitriolic forms of sexism, racism, and xenophobia back into the mainstream of American culture. While the most extreme rhetoric may have come from the right, the left was not immune to the existential threat of a female president. The right was not alone in producing and ignoring the flagrant sexism of the campaign. Many on the left alleged that gender had nothing to do with either their personal political affinities or the election outcome, preferring to focus on narratives privileging economic alienation (Hustvedt, 2017). The hyperbolic demonisation of Hillary Clinton and her supporters from the left spawned the label “BernieBros,” echoing sexism in the American New Left and civil rights movements (Breines, 1988). Trump took power in the context of overtly sexist commentary and revelations of an alarming catlog of candidates’ and appointees’ personal histories of violence and abuse against women. Once in office, the Trump administration immediately began to shore up structural discrimination via attacks on women’s reproductive rights, health care for pregnant women, implementing new forms of racialised discrimination against immigrants, and support for failed “tough on crime” policies. Rolling back the clock on incremental gains made over decades, the administration undertook wholesale destruction of programs and institutions intended to ameliorate the harms of inequality. While these actions will disproportionately harm poor people, they are also clearly about more than just economic alienation. Racism, sexism, racialised xenophobia, and transphobia were all actively foregrounded in the campaign. In fact, normalization of these forms of discrimination was arguably Trump’s most articulate platform position. The struggle to deny, 334

Antifeminism and backlash

justify, and structurally reinforce racism, sexism, and classism bridges the gap between neoliberal and neoconservative factions which comprise the most recent iteration of right-wing politics. Reacting against Obama’s eight years in office and the narrowly averted threat of a female president, the Trump administration is a virulent yet mainstream manifestation of what Kimmel has called “aggrieved entitlement” (2013), wherein white men feel like victims of challenges to patriarchal privilege. The involvement of mainstream politicians in antifeminist activism at the local level has also come to light. For example, a journalist discovered that New Hampshire State Representative Robert Fisher founded the misogynist reddit “Red Pill” (Bacarisse, 2017). As news consumption tipped to digital and social media formats, neoliberal appeals to formal equality merged with explicit attacks on social justice. The right reprised longstanding reversal tactics, claiming that efforts to address discrimation, or even identify it, are in fact symptoms of left intolerance and reverse discrimination (Moreton-Robinson, Casey, & Nicoll, 2008; Seidel, 1986). Contemporary backlash has moved beyond efforts to enforce neoliberal calls for formal equality to denigrate the goal of social justice itself. This is a shift from earlier framings which pointed to the reduction in explicitly racist and sexist laws as evidence that anti-racist and feminist movemements were no longer necessary. In criminology, attention to gender as a factor in crime and critiques of existing hierarchies of power have been targets of antifeminist backlash. The 2016 election cycle revealed connections between what many considered “fringe” backlash movements and mainstream American culture. Such reactionary politics are not unique to the United States, having been presaged by Brexit and accompanied by the rise of right-wing political parties and misogyny around the world (Bacchetta & Power, 2013; Hustvedt, 2017; Inglehart & Norris, 2016). While these developments are ripe for analysis, few critical criminologists have directly addressed the backlash against feminism or its connections to other social movements. Some critical criminologists have called for greater scholarly attention to antifeminism (Chesney-Lind, 2006; Dragiewicz, 2009, 2011, 2012a, 2012b: Dragiewicz & Mann, 2016), racism (Alexander, 2010; Potter, 2008; Richie, 1996, 2012), hate crime (Chakraborti & Garland, 2015), and right-wing nationalism (Winlow, Hall & Treadwell, 2017). Others have critiqued critical criminologists’ failure to enagage with feminist critiques and issues like violence against women and the family (Dragiewicz, 2011, 2014; Schwartz & DeKeseredy, 1991). Critical criminology is a potentially important location for the study of backlash phenomena, including antifeminism and its implications. Two important directions for critical criminology include examining antifeminist backlash by taking an intersectional approach and integrating the research on antifeminism, radicalization, and right-wing extremism.

Defining antifeminist backlash Susan Faludi’s (1991) book Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women argued that, “the last decade has seen a powerful counterassault on women’s rights, a backlash, an attempt to retract the handful of hard-won victories that the feminist movement did manage to win for women” (p. xi). Faludi observed that backlash aimed to undo the changes wrought by feminism. It also blamed feminism for women’s problems, as well as a host of other social ills. Rather than a new phenomenon, backlash is a “recurring feature in the history of feminism. Feminist successes have often been met, not only with resistance, but with renewed determination by patriarchal forces to maintain and increase the subordination of women” (Walby, 1993, p. 79). Backlash is not simply the interaction of two opposing forces. Nor is it the juxtaposition of two similarly situated authorities or interests. Most often used by scholars to refer to conservative 335

Molly Dragiewicz

reaction against progressive social change (Thomas, 2008), backlash is a dynamic process that occurs in response to threats to the interests of the powerful. Activism by disdvantaged individuals or groups poses a challenge to existing power relations. Backlash is rooted in the members of the powerful group feeling that their privilege is imperiled (Mansbridge & Shames, 2008, p. 625). “Any change-oriented social movement challenges the vested interests of the leaders of major social institutions, who readily perceive threats to their privileged status. However, feminist movements in particular, because they challenge deeply embedded structures of privilege, elicit powerful reactions” (Chafetz & Dworkin, 1987, p. 38). Chafetz and Dworkin argue that backlash emerges in response to the successes of progressive social movements. While they are a response to credible threats of social change, Mansbridge and Shames’ emphasis on a felt loss of power is key. The rhetoric of the American right increasingly and explicitly frames the interests of the most powerful groups as under siege by social justice activists. The deeply felt threat posed by advocates of social justice is so central to right-wing discourse that rightwing activists have attempted to make SJW, an acronym for social justice warriors, into an insult. Hustvedt argues that, Trumpism (and its populist relatives elsewhere) is a collective fantasy of humiliation that has genuine power, and it turns on contempt for the other that enhances a precarious perception of the self. Trump embodies the roiling insecurities that white people, especially white men, feel in a changing America, a growing sense of emasculation and impotence charged by a terror of sinking into the polluted swamp of the feminine. (2017, p. 63) In the 2011 edition of the Handbook of Critical Criminology, I wrote that efforts to reaffirm structural inequalities had undergone a rhetorical transformation from the blatantly discriminatory laws and speech of yesteryear to more subtle efforts that appropriate the neoliberal language of formal equality (Dragiewicz, 2011). Accordingly, the most visible backlash efforts at that time promoted “blindness” of important cultural categories like race and gender as a solution to the social problems of sexism and racism (Bonilla-Silva, 2006; DeKeseredy & Dragiewicz, 2007; Ferber, 2007). The push to enforce formal equality in the context of pervasive and persistent structural inequality continues to reproduce injustice along the lines of gender, race, and class. The political climate in the United States and other countries has shifted rapidly over the past few years, intensifying overt expressions of racialised misogyny and multiplying the harm of threats via digital media. Backlash works by simultaneously denying and justifying social inequality. This involves the individualization of problems that progressive social movements sought to radically contextualize. In effect, backlash rhetoric seeks to sever the personal from the political. Ann Cudd argues that individualizing inequality obscures the nature of oppression, which affects individuals as members of groups that experience invidious discrimination (Cudd, 2002). The context of group-based oppression and privilege is essential to understanding how demands that we ignore existing inequalities feed the backlash. Cudd writes, “that progress harms some identifiable group that previously enjoyed an unjustified advantage, sows the seeds of backlash” (2002, p. 8). It is important to clarify that backlash does not refer to any reaction against social change. A key component of backlash is the desire to return to aspects of an idealised past in which structural inequality was normalised. Accordingly, while social change is sometimes described as a pendulum, and backlash as a neutralising correction to swinging “too far,” backlash does not refer to the interaction of two similarly situated forces (Dragiewicz, 2012a, 2012b). The 336

Antifeminism and backlash

midpoint between extreme gender inequality and gender equality is not neutral, just as the midpoint between racism and racial equality is not neutral. While efforts to achieve social justice or equality can be conceived of on a continuum from more to less equal, the neutral point is the equitable end of the continuum rather than the middle. Thus, backlash is a reaction against what Hawkesworth calls “emancipatory political objectives” (1999, p. 135) rather than the reversal of social hierarchies. Violence in response to the threat of feminism is often portrayed as abberrant, extremist, or historical. Critical criminologists have worked to shift thinking about crime to challenge the idea that violence is necessarily a sign of deviance or alienation from society. As critical criminologists have observed, much violence is both produced by and productive of masculinity (see Messerschmidt & Tomsen, 2018, this Handbook). Indeed, norms against hitting girls rest closely alongside imperatives for men’s capacity to use violence where appropriate. In addition, popular culture provides a laundry list of circumstances under which men’s violence against women is justified (Greenblat, 1985). Godenzi argued that antifeminist backlash is not as marginal as it may seem, “given that most people live in genderized societies, every man reacts to challenges of the existing order of the sexes” (1999, p. 385). Feminism sought to challenge patriarchy through the production of alternative narratives to counter the gendered status quo. Likewise, efforts to end violence against women resist patriarchy by authorizing woman-centered or feminist stories about men’s violence against women. These narratives pose an implicit threat to patriarchy by revealing its negative influence on society. Although norms for female subordination and formal equality appear contradictory, they are utilized together in efforts to circumvent serious challenges to patriarchy. Antifeminists work to reinforce patriarchal norms even as they deny their existence (Dragiewicz, 2008; Girard, 2009; Mann, 2008). But gender is only one valence of social stratification. In order to understand antifeminist backlash it is necessary to address the ways that gendered justice is deeply marked by other categories of privilege and disadvantage including, but not limited to, race, nation, class, and sexuality.

What does backlash have to do with critical criminology? Feminist criminology grew out of the broader women’s movement and the voids in early criminology. Smart wrote about the “overwhelming lack of interest in female criminality displayed by established criminologists and deviancy theorists” she encountered while pursuing a Master’s degree in criminology (1976, p. xiii). At the same time, Smart noted that the few publications available on the topic presented an “entirely uncritical attitude towards sexual stereotypes of women and girls,” and presumed women’s biologically derived inferiority in crime and delinquency as elsewhere in life (p. xiii). With few exceptions, when women were acknowledged at all, gendered cultural stereotypes and antifeminist ideology prevailed in early explanations of crime. Smart worried that the study of women and crime would be marginalized, and acccomodated via token inclusion in criminology akin to that afforded “mentally abnormal offenders or twin studies.” She also forecast the emergence of the moral panic about delinquent girls and violent women, noting that female criminality was likely to become the object of increasingly punitive attention by media and criminal justice systems (p. xiv). Smart argued that despite these risks, it was necessary to “critically challenge the emerging moral panic over the relationship of women’s emancipation to increasing participation by women in criminal activity” (p. xv). Smart’s prescient remarks challenge the notion that resistance to feminism emerged recently, as a result of feminism having “gone too far.” Rather, Smart’s 337

Molly Dragiewicz

observations affirm Walby’s (1993) articulation of antifeminist backlash as ongoing, historically contingent, and culturally contextualized efforts to reassert the patriarchal domination of women.

Tactics of antifeminist backlash A growing interdisciplinary literature analyses antifeminist backlash (Chunn, Boyd & Lessard, 2007; Cudd, 2002; Faludi, 1991; Newson, 1991; Oakley & Mitchell, 1997; Roman & Eyre, 1997; Rossi, 2004; Storrs, 2007; Walby, 1993). Because violence against women and family law are core backlash issues, criminology has been a key location of antifeminist activism and one of the primary sites of research on it (Boyd, 2004; Burman, 2016; Caringella, 2009; Chesney-Lind, 2006; Chesney-Lind & Irwin, 2007; Chesney-Lind & Jones, 2010; DeKeseredy, 1999, 2011; DeKeseredy & Dragiewicz, 2007; DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 2005; Dragiewicz, 2000, 2008, 2010, 2011; Girard, 2009; Hacker, 2016; Halperin-Kaddari & Freeman, 2016; Koss & Cleveland, 1997; Mann, 2008, 2016; Menzies, 2007; Minaker & Snider, 2006; Rosen, Dragiewicz & Gibbs, 2009). Central tactics of antifeminist backlash include: efforts to reverse the changes wrought by feminism; blaming feminism for social problems; claims that feminism has “gone too far”; and attacks on women’s authority. In criminology, these goals are often accomplished through the misrepresentation of research; the decontextualization of violence; and attacks on services and laws that are useful to abused women (DeKeseredy, 1999; DeKeseredy & Dragiewicz, 2007; Dragiewicz, 2011). Central to backlash is the appropriation and reversal of the language, concepts, and complaints of progressive social movements. Reversal includes claims of reverse discrimination. Appropriation includes adopting reflexive critiques of flawed feminist, antiracist, and anti-capitalist movements and using them to attack the resources they provide.

An intersectional approach to antifeminist backlash Criminological research on backlash and resistance to progressive social change is an area that would be enriched by intersectional analysis. The significance of cultural forms of backlash that extend beyond economic interests cannot be denied in the wake of the re-assertion of overtly white supremacist and sexist political movements across the globe. For example, communication research has investigated the impact of racist and xenophobic backlash on the Bangladeshi diaspora in the United States. This research illustrates the inadequacy of binary understandings of identity for explaining the impact of bias, as well as the ways state surveillance and the criminal justice sytem are deployed against citizens and documented immigrants (Rahman, 2010). Likewise, religious and cultural studies scholars have documented the ways that “devaluing cultures and religions that are not Western [obscures] the forces in Western cultures and religions that continue to subordinate women and mask similar types of violence” (McKerl, 2007, p. 189). As I have argued elsewhere (Dragiewicz, 2012a), antifeminist backlash is entwined with broader resistance to feminism and other progressive social movements. Shifts in women’s social and economic status pose challenges to the gendered status quo (Smart, 1979). The nature of these challenges differs across subcultural, geographic and historical locations. They have been accelerated by growing inequality due to negative developments like global capitalism and structural adjustment programs. Backlash also arises in response to positive developments such as increasing pressure for gender equality from global women’s movements (Fulu & Miedema, 2015; Pease & Pringle, 2001; Walby, 1993). State adoption of antidiscrimination policy, for example via Title IX (United States Department of Justice, n.d.), the Convention 338

Antifeminism and backlash

on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (UN Women, n.d.), and the Violence Against Women Act, have been met with resistance as well as support (Dragiewicz, 2008). For example, some commentators have characterized shoring up the patriarchal gender order, alongside racial, sexual, and environmental orders, as an essential bulwark against the destruction of civilization.2 At the same time, others have made paternalistic claims about the need to protect white women from the depradations of patriarchal Muslim fundamentalism (Serisier, 2008; Tufail & Poynting, 2016; Winlow, Hall & Treadwell, 2017). This rhetoric is reminiscent of gendered and racialized justifications for lynching, colonization, and anti-suffrage campaigns (Alexander, 2010; Barnard, 1993; Chafetz & Dworkin, 1987). Antifeminist backlash is incomprehensible without recognition of the intersectional nature of contemporary right-wing politics. Intersectional scholarship indicates that women’s experiences are not simply defined by essentialist identity categories. They are shaped by the interaction of structural, ideological, interpersonal factors. As Yuval-Davis explains, Social divisions have organizational, intersubjective, experiential and representational forms, and this affects the ways we theorize them as well as the ways in which we theorize the connections between the different levels. In other words, they are expressed in specific institutions and organizations, such as state laws and state agencies, trade unions, voluntary organizations and the family. In addition, they involve specific power and affective relationships between actual people, acting informally and/or in their roles as agents of specific social institutions and organizations. (2006, p. 198) The core of intersectional analysis is political. Significantly, intersectional analyses offer a more accurate account of the ways expectation and experience interact to shape crime and responses to it. For example, while men’s feelings of shame due to being disrespected are a well documented contributing factor to men’s violence (Gilligan, 2001), their empowerment relative to women begs the question why women aren’t similarly triggered. Nor can deprivation or class explain the profoundly gendered social construction of race and ethnicity. For example, the projection of issues like sexism and violence against women onto racialized and foreign men are core tactics of contemporary backlash movements (Serisier, 2008). These dynamics cannot be accounted for without attention to multiple forms of social stratification. Gender is central to right-wing politics as “constructs of gender are deployed to recuperate the virtue of white masculinity and femininity as the embodiment of the nation and civilization” (Moreton-Robinson, Casey & Nicoll, 2008, p. xiiv). White women’s participation is a key strategy in the legitimization of right-wing backlash movements. Laura Bush’s faux feminist justifiction of the U.S. war on terror is one example of the ways white women serve as figureheads to selectively deploy putatively feminist goals as weapons in the culture war against Muslim Others (Serisier, 2008). Likewise, antifeminist women are promoted by antifeminist men’s groups as if they somehow disprove the existence of sexism (DeKeseredy, Fabricius & Hall-Sanchez, 2015). Kandiyoti described white women’s participation in antifeminist activism as a “patriarchal bargain” in which women assess and adopt the most appealing of limited options in patriarchal societies (Kandiyoti, 1998). The ways that women and men in different social locations deal with social change cannot be explained without reference to multiple social categories. While feminist approaches to criminology have included efforts to direct attention to women as criminals, victims, and players in the criminal justice system, feminist criminologies need to go beyond the study of what are putatively “women’s issues” to investigate the ways in which mutliple 339

Molly Dragiewicz

identitity categories intersect to shape experiences and perceptions of crime and justice (Potter, 2013). Domestic violence is a case in point. Despite 40 years of antiviolence advocancy and scholarship, battered women have greatly uneven access to resources to escape abuse. The profoundly racialized social construction of gender means that Black women and girls who defend themselves against domestic violence frequently face extreme criminal justice penalties (Richie, 1996). For example, new mother Marissa Alexander was sentenced to 20 years for firing a warning shot that harmed no one in an attempt to defend herself and her newborn from her abuser. Bresha Meadows has been incarcerated since she killed her abusive father in self defense at age 14. Richie argues that cases like these show how Black battered women’s experiences are qualitatively different from men and white women’s experiences, resulting in what she terms “gender entrapment” – heightened vulnerability to violence and difficulty escaping from abusive relationships. Potter’s (2008) research expanded on these findings, noting how racism shapes Black women’s experiences of and reactions to violence as well as system and community responses to abused Black women. These cases show how despite shifts in public discourse about domestic violence, racism, sexism, and other identity categories continue to intersect to harm abused Black women. The Alexander and Meadows cases may also be viewed as examples of antifeminist backlash against pressure to address violence against women as a crime problem. While civil and criminal legal changes have been implemented to improve criminal justice responses to domestic violence, there has been a backlash against these policies that has resulted in disproportionate arrests of women, dual charging, and punishing women for failure to protect their children from abusive partners. These effects weigh disproportionately on Black women who have historically been less likely to receive protection by the state and more likely to be subjected to state surveillance resulting in loss of custody of their children, incarceration, and receiving harsh sentences for defensive violence (Potter, 2008; Ritchie, 1996, 2012). These realities point to the utility of intersectional approaches to understanding backlash.

Connecting antifeminist backlash, radicalization, and other forms of extremism Research on backlash and resistance to social change is interdisciplinary and largely unintegrated. In addition to the research specifically on antifeminist backlash and criminology discussed above, a significant body of work addresses resistance to organizational change and diversity initiatives in business (Hill, 2009; Kidder et al., 2004; Thomas, 2007). Another is focused on electoral politics (Carlin & Winfrey, 2009; Carroll, 2009; Katz, 2016; Storrs, 2007). Other studies investigate resistance to anti-racist education and multiculturalism in schools (Lindgard et al., 1999). Communication and digital media research take up issues of online misogyny and harassment (Dragiewicz & Mann, 2016; Edstrom, 2016; Elizabeth, 2016). Separate from this backlash literature is another body of work on radicalization and extremism. Contemporary radicalization research is primarily focused on Islamic extremist radicalization and terrorism (Patel & Koushik, 2017). While one of the most recent books includes a section called “Gender,” the one page section describes the sex breakdown of lone-wolf terrorists (virtually all male) rather than discussing the gendered causes of the sex difference (Hamm & Spaaij, 2017, pp. 52–53). The authors cite Simon (2013), who glibly attributes men’s greatly disproportionate involvement in terrorism to women’s biologically determined risk-adverseness. On one additional page, Hamm & Spaaij wonder in passing whether masculinity might have something to do with the marked sex asymmetry of the violence. These recent examples indicate that the

340

Antifeminism and backlash

analysis of gender in this area of criminological research appears to have progressed little since Smart published Women, crime and criminology in 1976. The research on right-wing extremist groups has incorporated broader consideration of racism and xenophobia (Winslow, Hall & Treadwell, 2017). With few exceptions, such as Bacchetta and Power (2013) however, this research does not attempt to understand the role of gender or antifeminism in extremism, even when informants raise it. For example, an English Defence League supporter said, ANTIFA [the Anti-Fascist Network] are the worst of the lefties. I mean most of them are fucking wet as, but they have some decent types that will have it [he means, who will have a fight]. But if you look at most of those who oppose us, most of the lefties, they are fucking gangly ginger-haired fucking animal rights-supporting vegans that fucking want Muslims to have the freedom to eat Halal meat! They are the fucking man-hating feminists with faces full of metal piercings that oppose patriarchy, but they’re defending Islamic FGM [Female Genital Mutilation] and the Sharia idea of the women being half of a man. I mean, seriously, I just want to know what it is that makes them so fucking stupid. I mean a lot is brainwashing in universities, you can see it. (Winlow, Hall & Treadwell, 2016, p. 127) Attacks on feminists for not participating in racist and anti-immigrant campaigns are a common feature of right-wing activism by these groups on and offline. Right and “alt-right” activists like the one quoted above cannot understand why feminists aren’t thrilled with the opportunistic projection of men’s violence against women and girls onto racialized immigrant Others. Indeed, the featured post on the English Defence League (EDL) Facebook page as of May 17, 2017 is about the Rochdale grooming case. For those that missed the first part of #Three Girls tonight, you can watch it on the iPlayer link below. This is why we protest, this is why we march and this is why we confront them whenever we can. #EDL (www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=english%20defense%20league) While several of the offenders in that case have already been incarcerated, none of the police officers or social workers who failed to act in response to the girls’ reports of abuse received meaningful disciplinary action. As Tufail and Poynting observed, in the Rochdale grooming case “sexual exploitation and violence were racialised as characteristic of whole cultures and entire ethnic and religious populations, at the same time as the sexual exploitation and violence of the ‘mainstream’ were rendered invisible” (2016, p. 16). How can we understand the lack of commentary on the EDL former leader’s own history of violence against women against claims that gendered violence is the animating force for this right-wing group? Critical criminologists would be well placed to undertake such analysis. As of yet, however, they have not done so.

Conclusion Critical criminologists share an interest in progressive social change. Yet critical criminology has yet to take on intersectional issues of discrimination and structural inequality in a truly

341

Molly Dragiewicz

substantive way. Perhaps the recent election will inspire more critical criminologists to recognise the importance of hierarchies and cleavages other than class in understanding crime and violence. Backlash is evoked by an experiential threat to privileged status linked to multiple, specific social identities. Antifeminist backlash is intensified in the face of real shifts in mainstream discourses on issues related to social justice. Accordingly, we shouldn’t be distracted by the hysterical tone of the so-called alt right. It is more than the voice of a marginal fringe of extremist “provocateurs.” It is a symptom of the right’s recognition of the real challenge to the status quo posed by cultural and demographic shifts. This is an opportunity to outline strategies for social change that can account for multiple forms of crime, oppression, and disempowerment. Feminist criminology continues to be a key location of the ongoing work to understand these changes and reactions to them. While some critical criminologists focus on class inequality as the root cause of oppression, other scholars have argued that cultural and structural inequality are discrete yet interact. As Fraser argues, “As a result, misrecognition cannot be reduced to a secondary effect of maldistribution” (Fraser, 2013). Feminist criminology has undergone remarkable growth and development since the 1970s (see Renzetti, 2018, this Handbook). In 1982, the Division on Women and Crime (DWC) was established as the second division ever created in the American Society of Criminology (ASC) (DWC, n.d.). Today, DWC is one of ASC’s largest divisions. As of early 2017, there were 338 members, just under 11 percent of the total membership of 3,118 (Abby Moran, personal communication, April 4, 2017). Feminist Criminology, the official journal of the DWC, was launched in 2006. In 2017, it is ranked as “Q1”, in the top 25 percent of scholarly journals in Scimago’s law and gender studies categories. Susan Sharp, the journal’s inaugural editor, noted that feminist criminology was still marginalized, despite the growth of influential speciality journals such as Violence Against Women and Women and Criminal Justice (2006). Further, Sharp and Hefley (2007) noted that even today, where women are acknowledged in the most prestigious “mainstream” (i.e. not focused on women) criminology journals, gender is most often included only as a sex variable. This means that while criminological studies are more likely to distinguish between women and men than in the past, little effort has been made to explain the sex differences that have long been recognized as characteristic of crime and violence. In other words, while feminist criminology has experienced rapid growth in recent years, it has also been met with significant resistance, and has not yet been fully integrated into criminology. In addition, the variety of women’s experiences across multiple axes of social stratification often remains invisible even today. As Potter observed, despite publication of research documenting the intersection of race and gender in sentencing in Criminology as early as 1983, “it is bewildering that many criminologists still do not hypothesize and theorize that arrests and other criminal legal system procedures may differ across race and gender due to the social construction of racial and gender identities” (Potter, 2013, p. 310). The failure of much mainstream and critical criminology to incorporate feminist and intersectional research and theory is evidence of resistance to the changing face of scholarship from within criminology. As Siri Hustvedt noted, Donald Trump did not win the election simply because he appealed to the justified resentment felt by innumerable working-class families who have lost their livelihoods to trade deals or lost manufacturing jobs. He garnered millions upon millions of votes because his far-right campaign gave voice to a simmering, amorphous rage about what half of the voting citizenry perceives as a loss of or threat to its cultural status. (2017, p. 63)

342

Antifeminism and backlash

Critical criminology can do more to address the cultural dimensions of antifeminist backlash and other regressive impulses from the left and the right alongside the economic dimensions of social inequality. Antifeminism is a blind spot for criminological analysis of backlash and other forms of resistance to social change. Attention to antifeminism is essential to understanding backlash and organizing to reverse the rightward slide of politics in the U.S. and abroad. The current state of antifeminist backlash points to multiple future directions for criminological research. First, backlash and resistance to social change are essential areas of scholarship to which critical criminology can make a substantial contribution. Without attention to resistance to social change, it is likely that the failures of social movements will be misunderstood and attributed to the movements themselves. Marginalized groups may be scapegoated and blamed for the failure to achieve social change, regardless of the scope and weight of institutionalized and informal obstacles. Second, intersectional approaches are necessary to understand the multivalent challenges and opportunities for progressive social change. Recent political developments make clear that backlash strategies incorporate class, race, gender, sexuality, nationality, and other anxieties that operate simultaneously to push back against progressive social change. Third, research on antifeminist backlash can inform and be informed by the research on radicalization and violent extremism. Scholars focused on antifeminist backlash can also learn from resistance and reaction to other social changes. Finally, despite uneven, incomplete, and imperfect changes, it is important to recognize that antifeminist backlash is a reaction against credible threats of women’s empowerment. Critical scholars can investigate where there have been real areas of improvement for women over time as well as areas where future work remains to be done.

Notes 1 This chapter includes modified sections of work published previously by Dragiewicz (2008), Dragiewicz (2011), and Dragiewicz and Lindgren (2009). 2 See for example the Facebook page Never Hillary www.facebook.com/Never-Hillary-67949780884 8579/; www.ejfi.org/Civilization/Civilization-7.htm.

References Alexander, M. (2010). The New Jim Crow. New York: The New Press. Bacarisse, B. (2017, January 30). The Republican lawmaker who secretly created Reddit’s women-hating “red pill.” The Daily Beast. Retrieved May 4, 2017, from www.thedailybeast.com/the-republican-law maker-who-secretly-created-reddits-women-hating-red-pill. Bacchetta, P., & Power, M. (Eds). (2013). Right-Wing Women: From Conservatives to Extremists Around the World. London: Routledge. Barnard, A. L. (1993). The application of critical race feminism to the anti-lynching movement: Black women’s fight against race and gender ideology, 1892–1920. UCLA Women’s Law Journal, 3, 1–38. Bonilla-Silva, E. (2006). Racism Without Racists: Color-blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States (2nd ed.). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Boyd, S. B. (2004). Backlash against feminism: Canadian custody and access reform debates of the late twentieth century. Canadian Journal of Women and the Law, 16(2), 255–290. Breines, W. (1988). Whose new left? The Journal of American History, 75(2), 528–545. Burman, M. (2016). Fathers’ rights in Swedish family law reform: Taking account of fathers’ violence against mothers. Canadian Journal of Women & the Law, 28(1), 152–181. Caringella, S. (2009). Addressing Rape Reform in Law and Practice. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

343

Molly Dragiewicz

Carlin, D. B., & Winfrey, K. L. (2009). Have you come a long way, baby? Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, and sexism in 2008 campaign coverage. Communication Studies, 60(4), 326–343. Carroll, S. J. (2009). Reflections on gender and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign: The good, the bad, and the misogynistic. Politics & Gender, 5(1), 1–20. Chafetz, J. S., & Dworkin, A. G. (1987). In the face of threat: Organized antifeminism in comparative perspective. Gender & Society, 1(1), 33–60. Chakraborti, N., & Garland, J. (2015). Hate Crime: Impact, Causes and Responses. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Chesney-Lind, M. (2006). Patriarchy, crime and justice in an era of backlash. Feminist Criminology, 1(1), 6–26. Chesney-Lind, M., & Irwin, K. (2007). Beyond Bad Girls: Gender,Violence and Hype. New York, NY: Routledge. Chesney-Lind, M., & Jones, N. (2010). Introduction. In M. Chesney-Lind & N. R. Jones (Eds), Fighting for Girls: New Perspectives on Gender and Violence (pp. 1–9). New York, NY: State University of New York Press. Chunn, D. E., Boyd, S. B., & Lessard, H. (Eds). (2007). Reaction and Resistance: Feminism, Law, and Social Change. Vancouver, BC: University of British Columbia Press. Cudd, A. E. (2002). Analyzing backlash to progressive social movements. In A.M. Superson & A. E. Cudd (Eds), Theorizing Backlash (pp. 3–16). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. DeKeseredy, W. S. (1999). Tactics of the antifeminist backlash against Canadian national woman abuse surveys. Violence Against Women, 5(11), 1238–1257. DeKeseredy, W. S. (2011). Violence Against Women: Myths, Facts, Controversies. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press. DeKeseredy, W. S., & Dragiewicz, M. (2007). Understanding the complexities of feminist perspectives on woman abuse. Violence Against Women, 13(8), 874–884. DeKeseredy, W. S., & Schwartz, M. (2005). Backlash and whiplash : A critique of Statistics Canada’s 1999 General Social Survey on Victimization. Retrieved October 13, 2017, from http://sisyphe.org/article. php3?id_article=1689. DeKeseredy, W. S., Fabricius, A., & Hall-Sanchez, A. (2015). Fueling aggrieved entitlement: The contribution of Women Against Feminism postings. In W. S. DeKeseredy & L. Leonard (Eds), Crimsoc Report 4: Gender,Victimology & Restorative Justice (pp. 1–33). Charleston, SC: CRIMSOC. Division on Women and Crime (DWC) (n.d.). History: Division on Women and Crime. Retrieved October 12, 2017, from http://ascdwc.com/about/history. Dragiewicz, M. (2000). Women’s voices, women’s words: Reading acquaintance rape discourse. In S. Hoagland & M. Frye (Eds), Feminist Interpretations of Mary Daly (pp. 194–222). University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press. Dragiewicz, M. (2008). Patriarchy reasserted: Fathers’ rights and anti-VAWA activism. Feminist Criminology, 3(2), 121–144. Dragiewicz, M. (2009). Why sex and gender matter in domestic violence research and advocacy. In E. Stark & E. Buzawa (Eds), Violence against women in families and relationships:Vol. 3 Criminal justice and the law (pp. 201–215). Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger. Dragiewicz, M. (2010). A left realist approach to antifeminist fathers’ rights groups. Crime, Law and Social Change, 54(2), 197–212. Dragiewicz, M. (2011). Equality with a Vengeance. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press. Dragiewicz, M. (2012a). Antifeminist backlash and critical criminology. In W. S. DeKeseredy & M. Dragiewicz (Eds), Routledge Handbook of Critical Criminology (pp. 280–289). London: Routledge. Dragiewicz, M. (2012b). “You only get what you fight for”: Understanding the backlash against the U.S. battered women’s movement. In S. Winlow & R. Atkinson (Eds), New Directions in Crime and Deviancy: Papers from the York Deviancy Conference (pp. 173–187). London: Routledge. Dragiewicz, M. (2014). Domestic violence and family law: Criminological concerns. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 3(1), 121–134. Dragiewicz, M., & Lindgren, Y. (2009). The gendered nature of domestic violence: Statistical data for lawyers considering equal protection analysis. American University Journal of Gender, Social Policy & the Law, 17(2), 229–268. Dragiewicz, M., & Mann, R. M. (2016). Fighting Feminism: Organised Opposition to Women’s Rights. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 5(2), 1–5. Edstrom, M. (2016). The trolls disappear in the light: Swedish experiences of mediated sexualised hate speech in the aftermath of Behring Breivik. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 5(2), 96.

344

Antifeminism and backlash

Elizabeth, V. (2016). “I’d just lose it if there was any more stress in my life”: Separated fathers, fathers’ rights and the news media. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 5(2), 107. Faludi, S. (1991). Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women. New York, NY: Crown. Ferber, A. L. (2007). Whiteness studies and the erasure of gender. Sociology Compass, 1(1), 265–282. Fulu, E., & Miedema, S. (2015). Violence against women: Globalizing the integrated ecological model. Violence Against Women, 21(12), 1431–1455. Gilligan, J. (2001). Preventing Violence. New York, NY: Thames and Hudson. Girard, A. (2009). Backlash or equality? The influence of men’s and women’s rights discourses on domestic violence legislation in Ontario. Violence Against Women, 15(1), 5–23. Godenzi, A. (1999). Style or substance: Men’s response to feminist challenge. Men and Masculinities, 1(4), 385–392. Greenblat, C. S. (1985). “Don’t hit your wife . . . unless . . .”: Preliminary findings on normative support for the use of physical force by husbands. Victimology: An International Journal, 10(1–4), 221–41. Hacker, D. (2016). Divorced Israeli men’s abuse of transnational human rights law. Canadian Journal of Women & the Law, 28(1), 91–115. Halperin-Kaddari, R., & Freeman, M. A. (2016). Backlash goes global: Men’s groups, patriarchal family policy, and the false promise of gender-neutral laws. Canadian Journal of Women and the Law, 28(1), 182–210. Hamm, M. S., & Spaaij, R. (2017). Age of Lone Wolf Terrorism. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Hawkesworth, M. (1999). Analyzing backlash: Feminist standpoint theory as analytical tool. Women’s Studies International Forum, 22(2), 135–155. Hill, R. J. (2009). Incorporating Queers: Blowback, backlash, and other forms of resistance to workplace diversity initiatives that support sexual minorities. Advances in Developing Human Resources, 11(1), 37–53. Hustvedt, S. (2017). Not just economics: White populism and its emotional demons. NORA – Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, 25(1), 62–65. Inglehart, R., & Norris, P. (2016). Trump, Brexit, and the Rise of Populism: Economic Have-Nots and Cultural Backlash (SSRN Scholarly Paper No. ID 2818659). Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network. Retrieved from https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=2818659. Kandiyoti, D. (1988). Bargaining with patriarchy. Gender and Society, 2(3), 274–290. Katz, J. (2016). Man Enough? Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and the Politics of Presidential Masculinity. Northampton, MA: Interlink Pub Group. Kidder, D. L., Lankau, M. J., Chrobot-Mason, D., Mollica, K. A., & Friedman, R. A. (2004). Backlash toward diversity initiatives: Examining the impact of diversity program justification, personal and group outcomes. International Journal of Conflict Management, 15(1), 77–102. Kimmel, M. (2013). Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era. New York, NY: Nation Books. Koss, M. P., & Cleveland, H. H. (1997). Stepping on toes: Social roots of date rape lead to intractability and politicization. In M. D. Schwartz (Ed.), Researching Sexual Violence Against Women: Methodological and Personal Considerations (pp. 4–21). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Lingard, B., Douglas, P., & Yates, L. (1999). Men Engaging Feminisms: Pro-Feminism, Backlashes and Schooling. Buckingham: Open University Press. Mann, R. M. (2008). Men’s rights and feminist advocacy in Canadian domestic violence policy arenas: Contexts, dynamics, and outcomes of anti-feminist backlash. Feminist Criminology, 3(1), 44–75. Mann, R. M. (2016). The Harper Government’s new right neoliberal agenda and the dismantling of status of Women Canada and the Family Violence Initiative. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 5(2), 50. Mansbridge, J., & Shames, S. L. (2008). Toward a theory of backlash: Dynamic resistance and the central role of power. Politics & Gender, 4(4), 623–634. McKerl, M. (2007). Multiculturalism, gender and violence. Culture and Religion, 8(2), 187–217. Menzies, R. (2007). Virtual backlash: Representations of men’s “rights” and feminist “wrongs” in cyberspace. In D. E. Chunn, S. B. Boyd, & H. Lessard (Eds.), Reaction and Resistance: Feminism, Law, and Social Change (pp. 65–97). Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press. Messerschmidt, J., & Tomsen, S. (2018). Masculinities and crime (M. Dragiewicz, Ed.). In W. Dekeseredy (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Critical Criminology (2nd ed.). Abingdon: Routledge.

345

Molly Dragiewicz

Minaker, J. C., & Snider, L. (2006). Husband abuse: Equality with a vengeance? Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice, 48(5), 753–780. Moran, A. (April 4, 2017). Personal communication. Moreton-Robinson, A., Casey, M., & Nicoll, F. (2008). Virtue and transnational whiteness. In A. MoretonRobinson, M. Casey, & F. Nicoll (Eds), Transnational Whiteness Matters (pp. ix–xvi). Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. New York Times (2016, October 8). Transcript: Donald Trump’s taped comments about women. The New York Times. Retrieved from www.nytimes.com/2016/10/08/us/donald-trump-tape-transcript.html. Newson, J. (1991). Backlash against feminism: A disempowering metaphor. Resources for Feminist Research, 20(3/4), 93–97. Oakley, A., & Mitchell, J. (Eds). (1997). Who’s Afraid of Feminism? Seeing Through the Backlash. New York, NY: The New Press. Patel, F., & Koushik, M. (2017). Countering Violent Extremism. New York, NY: The Brennan Center, NYU. Retrieved from www.brennancenter.org/sites/default/files/publications/Brennan%20Center%20 CVE%20Report_0.pdf. Pease, B., & Pringle, K. (2001). A Man’s World?: Changing Men’s Practices in a Globalized World. London: Zed Books. Potter, H. (2008). Battle Cries: Black Women and Intimate Partner Abuse. New York, NY: NYU Press. Potter, H. (2013). Intersectional criminology: Interrogating identity and power in criminological research and theory. Critical Criminology, 21(3), 305–318. Rahman, S. (2010). Imagining life under the long shadow of 9/11: Backlash, media discourse, identity and citizenship of the Bangladeshi diaspora in the United States. Cultural Dynamics, 22(1), 49–72. Renzetti, C. M. (2018). Feminist perspectives. In W. Dekeseredy & M. Dragiewicz (Eds), The Routledge Handbook of Critical Criminology (2nd ed.). Abingdon: Routledge. Richie, B. E. (1996). Compelled to Crime: The Gender Entrapment of Battered Black Women. London: Routledge. Richie, B. E. (2012). Arrested Justice: Black Women,Violence, and America’s Prison Nation. New York, NY: New York University Press. Roman, L. G., & Eyre, L. (Eds). (1997). Dangerous Territories: Struggles for Difference and Equality in Education. New York, NY: Routledge. Rosen, L., Dragiewicz, M., & Gibbs, J. (2009). Fathers’ rights groups: Demographic correlates and impact on custody policy. Violence Against Women, 15(5), 513–531. Rossi, S. E. (2004). The Battle and Backlash Rage on: Why Feminism Cannot be Obsolete. Bloomington, IN: Xlibris. Schwartz, M. D., & DeKeseredy, W. S. (1991). Left realist criminology: Strengths, weaknesses, and the feminist critique. Crime, Law and Social Change, 15, 51–72. Seidel, D. (1986). Culture, nation, and “race” in the British and French New Right. In R. Levitas (Ed.), The ideology of the New Right (pp. 108–135). New York, NY: Polity Press. Serisier, T. (2008). Laura Bush and Dan Brown: Whiteness, feminism and the politics of vulnerability. In A. Moreton-Robinson, M. Casey & F. Nicoll (Eds) Transnational Whiteness Matters (pp. 147–164). Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Sharp, S. F. (2006). Editorial. Feminist Criminology, 1(1), 3–5. Sharp, S. F., & Hefley, K. (2007). This is a man’s world . . . or at least that’s how it looks in the journals. Critical Criminology, 15(3), 3–18. Simon, J. D. (2013). Lone Wolf Terrorism: Understanding the Growing Threat. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. Smart, C. (1976). Women, Crime and Criminology: A Feminist Critique. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Smart, C. (1979). The new female criminal: Reality or myth? British Journal of Criminology, 19(1), 50–59. Storrs, L. R.Y. (2007). Attacking the Washington “Femmocracy”: Antifeminism in the Cold War campaign against “communists in government.” Feminist Studies, 33(1), 118–152. Thomas, K. M. (Ed.) (2007). Diversity Resistance in Organizations. New York, NY: Psychology Press. Thomas, S. (2008). “Backlash” and its utility to political scientists. Politics & Gender, 4(4), 615–616. Tufail, W., & Poynting, S. (2016). The Rochdale “grooming” case and the politics of racialisation. In D. Pratt & R. Woodlock (Eds), Fear of Muslims? International Perspectives on Islamophobia (pp. 79–92). Berlin: Springer. UN Women. (n.d.). Text of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. Retrieved April 23, 2017, from www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw/cedaw.htm. 346

Antifeminism and backlash

United States Department of Justice. (n.d.). Overview Of Title IX Of The Education Amendments Of 1972, 20 U.S.C. A§ 1681 Et. Seq. Retrieved April 23, 2017, from www.justice.gov/crt/ overview-title-ix-education-amendments-1972-20-usc-1681-et-seq. Walby, S. (1993). Backlash in historical context. In M. Kennedy, C. Lubelska, & V. Walsh (Eds), Making Connections: Women’s Studies, Women’s Movements, Women’s Lives (pp. 76–86). Bristol, PA: Taylor & Francis. Winlow, S., Hall, S., & Treadwell, J. (2017). The Rise of the Right: English Nationalism and the Transformation of Working-Class Politics. Bristol: Policy Press. Yuval-Davis, N. (2006). Intersectionality and feminist politics. European Journal of Women’s Studies, 13(3), 193–209.

347

28 A critical examination of girls’ violence and juvenile justice Lisa Pasko and Meda Chesney-Lind

Since the 1990s, juvenile justice practitioners, policy makers, and scholars have expressed concern over girls’ increasing use of violence. For example, although juvenile crime has declined in recent years, girls now comprise a much larger percentage of arrests than they did in years past. In 1983, girls were 21.4 percent of juvenile arrests; by 1997, they were 26.9 percent, and in 2015 they were 29.4 percent of juvenile arrests (Chesney-Lind & Merlo, 2015; Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2016). Much of this is due to the fact that arrests of boys, particularly for offenses like simple assault, have fallen more sharply than girls’ arrests for the same offense (47.8 percent compared to 39.5 for girls between 2006 and 2015) (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2016). Juvenile court and correctional data reveal a similar theme. Since 1990, girls’ adjudications for person offenses have increased by 60 percent, now representing 22 percent of all youth adjudicated on such charges (Sickmund, Sladky, & Kang, 2015). Likewise, the number of girls in custody for a violent crime has also been on the rise. In 1989, 8,512 girls were in detention for a violent offense; 25 years later, that number more than doubled (17,730) (Sickmund, Sladky, & Kang, 2015). Given these increases, it is not surprising that both the media as well as scholars have shifted their attention to girls’ violence. However, such focus of attention usually involves exaggerated commentary on gang behavior, schoolyard fights, mean girl bullying (relational aggression), or domestic violence-related actions rather than a judicious exploration of the contexts that produce girls’ violence as well as the dynamics involved (see Chesney-Lind & Irwin, 2008). This chapter critically examines the contemporary legal response to girls’ violence. First, it looks at girls’ violent and aggressive activities from an historical perspective, teasing out differences between girls’ self-reports of violence from their official arrests and placing such acts of violence within its patriarchal context. Second, this chapter looks at current policy and law enforcement changes that have affected girls’ violent offense arrests, namely the relabeling and up-criming of girls’ status offenses as assault. Third, this chapter uses a case study in girls’ violence to underscore the motivations, context, and institutional response to such behavior. Lastly, this chapter concludes with policy recommendations.

History of girls, aggression and violence With reference to what might be called girls’ “non-traditional” delinquency, it must be recognized that girls’ capacity for aggression and violence has historically been ignored, trivialized 348

Girls’ violence and juvenile justice

or denied, yet has always existed. For this reason, self-report data, particularly from the 1970s and 1980s, have always shown higher involvement of girls in assaultive behavior than official statistics would indicate. As an example, Canter (1982a) reported a male versus female, selfreported delinquency ratio of 3.4:1 for minor assault and 3.5:1 for serious assault. At that time, arrest statistics showed much greater male participation in aggravated assault (5.6:1, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1980) and simple assault (3.8:1, Canter, 1982b). By the turn of the century, arrest statistics showed a 3.54:1 ratio for “aggravated assault” and a 2.25:1 ratio for “other assaults” (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1999). Taken together, these numbers suggest the gap was closing between what girls have always done (and reported, when asked anonymously) and arrest statistics, rather than a course change in girls’ participation in serious violence. In other words, the apparent percolating growth in girls’ arrests for assault have more to do with official policy changes in how girls are handled, rather than a dramatic rise in violence among girls. To further support this notion, research on trends in self-report data of youthful involvement in violent offenses also fails to show dramatic changes found in official statistics. Looking at most recent self-report data, the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS) data showed, in 1999, 27.35 percent of girls reported being in a physical fight in the previous year and a decade later, that figure dropped to 22.9 percent. By 2014, only 16.5 percent of girls reported being in such a fight (Centers for Disease Control, 2000, 2010, 2015). The psychological literature on aggression, which considers forms of aggression other than physical aggression (or violence), is also relevant here. On the whole, this literature generally reflects that, while boys and men are more likely to be physically aggressive, differences begin to even out when verbal aggression is considered (yelling, insulting, teasing; Bjorkqvist & Niemela, 1992; Phillips, 2003). Further, girls in adolescence may be more likely than boys to use “indirect aggression,” such as gossip, telling bad or false stories, telling secrets (Bjorkqvist, Osterman, & Kaukiainen, 1992; Cobbina, Like, & Miller, 2016; Miller, 2016; Phillips, 2003). When this broad definition of “aggression” is utilized, only about 5 percent of the variance in aggression is explained by gender (Bjorkqvist & Niemela, 1992). It is important to note, though, that one generally does not get arrested for rumor spreading or other forms of “covert” aggression; it is direct aggression—particularly physical assaults—that produce criminal justice consequences. For that reason, it is important to chart out the contexts that produce violence in girls (see Morash & Chesney-Lind, 2008; Wun, 2016). And, indeed, there is a gender difference here as well. When girls do use physical violence, they are far more likely to fight with a parent or sibling, whereas boys are more likely to fight with friends or strangers. Those who study aggression in young children and young adults also note that girls’ aggression is usually within the home or among their female peers at school, and, in previous decades, likely to be less often reported to authorities or taken seriously (Bjorkqvist & Niemela, 1992; Phillips, 2003; Wun, 2016). Phillips’s (2003) study of young women in South London found that the majority of them desired higher status and power within their social hierarchies, and frequently used verbal aggression and physical dominance to achieve such goals. Girls used aggressive behavior not only to intimidate and abuse girls lower in the pecking order, but also as a way of settling disputes resulting from failed friendships (see also Miller, 2016). For those girls who used physical violence, fighting became a way of enhancing or defending status while avoiding or assuaging threats to reputation. For those girls victimized, school became an alienating factor in their lives, riddled with fear and constant truancies. Girls’ behavior, including violence, needs to be put in its patriarchal context, as Artz (1998) has done in her analysis of girls’ violence in Canada. She noted that girls who reported problems with violence reported significantly greater rates of victimization and abuse than their non-violent 349

Lisa Pasko and Meda Chesney-Lind

counterparts, and that girls who were violent reported greater fear of sexual assault, especially from their boyfriends. Specifically, 20 percent of violent girls stated they were physically abused at home compared to 10 percent of violent males, and 6.3 percent of non-violent girls. Patterns for sexual abuse were even starker; roughly one out of four violent girls had been sexually abused compared to one in ten of non-violent girls (Artz, 1998). Follow-up interviews with a small group of violent girls found that they had learned at home that “might makes right” and engaged in “horizontal violence” directed at other powerless girls (often with boys as the audience). Certainly, these findings provide little ammunition for those who would contend that the “new” violent girl is a product of any form of “emancipation” (as is often hinted at in media accounts). Histories of physical and sexual abuse, then, may be a theme in girls’ physical aggression just as it is in their runaway behavior. It is also important to note that aggressive and violent girls, ironically, often commit the “ideology of familial patriarchy . . . [which] supports the abuse of women who violate the ideals of male power and control over women” (DeKeseredy, 2000, p. 46). This ideology is acted out by those males and females who insist upon women being obedient, respectful, loyal, dependent, sexually accessible and sexually faithful to males. Artz (1998) builds upon that point by suggesting that violent girls more often than not “buy-in” to these beliefs and “police” other girls’ behaviors, thus, serving to preserve the status quo including their own continued oppression. Such themes are particularly pronounced among girls who have the most serious problems with delinquency. Artz, Blais & Nicholson (2000, p. 31), in their study of girls in custody in British Columbia, Canada, found that the majority of girls were also male-focused, expressed hostility to other girls, and wanted very much to have boyfriends—always making sure that they had at least one, both in and out of jail. One girl strongly identified with the boys and saw herself as “one of the guys,” also admitting that she had “always wanted to be a boy.” Only one girl spoke little about boys—at 18 years of age she was the oldest girl in the center. All the girls used derogatory terms to describe other girls, and when they spoke about girls, their words reflected views of females as “other.” Many girls saw other girls as threats, particularly if they were pretty or “didn’t know their place” (i.e., thought they were better than other girls). A “pretty” girl, or a girl that the boys pay attention to, was a primary target for girl-to-girl victimization because she had the potential to unseat those who occupied the top rung on the “pretty power hierarchy” (Artz, Blais & Nicholson, 2000, p. 124). An “ugly” or “dirty” girl (a girl designated a slut) was also a primary target for girl-to-girl victimization because she “deserved” to be beaten for her unappealing looks and for her “unacceptable” behavior. Most of these girls regarded their victims as “responsible” for the violence that they committed, since they were acting as “sluts,” “total bitches,” or “assholes” (p. 189). In short, both girls’ and women’s victimization as well as girls’ violence towards other girls are really twin products of a system of sexual inequality and of one that valorizes male violence as agency and that has girls growing up “seeing themselves through the eyes of males” (Artz, 1998, p. 204). Indeed, Schaffner’s research (2007; 2006) has also shown how girls’ victimization experiences and exposure to violence in the home and in the community often precede their own use of violence. Her interviews with young women in detention centers across the United States consistently revealed “an undeniable connection between their having been harmed earlier in their lives and later court involvement, often for violent offending” (2007, p. 1231). In fact, many girls in her study found that their emotional conditions went unnoticed by parents and justice professionals and the psychological impact of their abuse went undiagnosed by mental health professionals. Instead, girls’ coping strategies—such as risky sexual behavior, self harm, drug use, and eating disorders—were often regarded by the court as evidence of their inability to take 350

Girls’ violence and juvenile justice

responsibility for their actions and of their propensity to be manipulative, hysterical, and in need of protection (see also Gaarder, Rodriguez, & Zatz, 2004).

Relabeling status offenses Why have the arrests for girls’ assaults increased, especially in the first half of the 21st century? Relabeling of behaviors that were once categorized as status offenses (non-criminal offenses like “runaway” and “person in need of supervision”) into violent offenses cannot be ruled out in explanations of arrest rate shifts, nor can changes in police practices with reference to domestic violence. A review of the over two thousand cases of girls referred to Maryland’s juvenile justice system for “person-to-person” offenses revealed that virtually all of these offenses (97.9 percent) involved “assault.” A further examination of these records revealed that about half were “family centered” and involved such activities as “a girl hitting her mother and her mother subsequently pressing charges” (Mayer, 1994). Acoca’s (1998) study of nearly 1,000 girls’ files from four California counties found that while a “high percentage” of these girls were charged with “person offenses,” a majority of these involved assault—namely, nonserious, mutual combat, situations with parents. In many cases, the parents may have been the main aggressor. Acoca details cases that she regards as typical including: “father lunged at her while she was calling the police about a domestic dispute. She (girl) hit him.” Finally, she reports that some cases were quite trivial in nature including a girl arrested “for throwing cookies at her mother” (Acoca, 1998, pp. 358–359). With specific reference to domestic violence involving female juveniles, Buzawa and Hotaling (2006) found that these youth were “often less likely to receive statutorily required police actions,” with authorities often minimizing the violence if youth were victims and making arrests of juveniles even if it was clear that parents had also engaged in violence. As examples, the researchers reported that two cases involved daughters who were slapped by their mothers and retaliated by slapping or pushing their mothers back. In neither case, they noted, was the parent arrested. Instead, parents, as the complainant, were treated by the police as the “injured parties,” and the girls were arrested (Buzawa & Hotaling, 2006, p. 29). Indeed, the authors also found that both women and juveniles (particularly daughters), if suspects, were more likely to be arrested. Whether the incident involved adult partners, daters, siblings, or parents and children, the odds of female arrest were always higher. In reality, when exploring the increases in the arrests of girls for “other assault,” it is likely that changes in enforcement practices have dramatically narrowed the gender gap. As noted in the above examples, a clear contribution has come from increasing arrests of girls and women for domestic violence. A California study showed this quite clearly and found that the female share of these arrests increased from 6 percent in 1988 to 16.5 percent in 1998 (Bureau of Criminal Information and Analysis, 1999). African American girls and women had arrest rates roughly three times that of white girls and women in 1998: 149.6 compared to 46.4 (Bureau of Criminal Information and Analysis, 1999). In addition, the relabeling of girls’ arguments with parents from status to assault is a form of “bootstrapping” and has also facilitated the incarceration of girls (notably, girls of color) in detention facilities and training schools—something that would not be possible if the girl were arrested for non-criminal status offenses. As Feld’s analysis (2009) of girls’ arrests for person offenses points out, “the incarceration of larger numbers and proportions of girls for simple assaults suggests a process of relabeling other status-like conduct, such as incorrigibility, to obtain access to secure placement facilities” (p. 260). Changes in school policies have also played a major role in the increases in girls arrested for assault, especially for girls of color (see Curtis, 2013; Parks et al., 2016; Wun, 2016). It has long 351

Lisa Pasko and Meda Chesney-Lind

been known that arrests of youth for minor or “other” assaults can range from school yard tussles to relatively serious, but not life threatening, assaults. For example, in the late 1970s, Steffensmeier & Steffensmeier (1980) first noted an increasing tendency to arrest girls for these offenses and commented that “evidence suggests that female arrests for ‘other assaults’ are relatively nonserious in nature and tend to consist of being bystanders or companions to males involved in skirmishes, fights, and so on” (Steffensmeier & Steffensmeier, 1980, p. 70). In the 1990s, Currie (1998) adds to this the fact that these “simple assaults without injury” are often “attempted” or “threatened” or “not completed.” And in the 2000s, Feld’s work (2009) shows that “many cases of girls charged with assault involved nonserious altercations with parents, who often may have been the initial aggressors” while “school officials’ adoption of zero-tolerance policies toward youth violence increases the number of youths referred for schoolyard tussles that they previously handled internally” (p. 255). At a time when media portrayals contribute to perceptions about the narrowing gender gap for youth violence (Chesney-Lind & Jones, 2010), sensitivity to domestic violence is heightened, and school principals are increasingly likely to call police onto their campuses, it should come as no surprise that youthful arrests in this area are up. Finally, consider the results of focus groups with delinquent girls in Ohio training schools which found reports of girls’ attempts to protect themselves have also resulted in girls being expelled from school and even, in one instance, being incarcerated (Belknap et al., 1997). For example, when asked why she was incarcerated, one girl told a story of her otherwise “clean” delinquent record until she carried a knife to school. She had repeatedly told school authorities that an older boy in the school was following her as she walked to and from school and that she was afraid of him. The school refused to look into it, but when the girl put a knife in her sock in order to protect herself getting to and from school, the school’s “no tolerance” code for weapons kicked in. This girl reported extreme frustration regarding the school’s tolerance of this boy stalking and sexually harassing her, but no tolerance for her attempts to protect herself when they would not. Certainly, these studies provide little evidence of the “new” violent girl as a product of any form of “emancipation” or of girls’ new-found “equal opportunity” into the social worlds of crime and violence (for such arguments, see Garbarino, 2006; Prothrow-Stith & Spivak, 2005).

A case study of girls’ violence In this section of the chapter, we use a case study in girls’ violence to illustrate the aforementioned themes as well as the context behind girls’ pathways toward criminality and violence. The case— Lucky, a 19-year-old African American woman with a long history of justice involvement and conflicts with the law—comes from a larger project that focused on the lives and correctional involvement of girl offenders. It was performed across eight different jurisdictions in the United States, from 2008–2012 (see Pasko & Chesney-Lind, 2016, for an extended discussion). Currently on parole and living between her boyfriend’s and family’s homes, Lucky’s early memories in her house were of moving frequently, of being afraid, of witnessing her mother being physically assaulted by her father and by other men who came into the home, and of watching adults—many of whom were strangers—buying and using various drugs and alcohol. As the oldest, she was often left to take care of her three younger siblings: You know, I do have memories of barbeques, and playing with cousins and my sisters, you know, it was OK. But it wasn’t OK, you know? There was a lot of screaming and my mom cheated on my dad a bunch of times and he would get drunk and hit her and sometimes hit my brother, and there would always be these people around, when I was about 10 or 11, I would just leave and got tired of it and needed a break. I mean like I am the one trying to 352

Girls’ violence and juvenile justice

make sure there was food and clean up shit and watched my brother and sisters and I was like, who is taking care of me, you know, like I am the kid, you know, I am the kid here, and who is taking care of me? At age nine, one of her father’s friends began molesting her, contributing to her feelings of frustration and desires to escape. At age 11, after her parents were jailed on domestic violence, drugs and weapons charges, Lucky and her siblings were placed with her grandmother, where she continued to run away and break curfew. Lucky attributed her parents’ arrests and placement with her grandmother as ultimately leading her to her first romantic attachment who exploited her: Do you know what it feels like to be dropped at grandma’s and not know if she’s coming back or what? That night . . . Yeah, angry all the time, I didn’t listen . . . I started hanging out with [gang friend]—‘oh baby girl, you know, you’re so pretty and c’mon do this’—and I wanted to be with them and run with them [gang] and so I started smoking pot and doing that [CSE] and then I know, like I was happy not to be around all my family drama and worry about my mom and stuff, but then, I wasn’t happy, cause I’m like, does she care? When she was 17, Lucky assaulted her father with a weapon, an offense that led to detention. Her father would not press charges or cooperate with the investigation; Lucky was therefore not charged with attempted murder. Moving from her boyfriend’s, friends’, or mother’s homes and, occasionally a motel or shelter, Lucky continued on probation after the age of 18 on marijuana and theft charges. Despite her assault on her father and her role in the gang, the greatest source of stress for Lucky remained with her relationship with her mother. “I get her, but . . . that doesn’t mean I didn’t wish she was different too. Dad, he’s gonna be a dick no matter what, but she could be different.” Ultimately, Lucky blamed her mother for the chaos in the home and for her neglect. “It’s her fault. She always started stuff and still does and makes it so I don’t wanna be around her.” Navigation of the school environment was also a highly problematic area for Lucky; it was a hostile environment, mostly generated by staff and teachers. In early elementary school, she reported positive experiences—teachers appeared invested in and cared about her, classmates were friends, she never went hungry and she had a certain ease in scholastic work. As she moved through middle and high school, she felt the perception of her changed, no longer deserving of positive attention but worthy of suspicion and surveillance. It is in these middle and high school years, she felt she was judged as “lazy,” “predacious,” and “untrustworthy,” with some staff just “afraid of us.” Feeling discarded and thrown away both by teachers and by other girls, Lucky’s conflicts with other students were often reduced to “drama” without effective mediation or resolution. And yet, her physical conflicts and occasional fighting were often a response to the many stressors in her life, while also described as necessarily functional to her—in order to protect herself, to end verbal and sexual harassment, and to maintain respect. She explained, “You know, it’s hard to sit there and try to, like, take a test or something when you haven’t slept all night because of what is going on all the time, you know? No one seems to get that. Like hey: some of us got stuff going on! No one cares about that because I’m just lazy . . . if I push some punk into a locker or something, then bam! You’ll notice that then, right?” She described school as a place quick to push out and punish for minor infractions—such pipelines between school and the justice system were visible, with police and/or probation officers often having designated space on campus. Ultimately, Lucky was arrested for shoving a classmate into a locker, an action caught on surveillance cameras and leading to her first person offense. Her reflections on her justice involvement rang similarly, especially in terms of the system’s confusing and contradictory messaging between offender and victim. She was resistant to accepting 353

Lisa Pasko and Meda Chesney-Lind

responsibility for her choices, as such choices were circumscribed by restriction, sense of inferiority, criticism, inflexibility, and lack of understanding. As Lucky explains, “Do you know how many times I have been told that no matter what I did, I do not deserve to be [sexually assaulted]? Or how many times I am not at fault for what someone else did to me? And yet, I am in court being told found responsible, found responsible, found responsible. Ridiculous.” She also expressed distrust of her probation officer, who was often in charge of performing any service and therapy available through community corrections. As Lucky described, “I think [PO] thought she was doing a good job with the group (therapy), but we would all sit there and be like, oh hell no, we ain’t telling her shit.” Lucky’s victimization experiences and efforts to escape and/or avoid victimization (including runaway, gang involvement, pushing students in the hallway, substance use, and minor theft), translated into increasing detachment from school, no models of normal economic survival, let alone job training, which itself was outside Lucky’s comfort and familiarity. Her involvement in the justice system did not mediate such effects, as she did not receive adequate intervention services or vocational and life skills training. Indeed, Lucky described how structure influenced her work opportunities: “It’s not just that I have trouble finding work because I have a record. It’s the way I look. When I applied for this one job as a janitor, I could tell what the guy saw. Gang tattoos . . . and you know, I’m Black, and I think that is what he’s gonna see, what they see, a Black gang member. So it’s hard getting away from it.” Are today’s girls embracing physical violence? Are they becoming more like the boys? Our case study illustrates the complexities and debate. On the one hand, the context of many girls’ “assaults” unveils a history of intergenerational violence, poverty, disrupted relationships with caregivers, isolation, and drug abuse, while showing a school system that is over-reactive to physical aggression, that applies zero tolerance policies, and that outsources the matters to an external body ( juvenile justice system), especially for girls of color (see Parks et al., 2016). On the other hand, schools and the juvenile justice system seemed under-reactive in taking girls’ conflicts and pleas for help seriously. Indeed, as in Lucky’s example, girls often report fairly frequent negotiation of household, community, and school conditions that expose them to conflict and victimization, often yielding extensive psychological problems for them and making them feel little personal agency for change in their futures (Baines, 1997; Belknap & Holsinger, 2006; Cameron & Taggart, 2005; Herman & Silverstein, 2012; Jones, 2008; Wun, 2016). With the exception of services offered by the juvenile justice system, many girls continue to have such conflicts and problems ignored.

Conclusion After decades of invisibility, girl offenders and their issues have surfaced on the national agenda. Sadly, this new attention is due largely to significant increases in girl’s arrests for crimes of violence, particularly family and school-related simple assault. A lack of programs for girls has, among other things, resulted in steady increases in both the detention and incarceration of girls. In short, we are discussing the need for programming for girls in a crisis atmosphere, since the relabeling of girls’ behavior as violence threatens to undo some 30 years of de-institutionalization and decriminalization of status offenses efforts. What is apparent from the literature on responding to girls’ violence and from the current interview research presented in this chapter is that the systems designed to serve our youth have failed girls. As Luke (2008) points out, “girls whose use of violence leads to their involvement with the juvenile justice system often come from what the social welfare field calls ‘multi-problem’ families and communities. By the time these girls reach adolescence, they have often been failed by multiple systems that are designed to protect 354

Girls’ violence and juvenile justice

their welfare” (p. 44). Instead, girls’ violence is reduced to a few simple observations and queries: statistical increases in girls’ assaults; the effect of a sexualized, hyper-violent media on girls’ actions; and whether or not girls are becoming “liberated” or masculinized. Critical criminologists need to engage in studies of youth violence that go beyond the numbers to explore the contexts that produce crime “problems,” such as girls’ use of violence. This research has clearly documented that girls’ violence, which has been the subject of so much speculation and hype, is very easily understood as the product of girls’ marginalization and alienation from school as well as misguided school policies and procedures that disempower girls, particularly girls of color. Criminology often uses decontextualized numbers to describe crime, but as the interviews summarized here have documented, such “numbers” can be highly misleading. Once good research has been conducted, critical criminologists have a responsibility to seek ways to challenge misguided characterizations of girls as violent while also working to roll back the criminalization of classrooms and school hallways so that all youth can go to school without fear of suspension or arrest. What also emerges from this study is an evident policy implication: schools and welfare and health service systems are in need of revision and repair in order to adequately address justiceinvolved girls’ lives and needs, especially in terms of recognizing risks, understanding what is behind their rage, and offering trauma-informed care. The content of gender-specific (or girlsensitive) programs formed within the juvenile justice system requires special attention, since the family court has a long history of paternalism and policing of girls’ behavior (especially sexuality) without sensitive, nuanced, girl-centered approaches (see Bloom et al., 2002; Chesney-Lind & Pasko, 2013; Pasko, 2017). Programming for this population often fails to offer girls spaces, experiences, and relationships that will move them away from criminogenic and violent pathways. While not apologizing for them or reducing them to victims of life circumstances, programming must be trauma-informed and address the obstacles that are presented by girls’ perceptions of judgment and unfairness, with this being especially true for girls of color. Indeed, programming needs to be culturally-sensitive as well and incorporate diverse and inclusive staff who can dismantle stereotypical assumptions. Lastly, without recognizing the intensity of violence and marginalization in their lives, pressuring girls to “take responsibility” and presenting them with basic life skills and vocational and/ or educational opportunities may not be enough. While such components, such as adequate transportation, safe and stable housing, and job training, are necessary, program development and its implementation need to acknowledge the developmental hurdles girls manage during their everyday lives; to recognize their needs for healthy emotional attachment, from caregivers, friends, teachers, and romantic partners; to offer a diversity of choices; and to recognize and amplify girls’ perceived openings for change and resiliency.

References Acoca, L. (1998). Outside/inside: The violation of American girls at home, in the streets, and in the system. Crime and Delinquency, 44, 561–590. Artz, S. (1998). Sex, power, and the violent school girl. New York: Teachers College Press. Artz, S., Blais, M. & Nicholson, D. (2000). Developing girls’ custody units. Vancouver: Unpublished report. Baines, M. (1997). Mad, bad, or angry? Youth Studies Australia, 16, 19–24. Belknap, J. & Holsinger, K. (2006). The gendered nature of risk factors for delinquency. Feminist Criminology, 1, 48–71. Belknap, J., Holsinger, K. & Dunn, M. (1997). Understanding incarcerated girls: The results of a focus group study. Prison Journal, 77(4). 381–404. Björkqvist, K. & Niemelä, P. (1992). New trends in the study of female aggression. In K. Björkqvist & P. Niemelä (Eds), Of mice and women: Aspects of female aggression (pp. 3–16). Cambridge, MA: Academic Press. 355

Lisa Pasko and Meda Chesney-Lind

Björkqvist, K., Österman, K. & Kaukiainen, A. (1992). The development of direct and indirect aggressive strategies in males and females. In K. Björkqvist & P. Niemelä (Eds), Of mice and women: Aspects of female aggression (pp. 51–64). Cambridge, MA: Academic Press. Bloom, B., Owen, B., Deschenes, E. P. & Rosenbaum, J. (2002). Improving juvenile justice for females: A statewide assessment for California. Crime and Delinquency, 48, 526–552. Bureau of Criminal Information and Analysis (1999). Crime and delinquency in California. Sacramento, CA: Department of Justice. Buzawa, E. S. & Hotaling, G. T. (2006). The impact of relationship status, gender, and minor status in the police response to domestic assaults police response to domestic assaults. Victims and Offenders, 1, 1–38. Cameron, M. & Taggart, C. E. (2005). “Adging Up” to “Beef on Sight”: A qualitative study of the perceived causes of interpersonal conflict and violence among African-American girls in an urban high school. Journal of School Violence, 4(2): 75–93. Canter, R. J. (1982a). Family correlates of male and female delinquency. Criminology, 20, 149–167. Canter, R. J. (1982b). Sex differences in self-report delinquency. Criminology, 20, 373–393. Centers for Disease Control (2000, 2010, 2015). Healthy youth! Data and statistics. Atlanta, GA: Centers for Disease Control. Chesney-Lind, M. & Irwin, K. (2008). Beyond bad girls: Gender, violence and hype. New York: Routledge. Chesney-Lind, M. & Jones, N. (2010). Fighting for girls: New perspectives on gender and violence. Albany, NY: State University of New York. Chesney-Lind, M. & Merlo, A. (2015). Global war on girls? Policing girls’ sexuality and criminalizing their victimization. Women & Criminal Justice (25th Anniversary issue), 25(1), 71–83. Chesney-Lind, M. & Pasko, L. (2013). The female offender: Girls, women, and crime, 3rd Edition. Thousand Oaks, Ca: Sage. Cobbina, J. E., Like, T. Z. & Miller, J. (2016). Gender-specific conflicts among urban African-American youth: The roles of situational context and issues of contention. Deviant Behavior, 37(9), 1032–1051. Currie, E. (1998). Crime and punishment in America. London: MacMillan. Curtis, A. J. (2013). Tracing the school-to-prison pipeline from zero-tolerance policies to juvenile justice dispositions. Georgetown Law Journal, 102, 1251–1277. DeKeseredy, W. (2000). Women, crime and the Canadian criminal justice system. Cincinnati: Anderson. Federal Bureau of Investigation (1980). Uniform crime reports, 1979. Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Studies US Government Printing Office. Federal Bureau of Investigation (1999). Uniform crime reports, 1998. Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Studies US Government Printing Office. Federal Bureau of Investigation (2016). Uniform crime reports, 2015. Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Studies US Government Printing Office. Feld, B. (2009). Violent girls or relabeled status offenders: An alternative explanation of the data. Crime and Delinquency, 55, 241–265. Gaarder, E., Rodriguez, N. & Zatz, M. (2004). Criers, liars, and manipulators: Probation officers’ views of girls. Justice Quarterly, 21, 547–578. Garbarino, J. (2006). See Jane hit: Why girls are growing more violent and what we can do about it. New York: Penguin books. Herman, J. & Silverstein, J. (2012). Girls and violence: A review of the literature. Journal of Community Health Nursing, 29, 63–74. Jones, N. (2008). Working “the code”: On girls, gender, and inner-city violence. Special issue: Current approaches to understanding female offending. Australia and New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 4, 63–83. Luke, K. (2008). Are girls really becoming more violent? A critical analysis. Affilia, 23, 38–50. Mayer, J. (1994, July). Girls in the Maryland juvenile justice system: Findings of the Female Population Taskforce. Paper presented at the Gender Specific Services Training, Minneapolis, MN. Miller. S. A. (2016). “How you bully a girl”: Sexual drama and the negotiation of gendered sexuality in high school. Gender & Society, 30(4), 721–744. Morash, M. & Chesney-Lind, M. (2008). The context of girls’ violence. In M. Zahn (Ed.), The delinquent girl (pp. 182–206). Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (2010). “OJJDP Model Programs: Search for MGP Programs.” Online: www.ojjdp.gov/mpg//. Parks, C., Wallace, B.C., Emdin, C. & Levy, I. (2016). An examination of gendered violence and school push-out directed against urban black girls/adolescents: Illustrative data, cases and a call to action. Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy, 15(3), 210–219. 356

Girls’ violence and juvenile justice

Pasko, L. (2017). Beyond confinement: The Regulation of girl offenders’ bodies, sexual choices and behavior. Women & Criminal Justice, 27(1), 4–20. Pasko, L. & Chesney-Lind, M. (2016). Running the gauntlet: Understanding commercial sexual exploitation and the pathways perspective to female offending. Journal of Developmental and Life- Course Criminology, 2(3), 275–295. Phillips, C. (2003). “Who’s who in the pecking order? Aggression and ‘normal violence’ in the lives of girls and boys.” British Journal of Criminology, 43, 710–728. Prothrow-Stith, D. & Spivak, H. R. (2005). Sugar and spice and no longer nice: How we can stop girls’ violence. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Puzzanchera, C. & Kang, W. (2008). “Juvenile Court Statistics Databook.” Online: http://ojjdp.ncjrs.gov/ ojstatbb/jcsdb/. Schaffner, L. (2006). Girls in trouble with the law. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers. Schaffner, L. (2007). Violence against girls provokes girls’ violence: From private injury to public harm. Violence Against Women, 13, 1229–1248. Sickmund, M., Sladky, A. & Kang, W. (2015). “Easy Access to Juvenile Court Statistics: 1985–2013.” Online. Available: www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/ezajcs/. Steffensmeier, D. J. & Steffensmeier, R. H. (1980). Trends in female delinquency: An examination of arrest, juvenile court, self-report, and field data. Criminology, 18, 62–85. Wun, C. (2016). Angered: Black and non-Black girls of color at the intersections of violence and school discipline in the United States. Race, Ethnicity, and Education (online first November 2016) http://dx.doi. org/10.1080/13613324.2016.1248829.

357

29 Girls and women in conflict with the law Katherine Irwin, Lisa Pasko, and Janet T. Davidson

Traditional research on crime and delinquency has long been criticized for its failure to adequately represent, incorporate, and understand female offenders, despite the fact that girls and women are in conflict with the law at increasing rates (Belknap 2014; Chesney-Lind & Pasko 2013; Daly 1992). The 1980s brought an onslaught of tough-on-crime legislation that increased United States jail and prison populations exponentially. For example, by 2014 there were 2.2 million individuals in jail and prison, with an additional 4.7 million on probation or parole (Kaeble et al. 2014). While women and girls have been a numerical minority in the justice system, their rates of justice involvement were increasing faster than boys’ and men’s during America’s tough-oncrime era. From 1985 to 2005 women’s incarceration rates increased 404% while men’s rates increased by 209% (The Sentencing Project 2007). Girls’ out of home placements grew by 40% between 1990 and 1999, compared to a 19% increase among boys (Sickmund, Sladky, & Kang 2015a), and between 1985 and 1997 girls’ court cases increased by 98%, while boys’ cases increased by 52% (Sickmund, Sladky & Kang 2015a). Importantly, since 2010 rates of justice involvement have decreased, and juveniles’ contact with the justice system has reduced dramatically (Bryer & Levin 2013). In 2000 there were 108,802 detained and committed juveniles in the U.S. By 2013, that number plummeted to 53,462 (Sickmund et al. 2015b). Adult deinstitutionalization has decreased at a slower rate, and the number of adults in U.S. correction facilities has declined by 1% each year between 2007 and 2013 (Kaeble et al. 2014). Regardless of overall declines in numbers, girls and women still make up a visible portion of individuals in conflict with the law. According to various data sources, in 2013 there were approximately 1.4 million girls and women under the supervision of the U.S. justice system,1 and girls and women of color were disproportionately included in these numbers (Kaeble et al. 2014; Sickmund et al. 2015b). Black women were imprisoned at between two and three times the rate of White women, and Latina women were imprisoned at between one and three times the rate of White women (Carson 2015). In the following we tell a story about the contexts of girls’ and women’s lives before, during, and after coming into justice contact, first by focusing on the gendered pathways to offending and criminal justice involvement. Next we outline prison, probation, parole and re-entry experiences of girls and women and focus on how racism complicates girls’ and women’s 358

Girls and women in conflict with the law

experiences before, during, and after doing time. We end the chapter with an argument for gender responsive policies.

Pathways to offending and justice involvement The pathways perspective of crime examines which life experiences, particularly childhood ones, place females at risk of offending. Research indicates that sexual, emotional, and physical abuse—particularly sexual trauma—as well as other forms of childhood strain (e.g., severe economic hardships in families, family disruption, substance-dependent and/or criminally involved parents, and neglect) are defining features in the lives of many female offenders, and these factors are often related to one’s likelihood of committing crimes (Acoca 1998; Belknap 2014; Bloom et al. 2002; Chesney-Lind & Sheldon 2014; Daly 1992; Gaarder & Belknap 2002; Johansson & Kempf-Leonard 2009; Jones et al. 2014; Leve & Chamberlain 2004; Mellin & Fang 2010; Pasko 2010; Richie 1996, 2001; Rodney & Mupier 2004; Salisbury & Van Voorhis 2009; Wilson & Widom 2010). For girls, family violence and hardships often precipitate running away (girls’ escape strategy) and increased exposure to criminal opportunities, recruitment by older men and/or gang members into sex trafficking, and sexual victimization on the streets (Chesney-Lind & Sheldon 2014; Dorais & Corriveau 2009; Lloyd 2012; Williams & Frederick 2009). Indeed, fleeing homes is a survival strategy for girls facing family trauma, neglect, and chaos. Once on the streets, girls engage in other street-based survival strategies. As a result, girls tend to come into contact with the justice system because their survival strategies are criminalized. Beyond the criminalization of girls’ survival strategies, family trauma, chaos and marginalization are risk factors for female offending. Poverty, racial marginalization, limited job opportunities, volatile relationships, and prior sexual abuse often encourage female delinquency and crime (see Bloom et al. 2002; Farley & Kelly 2008; Holger-Ambrose et al. 2013; Lloyd 2012; Richie 1996; Williams & Frederick 2009; Wilson & Butler 2014). Sexual abuse as children has long lasting effects, as sexual victimization shapes girls’ ability to form the types of social bonds that can deter delinquency and anti-social behavior. Victimization also increases the likelihood of depression, suicide attempts, problematic substance use, self-injury, violence, eating disorders, membership in delinquent peer groups, risky lifestyles, feelings of powerlessness, and difficulties in maintaining employment (Acoca, 1998; Bailey & McCloskey 2005; Bergen et al. 2004; Finkelhor & Browne 1985; McCabe et al. 2002; McCartan & Gunnison 2010; Mullis et al. 2004; Pasko 2010; Simkins & Katz 2002; Ullman 2004). Furthermore, early childhood sexual abuse establishes the foundation for future sexual exploitation through the development of feelings of stigmatization, chronic shame, guilt, and betrayal (Finkelhor & Browne 1985; Jacobs 1993; Wilson & Butler 2014). The profound disruption in psycho-social functioning that results from sexual trauma creates difficulties in regulating impulses, somatic distress, and fosters familiarity with sexually exploitative relationships (Pasko & Chesney-Lind 2016; Wilson & Butler 2014). Looking at the backgrounds of justice-involved girls and women, scholars have made significant contributions in feminist criminology through their pathways’ theoretical developments (see Wattanaporn & Holtfreter 2014). Daly (1992) identified five prototypical gendered pathways: (1) street women—escape and survival, involving women fleeing abuse and engaging in survival strategies such as prostitution, theft, and drugs; (2) drug-connected women, describing the use and trafficking of drugs by women in concert with romantic partners/family; (3) harmed and harming women, involving offenders who have experienced traumatic abuse which led to their chronic criminality and violence; (4) battered women, categorizing women whose crime is directly linked 359

Katherine Irwin, Lisa Pasko, and Janet T. Davidson

to their extreme victimization by their romantic partners and others; and (5) women whose crimes were economically motivated. Other pathways scholars specified similar trajectories and characterized them according to childhood victimization (Bloom et al. 2002), abusive homes and gender oppression (Erez & Berko 2010), extreme economic and racial marginalization (Richie, 1996, 2001), normal-functioning with drug-dependence (Brennan et al. 2012; Shechory, Perry, & Addad 2011), adult relationship dysfunction (Salisbury & Van Voorhis, 2009), socialized subculture, and anti-social aggression resulting from extensive experiences of deprivation, trauma, hostility, and relationship issues (Brennan et al. 2012). In the 1990s and early 2000s, girls’ and women’s justice contact increased dramatically, and such increases had to do with how the justice system was responding to girls and women who faced trauma, distress, and extreme marginalization. In fact, arresting and institutionalizing women and girls who confronted complicated and dangerous challenges was common at the time despite efforts of advocates and policy organizations to keep low-level offending women and girls out of the system. The JJDP Act of 1974 specifically called for the deinstitutionalization of status offenders. Despite this act, from 1988 to 1997 girls’ arrests increased by 59.8% (compared with a 27.3% increase for boys’ arrests). Between 1996 and 2005, juvenile arrest rates declined for boys by 27.8%, while girls’ arrests also decreased, but by a smaller percent (14.3%). Importantly, girls’ arrests from 1996 to 2005 for simple assault, prostitution, drug abuse, driving under the influence, and disorderly conduct continued to climb. Concurrent with rising arrests rates for girls, the number of girls in juvenile court went from 223,400 in 1985 to 461,600 in 2005 (Sickmund et al. 2015a). The largest increase in the number of girls’ court cases at that time was for simple assaults (Snyder & Sickmund 2006)—a historic catch-all category for a litany of minor forms of violence. After the 1974 JJDP Act, girls’ detention peaked in 2002, with 82,600 girls being detained. The banner year for girls’ commitments and out of home placements was 2000, with 26,800 girls being sent to juvenile institutions or otherwise removed from their homes, and in 1998 there were 800 girls who were waived to adult courts, an all-time high (Sickmund et al. 2015a). Critical scholars were keen to explain the increasing rates of girls’ contact with the justice system at a time when crime rates generally declined. Researchers identified at least two trends. The first was that the call for the deinstitutionalization of status offenders, per the 1974 JJDP Act, likely encouraged parents and police to re-label girls’ minor offenses (such as curfew violations, incorrigibility, or running away) as more serious offenses like simple assault (Buzawa & Hotaling, 2006). Second, there was evidence that up-criming (Chesney-Lind & Irwin, 2008; Feld, 2009) was occurring, which included a national trend of taking girls’ and boys’ school violence seriously. The 1994 Safe and Gun Free Schools act touched off a national zero-tolerance movement in schools. Schools throughout the nation adopted several zero tolerance measures promising mandatory suspension, expulsion, transfer, and arrest for a litany of school offenses such as fighting, bringing alcohol or drugs to school, throwing objects, or causing “scenes” on campus. The harshening of schools’ responses to student misbehavior was gender and racially biased. Crenshaw, Ocen, and Nanda (2015) found that Black girls were suspended six times more frequently than White girls in the 2011–2012 school year in a representative sample of U.S. schools. This was at the same time that Black boys were suspended three times more frequently than White boys. Some argued that Black girls’ disproportionate rates of school punishment related to racial disproportionality in the juvenile justice system. For example, in 2013 Black girls between the ages of 10 and 17 were 13.5 times more likely than White girls to be detained or committed in the juvenile justice system, while in 2003, Black girls were 12 times more likely than White girls to be in juvenile justice institutions (Sickmund et al. 2015b). Although the U.S. has seen a 360

Girls and women in conflict with the law

dramatic decline in the numbers of institutionalized juveniles since 2010, the disproportionate institutionalization of Black girls in juvenile system seems to have increased.

Girls and women in the justice system Girls and young women are often sanctioned and institutionalized for minor offenses, status offenses, and sexual misconduct (Pasko, 2010, 2011; Schaffner, 2006). The characterization of girls in official court records and case files regularly animates girls as deceitful, manipulative, hysterical, wildly sexual, and verbally abusive (Bloom et al. 2002; Gaarder & Belknap 2002; Goodkind 2005; Inderbitzin 2007; Kempf-Leonard & Sample 2000; Mallicoat 2007; Pasko 2010, 2011; Schaffner 2006). Under a paternalistic ideology, the police, courts, and corrections operate with a mantra of the need to “protect” girls from sexual experimentation and other dangers on the streets (Chesney-Lind & Sheldon 2014). At the same time, the court frequently labels girls as sexually promiscuous, untrustworthy, and unruly, without considering girls’ life histories and social contexts. Gaarder et al. (2004) corroborated the negative characterization of justice-involved girls. They found that girls were constructed as having character flaws and problematic personality traits, while links to prior victimization experiences, family disruption, and educational deficits were not addressed. Focusing on female juvenile offenders’ sexual behaviors, Pasko’s (2010) research of court and correctional professionals illustrated that staff wanted to recognize the complexity of sexual identity, although they created a treatment-oriented environment where alternative sexualities were seen as pathological (i.e., stemming from sexual abuse). In terms of the conditions of confinement, there has been a long history of girls and women being denied access to gender specific resources (i.e., hygiene products, health care information and services, and contact with family) at the same time that girls and women are exposed to a lack of privacy and demeaning and sexually derogatory treatment while institutionalized. In the 1960s and 1970s reports such as Wooden’s (1976) Weeping in the Playtime of Others and organizations like the Female Offender Resource Center (1977) chronicled severe cases of sexual humiliation and victimization of girls such as frequent and sometimes painful “pelvics” (pelvic exams) for girls. In the 1960s and 1970s girls and women were also subjected to sexual assault, lack of privacy, and the presence of male guards while girls and women were medically examined, changed clothes, or bathed. Many of these problems persist. Girls are still subjected to frequent “pelvic” exams in some institutions (Pasko, 2017), this at the same time that girls are given very little information about sexual health and safety (Sherman, 2005). The Bureau of Justice Statistics (Beck & Cantor, 2013) indicated that 8.2% of a sample of incarcerated girls in 2012 reported sexual victimization from staff or other youth, inlcuding 2.8% of girls reporting that staff victimized them.2 Sherman (2005) asserted that girls often arrive to juvenile institutions with PTSD and normal practices while in confinement tend to exacerbate this condition. The use of isolation and restraints can trigger PTSD and amplify girls’ depression and anxiety. Also, Sherman (2005) argued that girls arrive to confinement with strong attachments to family—despite the family traumas faced by many girls—although girls are often denied contact with family, including contact with children for parenting girls. Girls are frequently verbally humiliated and denounced. As Gaardner et al.’s (2004) work illustrates, juvenile justice workers often frame girls as being manipulative and more difficult to work with than boys and make demoralizing comments about girls liberally. Additionally, girls in Sherman’s (2005) report noted that they had limited access to hygiene products, that food was unappealing, and that they were given soiled underwear. Also, information about sexual and reproductive health, mental health services, and educational services are 361

Katherine Irwin, Lisa Pasko, and Janet T. Davidson

generally lacking for girls. There is also a troubling trend within the system of keeping girls in the dark about the status of their legal cases, something that Sherman (2005) found to be out of step with an emphasis on empowering and providing a “strengths-based” approach to working with girls (see also Schaffner 2007). Conditions of confinement for incarcerated women parallel the above findings. Like girls, many incarcerated women suffer from PTSD and their experiences in jails and prisons, like overcrowding and aggressive searches (Owen et al. 2008), create anxiety for women. In 2011, there were 8,763 allegations of sexual victimation in U.S. jails and prisons (Beck, Rantala, & Rexroat 2014), and women made up 41.2% of the substantiated cases of abuse by staff (Beck, Rantala & Rexroat 2014). Reports from the U.S. Department of Justice (Owen et al. 2008) demonstrated that there is a lack of health care for women—including prenatal care for pregnant women— mental health services, education opportunities, drug treatment, and other services. Contact with family, especially children, is also lacking, which is particularly problematic as family ties and parenting are important motivations for women to desist from crime. In Owen, Wells, and Pollock’s (2017) research with over 4,000 incarcerated women, women indicated that facilities were dangerously overcrowded and unclean, with the presence of blood and other bodily fluids in bathrooms, bedding, and other materials threatening the spread of diseases. Women were also exposed to demoralizing treatment from staff such as being shouted at, called derogatory names, and told that they were worthless. Also, Black women, when compared with White women, confronted higher rates of violence and more conflicts with prison staff, indicating that the prison experience for Black women is less safe than for White women.

Community supervision: probations, parole and re-entry There are proportionately more girls and women serving time in the community than in prison. Twenty-five percent of probationers and 12% of those on parole are female (Kaeble, Maruschak, & Bonczar 2015). Between 2000 and 2013 the rate of growth for females on probation outpaced the rate for males, while the rates for men and women on parole have increased at the same pace (Glaze & Kaeble 2014). This overall increase in community correctional populations has forced probation to do more with fewer resources. Turning to evidence-based practices to drive public safety and manage risks is one solution to these pressures (Davidson 2013). Evidence-based risk and need-based instruments have become the cornerstone of offender management in community corrections. Essentially every offender sentenced to felony probation or released to parole is first assessed via a risk assessment tool. The results of these tools shape how much supervision an offender receives based on their overall reoffending risk score, and scores help officers determine which services should be prioritized for offenders in the community. Despite their popularity, these instruments are problematic for girls and women. Risk assessment tools have largely been crafted using knowledge of male criminality and male risk factors, thus neglecting research on girls’ and women’s pathways (Belknap & Holsinger 2006). Only 11 of 41 studies published on risk assessment tools between 1986 and 2006 report any separate statistics for female offenders (Holtfreter & Cupp 2007). Factors that are not included in risk and need instruments (e.g., histories of victimization, child care responsibilities) will not be considered, nor will these factors be prioritized for service and treatment allocation. While female offenders, relative to men, may pose a lower threat to public safety, they nonetheless have important needs that should be met while serving time in the community. Girls and women on probation and parole face complicated and competing demands. They must navigate multiple systems while in the community or upon their release from prison, as many are simultaneously involved in the behavioral healthcare and child protective systems (Richie, 2001). 362

Girls and women in conflict with the law

Given that these girls and women often have histories of mental health and substance abuse problems, many are required to participate in mental health/substance abuse treatment programs as part of their supervision conditions. Such services often do not exist, and when they do exist, they are rarely affordable. Women who have children in the child protective services system face significant barriers if they want to regain custody of their children upon release and are often subject to increased surveillance on the part of case managers and other agents of the state (Lee, 2016). The conditions of probation and parole can be daunting. There are both general demands as well as specialized conditions that must be met, which can include random drug tests, obtaining employment, and staying out of trouble. For girls, this means that they also must refrain from committing status offenses, such as truancy, using alcohol, and running away. As part of their community correctional status, they must also stay away from people deemed “undesirables” by the court (Pasko 2017). If they commit offenses, they are subject to being incarcerated on the basis of violating a valid court order (Pasko 2017; Sherman 2005). Formerly incarcerated women must often refrain from interacting or living with formerly incarcerated individuals, even when such individuals are partners and family members (Allard 2002). Girls and women on parole, compared with boys and men, face additional stigmas linked to their incarceration. Formerly incarcerated women and girls with children must manage the shame associated with failing to live in accordance with “good mothering” ideals, which are often steeped in middle-class notions of motherhood. Women and girls must also contend with misguided assumptions about how much they love their children and how successfully they can control and regulate their deviant and criminal tendencies (Haney 2010). Lee’s (2016), ethnography of parents’ experiences in the New York child protective systems found that children were often taken away from their parents if parents admitted to drug use regardless of other indicators of child neglect and/or abuse. Like their male counterparts, formerly incarcerated girls and women of color must also contend with the stereotype that individuals of color are prone to crime (van Olphen et al. 2009). Formerly incarcerated girls and women of color must also face difficult to meet mandates, at the same time that they confront agents’ biases and preconceived notions about Latina and African American girls and women (Lopez & Nuno 2016). Girls and women with limited English proficiency skills are sometimes misinterpreted as being silent because they are oppositional or indifferent (Escobar 2016; Pasko & Lopez 2015). Additionally, in the 1980s and 1990s, women of color who used crack were blamed for the “crack baby epidemic.” conservative media and political pundits introduced the “welfare queen” stereotype (Foster 2008; Hancock 2003), thus piling on additional surveillance and judgment for women and girls of color who are re-entering society. Latina women who are undocumented also have been denigrated as bad mothers whose primary reason for immigration to the U.S. is to have “anchor babies” at the expense of lawabiding American citizens (Chavez 2013). Formerly incarcerated women continue to be targeted, surveilled, and punished for their past transgressions via state policies that prohibit them from access to important social services such as access to financial aid, certain welfare benefits, and even the ability to vote (Allard, 2002), and these pressures are especially keen for women of color. Racism and stigma of criminality also play into women’s abilities to secure housing, as landlords and apartment managers are often hesitant to rent to women of color in general and formerly incarcerated women and those with felony convictions in particular. Furthermore, the federal government restricts formerly incarcerated individuals with drug convictions from qualifying for housing subsidies that could offset the expense of rent (Allard, 2002). These discriminatory practices have shown to have disproportionately impacted former prisoners of color, most notably African Americans (Mauer 2006). 363

Katherine Irwin, Lisa Pasko, and Janet T. Davidson

Without housing, regaining custody of children becomes further complicated, and recidivism rates are increased. As an additional collateral consequence, in 1996, the federal government replaced the Aid to Family with Dependent Children (AFDC) with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), a federal block grant that imposes time limits and work requirements on welfare recipients. A key feature of TANF was Section 115, which subjected individuals convicted of a felony drug use offense to a lifetime ban of receiving cash assistance and food stamps (Allard 2002). This ban has disproportionately impacted women, especially women of color. According to a report by the Sentencing Project, 48% of the women affected by Section 115 are Latina and African American women (Allard 2002).

Gender responsive services While risk assessment is a good practice under the evidence-based model, as noted these instruments demonstrate the need to include more information about women’s and girls’ specific circumstances and needs (Smith, Cullen, & Latessa 2009; Van Voorhiss et al. 2008). Running away, poverty, childcare needs, prior victimization (physical and sexual), economic marginalization, severe disruptions in education, and substance abuse continue to emerge in qualitative and quantitative research as significant factors for female offenders. Unless these factors are seriously considered, girls’ and women’s success will be limited. Gender responsive risk assessment and supervision both recognizes and acts upon those gendered factors related to girls’ and women’s entry into the system. When gender specific factors are used to assess supervision needs, positive results for females typically follow (Schram et al. 2006; Huebner, DeJong, & Cobbina 2010). For example, female parolees who have stable housing and employment experience lower levels of recidivism and are more likely to regain custody of their children (Schram et al. 2006). Addressing women’s competing demands while under supervision, and doing so in gender-responsive ways, also leads to reduced rates of recidivism (Bui & Morash 2010; Fortuin 2007; Heilbrun et al. 2008). Female offenders recidivate at lower levels than their male counterparts (Durose, Synder & Cooper 2015). But, they are more likely to end up in prison via a probation or parole technical violation, as opposed to a new crime, than are their male counterparts (Huebner & Pleggenkuhle 2015). Further, their recidivism occurs earlier in their community supervision tenure than for males, regardless of their offense category or other demographic variables. A gender-responsive model could help keep girls and women in the community longer as well as reduce their likelihood of violating supervision rules (Morash 2010). The following are good guidelines for developing an effective, gender-responsive model of community supervision for girls and women (Golder et al. 2014): 1 2

3

4

364

Screen and identify individuals’ mental health needs. This should be accomplished with a gender-sensitive risk and need assessment instrument. Connect women to treatment. It is important to think about women’s risk and needs as interconnected, and to engage them in integrated treatment plans, often including clinical services. Acknowledge and capitalize on the role that probation and parole officers play in the lives of women under their supervision. These can be important sources of social support and connectors to important resources in the community. Utilize female-only caseloads. This allows officers to become experts in girls’ and women’s issues as well as resources that might be gender specific.

Girls and women in conflict with the law

5 6 7

Promote safety and security. Help girls and women with issues of economic marginality, housing stability, and other stability factors to help lower recidivism. Provide social service system coordination. Provide social support and protection from future victimization.

Relative to males, community correctional populations continue to see greater growth in girls and women doing time in the community. The differences between girl and women offenders and boy and men offenders must be acknowledged, situated in research, and enacted in best practices if a positive impact on girls’ and women’s lives and their recidivism is to be realized.

Notes 1

2

This approximate number includes adjudicated girls who were in residential placement (detention and commitment), probation, and waived to adult courts as well as women in jail, prison, probation, and parole. The 1.4 million number does not include the 223,100 girls who appeared in the juvenile courts and who were not adjudicated in 2013 (Sickmund et al. 2015a). Boys reported more cases of sexual victimization by staff and other inmates than girls. The same is true for adult male inmates.

References Acoca, L. (1998). “Outside/Inside: The Violation of American Girls at Home, in the Streets, and in the System.” Crime and Delinquency 44:561–590. Allard, P. (2002). Life Sentences: Denying Welfare Benefits to Women Convicted of Drug Offenses. Washington, DC: Sentencing Project. Bailey, J., & McCloskey, L. A. (2005). “Pathways to Adolescent Substance Use among Sexually Abused Girls.” Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology 33:39–54. Beck, A. J., & Cantor, D. (2013). Sexual Victimization in Juvenile Facilities Reported by Youth, 2012. National Survey of Youth in Custody. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics. Beck, A. J., Rantala, R., & Rexroat, J. (2014). Sexual Victimization Reported by Adult Correctional Authorities, 2009–11. U.S. Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. Bureau of Justice Statistics. Belknap, J. (2014). The Invisible Woman (4th Edition). Belmont: Wadsworth. Belknap, J., & Holsinger, K. (2006). “The Gendered Nature of Risk Factors for Delinquency” Feminist Criminology 1:48–71. Bergen, H., Martin, G., Richardson, A., Allison, S., & Roeger, L. (2004). “Sexual Abuse, Antisocial Behaviour and Substance Use: Gender Differences in Young Community Adolescents.” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 38:34–41. Bloom, B., Owen, B., Deschenes, E. P., & Rosenbaum, J. (2002). “Improving Juvenile Justice for Females: A Statewide Assessment for California.” Crime and Delinquency 48:526–552. Brennan, T., Breitennach, M., Dieterich, W., Salisbury, E. J., & Van Voorhis, P. (2012). “Women’s Pathways to Serious and Habitual Crime: A Person-Centered Analysis Incorporating Gender Responsive Factors.” Criminal Justice and Behavior 39:1481–1508. Bryer, S., & Levin, M. (2013). The Comeback States. Reducing Youth Incarceration in the U.S. National Juvenile Justice Network and Texas Policy Foundation. Bui, H. N., & Morash, M. (2010). “The Impact of Network Relationships, Prison Experiences, and Internal Transformation on Women’s Success After Prison Release.” Journal of Offender Rehabilitation 49(1):1–22. Buzawa, E. S., & Hotaling, G. T. (2006). “The Impact of Relationship Status, Gender, and Minor Status in the Police Response to Domestic Assaults.” Victims and Offenders 1(4):1–38. Carson, A. E. (2015). Prisoners in 2014. U.S. Department of Justice. Bureau of Justice Statistics. NCJ 248955. Chavez, L. (2013). The Latino Threat: Constructing Immigrants, Citizens, and the Nation (2nd Edition). Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press. Chesney-Lind, M., & Irwin, K. (2008). Beyond Bad Girls: Gender,Violence, and Hype. New York: Routledge. 365

Katherine Irwin, Lisa Pasko, and Janet T. Davidson

Chesney-Lind, M., & Pasko, L. (2013). The Female Offender: Girls, Women, and Crime (3rd Edition). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Chesney-Lind, M., & Sheldon, R. G. (2014). Girls, Delinquency, and Juvenile Justice (3rd Edition). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Crenshaw, K., Ocen, P. A., & Nanda, J. (2015). Black Girls Matter: Pushed Out, Over Policed and Unprotected. African American Policy Forum. Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies. Daly, K. (1992). “Women’s Pathways to Felony Court: Feminist Theories of Lawbreaking and Problems of Representation.” Southern California Review of Law and Women’s Studies 2:11–52. Davidson, J. T. (2013). “Women, Community Supervision and Evidence-Based Practices.” In The Female Offender, edited by M. Chesney-Lind and L. Pasko (pp. 153–181). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Dorais, M., & Corriveau, P. (2009). Gangs and Girls: Understanding Juvenile Prostitution. Montreal: McGillQueen’s University Press. Durose, M. R., Snyder, H. N., & Cooper, A.D. 2015. Multistate Criminal History Patterns of Prisoners Released in 30 States. U.S. Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. Bureau of Justice Statistics. NCJ 248942. Erez, E., & Berko, A. (2010). “Pathways of Arab/Palestinian Women in Israel to Crime and Imprisonment: An Intersectional Approach.” Feminist Criminology 10:156–194. Escobar, M. D. (2016). Captivity Beyond Prisons: Criminalization Experiences of Latina (Im)migrants. Austin, TX: University of Texas University. Farley, M., & Kelly, V. (2008). “Prostitution: A Critical Review of the Medical and Social Sciences Literature.” Women and Criminal Justice 11(4):29–64. Feld, B.C. (2009). “Girls in the Juvenile Justice System.” In The Delinquent Girl, edited by M. A. Zahn (pp. 225–264). Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Female Offender Resource Center (1977). Little Sisters and the Law. Washington DC: American Bar Association. Finkelhor, D., & Browne, A. (1985). “The Traumatic Impact of Child Sexual Abuse: A Conceptualization.” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 55:530–541. Fortuin, B. (2007). “Maine’s Female Offenders and Reentering – And Succeeding.” Corrections Today Magazine 69(2):34–37. Foster, C. H. (2008). “The Welfare Queen: Race, Gender, Class, and Public Opinion.” Race, Gender, and Class 1:162–179. Gaarder, E., & Belknap, J. (2002). “Tenuous Borders: Girls Transferred to Adult Court.” Criminology 40:481–517. Gaarder, E., Rodriguez, N., & Zatz, M. A. (2004). “Criers, Liars, and Manipulators: Probation Officers’ Views of Girls.” Justice Quarterly 547:556–578. Glaze, L. E., & Kaeble, D. (2014). Correctional Populations in the United States, 2013. U.S. Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. Bureau of Justice Statistics. NCJ 248479. Golder, S., Hall, M. T., Logan, T. K., Higgins, G. E., Dishon, A., Renn, T., & Winhan, K. M. (2014). “Substance Use among Victimized Women on Probation and Parole.” Substance Use & Misuse 49:435–447. Goodkind, S. (2005). “Gender-specific Services in the Juvenile Justice System: A Critical Examination.” Affilia 20:52–70. Hancock, A. (2003). The Politics of Disgust: The Public Identity of the Welfare Queen. New York: New York University Press. Haney, L. (2010). Offending Women: Power, Punishment, and the Regulation of Desire. Berkeley: University of California Press. Heilbrun, K., DeMatteo, D., Fretz, R., Erickson, J., Gerardi, D., & Halper, C. (2008). Criminal Recidivism of Female Offenders: The Importance of Structured, Community-Based Aftercare. New Jersey: New Jersey Department of Corrections. Holger-Ambrose, B., Langmade, C., Edinburgh, L., & Saewyc, E. (2013). “The Illusions and Juxtapositions of Commercial Sexual Exploitation among Youth: Identifying Effective Street-Outreach Strategies.” Journal of Child Sexual Abuse 22:326–340. Holtfreter, K., & Cupp, R. (2007). “Gender and Risk Assessment: The Empirical Status of the LSI-R for Women.” Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 23:363–382. Huebner, B. M., & Pleggenkuhle, B. (2015). “Residential Location, Household Composition, and Recidivism: An Analysis by Gender.” Justice Quarterly 32(5):818–844. Huebner, B. M., DeJong, C., & Cobbina. J. (2010). “Women Coming Home: Long-Term Patterns of Recidivism.” Justice Quarterly 27(2):225–254. 366

Girls and women in conflict with the law

Inderbitzin, M. (2007). “The Impact of Gender on Juvenile Justice Decisions.” In It’s a Crime: Women and Justice, edited by R. Muraskin (pp. 782–791). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Jacobs, J. L. (1993). “Victimized Daughters: Sexual Violence and the Empathic Self.” Signs 19:126–146. Johansson, P., & Kempf-Leonard, K. (2009). “A Gender-Specific Pathway to Serious, Violent, and Chronic Offending? Exploring Howell’s Risk Factors for Serious Delinquency.” Crime and Delinquency 55(2):216–240. Jones, N., Brown, S., Wanamaker, K., & Greiner, L. E. (2014). “A Quantitative Exploration of Gendered Pathways to Crime in a Sample of Male and Female Juvenile Offenders.” Feminist Criminology 9(2):113–136. Kaeble, D., Maruschak, L. A., & Bonczar, T. P. (2015). Probation and Parole in the United States, 2014. U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics. NCJ 249057. Kaeble, D., Glaze, L., Tsoutis, A., & Minton., T. (2014). Correctional Populations in the United States, 2014. U.S. Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. Bureau of Justice Statistics. NCJ 243904. Kempf-Leonard, K., & Sample, L.L. (2000). “Disparity Based on Sex: Is Gender Specific Treatment Warranted?” Justice Quarterly 7:89–128. Lee, T. (2016). Catching a Case: Inequality and Fear in New York City’s Child Welfare System. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. Leve, L., & Chamberlain, P. (2004). “Female Juvenile Offenders: Defining an Early-Onset Pathway for Delinquency.” Journal of Child and Family Studies 13:439–452. Lloyd, R. (2012). Girls Like Us. New York: Harper. Lopez, V., & Nuno, L. (2016). “Latina and African-American Girls in the Juvenile Justice System: Needs, Problems, and Solutions.” Sociology Compass 10(1):24–37. Mallicoat, S. L. (2007). “Gendered Justice: Attributional Differences between Males and Females in the Juvenile Courts.” Feminist Criminology 2(1):4–30. Mauer, M. (2006). Race to Incarcerate. New York: New Press. McCabe, K. M., Lansing, A.E., Garland, A. N. N., & Hough, R. (2002). “Gender Differences in Psychopathology, Functional Impairment, and Familial Risk Factors among Adjudicated Delinquents.” Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry 47:860–868. McCartan, L., & Gunnison, E. (2010). “Individual and Relationship Factors that Differentiate Female Offenders With and Without a Sexual Abuse History.” Journal of Interpersonal Violence 25(8):1449–1469. Mellin, E., & Fang, H. (2010). “Exploration of the Pathways to Delinquency for Female Adolescents.” Journal of Addictions and Offender Counseling 30(2):58–72. Morash, M. (2010). Women on Probation and Parole: A Feminist Critique of Community Programs and Services. Lebanon, New Hampshire: Northeastern University Press. Mullis, R. L., Cornille, T., Mullis, A. K., & Huber, J. (2004). “Female Juvenile Offending: A Review of Characteristics and Contents.” Journal of Child and Family Studies 13:205–218. Owen, B., Wells, J., & Pollock, J. (2017). Searching for Safety: Confronting Inequality in Women’s Imprisonment. Berkeley: University of California Press. Owen, B., Wells, J., Pollock, J., Muscat, B., & Torres, S. (2008). Gendered Violence and Safety: A Contextual Approach to Improving Security in Women’s Facilities. U.S. Department of Justice. Pasko, L. (2010). “Damaged Daughters: The History of Girls’ Sexuality and the Juvenile Justice System.” Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 100(3):1099–1130. Pasko, L. (2011). “Setting the Record ‘Straight’: Girls, Sexuality, and the Juvenile Correctional System.” Social Justice 37(1):7–26. Pasko, L. (2017). “Beyond Confinement: The Regulation of Girl Offenders’ Bodies, Sexual Choices, and Behavior.” Women and Criminal Justice 27(1): 4–20. Pasko, L., & Chesney-Lind, M. (2016). “Running the Gauntlet: Understanding Commercial Sexual Exploitation and the Pathways Perspective to Female Offending.” Journal of Developmental and Life-Course Criminology 2(3):275–295. Pasko, L., & Lopez, V. (2015). “The Latina Penalty: Juvenile Court and Correctional Attitudes toward the Latina Juvenile Offender.” Journal of Ethnicity in Criminal Justice (online Fall 2015) DOI:10.1080/1537 7938.2015.1015196. Richie, B. E. (1996). Compelled to Crime: The Gender Entrapment of Black Battered Women. New York: Routledge. Richie, B. E. (2001). “Challenges Incarcerated Women Face as They Return to Their Communities: Findings from Life History Interviews.” Crime and Delinquency 47:368–389. Rodney, E., & Mupier, R. (2004). “The Special Needs of Girls in Trouble.” Reclaiming Children and Youth 13:103–109. 367

Katherine Irwin, Lisa Pasko, and Janet T. Davidson

Salisbury, E., & Van Voohis, P. (2009). “Gendered Pathways: A Quantitative Investigation of Women’s Pathways to Incarceration.” Criminal Justice and Behavior 36:541–566. Schaffner, L. (2006). Girls in Trouble with the Law. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Schaffner, L. (2007). “Violence Against Girls Provokes Girls’ Violence: From Private Injury to Public Harm.” Violence Against Women 13:1229–1248. Schram, P. J., Koons-Witt, B. A., Williams III, F. D., & McShane, M. D. (2006). “Supervision Strategies and Approaches for Female Parolees: Examining the Link Between Unmet Needs and Parolee Outcome.” Crime and Delinquency 52:450–471. The Sentencing Project (2007). Women in the Criminal Justice System. Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project. Shechory, M., Perry, G., & Addad, M. (2011). “Pathways to Women’s Crime: Differences among Women Convicted of Drug, Violence, and Fraud Offenses.” The Journal of Social Psychology 151:399–416. Sherman, F. T. (2005). Pathways to Juvenile Detention Reform. Detention Reform and Girls. Challenges and Solutions. Baltimore: Annie E. Casey Foundation. Sickmund, M. A., Sladky, T. J., & Kang, W. (2015a). Easy Access to Juvenile Court Statistics: 1985–2013. Accessed December 6, 2016. Sickmund, M. A., Sladky, T. J., Kang, W., & Puzzanchera, C. (2015b). Easy Access to the Census of Juveniles in Residential Placement. Accessed December 2, 2016. Simkins, S., & Katz, S. (2002). “Criminalizing Abused Girls.” Violence Against Women 8:1474–1500. Smith, P., Cullen, F. T., & Latessa, E. J. (2009). “Can 14,737 Women Be Wrong? A Meta-Analysis of the LSI-R and Recidivism for Female Offenders.” Criminology and Public Policy 8:183–208. Snyder, H. N., & Sickmund, M. (2006). Juvenile Offenders and Victims 2006. National Report. NCJ 178257. Washington DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. Ullman, S. (2004). “Sexual Assault Victimization and Suicidal Behavior in Women: A Review of the Literature.” Aggression and Violent Behavior 9:331–351. van Olphen, J., Eliason, M. J., Freudenberg, N., & Barnes, M. (2009). “Nowhere to Go: How Stigma Limits the Options for Female Drug Users after Release from Jail.” Substance Abuse Treatment, Prevention, and Policy 4(1):4–10. Van Voorhis, P., Salisbury, E., Wright, E., & Bauman, A. (2008). Achieving Accurate Pictures of Risk and Identifying Gender Responsive Needs: Two New Assessments for Women Offenders. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice. National Institute of Corrections. Wattanaporn, K., & Holtfreter. K. (2014). “The Impact of Feminist Pathways Research on Gender-Responsive Policy and Practice.” Feminist Criminology 9:191–207. Williams, L., & Frederick, M. E. (2009). Pathways Into and Out of Commercial Sexual Victimization of Children: Understanding and Responding to Sexually Exploited Teens. Washington, DC: Fairfund, Inc. Wilson, B., & Butler, L. A. (2014). “Running a Gauntlet: A Review of Victimization and Violence in the Pre-Entry, Post-Entry, and Peri-/Post-Exit Periods of Commercial Sexual Exploitation.” Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy 6:494–504. Wilson, H. W., & Widom, C. S. (2010). “The Role of Youth Problem Behaviors in the Path from Child Abuse and Neglect to Prostitution: A Prospective Examination.” Journal of Research on Adolescence 20:210–236. Wooden, K. (1976). Weeping in the Playtime of Others: America’s Incarcerated Children. New York: McGraw Hill.

368

30 Critical criminology and drugs Henry H. Brownstein

Throughout human history human beings have been consuming one substance or another and in the modern world these substances are called drugs. Drugs include all natural or manufactured chemical compounds that when consumed by a living organism travel through its body to its brain where the compound disrupts the chemical signals ordinarily transmitted by the brain and thereby affects the body or mind or both in a number of different ways (Lewin, 1931). For example, when a person is faced with illness or is feeling poorly he or she may use one drug or another to restore his or her health and well-being (Chou et al., 2009; Kalso & Vainio, 1990; Mather, 1995; Reisman, 2011; World Health Organization, 2007). People have also used various drugs when they are faced with stress caused perhaps by a traumatic event, or at a time in their daily lives when they experience pain, discomfort or discontent, or simply when they want to enhance their personal feeling of pleasure or exhilaration (Goode, 2012; Huxley, 1954; Marlatt, 1996; O’Malley & Valverde, 2004; Weil, 1972). This is not to say that using drugs is always beneficial to the user, nor that it is never harmful. The use of a particular drug in a way for which it was not intended to be used or the misuse or abuse of almost any drug can result in negative health consequences for the person consuming the drug, including things like addiction, illness, and even death (HHS, 2016; NCHS, 2016). And some drugs used in some circumstances have been known to have a negative impact on social relationships, such as in those cases when users or sellers involved with certain drugs in certain circumstances engage in violence in relation to their personal or business involvement with those drugs (Brownstein, 2016a). Whether using a drug or drugs is helpful or harmful to an individual or to other people, in the sense that Durkheim said that crime is normal in society (1938), so too is drug-using normal in society. While drugs themselves are chemical compounds, the production, distribution, sale, and use of drugs are social phenomena. As social actors, the producers, distributors, sellers, and users of drugs are subject to public policies and programs intended to manage or control their experience with other people around them in terms of their involvement as producers, distributors, sellers, or users of drugs. The problem for making policy and developing programs to address both the negative consequences and positive potential of the social action and activity of these people as it relates to their involvement with drugs to a large extent is confounded and made more difficult by the social ambiguity and uncertainty surrounding the social, political, and even moral views 369

Henry H. Brownstein

that different people hold about drugs in society. For drug policy to be effective and drug programs to be successful, to make living in society better rather than worse for people, policies and programs need to acknowledge this ambiguity and uncertainty and recognize that various drugs at various times used by different people for different reasons in different ways under different circumstances can be beneficial in some cases and harmful in others. For more than a century across the world and particularly in the United States drug policy has been driven primarily by a desire to address the negative consequences of drug involvement by maintaining control over the production, distribution, and consumption of drugs. This policy position and direction has been grounded in politics and values probably more than it has been grounded in knowledge and understanding, and it has been supported by mainstream criminological theories and research (Brownstein, 2013). This chapter describes the role of mainstream criminological theory in guiding the development of drug policies and programs and discusses how critical criminological theory and research could help to move drug policies and programs in a more positive and productive direction.

Theory, research, and public policy Public policymaking is a process by which social agencies and individuals make decisions and take actions that set priorities and allocate available resources for the governing of people and activity in a social domain over which those agencies and individuals have power and authority to do so (Anderson, 2011; Birkland, 2011). Research is the development of “new knowledge by drawing upon past knowledge” and has the potential to contribute to policy and practice when new knowledge from basic research is recognized as “intellectual capital” and that intellectual capital is then applied to “achieving practical objectives that are themselves outside the sphere of basic knowledge” (Merton & Moss, 1985, p. 680). That is, individuals who conduct research gain knowledge that can be of value to those people who make the decisions and take the actions of public policy and practice. In the simplest sense a theory is an explanation, but to have explanatory value it must be accurate, consistent, broad, simple, and fruitful (cf., Kuhn, 1970, p. 321). To enhance our understanding of a particular social phenomenon it must offer an analytic framework that is supported by a coherent and compelling argument for a connection between established knowledge and new knowledge. In terms of the relationship of theory to research, Blumer wrote, “The aim of theory in empirical science is to develop analytic schemes of the empirical world with which the given science is concerned [thereby] setting problems, staking out objects, and leading inquiry into asserted relations” (1969, pp. 140–41). Ideally then scientific discovery toward new knowledge from established knowledge goes through research but is guided by theory. Theory guides research by providing sound concepts or ideas that lead the researcher along a path of science in a way or ways that are logical, defensible, compelling, and productive. To that end it is important that the theory guiding the formation of new knowledge from established knowledge is good theory, as defined, for example, by Kuhn (1970). Of course that is not always the case, and sometimes the production of new knowledge, or what passes as knowledge, is guided by ideological assumptions based on beliefs, attitudes, politics, or even values. Over time as new knowledge becomes established knowledge, theoretical paradigms shift and evolve and different paradigms compete and may even supplant one another. Considering the relationship between theory, research and policy, drug policy especially in the US through the first years of the twenty-first century with its emphasis on law enforcement rather than public health has on a theoretical level been guided by mainstream criminological paradigms of the middle and late twentieth century (Brownstein, 2013). More recently practical considerations, such as the 370

Critical criminology and drugs

unsustainable cost of having incarcerated so many people for minor drug offenses for such long periods of time, have made policymakers and practitioners more open to consideration of alternative policies and programs, especially policies and programs that are less costly. While these ideas for alternative drug programs and policies may not be concerned about being less prohibitive or repressive, in terms of the role of theory as a guide for policy decisions and actions this has opened the door for a paradigm shift and consequently has provided an opportunity for consideration of critical criminological theories that raise different questions about how drug research might be guided in a different direction that might lead to different approaches to policies and practices for dealing with people who produce, distribute, or use drugs. And in fact, by the second decade of the twenty-first century the landscape of drug policy has in fact been shifting.

A history of drug policy According to a report prepared by the US Congressional Research Service (CRS), “recreational and medical use of drugs, including cocaine and opium, were popular in the nineteenth century, but the federal government was not involved in restricting or regulating their distribution and use” (Sacco, 2014, p. 2). This period has been described as “an era of wide availability and unrestrained advertising” with people using whatever drug they thought would help them to relieve illness, pain, or discomfort (Musto, 1991, p. 42). The retailer Sears Roebuck sold hypodermic needles for people using morphine, a German pharmaceutical company called Bayer introduced a drug it named Heroin to treat coughs and congestion, and soft drink companies sold drinks made with extracts of coca to energize users (Inciardi, 2007; Musto, 1991). The situation was similar in other countries. According to a report by the British Medical Association, “Opium eating and laudanum (an alcoholic solution of opiates) consumption were widespread in mid-19th-century Britain. Opium, and its derivative morphine, were available as patent medicines, in tinctures and other commercial products were readily accessible through chemists and herbalists” (BMA Board of Science, 2013, p. 87). Early in the twentieth century in the US and elsewhere there was growing concern about problems that were believed to be related to drugs. In the medical community there was concern about addiction and health-related problems and in the criminal justice community there was concern with crime and public safety (Inciardi, 2007; Musto, 1999, 1991). In terms of policy and legislation there were public debates over whether the focus should be on medical and health problems or crime and safety problems (see Caulkins et al., 2011; DuPont & Voth, 1995; Erickson & Hathaway, 2010; Herring et al., 2010; Inciardi & Harrison, 2000; McBride & Terry-McElrath, 2016; Musto, 1991; Riley et al., 1999). Nations around the world both independently and in partnership with one another enacted policies and legislation to inhibit if not prohibit the production, distribution, and use of particular drugs (Bewley-Taylor, 2003; Inciardi, 2007; Musto 1999, 1991; Room & Reuter, 2011). By the middle of the twentieth century advocates for a criminal justice, law enforcement approach prevailed and in nations around the world they introduced policies and laws to control drug use and trade culminating with the US formally declaring war on drugs (Biden, 1990; Falco, 1996; Inciardi, 2007; Reuter, 1992; Weisheit, 1990; Wisotsky, 1986). Even during this period when the emphasis was on control and criminalization of people who produced, distributed, or used specified drugs, the emphasis on a law enforcement approach to drug policy was not equally shared by all nations, with some favoring a more balanced approach recognizing drugs as a problem of public health as well as public safety. For example, in 1924 in the UK the Ministry of Health convened the Departmental Committee on Morphine and Heroin Addiction, called the Rolleston Committee (for its chair and President of the Royal College of Physicians, Sir Humphrey Rolleston) to consider and make recommendations concerning 371

Henry H. Brownstein

when it would be medically advisable to prescribe heroin or morphine to addicts (BMA Board of Science, 2013, p. 89). So, despite the twentieth-century law enforcement emphasis on control and prohibition and even given the declaration of war on drugs in the US, advocates for a public health approach have not gone away. In fact, during the first decades of the twenty-first century observers of drug policy have argued that this period is an era of “transformative change in the global drug policy landscape” (Taylor, Buchanan, & Ayres, 2016, p. 2) and that we are undergoing “a quiet revolution” in drug policy (Rosmarin & Eastwood, 2012). In such times of shifting policy, “there is a need for novel ideas and innovative research to fill the gaps in our knowledge with empirical evidence about how things work, what their consequences are, and what responses will yield what outcomes” (Brownstein, 2016b, p. 839). That is, for drug policy this is a time when research and the theory that guides it should matter.

Criminological theory and drug policy While politics and values were clearly significant contributors to drug policy and practice decisions and actions throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, mainstream criminological theories played a supporting role given their focus on the control and command of individual people and their actions and activity associated with the production, distribution, and use of drugs formally declared to be harmful, undesirable, and offensive. In terms of such theory, historically there has been a clearly defined divide separating the ideas and propositions of mainstream and critical criminological theorists with each making and accepting different assumptions and each working from different paradigms (Eisenstadter & Henry, 2006; Gibbs, 1987; Taylor, Walton, & Young, 1973). Whereas mainstream criminological theories are the product of classical, neo-classical, and positivist thought and attend to explanations of crime and criminal behavior in terms of things such as social disorganization, social control or bonding, socialization, and anomie or strain, conversely critical criminological theories are the product of a Marxist paradigm and attend to explanations of things such as how crime and deviance are socially constructed, how and why people come to be labelled as criminal, and the significance of power and the imbalanced distribution of scarce resources on decisions and actions related to crime and criminal justice (Schwartz & Brownstein, 2016). As discussed above, historically drug policy, particularly in the US, has been oriented to controlling the behavior of people who are involved with specified though not all drugs in one way or another. The focus has been on establishing and enforcing laws and policies to control the behavior of individuals in relation to the production, distribution, and use of these drugs. Fortuitously for policymakers favoring control and enforcement, research questions derived from mainstream criminological theories are relevant to addressing drugs and the people involved with them as a problem in need of control over the behavior and activity of those people. Based on the Hobbesian assumption that people are by nature malevolent and need to be controlled so that they will obey the social norms of a civil society (Bohm & Vogel, 2011), such theories raise questions about things like conformity, deviance, and social control. They focus on the individual as the problem in need of control and the need of a powerful external force with legitimized authority to help those people to avoid deviance and to conform to normal and acceptable behavior. Unfortunately, this does not account for the fact that drugs are many different things, some of which are recognized as acceptable (e.g., the production, sale, and use of over-the-counter and prescription drugs) and others that are not (e.g., the production, sale, and use of drugs such as heroin that are arbitrarily and unscientifically classified as illegal for all people under all circumstances). Nor does it recognize that some drugs can be beneficial to the user 372

Critical criminology and drugs

and some drugs can be harmful, or some drugs might be beneficial in some circumstances and harmful in others. And it does not acknowledge that some people use drugs in order to reduce their likelihood of engaging in deviant behavior that might be related to perhaps a personal health condition or social forces beyond their control. Consequently, during the twentieth and early twenty-first century these mainstream criminological theories provided scholarly cover legitimating drug policies and programs that might have been doing more harm than good, or at least might have been disingenuous. Policies and programs that are established and enforced to control the involvement of people with drugs ignore the fact that producing, distributing, and using drugs are not inherently bad or deviant behaviors and are not necessarily or always harmful to individuals or society (Currie, 1993; Nadelmann, 2007; Trebach, 1982). And they are not necessarily best explained in terms of individual behavior or activity or even the ability or not of an individual to freely make a decision or take an action to be involved with particular drugs for particular reasons under particular circumstances. In 1967 Donald Cressey received the Edwin H. Sutherland Award from the American Society of Criminology. At the time he argued that criminology was on the verge of major shift and concluded that there is in the field of criminology “a growing awareness that criminality is not ‘in’ people” (Cressey, 1968, p. 5). A decade later he acknowledged that he had misspoken when he wrote, “In 1967, of course, no one knew that the Law Enforcement Administration [LEAA, established by the US government once it decided that crime should be recognized and treated as a serious social problem] was going to throw billions into a war on crime or that the so-called ‘research arm’ of LEAA, the National Institute of Law Enforcement and the Administration of Justice [later to become the National Institute of Justice, NIJ], was going to be more interested in financing studies about what to do about ‘the crime problem’ than in financing studies about why there is a ‘crime problem’ to worry about” (Cressey, 1978, p. 171). By his original assessment there should have been a shift in criminology and criminological theory from focusing on people and their behavior to a more interdisciplinary focus on what Cressey called “negotiated justice” (1978) involving an appreciation of the interrelatedness of the processes and products of doing justice and the people who receive and administer it. Instead, he argued, the attention of criminology and criminologists drifted away from a scientific quest for a better understanding and explanation of the causal context of crime and criminologists became technical assistants “to politicians bent on repressing crime” (Cressey, 1978, p. 173; see also, Berger & Kellner 1981; Merton, 1945). The point is that in the later decades of the twentieth century there was an opportunity for a new paradigm and a transformation in the focus of criminological theory to guide criminologists in the conduct of scientific studies of crime, and that opportunity was lost. The focus of mainstream criminology on the crime and the behavior of individual offenders was given new life by the creation of the LEAA by Presidential Commission in the US and the billions of dollars it made available for research specifically on crime as a problem. In terms of drug policy, the impact was even more troubling. The war on drugs was declared and those people and agencies with the legal authority to pass judgement and enforce laws targeted for control those people who were involved with the production, sale, or use only of those drugs that had been selected as unacceptable in all or some circumstances by all or some people. Having spent decades studying and trying to understand and explain drugs and society, Elliott Currie concluded that instead of being a benefit to society or to individual people, the war on drugs has “jammed our jails and prisons, immobilized the criminal justice system in many cities, swollen the ranks of the criminalized and unemployable minority poor, and diverted desperately needed resources from other social needs” (Currie, 1993, p. 3). That is, the war on drugs, as is the case with the war on crime, did more harm than good. 373

Henry H. Brownstein

In 1967 Cressey saw an opening for a reconceptualization and reorientation of criminological theory and research envisioning a shift from a criminology that viewed crime in terms of individual people and their behavior toward criminology as a study of the causes of crime and the processes and products of criminal justice. If not for LEAA and the direction it moved criminologists and criminology, this could have been an opportunity for critical theories of crime and justice to gain a more significant role in the field and the science. Writing about critical criminological theory, Schwartz and Hatty wrote, “All critical theorists share a common concern with class, or at least the economic structure of society, and the manner in which the inequalities of modern capitalist society influence crime” (2003, p. x). That is, had the shift that Cressey saw coming been realized and had it been given recognition by policymakers, then the work of critical criminologists could have produced research and informed policy in the direction of trying to understand things like the relationship between identity and experience, power and the relevance of imbalanced access to resources and opportunity, and the potential of peaceful rather than belligerent approaches to resolving conflicts in society. The problems related to the fact that this shift did not occur were exacerbated for drug crimes and drug policy because not only did the focus remain on those individuals who produced, distributed, or used drugs themselves but it limited the opportunity to raise questions about how reality had been constructed in an unscientific and illogical way that made drug involvement into one of the most serious crimes of the century. The following considers what might have been different had critical rather than mainstream criminological theory been the predominant paradigm when crack cocaine first appeared in American cities in the middle of the 1980s. In the early 1980s there was more cocaine available on the world market than could be sold to all consumers (Fagan & Chin, 1989). Part of the problem was that powder cocaine was very expensive on a retail level and there were not enough users with the wealth necessary to purchase it. Manufacturers and distributors may or may not have done a formal market analysis, but they knew that there was a large population of drug users in American cities who might be interested in cocaine, if they could afford it (see Williams, 1989). Crack cocaine helped solve that problem. It allowed sellers to package cocaine in a small, single-use form that could be sold for a small amount of money. Naturally, this is an oversimplification, but the point is that the cocaine industry opened a new market during the 1980s. It was a particularly interesting market because as a product crack had no history. Different from other drugs sold to urban poor users, such as heroin or marijuana, there was no need for the seller to have a large capital investment, crack is relatively easy to manufacture from a small amount of powder cocaine, and crack quickly established a reputation for giving a quick pleasurable high, so crack became the business of entrepreneurial and heavily armed young boys who operated independent of any established hierarchy or authority (Bourgois, 1995; Brownstein, 1996; Inciardi, 2007; Johnson, Hamid, & Sanabria, 1992; Williams,1989). It was not surprising, then, that given an absence of adult supervision, lots of armament, and a product that brought anxious consumers back to sellers over and over again, some violence was associated with the crack markets, though not necessarily by crack users (Goldstein et al., 1989). The violence came at a time of growing violent crime in cities and both the media and public policymakers became concerned about crack. Keep in mind that crack cocaine by definition is a form of cocaine. Very simply, the National Institute on Drug Abuse defines cocaine as, “a powerfully addictive stimulant drug made from the leaves of the coca plant native to South America” (www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/cocaine). Giving testimony on April 29, 2009 before the US Senate Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs, the Committee on the Judiciary, Nora Volkow, Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse told the members of Congress that cocaine powder is a hydrochloride salt that can be ingested as a powder or as a diluted solution through nose or mouth or even intravenously, and crack cocaine is a base form of cocaine 374

Critical criminology and drugs

that has not been neutralized by an acid and can be ingested by heating, vaporizing, and smoking. She told them that the use of cocaine in any form can be a health problem and that it appears that the route of ingestion has some impact on health consequences for the user. She specifically told the Committee, “Regarding specific questions surrounding powder versus crack cocaine, research consistently shows that the form of the drug is not the crucial variable; rather it is the route of administration that accounts for the differences in its behavioral effects.” The title of the testimony by the NIDA Director to Congress was, “Restoring Fairness to Federal Sentencing: Addressing the Crack-Powder Disparity.” The question of fairness that the title is raising refers to a law based in 1986 in response to fear, lack of knowledge, unsubstantiated popular media accounts, and the fact that most cocaine powder users at the time were middleclass white people and most crack cocaine users were poor black people (see Brownstein 1991a, 1991b), the Narcotics Penalties and Enforcement Act. Under this law a crack dealer convicted of selling 5 grams of crack would receive an equivalent sentence to a powder cocaine dealer convicted of selling 500 grams of powder—a disparity of 100 to 1 (Public Law 99–570; October 27, 1986). Almost two decades after the law was passed, even Alfred Blumstein, who was the Director of Science and Technology for the original President’s Commission on Crime in 1967, could see the imbalance in this law. He wrote, “No other feature of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines has been viewed more critically than the 100:1 crack-powder cocaine disparity built into the guidelines because of the requirement in the Federal Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986. The disparity is particularly distressing because crack defendants are primarily black and powder defendants are primarily white and Hispanic” (Blumstein, 2003, p. 87). More recently there have been efforts to reduce the disparity, but not to eliminate it.

Critical criminology and the shifting landscape of drug policy In light of the negative outcomes of earlier drug policy in the US, such as mass incarceration and the inequitable distribution of sanctions and penalties for drug users distinguished by characteristics such as race and age and by their choice of drug, the drug policy landscape is again shifting in the early twenty-first century. The question is whether or not this time policymakers will reconsider their approach to drugs and the people who produce, distribute, and use them. This could again be a time for new policies that could be guided by different theories. Critical theorists who recognize and seize the opportunity could guide research that raises questions about things like the role of power and authority or the imbalanced distribution of both resources and sanctions based on social characteristics such as race and gender in the design and implementation of drug policy.

References Anderson, J.E. (2011). Public Policymaking (7th edition). Boston: Wadsworth. Berger, P.L., and Kellner, H.K. (1981). Sociology Reinterpreted—An Essay on Method and Vocation. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books. Bewley-Taylor, D.R. (2003). “Challenging the UN drug conventions: problems and possibilities.” The International Journal of Drug Policy 14:171–9. Biden, J.R., Jr. (1990). Fighting Drug Abuse: A National Strategy. Prepared by the Majority Staffs of The Senate Judiciary Committee and the International Narcotics Control Caucus, January. Birkland, T.A. (2011). An Introduction to the Policy Process—Theories, Concepts, and Models of Public Policy Making (3rd edition). Armonk, NY: ME Sharpe. Blumer, H. (1969). Symbolic Interactionism—Perspective and Method. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Blumstein, A. (2003). “The notorious 100:1 crack: powder disparity—the data tell us that it is time to restore the balance.” Federal Sentencing Reporter 16:87–92. 375

Henry H. Brownstein

BMA Board of Science (2013). Drugs of Dependence—The Role of Medical Professionals. London: British Medical Association. Bohm, R.M., and Vogel, B.L. (2011). A Primer on Crime and Delinquency Theory. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Bourgois, P. (1995). In Search of Respect—Selling Crack in El Barrio. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brownstein, H.H. (1991a). “The media and the construction of random drug violence.” Social Justice 18:85–103. Brownstein, H.H. (1991b). “Left realism and drug law enforcement.” The Critical Criminologist 3:1–2, 11–12. Brownstein, H.H. (1996). The Rise and Fall of a Violent Crime Wave: Crack Cocaine and the Social Construction of a Crime Problem. Guilderland, NY: Harrow and Heston. Brownstein, H.H. (2013). Contemporary Drug Policy. London: Routledge. Brownstein, H.H. (2016a). “Drugs and violent crime.” In H.H. Brownstein (ed.), The Handbook of Drugs and Society, pp. 371–86. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons. Brownstein, H.H. (2016b). “The shifting landscape of drug policy and the need for innovative research.” Criminology and Public Policy 15:837–41. Caulkins, J.P., Hawken, A., Kilmer, B., and Kleiman, M. (2011). Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know. New York: Oxford University Press. Chou, R., Ballantyne, J.C., Fanciullo, G.J., Fine, P.G., and Miaskowski, C. (2009). “Research gaps on use of opioids for chronic noncancer pain: findings from a review of the evidence for an American Pain Society and American Academy of Pain Medicine Clinical Practice Guideline.” The Journal of Pain 10:147–59. Cressey, D.R. (1968). “Negotiated justice.” Criminologica 5:5–16. Cressey, D.R. (1978). “Criminological theory, social science, and the repression of crime.” Criminology 16:171–91. Currie, E. (1993). Reckoning—Drugs, the Cities, and the American Future. New York: Hill and Wang. DuPont, R.L., and Voth, E.A. (1995). “Drug legalization, harm reduction, and drug policy.” Annual Internal Medicine 123:461–5. Durkheim, E. (1938). The Rules of Sociological Method (8th edition). Tr. by S.A. Solovay and J.H. Mueller and edited by G.E.G. Catlin. New York: The Free Press. Eisenstadter, W.J., and Henry, S. (2006). Criminological Theory: An Analysis of its Underlying Assumptions. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Erickson, P.G., and Hathaway, A.D. (2010). “Normalization and harm reduction: research avenues and policy agendas.” International Journal of Drug Policy 21:137–9. Fagan, J., and Chin, K.L. (1989). “Initiation into crack and cocaine: a tale of two epidemics.” Contemporary Drug Problems 16:579–618. Falco, M. (1996). “U.S. drug policy: addicted to failure.” Foreign Policy 102:120–33. Gibbs, J.P. (1987). “The state of criminological theory.” Criminology 25:821–40. Goldstein, P.J., Brownstein, H.H., Ryan, P.J., and Bellucci, P.A. (1989). “Crack and homicide in New York City, 1988: a conceptually based event analysis.” Contemporary Drug Problems Winter:651–87. Goode, E. (2012). Drugs in American Society. Boston: McGraw Hill. Health and Human Services (HHS) (2016). Facing Addiction in America: The Surgeon General’s Report on Alcohol, Drugs, and Health. Office of the Surgeon General, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, November. Herring, R., Thom, B., Beccaria, F., Kolind, T., and Moskalewicz, J. (2010). “Alcohol harm reduction in Europe.” In T. Rhodes and D. Hedrich (eds), Harm Reduction: Evidence, Impacts and Challenges, pp. 275–301. EMCDDA Monograph (10). Lisbon, Spain: European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction. Huxley, A. (1954). The Doors of Perception. New York: Harper and Row. Inciardi, J.A. (2007). War on Drugs IV: The Continuing Saga of the Mysteries and Miseries of Intoxication, Addiction, Crime and Public Policy (4th edition). Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Inciardi, J.A., and Harrison, L.D. (eds) (2000). Harm Reduction—National and International Perspectives. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Johnson, B.D., Hamid, A., and Sanabria, H. (1992). “Emerging models of crack distribution.” In T. Miecz kowski (ed.), Drugs, Crime, and Social Policy: Research, Issues, and Concerns, pp. 56–78. Boston: Allyn and Bacon. Kalso, E., and Vainio, A. (1990). “Morphine and oxycodone hydrochloride in the management of cancer pain.” Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics 47:639–46. Kuhn, T. (1970). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

376

Critical criminology and drugs

Lewin, L. (1931). Phantastica: Narcotic and Stimulating Drugs: Their Use and Abuse. Tr. by P.H.A. Wirth. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co. Ltd. Marlatt, G.A. (1996). “Harm reduction: come as you are.” Addictive Behaviors 21: 779–88. Mather, L.E. (1995). “1994 John J. Bonica Lecture: the clinical effects of morphine pharmacology.” Regional Anesthesia 20:263–82. McBride, D.C., and Terry-McElrath, Y. (2016). “Drug policy in the United States.” In H.H. Brownstein (ed.). The Handbook of Drugs and Society, pp. 574–93. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell. Merton, R.K. (1945). “Role of the intellectual in public bureaucracy.” Social Forces 23:405–15. Merton, R.K., and Moss, J.Z. (1985). “Basic research and its potentials of relevance.” The Mount Sinai Journal of Medicine 52:679–84. Musto, D. (1991). “Opium, cocaine, and marijuana in American history.” Scientific American 265:40–7. Musto, D. (1999). The American Disease (3rd edition). New York: Oxford University Press. Nadelmann, E.A. (2007). “Drugs.” Foreign Policy 162:24–6, 28, 30. National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) (2016). Health, United States, 2015: With Special Feature on Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities. Hyattsville, MD: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. O’Malley, P., and Valverde, M. (2004). “Pleasure, freedom and drugs: the uses of ‘pleasure’ in liberal governance of drug use and alcohol consumption.” Sociology 38:25–42. Reisman, S.E. (2011). “New lead for pain treatment.” Nature 471:458–9. Reuter, P.H. (1992). “Hawks ascendant: the punitive trend of American drug policy.” Daedalus 121:15–52. Riley, D., Sawka, E., Conley, P., Hewitt, D., Mitic, W., Poulin, C., Room, R., Single, E., and Topp, J. (1999). “Harm reduction: concepts and practice. a policy discussion paper.” Substance Use and Misuse 34:9–24. Room, R., and Reuter, P. (2011). “How well do international drug conventions protect public health?” The Lancet 279:84–91. Rosmarin, A., and Eastwood, N. (2012). A Quiet Revolution: Drug Decriminalisation Policies in Practice Across the Globe. London: Release, accessed April 11, 2016 www.tni.org/en/issues/decriminalization/ item/3631-a-quiet-revolution. Sacco, L.N. (2014). Drug Enforcement in the United States: History, Policy, and Trends. CRS Report Prepared for Members and Committees of Congress. R43749. Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service. Schwartz, M.D., and Brownstein, H.H. (2016). “Critical criminology.” In A.R. Piquero (ed.), The Handbook of Criminological Theory, pp. 301–17. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley & Sons, Inc. Schwartz, M.D. and Hatty, S.E. (2003). Controversies in Critical Criminology. Cincinnati, OH: Anderson. Taylor, I.R., Walton, P., and Young, J. (1973). The New Criminology: For a Social Theory of Deviance. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Taylor, S., Buchanan, J., and Ayres, T. (2016). “Prohibition, privilege and the drug apartheid: the failure of drug policy reform to address the underlying fallacies of drug prohibition.” Criminology and Criminal Justice, published online before print, February 22, 2016, doi: 10.1177/1748895816633274. Trebach, A.S. (1982). The Heroin Solution. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Weil, A. (1972). The Natural Mind—An Investigation of Drugs and Higher Consciousness. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Weisheit, R.A. (1990). “Civil war on drugs.” In R.A. Weisheit (ed.), Drugs, Crime and the Criminal Justice System, pp. 1–10. Cincinnati: Anderson. Williams, T. (1989). The Cocaine Kids: The Inside Story of a Teenage Drug Ring. New York: Da Capo Press. Wisotsky, S. (1986). Breaking the Impasse in the War on Drugs. New York: Greenwood. World Health Organization (WHO) (2007). Access to Controlled Medications Programme. WHO/PSM/OSM/ 2007 2. Geneva, Switzerland: WHO.

377

31 Critical perspectives on urban street gangs Simon Hallsworth

Since Thrasher’s pioneering research was conducted on urban street gangs in Chicago in the early twentieth century (Thrasher, 1927), criminologists since have paid considerable attention to the many questions posed by their presence: How are they to be defined? What is it that they do? How many of them are there? How do they emerge and how do they reproduce themselves? Are they changing and, not least, how should control agents respond to their presence? If we consider how criminologists have sought to address these questions in the decades since Thrasher then one can, for the sake of ease, draw a heuristic distinction between those approaches we might want to term ‘critical’ and which will form the focus of this chapter, and distinguish these from those approaches which are more ‘administrative’, state-centered and mainstream. Given that critical criminology defines itself both by its opposition to and difference from the methods and approaches typically embraced by state centered administrative criminologists, prior to studying what is distinctive about critical criminological approaches to street gangs, it pays to briefly consider what is distinctive about the administrative tradition and its approach as a precursor.

Administrative criminiology and the gang Administrative criminology is an umbrella term I will use to classify an approach to urban street gangs that conform broadly to the following assumptions. It views itself as a discipline which utilizes scientific methods in order to produce objective facts about urban street gangs. The scientific approach it adopts is predominantly (but not exclusively) positivistic in orientation and this is expressed practically in an approach that embraces quantitative research methods, particularly surveys, as the basis for establishing the objective ‘truth’ about gangs. In practice this orientation resolves itself into the production of numerous surveys distributed to youth cohorts from which statistics are abstracted attesting to the number of gang members, the type of urban street gang they belong to (they come, apparently, in different forms) and which throw light on the characteristics of gang members such as their age, ethnicity, gender; as well as identifying various characteristics allegedly peculiar to gang members (such as their relationship to authority, history of violence and so on). Given that criminology is predominantly – though by no means exclusively – a utilitarian discipline orientated since its inception towards the bio-political task of helping the state 378

Urban street gangs

identify its criminal outside (with the wider ambition of effectively enabling its control), most work on urban street gangs conducted within this administrative tradition can be defined by relation to this mission. That is, to help the state identify and understand gangs with the ambition of enabling their control. Given this orientation, gangs are not studied within this tradition as social movements we might want to understand because they are interesting in and of themselves, but as social problems which need to be understood in order to be suppressed. This also explains why the dominant focus the administrative tradition applies to the study of street gangs is one that foregrounds criminality where this is defined on an a-priori basis. The Euro-gang definition of an urban street gang exemplifies this approach. A street gang (or a troublesome youth group corresponding to a street gang elsewhere) is any durable, street-oriented youth group whose own identity includes involvement in illegal activity. If this tradition shares with the wider mass media, a perspective in which the urban street gang is presumed to be a potent threat that needs to be suppressed, this is a tradition that nevertheless aspires to assess and measure the threat in a cold scientific manner and in a way that typically eschews the often lurid sensational coverage of gangs typically found in the mass media. It is worth bearing these features of the administrative tradition in mind when we now turn to consider the defining hallmarks of more ‘critical’ approaches to the study of urban street gangs. This is a generic name I will deploy for an approach to urban street gangs which marks a sharp epistemic break with the underlying assumptions and methodological orientation of administrative gang criminology discussed above. In what follows, I will trace out these differences and explore in so doing what is distinctive about this tradition and its approach.

Critical criminological approaches to urban street gangs Let us begin with the question of politics. Though more administrative approaches rarely articulate a particular political standpoint, aspiring as they do to ‘scientific objectivity’ it is nevertheless the case that they are articulated to dominant political programmes and the law and order agendas implicit to them. In the contemporary world order where gangs are defined as a political enemy; where states such as the USA and the UK have initiated a barrage of programmes designed to suppress them, administrative criminology positions itself very much as a servant of the state, providing it with the strategic knowledge it needs to go about the business of gang suppression in an informed way. More than that, it is often well paid to do so. Critical perspectives on urban street gangs are beholden to a different political standpoint, one informed by more Marxist, radical, sometimes feminist and anarchist traditions. This is not a tradition that is remotely state centered, it is typically anti-state and very hostile to the forms of anti-gang suppression that have (to cite the USA as a case study) seen tens of thousands of gang members arrested, incarcerated or deported and subject, more generally, to an incredible battery of anti-gang suppression tactics. If we consider the source of this hostility to the state and to its gang suppression programmes this has to be explored, in the first instance, by reference to the particular relation more critical commenters have to urban street gangs and by reference to the forces they identify as responsible for their emergence and reproduction. Whereas the gang is defined and understood within administrative approaches as a social problem predominantly caused by defective gang members, within more critical approaches a more sympathetic and appreciative approach is typically found. Gangs within this perspective 379

Simon Hallsworth

are not presumed to be invariably criminal but complex problem solving units whose members come together to resolve (not always well or successfully) the wider contradictions they experience living and surviving in very difficult social conditions, including areas subject to multiple deprivation and poverty – the areas where gangs are typically found. While violence can certainly figure in the adaptive responses gangs initiate to their circumstances, critical criminologists typically resist defining gangs solely by reference to criminality or violence. They point towards and highlight instead other aspects of gang becoming which are not criminal. Gangs, from this perspective, are composed of people who find comradeship; who gain intense pleasures through the edgework they do, dwelling as they do on the border between the licit and the illicit; in Goffman’s terms, ‘by being where the action is’. Far from being simply pathological beings drawn to crime, from within a critical perspective gang members are conceived as creative people who come together to obtain the very things mainstream society values but which it does not, given the inequitable social relations that characterize it, deliver. These include, not least, the desire to have fun, gain respect and make money in a world where well paid work is difficult to find. In approaching gangs in this way, Critical criminologists aspire to ‘humanize the deviant’ to use Stan Cohen’s expression, by bringing to the foreground of enquiry the lived phenomenological reality of gang existence as gang members live and express this. Critical approaches, as such, aspire to give voices to the suppressed and marginalized, reclaiming so doing their own sense of agency and purpose. Far then from being represented as a faceless cluster of statistical risk factors, gang members appear in critical discourse as human agents who make choices, often difficult and not necessarily right ones. Far from unconditionally seeing gangs as the problem, they are also invoked as actors who, if approached in the right way, might be part of a solution to the problems they pose. In part, this sympathetic orientation towards urban street gangs is shaped by the fact that gang members are not constructed within this tradition as simply defective psychotically inclined individuals, but as people whose actions are rational by the standards of the social field in which they exist. As critical researchers show, gangs don’t simply emerge anywhere, their appearance is conditioned by particular environments, particularly environments subject to multiple deprivation and what Vigil termed ‘multiple marginality’. As studies in the USA have shown, gangs appear amongst the urban poor and reproduce themselves in the face of extraordinary efforts on the part of the state to liquidate them, including mass incarceration and deportation policies. Far from seeing gangs as pathological units, within critical criminological perspectives they are conceived instead as an emergent product of their social field, where the forms of marginalization gangs experience are the outcomes of wider socio-economic conditions and political programmes associated with inequitable class and ethnically divided societies that elect to systematically criminalize and marginalize their urban poor. Methodologically, critical criminologists interested in urban street gangs eschew the kind of quantitative research methods favored by more administrative traditions in favor of a more qualitatively and ethnographically engaged approach with their subject matter. The reasons why more quantitative approaches are rejected and why critical criminologists prefer ethnography bears consideration. In part the problem critical criminologists have with quantitative research is that it is typically considered to dehumanize its subject matter. Rather than producing objective facts about gangs it has been criticized for its production of what Jock Young terms ‘voodoo statistics’. Such a criminology, he argues, is ‘denatured and desiccated’: Its actors inhabit a world where they are driven to crime by social or psychological deficits, or make opportunistic choices in the criminal marketplace. They are either miserable or mundane. They are, furthermore, digital creatures of quantity, they obey probabilistic laws 380

Urban street gangs

of deviancy – they can be represented by the statistical symbolism of lamda, chi, and sigma, their behaviour can be captured by the intricacies of regression analysis and equation. (Young, 2004, p. 13) This description captures well the representation the empirically driven administrative gang research tradition too often presents of gangs. In the reduction of complex lives to statistical equations, so the cultural richness of difficult complex lives are reduced (in a research gaze) to little more than arid statistics with the consequence that people become reproduced within this discourse as little more than walking clusters of de-contextualized variables and ‘risk factors’. Critical gang researchers today not only reject this positivistic line of reasoning, they take a lead from the Birmingham school (Hall, 1976) who conceived youth subcultures as a rich source of cultural production and saw in this culture an attempt to dramatize and symbolically address the lived contradictions group members experienced. To gain access to the lived reality of complex gang lives, therefore, critical researchers not only reject statistical analysis (and the research at a distance this implies), they get up close to their objects of study and embrace in so doing an ethnographic approach predicated on direct observation and engagement in gang lives. And it is through thick ethnography that this tradition seeks to reveal the often complex and contradictory, often messy, sometimes dysfunctional world of gangs. This more sympathetic approach also enables this research tradition to see what is typically lost in more administrative approaches and that is a world populated by human subjects who author their own history – though not necessarily with tools of their own making. What this ethnographically sensitive approach also facilitates and which again starkly differentiates it from more administrative traditions, is an appreciation of the less rational and more affective dimensions of social action. Influenced particularly by the phenomenological tradition of Jack Katz (but also Bataille), critical gang researchers, particularly those who sit within a cultural criminological tradition, remain sensitive to the affective dimensions of social action. Gang members, in this sense, are not studied as some kind of misguided rational actor who preplans their lives but as sensuous beings whose actions are often less preplanned but situationally determined; whose acts are driven by pleasure in transgression, seduced, as Katz argued, by the ‘seductions of evil’; participants in what Presdee called ‘the carnival of crime’. This leads researchers into directions rarely if ever explored by more administrative traditions. It leads critical criminologists to study gang culture and style, to consider, what following Goffman (again), we might term their social presentation of self in everyday life: how they walk, how they dress, how they feel; the sensuous burden of life lived precariously on the edge. Critical researchers then are sensitive to issues of culture and subjectivity but with an appreciation as well of the deeper molar forces such as ghettoization, mass incarceration, poverty etc. which condition and frame the choices gang members make. Critical researchers however don’t simply work at the intersection of the macro and micro levels of analysis; they also remain very sensitive to meso level issues of locality and space. Gangs, after all, are not only social movements whose nature is shaped by abstract molar forces bearing in on them, but by an array of more local forces the intersection of which also has to be understood. Gangs in this sense are not simply members of a wider society or a particular economy, they are part of communities in particular settings, with distinctive histories and biographies whose culture is in turn and in part reproduced in gang culture. Brotherton’s ethnography of the Latin Kings brings this aspect of gang life brilliantly to light in his consideration of the texts produced by the Kings and his elaboration of how these texts both impart and reproduce the ethno culture of their parent communities. Alistair Frazier’s more recent ethnography of gang culture in Glasgow, again documents how the lives of the gang members are shaped by the politics of the spaces and places they inhabit. As he shows, 381

Simon Hallsworth

gang lives unfold in particular places and thus to understand the gang the researcher also has to be sensitive to the way city spaces are constructed and not least changed over time. If administrative research (like the mass media) typically positions the gang member as an outsider who preys upon the communities from which they derive, the critical tradition identifies elements of gang identity that shake this cozy populist assumption. Gangs are part of the parent communities from which they emerge, not inevitably their enemy; gang culture far from being wholly oppositional to and antagonistic towards their parent communities, are often infused by and reproduce core elements of them. One of the most important contributions that critical gang research has made to our understanding of gang phenomena has been to conduct research that contests popular mythology about gangs by revealing truths that are often different and typically less sensational. Feminist inspired research into young women’s involvement in urban street gangs exemplifies this strand of critical enquiry. Though predominantly a male driven phenomenon, women have always been involved with urban street gangs in various ways. Understanding how they are related however has proved contentious. One recurrent theme – and one typically reproduced by the mass media – is that girl gangs are on the rise and that a new species of ‘she-male’ gangsters have evolved who are every bit as dangerous as their male counterparts. A claim that has been assiduously studied by critical criminologists such as Susan Bachelor and Tara Young, both of whom have conducted extensive research into the lives of young women in a street context. As Tara Young’s work made clear, women could and would group together. However the groupings they typically inhabited did not, she argued, have the hallmarks of urban street gangs. Nor was the relation to violence and criminality quite the same as for male gang members. Both Susan Bachelor and Tara Young found no confirming evidence to substantiate the ‘she-male’ gangster thesis. What they did uncover in their work with young women however were lives lived in often desperate conditions. What their work also exposed was that young women did not fit the popular stereotypes too often ascribed to them. They were not ‘gangster moll’s nor were they the passive victims of male violence but active agents in their own right. One of the key features that distinguishes critical gang research from more administrative approaches is in the attention this tradition gives to study and document the often disturbing ways in which the term gang is constructed by the mass media and other right thinking people. Why, this tradition asks, do gangs appear to occasion such hostility and hatred when a more sober and proportionate study of them might not provoke such extreme responses? How and why do gangs come to be blamed, as Jock Young wryly observes, for just about every manifestation of urban violence when a more proportionate examination of their behavior might justify less sensational explanations. This concern over the social representation of gangs has led critical researchers to pay close attention to the way the term gang is evoked in popular discourse; to attend to the nature of the often sensational ‘gang talk’ produced by an ever expanding army of ‘gang talkers’; to pay attention to the intersection of forces that provoke such sensational coverage. As Dwight Conquergood observes, the term gang is not an unproblematic neutral descriptor of a reality out there. Before they tattoo their bodies with gang insignia, urban youth are always already inscribed and branded by stigmatising images of poverty, prejudice and pathology, which are produced by the official discourse of the media, legal system and public policy institutions – those authorities and experts who have the power to know, name and label. Gangs are constructed in public discourse as the cause, effect and aberrant response to social disorder and urban decay. The demonised figure of the violent gang banger is the sensational centre piece in 382

Urban street gangs

the self-righteous morality play called the ‘urban underclass’ currently playing in mainstream media and social policy institutions. (Conquergood, 1994, p. 53) The term, as such, appears both in popular but also administrative approaches as what Katz and Jackobsen termed ‘a transcendental evil’ into which wholly disparate social problems could be unproblematically folded. This can be illustrated, not least, by attending the many things urban street gangs have been blamed for. Take the UK as a case study. Throughout the twentieth century, this was a society that was not generally known for having a gang problem. This would all change in the twenty-first century when the gang was sensationally discovered by the mass media and various academics. While not disputing that gangs exist, what is interesting and moot to this discussion, is how quickly gangs came to be associated with and blamed for just about all forms of urban violence. In this guise, as folk devils incarnate, they were quickly blamed for orchestrating the drugs trade, most serious violence, the sexual abuse of women, raping mothers, dangerous dogs, orchestrating the urban riots of 2011 and, not least, of ‘breaking Britain’ at least according to one prominent government minister. While not disputing that gangs and gang members have some involvement with all of the above, when subject to more sober critical analysis, what is clear is that problems associated with issues like gun crime, dangerous dogs, sexual abuse, and riots not only have causes that extend beyond the gang, these problems often do not require invoking the term ‘gang’ at all in order to explain the problem. How then to make sense of this promiscuous ‘gang talk’ produced by a disturbing and not least proliferating array of ‘gang talkers’. This is an issue critical perspectives on urban streeet gangs have long considered. For commentators like Conquergood and Alexander, in part the problematic use of the term ‘gang’ is bound up with the racial package the term has come to possess in the course of its American history and from which it is difficult to disconnect. The term as such does not designate people in general, it is inextricably bound up with images of the underclass where the underclass in question is typically imagined as black or Latino. And this also helps make sense of why urban street gangs are not only sensationally discovered but incessantly discovered in and among minority ethnic groups. Other critical commentators, myself included, have sought to explore gang talk by studying how the discourses that surround it are structured. Considered from this perspective, gang talk appears less to designate street realities, but constitutes instead a strange phantasmagorical discourse about monsters imagined to gestate and reproduce within the body of society they in turn prey upon. What gang talkers do in the discourse they produce is simply instantiate a further iteration of this terrible truth. And so they become blamed for ever more chaos and destruction: Where once they were small they are fantasied today as huge proliferating and expanding. Where once disorganised, they are now fantasied as evolving elaborate corporate structures; gaining as they go ever more ‘new weapons of choice’: dangerous dogs, rape, and so on. Gang talk moreover appears to be a discourse impervious to empirical refutation which is something else that critical research has enquired into. Take, for example, the claim that urban street gangs ‘caused’ the riots that occurred in the UK in 2011. A claim that appeared within hours of the riots occurring, trotted out by the then prime minister David Cameron; accepted unquestionably by the mass media and not least the odd academic; and this is where it gets strange because even when it became clear to the government in the face of pretty irrefutable evidence that gangs did not cause the riots, the government’s first policy response to riots not caused by gangs was to initiate and fund a huge gang suppression campaign. Gang talk then has an appeal that is impervious to truth claims. What it does appeal to and appears to find a deep resonance with are deeply inscribed ontological insecurities people hold 383

Simon Hallsworth

about demon hordes invading the body of the good society. And it is these fears that are harnessed and expressed through gang talking narratives. In exploring the wider social discourse around gangs, critical researchers aspire not only to re-impose the reality principle into a world where it is typically lost arguing, for example, that the gang is not the monster you are fantasising, or, this problem cannot be reduced to a plenitude of gangs running amok; they are also concerned to prevent the criminalising consequences that this demonising rhetoric can potentially have for young people so labelled. As Brotherton notes, by constituting the gang as a social enemy, or in Cohen’s terms a ‘folk devil’, so the state and control agents have been able to justify developing an extraordinary range of punitive measures to suppress them. These have included policies that allow police to disperse gang members, give gang members aggravated sentences, strip them of social rights and subject them to ordinances which prevent them meeting friends or wearing particular items of clothing. One of the consequences of this war on gangs is that it has helped drive forward the huge explosive growth in the American prison population. It has also helped justify the United States deportation policies which have led tens of thousands of alleged gang members to be evicted from the US and sent back to countries where they face extreme risks and dangers. Which takes us back once again to the question of the politics. In a world that demonises gangs and which conspires of the basis of a rich and disturbing fantasy life at their liquidation, what critical criminology aspires to do is not deny the reality of the bad things gangs and gang members do, but to in effect put the gang in its place. They aspire to draw attention to the fantasies that drive forward popular fears and which too often provoke disproportionately punitive responses. Critical criminologists aspire to challenge the lethal policies which are shaped by gang talking narratives and offer in their stead a more progressive agenda for intervening in and working with urban street gangs.

Conclusion Let me conclude here by putting critical criminological approaches to urban street gangs in their place before briefly considering some of the criticisms this tradition has received, not least, by other self-professed progressive commentators. Despite producing what is arguably the most theatrically rich and ethnographically thick and detailed examination of urban street gangs, critical criminology, though popular among many young academics and, not least, students, has made few inroads in terms of informing wider gang policy and practice. Administrative criminology and the numbers game its protagonists play is arguably far more influential, both within the academy and with government, not least because the concerns of these two constituencies are far more aligned. Both see the same problem: The gang. Both conspire at its suppression. Why though does critical gang research tend to be ignored? One explanantion that has been posed by some who, like John Pitts, position themselves within a ‘left realist’ position is that it (a) denies the reality of the violence gangs are implicated in; (b) it presents an overly romanticized view of these gangs and gang members; (c) is overly wedded to a social constructionist perspective; and (d) it offers as such no meaningful policy prescriptions for addressing the real problems gangs pose to society and each other. In many respects the claim that critical perspectives are in denial is something of a straw man argument. Conceiving of gangs as something more than simply criminal organizations is not to deny that gangs and gang members can be violent. Nor do approaches which aspire to look beyond the gang to understand many of the problems currently blamed on gangs, constitute a denial discourse either. Nor can the ethnographic tradition around which critical perspectives are largely constructed be blamed for romanticizing urban street gangs. To humanize them is 384

Urban street gangs

not to make any claim that the groups in question are capable of resolving the predicaments that propel them into existence, or to argue that the choices gang members make might not be bad ones. What remains one of the key strengths of the critical tradition is that it acknowledges in ways no other tradition does the fact that the deviant is always as much a social construction as something that simply and unproblematically exists out there. And it accomplishes this precisely by attending closely and assiduously to often sensational and disturbing discourses that surround phenomena like urban street gangs. In the context of criminalizing societies such as the UK and the USA, what critical research helps accomplish is precisely its instantiation of the reality principle: gangs, it argues, are not quite the monsters they are made to be; problems blamed on gangs often have different causes and call for different solutions. This is a necessary message and a political one. The problem remains however that gang talk in its various forms, remains tragically truth resistant and that is also why the message critical researchers relay too often tends to be ignored.

Bibliography Alexander, C.E. (2008). Rethinking ‘Gangs’: Gangs, Youth Violence and Public Policy. London: The Runnymede Trust. Batchelor, S.A. (2001). “The myth of girl gangs.” Criminal Justice Matters, 43: 26–27. Batchelor, S. (2009). “Girls, gangs and violence: assessing the evidence.” Probation Journal, 56(4): 399–414. Bracchi, P. (2008). “The feral sex: the terrifying rise of violent girl gangs.” Daily Mail, from www.dailymail. co.uk/news/article-566919/The-Feral-Sex-The-terrifying-rise-violent-girl-gangs.html. Brotherton, D. and L. Barrios (2004). The Almighty Latin King and Queen Nation: Street Politics and the Transformation of a New York City Gang. New York: Columbia University Press. Cohen, S. (1972). Folk Devils and Moral Panics: The Creation of the Mods and Rockers. London: MacGibbon and Kee. Conquergood, D. (1994). “Homeboys and hoods: gang communication and cultural space”, in L. R. Frey (Ed.) Group Communication in Context: Studies of Natural Groups. New Jersey: Lawrence Erbaum Associates, INC. Goffman, E. (1982). Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face to Face Behavior. New York: Pantheon. Hagedorn, J. and P. Macon (1988). People and Folks: Gangs, Crime, and the Underclass in a Rustbelt City. Chicago: Lake View Press. Haggadorn, J. (2008). World of Gangs: Armed Young Men and Gangsta Culture. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. Hall, S. (Ed.) (1976). Resistance Through Rituals: Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain. London: Hutchinson [for] the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, University of Birmingham. Hallsworth, S. (2011). “Gangland Britain: Realites, fantasies and industry”, in Youth in Crisis: ‘Gangs’, Territoriality and Violence, B. Goldson (Ed.) London: Routledge. Hallsworth, S. and D. Brotherton (2011). Reducing Riots to Gangs: A Critique and a Warning. London: The Runnymede Trust. Hallsworth, S. and T. Young (2008). “Gang talk and gang talkers: a critique.” Crime, Media, Culture, 4(2): 175–195. Katz, J. (1988). Seductions of Crime: Moral and Sensual Attractions in Doing Evil. New York: Basic Books. Katz, J. and J. Jackson (1997). “The criminologists gang”, in Blackwell Companion to Criminology, C. Sumner (Ed.) London: Blackwell. Klein, M. W. (1995). The American Street Gang: Its Nature, Prevalence, and Control. New York: Oxford University Press. Klein, M. W. (2001). The Eurogang Paradox: Street Gangs and Youth Groups in the U.S. and Europe. Dordrecht, Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Lee, A. (2008). “Mob violence: the rise of girl gangs”, Daily Express, from www.express.co.uk/posts/ view/45443. Lyng, S. (2005). Edgework: The Sociology of Risk Taking. New York and London: Routledge. Pitts, J. (2011). “Mercenary territory: are youth gangs really a problem?”, in Youth in Crisis: Gangs, Territory and Violence, B. Goldson (Ed.) London: Routledge. 385

Simon Hallsworth

Pitts, J. (2012). “Reluctant criminologists: Criminology, Ideology and the violent street gang, Youth and Policy, 109: 27–45. Presdee, M. (2000). Cultural Criminology and the Carnival of Crime. London: Routledge. Thrasher, F.M. (1927). The Gang: A Study of 1,313 Gangs in Chicago. Chicago, IL; University of Chicago Press. Vigil, J.D. (1988). Barrio Gangs: Street Life and Identity in Southern California. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. Young, J. (2004). “Voodoo criminology and the numbers game”, in J. Ferrell, K. Hayward, W. Morrison and M. Presdee (Eds) Cultural Criminology Unleashed. London: Glass House. Young, T. (2009). “Girls and gangs: ‘She-male’ gangsters in the UK?” Youth Justice, 9(3): 224–238. Young, T. (2011). “In search of the ‘shemale’ gangster”, in B. Goldson (Ed.) Youth in Crisis? Gangs, Territoriality and Violence. London: Routledge.

386

32 The future of a critical rural criminology Joseph F. Donnermeyer

A critical rural criminology is on the cusp of great developments. That is the optimistic view! However, “cusp” is a word that merely denotes a point in time that foreshadows important events and can equally refer to developments that purport decline. Which way will a critical rural criminology go? In this chapter, I begin with a brief reprise of definitions associated with the words “rural” and “critical.” In the second section, I describe eight key events or “cusps” associated with the development of a critical rural criminology. From there, I proceed to a consideration of three areas where a critical perspective is now an important dimension of a general rural criminology, but where even more can be done. Following this, I advocate for areas where a critical rural criminology can grow by re-focusing extant critical literature to make it more rural focused, or by re-framing extant rural criminological literature to make it more critical. Hopefully, readers will notice for themselves the various intersections or commonalities of this chapter with many other chapters in the second edition of this Handbook. I express my great hope that rural criminology will continue to develop and mature as a significant sub-field in criminology, and observe that its future growth, to a considerable extent, is dependent upon the incorporation of critical perspectives for understanding the rural dimensions of crime.

What is rural and what is critical: a reprise The dominant or hegemonic form of “metropolitan thinking” (Carrington, Hogg & Sozzo, 2016, p. 3) so ubiquitous in criminology, past and present, inevitably requires those writing from a rural criminological perspective to define what is rural before they address the theoretical and empirical issues associated with their scholarship whenever they submit their work to various peer-reviewed venues. Indeed, this is a sign of marginality, but even so, it can be treated advantageously, because continuous reminders of what rural means prevents scholars from descending into a variety of conceptual gaffes and theoretical faux pas based on over-generalized assumptions about the natural of rurality. The fundamental and perhaps only universal feature of “rural” around the world is population size (Donnermeyer & DeKeseredy, 2014). However, places with smaller populations, and by extension, smaller population densities, are likely to exhibit other qualities that function to 387

Joseph F. Donnermeyer

make the diversity of rural places distinctive from the contexts of urban places. There can be stronger networks amongst the people who live in rural places, or what is classically known as primary relationships, and networks that are more parochial or inward looking. However, this distinction was and continues to be inaccurately expressed in dichotomies of the stereotypical type by those who fall back on the images of urban depicted in Wirth’s (1938) classic article in the American Journal of Sociology or the ready-made dichotomous gemeinschaft-gesselschaft trope of Tönnies (1955). Hence, it is a matter of research, an empirical question, to determine the strength of networks and what relationship they may have to enabling or constraining specific types of crime (Donnermeyer, 2015). As well, the economies of many rural places may be characterized as more dependent on agriculture or extractive industries and of relationships of dependency to the economic and political centers of power within regions and countries (Carrington, Hogg & Sozzo, 2016). There may be more inequality within specific rural places than most urban localities, and consequently, local rural elites, through their connections to urban-based power centers, exercise more hegemonic influence within a small community. All of these generalities must be tempered by remembering one simple fact and two assertive observations. First, even though urbanizing rapidly, the world remains over 45 percent rural and that adds up to billions of people living in millions of localities with smaller populations and population densities (The World Bank, 2016). Hence, I assert that first of all, the variety of rural places surpasses the economic, cultural and social variations of context found in cities, although I admit that bringing any kind of evidence to bolster this assertion would require a greater investment of time and energy than I am willing to make. Nonetheless, it is a reminder that not all rural places are alike and that whether quantitative or qualitative in methodological approach, both case studies of crime and criminal justice at a specific rural place and comparative work across the diversity of rural places has great potential to advance the knowledge base of criminology and either revise or re-write criminological theory. Second, I assert that the only trait of rural places that is universal is population size and density. All other cultural, economic and social characteristics of small places can vary and thereby possess great significance for understanding variances in specific types of crime and how criminal justice systems at the local level perform. Just as rural criminology’s development seems to constantly require a defensive definition of what rural means, the same also could be said for critical criminology (DeKeseredy & Dragewicz, 2012b). It is incumbent on critical criminologists to remain self-aware. There are many ways to define the diversity of approaches to critical criminology. I return to a definition I established for the chapter on “rural crime and critical criminology” from the first edition of this Handbook (DeKeseredy & Dragewicz, 2012b). Written as an attempt to capture the diversity of critical criminology in a single, but admittedly long, sentence, I define it as follows: all approaches to critical criminology argue for a structural explanation . . . of crime, that is, crime is rooted in economic, social and political inequalities and social class, racism, hate, and other forms of segmented social organization, reinforced and rationalized by culturally derived relativistic definitions of conforming, deviant, and criminal actions, which separate, segregate, and otherwise cause governments at all levels and peoples everywhere to differentially and discriminately enforce laws and punish offenders. (Donnermeyer, 2012, p. 289) The many occasions when criminologists who are either urban-myopic or critically-deaf and who often ignore, disparage, or misinterpret the work of rural criminology and critical criminology 388

The future of a critical rural criminology

are reminders that sustained self-consciousness about ways by which the two have great potential to inform and advance each other is necessary (Donnermeyer, Scott & Barclay, 2013).

A chronology of cusps in critical rural criminology The status of a critical rural criminology would not occupy its present state without the occurrence of important events that mark its past. For readers who wish a wider account of general rural criminology’s development, I refer them to Chapter 1 of the Routledge International Handbook of Rural Criminology (Donnermeyer, 2016a). 1

2

DeKeseredy (2016) cites Chambliss’ (1964) article in Social Problems on vagrancy laws of England as likely the first critical analysis with a rural focus. In this article, Chambliss (1964) sets his sights on the “relationship between particular laws and the social setting in which these laws emerge, are interpreted, and take form” (p. 67). From this frame, he then examines the relationship of vagrancy laws to the context of an ever-changing England. From the black plague to the early stages of industrialization and the growth of cities as we know them today, these laws were established to advantage the “vested interests” of the ruling classes, and served to control the supply of labor for their profit. Initially developed to punish the “idle”, Chambliss (1964) observed that the laws had evolved to a focus on “roadmen who preyed upon citizens who transported goods from one place to another” (p. 76) Chambliss (1964) concludes that “This analysis of the vagrancy statutes . . . has demonstrated the importance of ‘vested interest’ groups in the emergence and/or alteration of laws” (p. 77) Hence, Chambliss’ analysis serves as a role model for the consideration of contemporary forms of labor control and exploitation, such as the need for additional studies of farm worker trafficking and abuse (Byrne & Smith, 2016). A second key event in the development of a critical rural criminology was Wood’s (1990) call for a left realist view of “rural working class crime.” Noting the shift left realism brought to critical criminology by a re-focus on the crimes of the working class rather than the “powerful” in society, Wood observes that “It should not come as a major surprise that the British dominated left realist school does not pay much attention . . . to the problem of crime for those residing in rural areas, because Britain is, for the most part, an urban populated society” (p. 1). Wood (1990) hones in on the advantages and disadvantages of the concept of “community” and its use by the Chicago School of Sociology for understanding forms of social control and for considering a left realist approach to rural crime. He offers the following advice: By recognizing that the political economic factors which lead to working class crime in inner cities also impact upon the citizens of rural areas, left realism will be able to move beyond appearance and will be truly intent upon providing answers to working class crime in areas of all population sizes. (p. 12)

3

As rural criminology began to grow, and the networks of scholars both increased and cohered, a critical rural criminology began to emerge. One indicator of this was the publication in 2006 of Policing the Rural Crisis by Russell Hogg and Kerry Carrington, with a foreword by Tony Jefferson. Hogg and Carrington (2006) address issues familiar to any critical approach to criminology, but within the context of crime and criminal justice of rural Australia. Crime rates, especially violent crime, are in fact higher in rural Australia, and the participation of Aboriginal people in the criminal justice system, especially males, 389

Joseph F. Donnermeyer

4

5

390

is many times higher than the general population. The authors sketch a rural landscape that is far from tranquil, scarred by colonial policies that destroyed Aboriginal families and communities and continues to the present through discriminatory policies by Australian society at-large and its criminal justice agencies. Rural Australian communities are stressed by drought, resource extractive industries, the transformation of agriculture from smaller, family-based operations to more industrialized modes of production, and a host of other economic, social and cultural changes that impact levels of both rural property and violent crimes and the conduct of the police and courts. In 2008, for the first time, a peer-reviewed journal published a special issue on rural crime (Donnermeyer, 2016b). The journal is Southern Rural Sociology, since re-named the Journal of Rural Social Sciences. The lead article, by Donnermeyer and DeKeseredy (2008), was an attempt to lay out a framework for a left realist approach to rural criminology. At the time of its composition, we had not yet remembered Wood’s (1990) work, yet, what we wrote fits well with his original call for a left realist approach to the study of rural crime. Instead, we worked from the intellectual foundations common to so much of critical criminology, namely, the Taylor, Walton and Young’s (1973) classic The New Criminology. Realizing that the audience for Southern Rural Sociology would likely be neither critical/ left nor familiar with rural criminology, we briefly described their respective developments, and proceeded to assert three important dimensions to a critical rural criminology. First, recognizing that the general rural crime literature was largely devoid of any kind of theory, we called for contextualizing studies of crime at specific rural places within larger social, cultural and economic forces. Perhaps such an argument seems facile to a critical criminology readership, but in fact, for the audience of the journal, we felt that the fundamental principles behind both C.W. Mills’s The Sociological Imagination (1959) and Jock Young’s The Criminological Imagination (2011) was the best place to start. We cited the economic vulnerability of many rural communities in a post-industrial era and the impacts that has on both rural men and women. Second, we called for a “social psychology of rural crime”, affirming, by coincidence, the spirit of Woods’ (1990) work that these larger structural forces have real consequences. By doing so, we advocated for a “human face” on rural crime scholarship. Finally, we argued for the application of the left realist “square of crime” as a particularly effective framework for the organization of future rural criminology scholarship and the re-interpretation of previous rural crime research that is largely absent of theory. We argued that a consideration of the social forces associated with all four elements that make up the square of crime – policing and other forms of social control, the social conditions that influence public levels of control and tolerance, the causes of offending, and the factors associated with the vulnerabilities of victims – were useful heuristics for analyzing the vast array of crime and criminal justice issues that manifest themselves within specific rural contexts, and building rural-focused middle-range theories of crime (Merton, 1949). It should therefore come as no surprise that the first rural-focused middle range (Merton, 1949) theory explicitly built from a critical perspective came a year later with the work of DeKeseredy and Schwartz (2009) on violence against rural women. Dangerous Exits (DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 2009) posed a model of “male peer support of separation and divorce sexual assault” that emphasized the consequences of strong patriarchal norms in many rural communities as a type of normative structure that socialize and reinforce men’s rationalizations for verbally and physically abusing their partners. Explicitly feminist in its orientation, DeKeseredy and Schwartz (2009) continuously linked structural change within the broader economic, social and cultural dimensions of rural America. Their attempt was to remove

The future of a critical rural criminology

6

7

8

both the “gender blind” and theory-less properties of past rural crime studies and model a future rural criminology that was more critical and more conceptually sophisticated. Donnermeyer, Scott and Barclay (2013) wrote in the opposite direction of DeKeseredy and Schwartz (2009), as we attempted to highlight how rural crime studies contain lessons for a greater recognition of rural within critical criminology. We accomplished this by discussing three key areas in rural criminology – namely, rural communities and crime, agricultural crime, and rural “otherness” – that can inform critical criminology. We described how mostly quantitative research on rural crime and community characteristics could challenge both the generalizability and the basic line of reasoning of social disorganization theory (Kubrin, 2009) and the theory of collective efficacy (Sampson, 2012). We focused on the relationship of agricultural victimization and of farmers as possible offenders (from abuse of farm workers to violations of environmental laws) to highlight the fact that farmers and ranchers are people who run capitalist enterprises “embedded in complex, globalised commodity chains, and farmers themselves are situated in localized expressions of their respective country’s social class structure” (p. 78). Finally, we discussed opposite images of rural – rural as crime free/safe havens, and rural as localities of “dread and horror” (p. 79) – to examine deeper realities associated with rural culture, including expressions of rural masculinities, discrimination, marginalization and “othering” of women and indigenous peoples, and of various social constructions of crime. In 2014, Donnermeyer and DeKeseredy published Rural Criminology, one of many monographs in the Routledge “New Directions in Critical Criminology” series edited by Walter DeKeseredy. It begins by addressing the same contradictory rural images as the Donnermeyer, Scott and Barclay (2013) article of a year earlier, but in a more detailed manner. It discusses, dissects and debunks four myths: (1) that the rural–urban dichotomy is useful, either theoretically or empirically; (2) that “collective efficacy = low crime, and social disorganization = high crime” (p. 8); (3) that rural crime rates were historically low and only increase as they exhibit more urban-like qualities; and (4) the Jeykll and Hyde-like nature of images of rural as either crime free or crime ridden. We applied the left realist square of crime approach to consider three rural criminological issues where there is already extensive rural criminological research, but without a critical base. These issues included the characteristics of rural communities and crime, drug production, trafficking and abuse, and agricultural crime. Each was discussed, and the extant literature re-interpreted, around the four dimensions encompassed by the square of crime. The intent was not only to bring a critical light to these issues, but to model how other scholars with a critical bent might do much the same with the extant but non-critical literature that exists in their substantive areas of interest. The second of two cusps that occurred in 2014 came with the publication of a special rural issue Critical Criminology, the official journal of ASC’s Division of Critical Criminology. The editor’s introduction (Carrington, Donnermeyer, & DeKeseredy, 2014) framed the theme of this special issue as one of “re-imaging the boundaries” of both rural criminology and critical criminology. Brisman, McClanahan and South (2014) proposed a “GreenCultural Criminology” for the study of rural environmental issues, and Hall-Sanchez (2014) expanded the male-peer support model of violence against women by considering the consequences of men’s hunting as a form of ritualistic male-bonding. Smith (2014) reported on an ethnographic study of female drug users and how they constructed their own drug use within the context of rural communities in Wales. Beichner and Rabe-Hemp (2014) also take a place-based approach and a model of “Relational Vulnerability” in order to study the challenges of female offenders re-integrating back to the rural communities from which 391

Joseph F. Donnermeyer

they came. Robinson and Ryder (2014) maintain a place-based perspective through their examination of abusive teen experiences in the Cape Cod region of Massachusetts. Part of the title of their article is a quote from one of their research subjects, a quote that belies the crime-free image of rural localities. This four-word statement says a lot: “Constant violence from everywhere.” Opsal and O’Connor Shelley (2014) shift the focus back to a Green Criminology topic by describing the hegemonic power (i.e., political economy) of the oil and gas industry in rural Colorado through a study of citizens’ experiences as documented in complaints to a state regulatory agency. Finally, Cayli (2014) describes the origins of the Mafia in the agricultural regions of Italy and of current events surrounding efforts to confiscate their lands and convert these spaces to forms of sustainable agriculture. Without a critical point of view, rural criminology will be less rich in its theoretical perspectives and less rigorous in its application of both quantitative and qualitative methodologies. Without rural criminology, critical criminology’s focus will likely maintain the same “metropolitan thinking” as mainstream criminology (Carrington, Hogg & Sozzo, 2016). They need each other.

Already critical There are three substantive areas in rural criminology that already adopt a critical perspective but nonetheless, would benefit from additional theorizing and research. First, the research on violence against rural women, as described in the previous section, is perhaps the most self-consciously critical area within rural criminology (DeKeseredy et al., 2016). Yet, there are opportunities for “re-imaging” its “boundaries” (Carrington, Donnermeyer & DeKeseredy, 2014). Specifically, this area requires an international synthesis of scholarship that describes the varied contexts in which rural women are the victims of violence. How generalizable is the male peer-support model, and in what ways can it be expanded to account for studies beyond North America? Related to this is the need to examine rural men, and the vocabularies of rationalization they use as aggressors. Incredibly, there is far more research on the motivations of poachers (Von Essen et al., 2016) than on the motivations of male offenders involved with intimate partner violence.1 Their motivations, to some extent, are mostly inferred from the experiences of their victims (DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 2009). In addition, Jakobsen’s (2016b) analysis of wife-beating as supportive of a “particular social order” (p. 1) in Tanzania serves as a role model for linking a middle range theory like male-peer support (DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 2009) to larger social forces, including the role of the state or other more localized forms of governance in any other society of the world. Second, the incredible growth of Green Criminology in the 21st century has greatly aided the development of rural criminology. Yet, Green Criminology remains focused on the nature of various environmental harms and violations of environmental laws without a strong focus on their rural context. Hence, Green Criminology mostly lacks a place-based approach to its subject matter. Why is this important? Simply, given the patterns of dependency between urban centers of political and economic power and rural localities where so many of these offenses occur, there is a need for a greater consideration of structural or societal-wide forms of globalization and economic exploitation and their impact on rural peoples and rural communities. Third, a wide range of rural-focused studies of rural community characteristics and crime call into question the generalizability of social disorganization theory. Rural studies ranging from work on violence against women (as mentioned above) to drug use and trafficking (Garriott, 2011) challenge the one-sided conceptualization within mainstream criminology that views 392

The future of a critical rural criminology

collective efficacy as a key factor in reducing crime (Donnermeyer, 2015). It is now time to rebuild a theory of crime and place, and that I believe is best accomplished through a more critical conceptualization of place itself. To this end, I recommend the work of Liepins (2000) on defining the essential elements of rural communities and on characterizing rural places as localities expressive of “temporally and locationally specific terrains of power and discourse” (p. 30). Hence, a critical rural criminology should fit expressions of crime to a conceptualization of place, which is in the opposite direction of social disorganization’s evolution from the work within the old Chicago School of Sociology that essentially attempted to fit a theory of place to crime (Donnermeyer, 2016b).

Toward a mature critical rural criminology: expansion, re-focus and re-frame The future of a critical rural criminology depends greatly on the conduct of both quantitative and qualitative research from a critical approach. Yet, there are two other ways to expand and develop a critical rural criminology. The first is a rural re-focus of extant work in critical criminology that has rural dimensions but is currently unarticulated. The second is a critical re-frame of extant work in criminology that already has a rural focus, but lacks a critical perspective. The first topic is the re-entry of incarcerated persons, both female and male offenders, to their home communities when these places are rural. The spatial, social and cultural isolation of former inmates in a rural context is vastly unexplored (Beichner & Rabe-Hemp, 2014). Given the much greater likelihood that rural offenders are working class and/or indigenous, and all of the structural inequalities and discrimination behind differential rates of arrest and imprisonment, and given the larger possibilities that many rural communities themselves have greater inequality, high levels of poverty, patriarchal norms, and fewer resources for helping these returning individuals, there is much work to do that documents this issue and informs policy from a critical point of view. Second, Jakobsen’s (2016a) re-examination of a crime prevention initiative called the “Sungusungu” in rural Tanzania and her dissection of a previous idealization of this group by Christie (1977), demonstrates the tremendous potential of a critical rural criminology for “re-imagining the boundaries” (Carrington, Donnermeyer & DeKeseredy, 2014) of a large body of extant literature on how we view community-based crime prevention, policing and restorative justice. Jakobsen’s (2016a) work also show why critical rural criminology needs to maintain an international perspective. Observing how Christie’s (1977) over-romanticized images influenced the “criminological trajectory” on these topics in so many westernized countries, she (Jakobsen 2016a, p. 414) concludes: The way to sharpen criminology’s conceptual tools, and to test their mettle in terms of making sense of social phenomena, is to engage them with the variety of different shapes those phenomena take across the world. This is why rural criminology needs to engage with rural Africa. A third area in which a future critical rural criminology can engage is a set of topics called hate crime, genocide, war, and terrorism. It may be unwise to lump such diverse subject matter together, however, they do share one thing in common that is quite pertinent to this chapter – hardly any of the literature associated with these four fully appreciate their rural dimensions. In the US, hate groups are disproportionately rurally located. Collins (2016) describes the transformation of nomadic pastoralists and small-scale agriculturalists into so-called “pirates” (a decidedly western 393

Joseph F. Donnermeyer

frame) in Somalia. The call for a criminological focus on war (Hagan, 2015) awakened an energized response by the critical criminological community (Berger, 2016; McGarry & Walklate, 2016, Michalowski & Kramer, 2016), but failed to recognize the extent that state-sponsored wars of aggression may disproportionality affects rural peoples and communities and can be played out on the geographic and political peripheries of the state. Finally, the study of genocide (Matsueda, 2009) needs much greater contextualization of its rural dimensions, that is, of race, ethnic and tribal divisions as they are expressed at the village level and other rural contexts. The fourth area where a much expanded critical rural criminology is greatly needed is related to agriculture and food security. Although there is already some work in this area, both empirically and conceptually, much more is necessarily in order to understand the nature and patterns of agricultural victimization (Barclay, 2016; Bunei et al., 2016) and its economic and human costs on farmers, especially the millions of food producers around the world who are not large-scale, industrialized operations. These family-based, often subsistence level operations are illustrative of the ways a rural working class (Wood, 1990) are affected by global economic forces as expressed within a local context (Donnermeyer & DeKeseredy, 2014). In addition, agriculturalists are often the offenders, especially on important issues related to food safety. The work of Smith and McElwee (2016) already demonstrate the potential for organized crime, through connections to local farmers, to become engaged in forms of food fraud that threaten the security of complex commodity chains. What is needed now is a re-frame of the issue from a critical, perhaps even an old-style Marxist, interpretation. As well, issues related to farm animal abuse (Lovell, 2016), farm labor trafficking and abuse (Byrne & Smith, 2016) and the working conditions of food processing facilities for both workers and animals (Lovell, 2016) are ripe for examination by critical rural criminologists. The trafficking of everything – from flora and fauna to antiquities to illicit drugs to humans – often has significant rural dimensions. A synthesis of trafficking, without regard to the item or person trafficked, may serve two vital needs. First, it would break down artificially constructed boundaries of theory and research based on what is trafficked, whether animate or inanimate. Second, it would link the profit motive and the social organization of trafficking networks to show the rural-urban connections of illicit market systems. Trafficking may be one area where a great deal of borrowing from mainstream criminological work on gangs and organized crime can be done, but by re-framing this scholarship from a more critical perspective. Urban-normativity refers to urban dominant images of the geographic, social and cultural landscapes of rural localities (Fulkerson & Thomas, 2016). As Wooff (2016) cautions, deviance of any kind requires consideration of localized expressions of norms, values and beliefs and exactly what is defined as deviant. Hence, definitions of what violates the law, how people are treated who may not fit in (from issues associated with race to LBGTQ lifestyles and more) and how this pertains to crimes and harms, require as much of a rural focus as an urban focus. As well, there is a need for additional analysis of rural images as portrayed in the media (DeKeseredy, Muzzatti & Donnermeyer, 2014; Hayden, 2014) and how these shape public perceptions of rural places, and the connections between rural images and the constructions of criminal justice and policing policies within a rural context. Consideration of the rural dimensions of electronic forms of communication provide a virtually unexplored area for a rural critical criminology (and to a greater extent, for many sub-fields of criminology). For example, how does social media strengthen the cohesion of geographically dispersed but mostly rural-located networks of those who adhere to and actively participate in hate groups, and other types of deviance, such as child pornography? Are there rural-urban differences in varieties of electronic forms of con and fraud, and of their victims? As well, research on cyber-stalking and -bullying as experienced by rural-located victims and 394

The future of a critical rural criminology

committed by those with rural backgrounds would both expand and reimagine the boundaries of interpersonal violence as expressed at rural places. Some rural people may be more subject to both geographic and social isolation, hence, exhibiting a greater reliance for on-line networks and relationships than urban people. They may be more vulnerable and the harm may be greater.

Conclusions – avoid dichotomies and go local In recent years, a push for a criminology of the global south has emerged (Carrington, Hogg & Sozzo, 2016). This initiative has great potential to partner up and be part of rural criminology’s continued growth. However, it also offers up the possibility of a new dichotomy that would restrict the development of a critical rural criminology and rural criminology more generally, because despite the great care with which its proponents define what is means, it may become nothing more than another carelessly used binary pitting theory and research developed in the global north (i.e., westernized criminology) against any scholarship developed in the name of the global south, and vice versa. A better approach is to call for a conscious “internationalization of a critical rural criminology.” This is accomplished in two ways. First, begin with a place-based view of rural crime and criminal justice issues. Second, link the localized context of these rural crime and criminal justice issues to the larger structural dynamics of the societies (and if, possible, a global view) in which this scholarship originates. This will require various critical conceptual frames, one being the square of crime, to forge those links. This two-step approach to developing a critical rural criminology would allow for work that compares, contrasts and synthesizes research findings through a comparative lens largely based on the diversity of rural places. In turn, this comparative approach would give a critical rural criminology a stronger international base without descending into old and useless dichotomies, such as gemeinshaft vs. gessellschaft or of any new binaries, like the Global North vs. the Global South, with the same potential for stereotype and over-generalization. In conclusion, I shamelessly plagiarize but re-phrase a maxim associated with a US politician from the past (Thomas “Tip” O’Neill) – “all scholarship is local.” Without maintaining a human and humanistic focus of crime’s impact on rural people at the specific places where they live, rural criminology will never develop much beyond is present status. Without comparing, summarizing and synthesizing from examinations of rural crime at these specific places and linking these insights to larger, structural-level social and economic forces, a fully mature critical rural criminology is possible.

Note 1

Acknowledgement is extended to Walter DeKeseredy for the ideas that more rural-focused scholarship of rural men and violence is greatly needed, and also making me aware that there is little in the literature on the rural context of cyber-crime, especially stalking and bullying.

References Barclay, E. (2016). Farm victimization: The quintessential rural crime. In J. F. Donnermeyer (Ed.), The Routledge international handbook of rural criminology (pp. 107–116). London: Routledge. Beichner, D., & Rabe-Hemp, C. (2014). “I don’t want to go back to that town”: Incarcerated mothers and their return home to rural communities. Critical Criminology, 22(4): 527–543. Berger, R. J. (2016). Not all criminologists were sleeping: A sympathetic rejoinder to John Hagan. The Criminologist, 41(1): 9–10. Brisman, A., McClanahan, B., & South, N. (2014). Toward a green-cultural criminology of the “the rural.” Critical Criminology, 22(4): 479–494. 395

Joseph F. Donnermeyer

Bunei, E. K., Auya, S., & Rono, J. K. (2016). Agricultural crime in Africa: Trends and perspectives. In J. F. Donnermeyer (Ed.), The Routledge international handbook of rural criminology (pp. 117–126). London: Routledge. Byrne, R., & Smith, K. (2016). Modern slavery and agriculture. In J. F. Donnermeyer (Ed.), The Routledge international handbook of rural criminology (pp. 157–166). London: Routledge. Carrington, K., Donnermeyer, J. F., & DeKeseredy, W. S. (2014). Intersectionality, rural criminology, and reimagining the boundaries of critical criminology. Critical Criminology, 22(4): 463–477. Carrington, K., Hogg, R., & Sozzo, M. (2016). Southern criminology. British Journal of Criminology, 56(1): 1–20. Cayli, B. (2014). Renewing criminalized and hegemonic cultural landscapes. Critical Criminology, 22(4): 579–593. Chambliss, W. J. (1964). The sociological analysis of the law of vagrancy. Social Problems, 12(1): 67–77. Christie, N. (1977). Conflicts of property. British Journal of Criminology, 17(1): 1–15. Collins, V. E. (2016). The nomadic pastoralist, the fisherman and the pirate: A historical overview of the rural dimensions of piracy in Somalia. In J. F. Donnermeyer (Ed.), The Routledge international handbook of rural criminology (pp. 93–102). London: Routledge. DeKeseredy, W. S. (2016). Thinking critically about rural crime: The influence of William J. Chambliss. Critical Criminology, 24(2): 263–278. DeKeseredy, W. S., & Schwartz, M. D. (2009). Dangerous exits: Escaping abusive relationships in rural America. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. DeKeseredy, W. S., Muzzatti, S. L., & Donnermeyer, J. F. (2014). Mad men in bib overalls: Media’s horrification and pornification of rural culture. Critical Criminology, 24(May): 179–197. DeKeseredy, W. S., Hall-Sanchez, M., Dragiewicz, M., & Rennison, C. M. (2016). Intimate violence against women in rural communities. In J. F. Donnermeyer (Ed.), The Routledge international handbook of rural criminology (pp. 171–180). London: Routledge. Donnermeyer, J. F. (2012). Rural crime and critical criminology. In W. S. DeKeseredy & M. Dragiewicz (Eds), Routledge handbook of critical criminology (pp. 289–302). London, Routledge. Donnermeyer, J. F. (2014). On expanding the concept of green collar crime: Some considerations about crimes and harms of food producers. The Critical Criminologist, 22(2): 2–5. Donnermeyer, J. F. (2015). The social organization of the rural and crime in the United States: Conceptual considerations. Journal of Rural Studies, 39: 160–170. Donnermeyer, J. F. (Ed.) (2016a). The Routledge international handbook of rural criminology. London: Routledge. Donnermeyer, J. F. (2016b). Introduction to the international handbook of rural criminology. In J. F. Donnermeyer (Ed.), The Routledge international handbook of rural criminology (pp. 1–10). London: Routledge. Donnermeyer, J. F., & DeKeseredy, W. (2008). Toward a rural critical criminology. Southern Rural Sociology, 23(2): 4–28. Donnermeyer, J. F., & DeKeseredy, W. (2014). Rural criminology. London: Routledge. Donnermeyer, J. F., Scott, J., & Barclay, E. (2013). How rural criminology informs critical thinking in criminology. International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 2(3): 69–91. Fulkerson, G. M., & Thomas, A. R. (Eds). (2016). Reimagining rural: Urbannormative portrayals of rural life. Lanham: Lexington Books. Garriott, W. (2011). Policing methamphetamine: Narcopolitics in rural America. New York: New York University Press. Hagan, J. (2015). While criminology slept: A criminal war of aggression. The Criminologist, 40(6): 1, 3–4. Hall-Sanchez, A. K. (2014). Male peer support, hunting, and separation/divorce sexual assault in rural Ohio. Critical Criminology, 22(4): 495–510. Hayden, K. (2014). Inbred horror: Degeneracy, revulsion, and fear of the rural community. In A.R. Thomas and G.M. Fulkerson (Eds), Against urban normativity: Perspectives on rural theory. Lanham: Lexington Books. Hogg, R., & Carrington, K. (2006). Policing the rural crisis. Sydney: The Federation Press. Jakobsen, H. (2016a). Community law enforcement in Tanzania. In J. F. Donnermeyer (Ed.), The Routledge international handbook of rural criminology (pp. 409–418). London: Routledge. Jakobsen, H. (2016b). How violence constitutes order: Consent, coercion, and censure in Tanzania. Violence Against Women. Online. doi: 10.1177/1077801216678091. Kubrin, C. E. (2009). Social disorganization theory: Then, now, and in the future. In M.D. Krohn, A.J. Lizotte, & G.P. Hall (Eds), Handbook on crime and deviance (pp. 225–236). New York: Springer. Liepins, R. (2000). New energies for an old idea: Reworking approaches to ‘community’ in contemporary rural studies. Journal of Rural Studies, 16: 23–35. 396

The future of a critical rural criminology

Lovell, J. S. (2016). Understanding farm animal abuse: Legal and extra-legal factors. In J. F. Donnermeyer (Ed.), The Routledge international handbook of rural criminology (pp. 137–146). London: Routledge. Matsueda, R. L. (2009). Toward a new criminology of genocide: Theory, method and politics. Theoretical Criminology, 13(4): 495–502. McGarry, R., & Walklate, S. (2016). Criminology and the zookeepers of war: A view from across the pond. The Criminologist, 41(3): 8–9. Merton, R. K. (1949). Social theory and social structure. New York: Free Press of Glencoe. Michalowski, R., & Kramer, R. (2016). While conventional criminology slept. The Criminologist, 41(2): 10–11. Mills, C. W. (1959). The sociological imagination. New York: Oxford University Press. Opsal, T., & O’Connor Shelley, T. (2014). Energy crime, harm, and problematic state response in Colorado: A case of the fox guarding the hen house. Critical Criminology, 22(4): 561–577. Robinson, R. A., & Ryder, J. A. (2014). “Constant violence from everywhere”: Psychodynamics of power and abuse amongst rural and small-town youth. Critical Criminology, 22(4): 545–560. Sampson, R. J. (2012). Great American city: Chicago and the enduring neighborhood effect. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Smith, C. (2014). Injecting drug use and the performance of rural femininity: An ethnographic study of female injecting drug users in rural north Wales. Critical Criminology, 22(4): 511–525. Smith, R., & McElwee, G. (2016). Criminal farmers and organised rural crime groups: A UK case study. In J. F. Donnermeyer (Ed.), The Routledge international handbook of rural criminology (pp. 127–136). London: Routledge. Taylor, I., Walton, P., & Young, J. (1973). The new criminology: For a social theory of deviance. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Tönnies, F. (1955). Community and society. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Von Essen, E., Hansen, H.-P., Nordström Källström, H., Peterson, N. M., & Peterson, T. R. (2016). Illegal hunting: Between social and criminal justice. In J. F. Donnermeyer (Ed.), The Routledge international handbook of rural criminology (pp. 319–328). London: Routledge. Wirth, L. (1938). Urbanism as a way of life. American Journal of Sociology, 40(1): 1–24. Wood, D. (1990). A critique of the urban focus in criminology: The need for a realist view of rural working class. Burnaby, British Columbia: Simon Fraser University, School of Criminology. Wooff, A. (2016). The importance of context: Understanding the nature of antisocial behavior in rural Scotland. In J. F. Donnermeyer (Ed.), The Routledge international handbook of rural criminology (pp. 55–64). London: Routledge. The World Bank (2016). Rural population. Online: data.worldbank.org, accessed on August 8, 2016. Young, J. (2011). The criminological imagination. Malden: Polity Press.

397

33 Media and crime Interrogating the violence of representation Eamonn Carrabine

The critical examination of the complex relationships between media and crime is now a wellestablished area in criminology. Much of the research has been dominated by an ‘effects’ tradition that was developed by psychologists and sociologists in the last century. The proliferation of mass communication technologies like film, radio and television from the 1920s onwards, which addressed a mass of people simultaneously, was accompanied by a surge of academic research on the possible harmful effects of media content. The research questions echoed, on the one hand, widespread public concerns over gratuitous sex and violence on screen morally corrupting vulnerable young viewers; while on the other, critical commentators pointed to the ways mindless media audiences are politically manipulated, ideologically controlled and culturally degraded by the power of media industries. The common-sense assumption that depictions of violence incite violent behaviour amongst audiences has a long history. But all too often the debate is polarized, simplified and displaced. It is often the case that ‘deep-seated anxieties about what are perceived as undesirable moral or social changes lead to a search for a single causal explanation’ (Buckingham, 2003, p.165). Blaming certain media, like television or computer games, deflects attention away from more difficult issues – that may well be uncomfortably ‘closer to home’ (Connell, 1985). The ‘history of respectable fears’ (Pearson, 1983) demonstrates how popular anxieties in the present often rely on idealized images of the past and are driven as much by generational fear as class antagonism in the creation of moral panics over social problems. The concept of moral panic owes much to the pioneering work of figures like Stan Cohen, Stuart Hall and Jock Young who have been concerned with how the media ideologically distort the reality of crime. There is little doubt that the mass media are selective over the kinds of crimes, criminals and circumstances they report, but Richard Ericson (1991) not only wonders why this should come as a surprise, but also queries why anyone would expect the cultural products of the mass media to reflect the social reality of crime. He is thus critical of studies that compare media representations of crime with officially recorded statistics. As he explains, police statistics do not mirror the reality of crime but are themselves ‘cultural, legal, and social constructs produced by the police for organizational purposes’ so that what is presented is one symbolically constructed reality compared to another (Ericson, 1991, p. 220). His crucial question then is why do media organizations focus on particular events, privilege particular classifications and interpretations of these events over others? Answering this calls for an understanding of how institutions make the 398

Media and crime

news and interact with events that occur in an uncertain world and has revived interest in the collective character of journalistic activity. In addition, there are different levels at which the production of news can be studied, which ranges from specific texts (e.g. Brundson & Morley, 1978, on the current affairs programme Nationwide), genre production (e.g. Raphael, 2004, on reality TV crime programmes), investigating journalists at work (e.g. Schlesinger & Tumber, 1994, on crime reporters) comparing different media (e.g. Erikson et al., 1991, on how stories vary by medium) through to studies of entire media systems (e.g. Hallin & Mancini, 2004, distinguish three differing models of commercial broadcasting operating in the 18 democracies they examined). An important strand of research has concentrated on the dynamics of news reporting and the news worthiness of crime, yet others have focussed on a broader range of cultural forms to explore crime as a source of popular entertainment. From the various representations of criminality and punishment found in literature, film, and television through to the array of ‘new’ media technologies that are profoundly transforming politics and culture, there has been a concerted effort to address the carnival of crime (Hayward & Presdee, 2010). Alongside these developments there has been the parallel emergence of a ‘surveillant assemblage’ (Haggerty & Ericson, 2000) and new forms of ‘digital rule’ (Jones, 2000), which have become possible with the rise of networked information and communication technologies (ICTs) and the ‘social sorting’ (Lyon, 2003) that accompanies them. Much recent attention has focused on cybercrime and the internet, not least since it has been suggested that the 55 per cent crime drop in the United Kingdom between 1995 and 2013 could well be explained by the displacement of crime offline to online, while the Eurostat 2010 ICT survey revealed that online fraud had become the most prevalent acquisitive crime in Europe, above car theft and burglary (Williams, 2016, p.21). Concerns about the harmful impact of media images on individuals and society at large are as old the media themselves, with much effort focused on representations of violence and the damaging effects such images have on audiences. However, far less attention has been afforded to the violence of representation and that will be my main focus in this chapter. Here I draw on my work in visual criminology to make sense of two modalities of violence: one that is ‘out there’ in the world, as opposed to that which is exercised through words and images upon things in the world (a point I borrow from Armstrong and Tennenhouse, 1989, p.9). It takes up Sheila Brown’s (2003, pp.114–115) suggestion that criminologists need to appreciate ‘the many faceted ways in which violence is inscribed within media representations’ and does so through a discussion of documentary photography, where the relationships between aesthetics and politics are often given special urgency, with their distinctive claims on the real and their heavy traffic in pain. The chapter begins by charting some of the profound consequences a global, digital market place is having on media industries, blurring the boundaries between news and entertainment, professional and amateur journalism, while opening up novel forms of visual language in cyberspace. It then explains how a rich strain of theoretical writing has emerged that has taken issue with the orthodox positions taken in the debates surrounding the politics of representation in documentary and explores how some contemporary practitioners have questioned the camera’s role as a credible eyewitness. Each of the examples raises important questions on the ethical stakes involved in representing suffering and they speak to the violence of the image from which we have much yet to learn. This point has been put in the following way: Why look at pictures of atrocity? We don’t have a choice. We can’t help but see them anyway. In our daily newspapers, on our TVs, on our computers and now on our phones and other handheld devices, we live in an ever-expanding world of images, many of them showing terrible things. There are many instances of pictures of atrocity being more powerful 399

Eamonn Carrabine

than the words that describe them and, in cases as notable for their photographs of atrocity as Abu Ghraib and the Holocaust, it took the images for us to really believe what went on, even when we had the words. (Prosser, 2012, p.7) In this passage the compelling power of the visual is emphasized, and this will be a theme running throughout the chapter.

Digital media Today the news is produced and consumed in a global, digital market place. Fifteen years ago, around 15 million newspapers were bought every morning in Britain. Today it is 6 million and falling (Preston, 2017), while the use of social media sites and Internet search engines is where many now read the news. The growth of digital communication has also seen the rise of the ‘citizen journalist’, adding a new dimension to the media landscape and having potentially profound consequences for democracy. All these developments are symptomatic of the ‘new visibility’ (Thompson, 2005) and recent work has been drawn to how these technologies in the hands of ordinary citizens have changed public perceptions of policing in these new media environments (Greer & McLaughlin, 2011). Andrew Goldsmith (2011) has, for example, examined how the prevalence of mobile phone cameras and the capacity of video-sharing platforms like YouTube and social networking sites such as Facebook have enabled many to share images of apparent police misconduct with mass audiences, and challenge official versions of events. He focuses on two important cases, the death of Ian Tomlinson in London in April 2009 during the G20 protests and the death of Robert Dziekanski at Vancouver airport in October 2007. In both examples, amateur video footage captured police wrongdoing and triggered public controversies that have had far reaching implications. Another example of such ‘participatory journalism’ is the whistle blowing website WikiLeaks, which was founded in 2006 and has released details of operating manuals at Guantanamo Bay in 2007, Sarah Palin emails in 2008 and the massive document leak dubbed ‘Cablegate’ in 2010, and has opened up an important set of questions over the power of information itself (Gournelos, 2012). Yet it remains the case that the proliferation of new media has not fundamentally challenged the dominance of traditional, mainstream media industries. Rather, citizen journalism has supplemented these outlets and forced them to become more competitive (Jewkes, 2015, p.75), so that well-established organizations like the BBC, the Guardian, Telegraph, Daily Mail and the Sun are still the most popular websites for news and public affairs. A recent report on the news publishing industry in the UK found a buoyant sector despite falling newspaper profitability (largely due to declining advertising revenues) and a continuing commitment to holding the powerful to account. The examples of agenda-setting newspaper journalism cited include the Guardian’s Panama Papers revelations (of how the world’s rich and famous hide their money offshore) and The Sunday Times’s investigation into corruption at Fifa (football’s world governing body), but it notes that the future for the news publishing industry rests ‘on their ability to monetise newsbrand content, particularly on digital platforms, in order to fund newsgathering’ (Greenslade, 2016). The implication is that media corporations will only continue to prosper if they develop new business models that work with, rather than against, the digital revolution. It is clear that in today’s news environment of digital, satellite and cable technologies the news appears in many different forms, including ‘serious’, ‘soft’, ‘hard’ and ‘popular’, delivered online as well as in traditional print and global broadcasting, with increasing concentration of media ownership, new approaches to ‘the complex and more differentiated field of news production’ (Cottle, 2003, p.16) will need to be developed. 400

Media and crime

One example is the way digital technologies have transformed the practice of documentary making. I have described elsewhere (Carrabine, 2012, 2016) the relationships between documentary, journalism and sociology as they have evolved over time, but it is worth noting that three distinctive phases in the genre have been identified: the first is cinema documentary, which made heavy use of reconstruction; the second that of observational documentary, which responded to the new opportunities and demands of television. [The] third phase is the result of new attitudes to photography in general, which have developed since the 1990s. The growth in all forms of photographic activity, enabled by digital technologies, seems to have reawoken long-held anxieties about photography. (Ellis, 2012, p.2) These are important arguments, not least since they speak to the ubiquity of images in contemporary life. One recent estimate suggests that every day, 6.7 billion people view the world through their own lens, 5 million pictures are uploaded on Flickr and 2 billion videos are screened on YouTube, with Facebook also growing by 1 to 2 billion images a week ‘testifying to how the conversations enacted on online social networks too are today increasingly made up of images’ (Favero, 2014, p.166). Indeed, the phrase ‘oversharing’ has come to describe the phenomenon where ‘too much’ is revealed about ourselves on social media through the constant documenting and display of private lives to others (Agger, 2015). Yet ever since the birth of the camera in the mid-nineteenth century, it has been accused of upsetting the divide between public worlds and private selves, transforming the very act of looking and giving rise to a whole series of characterizations of this condition: the society of spectacle, the politics of representation, the gendered gaze, and so forth, are some of the most influential. For Ellis (2012) documentary making has developed a new third phase where films now tend to document the personal encounters between filmmakers and the filmed, as exemplified in the work of Nick Broomfield, Michael Moore and Louis Theroux. Interactivity is also the defining feature of the visual language of ‘Webdocs’ (or ‘i-docs’, as they are also known). These interactive documentaries merge the tradition of documentary film making with the participatory possibilities offered by the infrastructure of Web 2.0 to produce a complex, non-linear viewing experience. One of the most lauded is Prison Valley: The Prison Industry (by David Dufresne and Philippe Brault, ARTE production) that explores Cañon City, Colorado, described as a ‘town in the middle of nowhere with 36,000 souls and 13 prisons, one of which is Supermax, the new “Alcatraz” of America’ (http://prisonvalley.arte.tv/?lang=en). It incorporates digital video, social media, blogging and an iPhone app that offers multiple ways of understanding the prison–industrial complex. When viewers enter the space of i-docs they are ‘progressively led to suspend the distinction between still and animated photographs, between photographs and videos, between textual, sonic and visual information’ (Favero, 2014, p.171), as well as contributing to the ongoing blurring of the boundaries between news and entertainment. It is not even clear if Prison Valley should be described as a film or a website, as Favero (2014) suggests, it is not at all obvious if the audience for i-docs should be called ‘viewers’ or ‘users’ and whether the term ‘watch’ or ‘enter’ best describes an encounter with the genre. Harder still to classify is the work of Trevor Paglen (2009, 2010, 2012), who trained as a geographer, and has produced a number of multimedia projects exploring the murky state of global surveillance, spy satellites, CIA aircraft and military installations. His overall concern is with ‘how the political geographies that structure our everyday lives are becoming more and more abstract, and about how new forms of domination arise in the gaps and limits of our everyday perception’ (Paglen, 2013, p.207). In this latter project he explored the communications satellites orbiting 401

Eamonn Carrabine

the earth and the development of stealth programs designed to interfere with space technology and disable their operations in such a way that it would be hard for someone else to know they had been sabotaged, making it appear as if they had simply failed. These efforts to control the orbital infrastructure are part of a systemic military strategy that he equates with ‘switching cities off ’ (Graham, 2010, pp.263–302). Moreover, these objects are destined to become the major ruins of our times, potentially drifting around the earth for billions of years, outlasting the great pyramids of Giza and the cave paintings of Lascaux. More recently his attention turned to the rise of ‘machine vision’ in digital media and the profound implications that flow from this transformation, enabling the exercise of power on much larger, and smaller, scales than ever before. As he explains: What’s truly revolutionary about the advent of digital images is the fact that they are fundamentally machine-readable: they can only be seen by humans in special circumstances and for short periods of time. A photograph shot on a phone creates a machine-readable file that does not reflect light in such a way as to be perceptible to a human eye. A secondary application, like a software-based photo viewer paired with a liquid crystal display and backlight may create something that a human can look at, but the image only appears to human eyes temporarily before reverting back to its immaterial machine form when the phone is put away or the display is turned off. However, the image doesn’t need to be turned into human-readable form in order for a machine to do something with it. (Paglen, 2016, p.15) Our built environments are increasingly filled with machine-to-machine seeing technologies, so that images no longer simply represent, but actively intervene in daily life in unseen ways. These developments all speak to the surprising revival of documentary as a critical practice in recent years. In the 1990s it would have been said that ‘documentary had surely had its day, perishing with the liberal politics that had nourished it; and along with it, naïve ideas about humanitarian reform and the ability of visual representation to capture reality’ (Stallabrass, 2013, p.12). By then the movement was charged with exploiting the other and the ‘truth claims’ debunked as stage-managed fictions. Faced with this existential crisis the practice has since recast its older social and political obligations. Contemporary photographers seem to be less troubled by terms like ‘truth’, ‘evidence’ and ‘reality’, which is not to say they are blind to the way photographs are constructed, but are more attuned to them as ‘carefully fabricated cultural objects’ (Price, 2009, p.107). There are many instances when pictures of violence, suffering and trauma have a compelling force, often more powerful than words, and invite us to bear witness, make judgements and take sides, as we will see in the next section.

Picturing violence It has been said that the ‘traffic in pain’ is not only ‘a crucial element of news reporting . . . but it also courses through the art market, tourism, even fashion and advertising’ (Reinhardt & Edwards, 2007, p.7). In doing so, it has become commonplace to insist that such images no longer have the impact they once had, while there is an influential line of critique on photographic representation that is deeply suspicious of how the camera aestheticizes all that it pictures. To take one example, David Shields (2015) has collected together 64 glossy war photos that were published on the front page of the New York Times from the invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 up to 2013. By arranging them thematically the intention is to underline how they reproduce and reinforce certain visual tropes that glamorize war. The accusation is that the newspaper does all 402

Media and crime

it can to transform violence into beauty, which ultimately serves to imply that ‘a chaotic world is under control’ (Shields, 2015, p.9). By deliberately aestheticizing their subjects, they anaesthetize the viewer and this relationship between aesthetics and politics lies at the heart of picturing violence and has led to increasingly porous boundaries between fact and interpretation. Since the 1970s the practice of documentary photography has come under sustained critique from the Left, as questions surrounding the politics of representation came increasingly to the fore. It features in the writing of Allan Sekula, Martha Rosler and Susan Sontag, and can be traced back to Walter Benjamin’s (1934/1982) dire warnings on photography’s ability to beautify suffering. What each thinker shares is the conviction that ‘aestheticizing suffering is inherently both artistically and politically reactionary, a way of mistreating the subject and inviting passive consumption, narcissistic appropriation, condescension, or even sadism on the part of viewers’ (Reinhardt, 2007, p.14). Yet, it is important to note that recent years have seen a substantial wave of theoretical writing on photography by Ariella Azoulay, Judith Butler, Georges Didi-Huberman, Susie Linfield, Jacques Rancière and many others (see Stallabrass, 2013, for a collection of this work) that sees fresh roles and revaluations of the medium in new social and political situations. Each of these thinkers can help us make sense of contemporary media landscapes and the dynamics of ethical responsibility in them. Azoulay (2008), for example, has made much of the citizenship of photography in her discussion of how the camera is an instrument of considerable political power, arguing that we need to transform our relationship to images from one of passivity and complaint to one of creativity and collaboration. Rancière (2007, pp.22–31) has drawn an important distinction between three different kinds of image: ‘naked’, ‘ostensive’ and ‘metaphoric’ in an effort to query the radicalism of art and its emancipatory powers. Elsewhere I have described how Didi-Huberman’s (2008) controversial analysis of the few pictures taken from inside the Holocaust provide evidence of the ‘crime of crimes’ (Carrabine, 2014), also reminds us that the attempt to destroy all that documented it – was an integral part of the extermination. Despite their differences it is clear that Azoulay, Rancière and Didi-Huberman are each striving to enlarge the political imagination and each emphasize that images, when used critically and inventively, can enable us ‘to think through the essential questions of our time’ (Lübecker, 2013, p.405). A rich strain of theoretical writing has emerged that has taken issue with some of the orthodox positions taken in the debates surrounding the politics of representation and it is from these we have much yet to learn. Photographs, as Linfield (2010, p.39, emphasis in original) notes, are especially ‘good at making us see cruelty’. Her work has long explored the problems of photography and violence, and she is acutely aware of the subtle differences in the ways suffering can be pictured and how those differences inform viewers’ understanding of trauma. Because the ‘camera always sees more than the photographer’ (ibid., p.82) pictures of violence not only allow but invite us to respond differently from the perpetrators of atrocity, even when the pictures are intended to humiliate their victims. Consequently, the viewing of such pictures is not necessarily an act of voyeuristic exploitation prolonging the harm, but can lead to a ‘deeper understanding, of the cruelty involved’ (Reinhardt, 2012, p.36). As she puts it, the ‘very thing that critics have assailed photographs for not doing – explaining causation, process, relationships – is connected to the very thing they do so well: present us, to ourselves and each other, as bodily creatures’ (Linfield, 2010, p.39, emphasis in original). It is significant that she develops these arguments in the specific case of pre-execution photos taken by jailers at the Tuol Sleng prison during the Khmer Rouge genocide. As part of its permanent exhibition the Tuol Sleng museum displays thousands of photographic portraits of prisoners produced between 1975 and 1979, initially passport-sized prints, stapled to the detainees case files, they deliberately employ Bertillon’s famous mug-shot perspective (Dalton, 2015, p.79). Of the estimated 14,000 prisoners it received, only seven are known 403

Eamonn Carrabine

to have survived. The images were not incidental to the regime, rather the entire ‘photographic documentation process was indicative of a larger bureaucratic effort to establish political legitimacy’ (Tyner & Devadoss, 2014, p.366). The mug shots, selected and enlarged by East German photographers in 1981 have been posted on numerous boards ever since the museum opened (Chandler, 2000, p.27). Furthermore, it has been argued that the portraits ‘have become “undisciplined envoys” of Cambodia’s past, circulating on a global scale and through various media’ (Hughes, 2003, p.24). Linfield describes how the: most stunning are the many children, photographed on their own, who would be tortured and killed as counterrevolutionary enemies or as the soiled descendants of such. The Killing Fields opens, after several pitch-black pages, with the serene picture of a girl who looks to be about seven. She wears a neat, button-down gray shirt with a slightly wrinkled, gracefully rounded collar – an innocent, child’s collar; her eyes are clear, her eyebrows slightly full; her jet-black hair is cut off just below her ears, with one side flipping upward. She looks reserved, dignified, and remarkably poised. But to stare at her as she stares at us is to enter into an abyss. . . . Looking at these doomed people is not a form of exploitation; forgetting them is not a form of respect. But it would be good to eschew a knowledge that is easy, an identification that is glib, and a resolution that is cheap. (Linfield, 2010, p.57) Her approach is to reverse Walter Benjamin’s famous observation that ‘There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism’ to suggest that every image of barbarism ‘embraces its opposite, though sometimes unknowingly’ (ibid. p.33) and that this is the dialectic at the heart of pictures of suffering. These pictures of prisoners about to be executed constitute a ‘troubling documentary record’ (Zelizer, 2012, p.156), but it was not one that Western journalists covered at the time of the slaughter, or for some time after. Some conflicts are staged for the media, but many are not and this raises the important issue of how matters come to public attention and shape collective memory. A common complaint levelled against visual documentary concerns all that it excludes from view. It is often the case, especially when atrocities takes place, that cameras are forbidden. One response to the lack of documents is to invent them, and this is a ‘regular tactic in the face of dictatorship and censorship’ (Stallabrass, 2013, p.18) so that the making of ‘documentary fictions’ has become a way of representing traumatic events where little evidence remains. One exponent of this approach is Walid Raad and his work as the Atlas Group – an imaginary collective producing mixed media projects on the civil war in Lebanon, from 1975 to 1991. Over the last 25 years he has created work in photography, video, sculpture, and performance exploring the veracity of documents, commenting on archival impulses and the conventions of museum display, to explore the role of memory, manipulation and narrative in histories of conflict. The project exposes the limits of what is thinkable and sayable by attempting to answer the question The Atlas Group (2003/2006, pp.179–180) posed in an interview: ‘How do we represent traumatic events of collective historical dimensions when the very notion of experience is itself in question?’ Rather than suppressing their fabricated character, other photographs turn it into a virtue and make this quality integral to the meaning of the work. The ambiguity between the real and the staged has been explored by the artist Andres Serrano, infamous for his Piss Christ (1987) (an image of a small, plastic crucifix immersed in a glass of his own urine), when he was commissioned to create images to accompany an article on torture in the New York Times Magazine in 2005. The cover featured an unidentified figure, whose face was ominously hidden beneath a black hood, set against a dark red background, while the essay contained two further photographs. 404

Media and crime

The first is a close-up of a figure’s forcefully handcuffed arms, with a trickle of blood running down one of the hands, and in the second the head of a reclined figure is depicted, their face covered by a wet, white cloth over which water is being poured from a canteen. The images were troubling for some, because of the uncertainty they provoked over photography’s veracity and integrity. By staging images that referenced the notorious Abu Ghraib torture photographs and elsewhere, but not literally depicting the violence in them, Serrano’s approach has been defended on the basis of the critical work it performs: Rather than undermining photography’s ability to bear witness, the circulation of Serrano’s photographs in The New York Times Magazine poses a more challenging task: it encourages viewers to more closely examine the conventions and the set of beliefs upon which photography’s evidentiary and testimonial authority ultimately depend. (Duganne, 2007, p.74) Ten years later Serrano returned to this disturbing subject, raising further ethical questions about the representation of suffering, in a series of photographs made with survivors of torture. During the course of 2015 he photographed more than 40 participants, recreating their suffering through staged versions of their torment with devices associated with torture. The series takes inspiration from such sources as Nazi Concentration camps, Stasi interrogation centres, the conflict in Northern Ireland and Abu Ghraib in Iraq. Among the participants are some of Northern Ireland’s ‘hooded men’, a group of political prisoners who were subjected to ‘deep interrogation’ under the British government’s internment programme in the early 1970s. For their portraits, some of the men stripped and wore hoods for the first time since their ordeal. Significantly, the Torture series is not just a refashioning of history, but acts as a form of witnessing that the conflict still continues. The men are ‘campaigning to have their treatment recognized as torture at the European court of human rights’ and as recently as April 2016 ‘their lawyers accused Theresa Villiers, then the Northern Ireland secretary, of deliberately holding back documents that could help them’ while Amnesty International has called for their case to be reopened (Jones, 2016). That the images are not entirely fictitious representations of trauma raises important questions about individual and collective memory, and chimes with the genre of ‘aftermath photography’ that has become an important way of bearing witness to the places and traces of suffering in contemporary visual culture.

Aftermath photography In contrast to the logic of much photojournalism, which seeks to record the spectacle of conflict as it unfolds, there has been an effort to reconfigure the violence of representation by focusing on the traces of conflict in a ‘more reserved, pictorially still depiction of its aftermath’ (Carville, 2014, p.73). An example of such an approach is the work of the French photographer Sophie Ristelhueber who has paid particular attention to the ruins and traces left by war and the scars it leaves on the landscape. In her series WB (West Bank) she ‘refused to photograph the great separation wall that embodies the policy of a state and the media icon of the “Middle Eastern problem”,’ rather she took photographs of the small roadblocks the Israelis had built on ‘country roads with whatever means available’ and from such an elevated ‘viewpoint that transforms the blocks of the barriers into elements of the landscape’ (Rancière, 2011, p.104). It has been said that her images have the dry, objective look of an insurance assessors report, in that they seem to be presented purely as evidence. But we are invited to ‘to view them culturally as well as factually, and to use our imagination as well as our eyes’ (Badger, 2007, p.156). 405

Eamonn Carrabine

Her approach developed from an early series of photographs of post-surgical scars on human bodies taken at a hospital in Paris, which were exhibited at such a large scale that they were transformed into landscapes. The series consists of large-scale close-ups of fresh surgical stitches, framing sections of human flesh that remain strangely anonymous and mysterious. Then later she started to go to areas of war and conflict and photograph scars of war left on the landscape. Her images are traces of history and conflict, which she calls ‘details of the world’, are like scars on a body, and they convey a similar story of wounds barely healed. She has been photographing these metaphorical scars in such war-torn places as Beirut, Kuwait, Bosnia and Iraq since 1982, recording the violence inflicted on the surface of the earth by the machinery of war. Rather than focusing on the geopolitical meaning of a particular conflict, she is engaged with the ambiguities of the ‘terrain of the real and of collective emotions’ (in Oliver & Oliver, 2011), visualizing the tragic repetition of destruction across nature and civilization. This more allusive approach is also exemplified in the Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar, who has produced several works on the Rwandan genocide of 1994, none of which depict a single instant of the carnage. Across a series of pieces, he has explored the limits of representation and highlighted issues that barely registered in the Western mass media, exposing media culture’s inability to see and stop the slaughter. His installation Untitled (1994) is composed of 17 digitally reproduced covers of Newsweek magazine, over the five-month period from April 6 to August 1, 1994, during which time a million people were massacred. Only the last cover features the Rwandan genocide, below each other cover is a printed card detailing what was happening in Rwanda at the time of publication of the issue (Kurt Cobain’s suicide, miracle medical cures, the legacy of Jackie Onassis, the World Cup, O.J. Simpson’s trial, and the future of North Korea are among the cover features). The juxtaposition is an indictment of Western media culture’s failure to see and intervene in the slaughter. Crucially, Jaar does not suggest that what were needed were more pictures of people suffering, as these graphic images also contribute to our inability to see. Although Jaar took numerous photographs when he was in Rwanda, much of his work depends upon, and even accentuates, a refusal to display the violence. On being invited to participate in a public art project in Malmö, Sweden, he was given the use of 40 light-boxes to display any image he wished. Instead he filled them with the name ‘Rwanda’ repeated multiple times in large, black type on a white background, which were then distributed around the city – posters deploying the rhetoric of advertising in an effort to shift perception. His Real Pictures (1995) exhibition was the first to include the different pictures he took of the genocide, but they are buried within black boxes, and the only thing visible is text describing the image inside. The boxes are arranged into monuments of various shapes and sizes, which Jaar has described as a ‘cemetery of images’, but in addition to resembling a graveyard, the installation also looks like an archive. Once they are stored in this way, ‘archivally, these images accumulate a charge, so that the monuments begin to operate like batteries: image batteries’ (Levi Strauss, 2003, p.94). The idea of the archive used here also speaks to the future of testimony, providing spectral memory traces for a time yet to come. Most commentators see the installation as a ‘tomb to the media’, a haunting ‘elegy to the image and to the power it has lost to a world of simulation and spectacle’ (Blocker, 2009, p.55). Some contemporary photographers have taken an anti-reportage position, slowing down the image-making process and arriving well after the decisive moment. This more contemplative strategy can be found in Simon Norfolk’s various studies of war and his efforts to challenge the oversimplification of much photojournalism. In his photographs of Afghanistan (Norfolk, 2002) there is a deliberate attempt to understand the country’s long struggle with colonialism and his images deploy a distinctive pictorial style, that invokes late eighteenth-century Western landscape painting and its portrayal of the decline of once great civilizations. In this way, ‘the skeletons of bombed-out buildings are shown as romantic ruins on deserted plains’ to make the critical point 406

Media and crime

that it is because of the destruction of over 30 years of war ‘this ancient and culturally rich region has been returned to a premodern state’ (Cotton, 2015, p.172). This attention to the traces of time and how to visualize the complexity of human suffering is developed in his subsequent work. The failure of Western governments to intervene in the conflict in the former Yugoslavia is a theme explored in Norfolk’s (2005) Bleed, which revisits the frozen landscapes of eastern Bosnia where thousands were massacred and the almost abstract images become powerful allegories for the secrets buried beneath the ice. For Norfolk it was crucial to know the exact location of the grave sites, to give the work a forensic credibility and visual power. As he explains, ‘it’s even more important when the picture uses metaphors; if the detective work was poor then the whole project would unravel quickly. The only way you can come at it in such a symbolic way is if you are one hundred percent sure that here are the locations – otherwise it’s a weak, feeble approach’ (cited in Lowe, 2014, p.225). The tension between the arresting beauty of the images and the fact that something terrible is contained in them enables him to make a strong moral argument about the nature of guilt. A rather different exponent of the method is Bruno Serralongue who in his Fait Divers series traced crime and accident scenes as they were described in the regional newspaper, Nice-Matin. Working between late 1993 and April 1995 he would take pictures of the deserted scene in and around Nice, France, where only very recently something terrible had happened. Although the photos ‘look too suspiciously banal’ on their own, once they are accompanied by text below the image, the effect is disconcerting and is an ironic comment on the ‘role of the photographeras-detective’ albeit ‘one who always arrives at the scene too late’ (Van Gelder & Westgeest, 2011, p.159). Others too have become preoccupied with conveying traumatic events that for various reasons have left hardly any visual traces. This is especially the case in Antonio Olmos’s (2013) efforts to photograph all the sites where murders occurred in London, England, between January 1, 2011, and December 31, 2012, which are collected in his profoundly moving book Landscape of Murder. The sites were visited within a few days of the crime, and the images not only capture fleeting moments of grief (huddled friends, wilting flowers, messages of condolence), remnants of forensic investigation (fluttering police tape, scattered traffic cones), but occasionally nothing at all remains to indicate that a life has ended violently at the site. The book is not so much about violence and death, but rather a way of seeing place and giving memory to mostly forgotten events, and in doing so it presents a very different portrait of the city. In this it shares much with the genre of ‘aftermath photography’ and the ‘forensic turn’ where there is an acknowledgement that the camera is a ‘secondary witness’ that does not depict the trauma itself, but rather the spaces in which it occurred and the traces left behind, so that the ‘act of secondary witnessing takes on an overly moral character as the witness is actively choosing to make their statement about the past rather than passively being there at the time of the occurrence’ (Lowe, 2014, p.217). The question of photography’s roles as a credible eyewitness is taken up by Taryn Simon (2003) in her work with the Innocence Project in the US, which was established in 1992 and primarily uses DNA testing to overturn wrongful convictions. Images in these cases were deeply implicated in transforming innocent citizens into violent criminals and securing their convictions. In 2002 Simon photographed a number of these men at locations that had profound significance in their wrongful imprisonment, often the scene of crime. This particular place is both arbitrary and crucial – it is somewhere they had never been, yet changed their lives forever. The haunting narrative portraits she produced highlights photography’s ability to blur truth and fiction and the devastating consequences this can have. Each photograph is accompanied by commentary from the two lawyers who co-founded the Innocence Project, Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck (who both also worked on the O.J. Simpson defence team in 1995), and it quickly 407

Eamonn Carrabine

becomes apparent that there remain many still falsely imprisoned because of failings in the legal system. Her images directly confront the contradiction between truth and justice, and in them we see a ‘mixture of anger, resignation, and fear in the photographed images of the innocents forged by the unimaginable horror of spending a decade or more in prison because they happened to be a person of the wrong color or class, in the wrong place, at the wrong time’ (Courtney & Lyng, 2007, p.189).

Conclusion These are only a handful of recent examples and what should be clear from this brief discussion of the documentary tradition is that it is not only flourishing, but has much to offer a visually informed criminology. Although the genre can be condemned and dismissed for its morbid fascination with human suffering, it also offers new ways of seeing social practices. Despite all the contradictions running through the tradition, the desire to bear witness to the suffering and violence of the age remains paramount, and requires us to learn new ways of seeing, especially in those places where seeing is not simple and is often hidden from view. Indeed, it is also clear that accompanying this resurgence of interest in using images to tell stories about social worlds there has also been an emergence of a rich body of theoretical writing focusing on the ethical and political implications of the visual, working within, around and against the traditions described in this chapter.

References Agger, B. (2015) Oversharing, Abingdon: Routledge. Armstrong, N. and L. Tennenhouse (1989) ‘Introduction: Representing Violence, or “How the West was Won”’, in Armstrong, N. and L. Tennenhouse (eds) The Violence of Representation: Literature and the History of Violence, London: Routledge. The Atlas Group (2003/2006) ‘Let’s be Honest, the Rain Helped’, in Merewether, W. (ed.) The Archive, London: Whitechapel Gallery, pp.179–180. Azoulay, A. (2008) The Civil Contract of Photography, New York: Zone Books. Badger, G. (2007) The Genius of Photography, London: Quadrille. Benjamin, W. (1934/1982) ‘The Author as Producer’, in Burgin, V. (ed.), Thinking Photography, London: Macmillan, pp.15–31. Blocker, J. (2009) Seeing Witness:Visuality and the Ethics of Testimony, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. Brown, S. (2003) Crime and Law in Media Culture, Buckingham: Open University Press. Brundson, C. and D. Morley (1978) Everyday Television: Nationwide, London: BFI. Buckingham, D. (2003) ‘Children and Television: A Critical Overview of the Research’, in Nightingale, V. and K. Ross (eds) Critical Readings: Media and Audiences, Berkshire: Open University Press. Carrabine, E. (2012) ‘Just Images: Aesthetics, Ethics and Visual Criminology’, British Journal of Criminology, 52:463–489. Carrabine, E. (2014) ‘Seeing Things: Violence, Voyeurism and the Camera’, Theoretical Criminology, 18(2):134–158. Carrabine, E. (2016) ‘Doing Visual Criminology: Learning from Documentary, Journalism and Sociology’, in Jacobsen, M. and S. Walklate (eds) Liquid Criminology: Doing Imaginative Criminological Research, Dartmouth: Ashgate, pp.121–139. Carville, J. (2014) ‘The Violence of the Image: Conflict and Post-Conflict Photography in Northern Ireland’, in Kennedy, L. and C. Patrick (eds.) The Violence of the Image: Photography and International Conflict, London: IB Tauris, pp.60–77. Chandler, D. (2000) Voices from S-21: Terror and History in Pol Pot’s Secret Prison, Chiang Mai, Thailand: Silkworm Books. Connell, I. (1985) ‘Fabulous Powers: Blaming the Media’, in Masterton, L. (ed.) Television Mythologies, London: Comedia. 408

Media and crime

Cottle, S. (2003) ‘Media Organisation and Production: Mapping the Field’, in Cottle, S. (ed.) Media Organization and Production, London: Sage. Cotton, C. (2015) The Photograph as Contemporary Art, London: Thames & Hudson. Courtney, D. and S. Lyng (2007) ‘Taryn Simon and The Innocents Project’, Crime, Media, Culture, 3(2):175–191. Dalton, D. (2015) Dark Tourism and Crime, London: Routledge. Didi-Huberman, G. (2008) Images in Spite of All: Four Photographs from Auschwitz, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Duganne, E. (2007) ‘Photography after the Fact’, in Reinhardt, M., H. Edwards and E. Duganne (eds) Beautiful Suffering: Photography and the Traffic in Pain, Williamstown, MA: Williams College Museum of Art, pp.57–74. Ellis, J. (2012) Documentary: Witness and Self-Revelation, London: Routledge. Ericson, R. (1991) ‘Mass Media, Crime, Law, and Justice: An Institutional Approach’, The British Journal of Criminology, 13(3):219–249. Erikson, R., P. Baranek and J. Chan (1991) Representing Order: Crime, Law, and Justice in the News Media, Toronto: Toronto University Press. Favero, P. (2014) ‘Learning to Look Beyond the Frame: Reflections on the Changing Meaning of Images in the Age of Digital Media Practices’, Visual Studies, 29(2):166–179. Goldsmith, A. (2011) ‘Policing’s New Visibility’, British Journal of Criminology, 50(5):914–934. Gournelos, T. (2012) ‘Breaking the News: Power and Secrecy in the Age of the Internet’, in Gunkel, D. and T. Gournelos (eds) Transgression 2.0: Media, Culture, and the Politics of a Digital Age, London: Continuum. Graham, S. (2010) Cities Under Siege, London: Verso. Greenslade, R. (2016) ‘News publishers contributed £5.3bn to the UK economy in 2015’, in The Guardian, 14 December 2016. Greer, C. and E. McLaughlin (2011) ‘We Predict a Riot? Public Order Policing, New Media Environments and the Rise of the Citizen Journalist’, British Journal of Criminology, 50(6):1041–1059. Haggerty, K. and R. Ericson (2000) ‘The Surveillant Assemblage’, British Journal of Sociology, 51(4):605–622. Hallin, D. and P. Mancini (2004) Comparing Media Systems: Three Models of Media and Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hayward, K. and M. Presdee (eds) (2010) Framing Crime: Cultural Criminology and the Image, Abingdon: Routledge. Hughes, R. (2003) ‘The Abject Artefacts of Memory: Photographs from Cambodia’s Genocide’, Media, Culture & Society, 25(1):23–44. Jewkes, Y. (2015) Media and Crime, 3rd edition, London: SAGE. Jones, J. (2016) ‘Why Northern Ireland – and the rest of the world – needs Andres Serrano’s Torture pictures’, The Guardian, 24 October 2016, www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2016/ oct/24/andres-serrano-torture-human-cruelty-void-derry-northern-ireland-troubles. Jones, R. (2000) ‘Digital Rule: Punishment, Control and Technology’, Punishment & Society, 2(1):5–22. Levi Strauss, D. (2003) Between the Eyes: Essays on Photography and Politics, New York: Aperture. Linfield, S. (2010) The Cruel Radiance, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lowe, P. (2014) ‘The Forensic Turn: Bearing Witness and the “Thingness” of the Photograph’, in Kennedy, L. and C. Patrick (eds) The Violence of the Image: Photography and International Conflict, London: IB Tauris, pp.211–234. Lübecker, N. (2013) ‘The Politics of Images’, Paragraph, 36(3):392–407. Lyon, D. (2003) ‘Surveillance as Social Sorting’, in Lyon, D. (ed.) Surveillance as Social Sorting: Privacy, Risk and Digitial Discrimination, London: Routledge, pp.13–30. Norfolk, S. (2002) Afghanistan, Stockport: Dewi Lewis. Norfolk, S. (2005) Bleed, Stockport: Dewi Lewis. Oliver, M. and P. Oliver (2011) ‘Sophie Ristelhueber’, https://talkingwound.wordpress.com/category/ scars/. Olmos, A. (2013) Landscape of Murder, Stockport: Dewi Lewis. Paglen, T. (2009) Blank Spots on the Map: The Dark Geopgraphy of the Pentagon’s Secret World, New York: Dutton. Paglen, T. (2010) Invisible: Covert Operations and Classified Landscapes, New York: Aperture. Paglen, T. (2012) The Last Pictures, New York: Creative Time. Paglen, T. (2013) ‘What Greg Roberts Saw: Visuality, Intelligibility, and Sovereingty – 30,600 km over the Equator’, in Mirzoeff, N. (ed.) The Visual Culture Reader, London: Routledge, pp.207–219. Paglen, T. (2016) ‘Invisible Images (Your Pictures Are Looking at You)’, Science/Fiction, 74:14–22. 409

Eamonn Carrabine

Pearson, G. (1983) Hooligan: A History of Respectable Fears, London: Macmillan. Preston, P. (2017) ‘Change never stops, but we will always need journalism’, The Guardian, 1 January 2017. www.theguardian.com/media/2017/jan/01/we-always-need-journalism-but-change-never-stops. Price, D. (2009) ‘Surveyors and Surveyed: Photography Out and About’, in Wells, L. (ed.) Photography: A Critical Introduction, London: Routledge, pp.65–115. Prosser, J. (2012) ‘Introduction’, in Batchen, G., M. Gidley, N. Miller and J. Prosser (eds.) Picturing Atrocity: Photography in Crisis, London: Reaktion Books, pp.7–13. Rancière, J. (2007) The Future of the Image, London: Verso. Rancière, J. (2011) The Emancipated Spectator, London: Verso. Raphael, P. (2004) ‘The Political Origins of Reali-TV’, in Murray, S. and L. Oullette (eds.) Reality TV: The Re-making of TV Culture, New York: New York University Press. Reinhardt, M. (2007) ‘Picturing Violence: Aesthetics and the Anxiety of Critique’, in Reinhardt, M., H. Edwards and E. Duganne (eds) Beautiful Suffering: Photography and the Traffic in Pain, Williamstown, MA: Williams College Museum of Art, pp.13–36. Reinhardt, M. (2012) ‘Painful Photographs: From the Ethics of Spectatorship to Visual Politics’, in Grønstad, A. and H. Gustafsson (eds) Ethics and Images of Pain, London: Routledge. Reinhardt, M. and H. Edwards (2007) ‘Traffic in Pain’, in Reinhardt, M., H. Edwards and E. Duganne (eds) Beautiful Suffering: Photography and the Traffic in Pain, Williamstown, MA: Williams College Museum of Art, pp.7–12. Schlesinger, P. and H. Tumber (1994) Reporting Crime: The Media Politics of Criminal Justice, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Shields, D. (2015) War is Beautiful, New York: Powerhouse. Simon, T., P. Neufeld and B. Scheck (2003) The Innocents, New York: Umbrage. Stallabrass, J. (2013) ‘Contentious Relations: Art and Documentary’, in Stallabrass, J. (ed.) Documentary, London: Whitechapel Gallery. Thompson, J. (2005) ‘The New Visibility’, Theory, Culture and Society, 22(6):31–51. Tyner, J. and C. Devadoss (2014) ‘Administrative Violence, Prison Geographies and the Photographs of Tuol Sleng Security Center, Cambodia’, Area, 46/4:361–368. Van Gelder, H. and H. Westgeest (2011) Photography Theory in Historical Perspective, Oxford: Blackwell. Williams, M. (2016) ‘Guardians Upon High: An Application of Routine Activities Theory to Online Identity Theft in Europe at the Country and Individual Level’, British Journal of Criminology, 56(1):21–48. Zelizer, B. (2012) ‘Atrocity, the “As If ”, and Impending Death from the Khmer Rouge’, in Batchen, G., M. Gidley, N. Miller and J. Prosser (eds) Picturing Atrocity: Photography in Crisis, London: Reaktion Books, pp.155–167.

410

34 Research on human trafficking Critical perspectives and thoughts on new directions Emily Troshynski and Olivia Tuttle

Introduction The phenomenon of illegal trafficking of humans is not new. What are new are the global sophistications, complexities, and consolidations of trafficking networks, as well as the increasing numbers of men, women, and children who are trafficked each year. Even with legal prohibitions, advocates, governmental organizations, and scholars have raised concerns that a modern form of slavery known as “human trafficking” has reached epic proportions. Human trafficking includes the use of force, fraud, and/or coercion to transport persons either within countries or across international borders; it often involves a number of different crimes, spanning several different countries, and is said to include increasing amounts of individuals each year. Those who study human trafficking are faced with large gaps of empirical literature and theoretical knowledge. There is only a diminutive amount of reliable data on the actual scale of human trafficking (Bales, 1999, 2005; Di Nicola, 2007; Gozdziak & Bump, 2008; Laczko & Gozdziak, 2005), a handful of long-term evaluations dedicated to “effectiveness” of anti-trafficking policies (Winterdyk & Reichel, 2010), and limited research devoted to identifying and serving trafficking victims (Clawson, Dutch, Solomon, & Grace, 2009; Sigmon, 2008). Likewise, we know even less about the techniques used by actual traffickers themselves (Blank, 2007; Troshynski & Blank, 2008, 2016; Zhang, 2012). What research we do have is typically discipline specific, geared towards policy and media outlets. Only recently have scholars incorporated inter/multidisciplinary understandings of human trafficking (Dragiewicz, 2014). Given the gaps in empirical and theoretical knowledge, the field of critical criminology has much to offer future research on human trafficking. Critical criminology seeks to challenge state-defined concepts of crime, question official crime statistics, and critique positivist analyses of criminality. As such, critical criminology considers the “politicized exploration of the role of crime and crime control in society” (Anthony & Cunneen, 2008, p. 2) with a focus on the unequal distribution of power or of material resources including the role of the state (and state actors) in reproducing disadvantage. Dominant forms of social control (i.e. policing, criminal justice, and penal policies), laws and systems of punishment are central to a broader understanding of how the status quo benefits the powerful elites; a

411

Emily Troshynski and Olivia Tuttle

relationship considered to be criminogenic because it further exacerbates inequalities and injustices. Critical criminology seeks to contribute to and promote a foundational knowledge needed to confront a world inundated with policies of exclusion (Young, 1999), advance progressive agendas which favor those most marginalized (Schwartz & Freidrichs, 1994, p. 221), and advocate for transformative social change that promotes a higher quality of life for the truly disadvantaged. As such, incorporating a critical criminological lens is beneficial for the timely production of an enhanced understanding of human trafficking. The goal of this chapter is to discuss multidimensional trends of human trafficking. A comprehensive review of relevant research dedicated to human trafficking is explored which allows for a conversation surrounding contested rates, inconsistent definitional issues, attachments to international policy, various manifestations of the phenomenon (i.e. labor and sexual exploitation, and other forms), as well as some most commonly cited methodological limitations and theoretical deficiencies. For future work, it is suggested herein that the use of critical criminology does have a significant role to play on the dialogue surrounding human trafficking and such a discussion is paramount to this chapter.

Contested rates and inconsistent definitions Even though accurate data on the number of humans trafficked annually is mixed, first popularized estimates suggested that between 7,000 and 4 million women and children were trafficked internationally each year into illegal sex and labor industries (Cwikel & Hoban, 2005; Jakobsson & Kotsadam, 2013; O’Connell Davidson, 2006a, 2006b). In 2004, there were also claims that the number of “slaves in the world” was 27 million (Bales, 2005, p. 8) while, a year later, the International Labor Organization (ILO) estimated that 2.45 million individuals were trafficked for forced labor (Belser, 2005). In 2010, the U.S. government further clamed that 0.18 percent of the world’s population (which was 6.9 billion at the time) were trafficking victims while, again in 2012, the ILO reported that approximately 9.1 million individuals were currently trafficked (U.S. Department of State, 2010; ILO, 2012). Current ILO figures now suggest that, “almost 21 million people are victims of forced labour” and of those exploited, “4.5 million are victims of forced sexual exploitation” (ILO, 2016).1 Even though these estimates are varied, oftentimes they do not include individuals trafficked within their own country nor do they mention the problematic trend of human trafficking for organs. Because of the hidden figure and illegality of the activity, it is nearly impossible to estimate the true numbers of humans who are trafficked each year. Even so, many media and government sources treat these figures as factual (e.g. U.S. State Department’s Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report, 2013, p. 7; see also Weitzer, 2014). Future research on human trafficking should continue to focus on these dubious rates and seek out publications geared towards a more holistic account of the problem at hand. Additionally, future research on human trafficking should seek to problematize the reality that, currently, there is no uniform definition. Terms such as “human trafficking” and “trafficking in persons” are often interchangeable and tend to refer to “severe forms of trafficking” whereas “alien smuggling,” “trafficking of aliens,” “illegal immigrant smuggling,” “trade of human beings,” and “commodification of human beings” are also used to describe similar phenomena. These inconsistencies account for the fact that, since 2000, there have been over 20 different definitions used to describe human trafficking (Albanese, Schrock-Donnelly & Kelegian, 2004; Salt & Hogarth, 2000). Although human trafficking is often considered an international crime that involves the crossing of borders, individuals can also be trafficked within their own countries as well. This is 412

Research on human trafficking

significant because victims of human trafficking are not always what some governments consider to be “illegal aliens” – they may, in fact, be citizens of the country to which they are trafficked, legal residents, or visitors. Additionally, since human trafficking is widely regarded as a multifaceted crime, it is not always readily apparent when a case of “illegal immigration” or “human smuggling” becomes a case of “human trafficking.” There are subtle differences between each of these phenomena and a critical criminological perspective should always consider the discrepancies, similarities, and historical and/or legislative history of each. Similar to problems with “human trafficking” and “human smuggling,” confusions are also present with the numerous definitions of “trafficking in women.”2 Wijers and Lap-Chew (1997) provide a definition that highlights instances of coercion and deception as tantamount. Considered to be the most comprehensive discussion of the lineage of troubles and resolutions in defining “trafficking in women,” Wijers and Lap-Chew include a historical review of international conventions and contextual changes where trafficking in women relates to “all acts involved in the recruitment and/or transportation of women within and across national borders for work or services by means of violence or threat of violence, abuse of authority or dominant position, debt bondage, deception or other forms of coercion” (1997, p. 36). To date, this definition is used and cited the most. Similar to definitions of trafficking for labor, this definition also promotes a heavy emphasis on coercion as a key element. In thinking about the definition of human trafficking, past research has also explored the ways in which public and government agencies have defined the phenomenon and how these definitions have influenced current trafficking policies (Jahic & Finckenauer, 2005; Weitzer, 2005, 2007, 2011, 2014). What does remain consistent throughout the literature is that definitions tend to acknowledge a trafficked person as someone who is treated as an object of exploitation. It is for this primary reason that descriptors such as “fraud,” “force,” and “coercion,” are used as key defining characteristics of human trafficking as seen within international and localized legislation and policy efforts. Even so, available evaluative models and theoretical concepts fall short of fully describing the complexity of human trafficking. Such existing frameworks tend to package human trafficking within a larger context of forced labor, irregular trends in migration, or anti-prostitution frameworks. Indeed, there is still a need to create a comprehensive theoretical framework on human trafficking.

Defining elements of human trafficking: coercion, power, and exploitation Given these inconsistencies, scholars continue to suggest that, with all forms of human trafficking, the similarities and connections to be made rest in the reduction of human beings to property over which an unlimited amount of power is exercised by one human being over another (Pocar, 2007; Raymond, 2002). This is why the use of fraud, force, coercion, power, and exploitation are common features that continue to be incorporated throughout international legislation including the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime, as adopted in November 2000 by the United Nations General Assembly (Conyers, 2007; Giampolo, 2006; Lobasz, 2009). In defining “trafficking in persons,” the Protocol highlights the act of control of one person over another, through the presence of fraud, coercion, physical or psychological abuse and for the purpose of exploitation3 while the “smuggling of migrants” refers specifically to procuring the illegal entry of a person into a state of which the person is not a national or a permanent resident 413

Emily Troshynski and Olivia Tuttle

in return for a financial or other material benefit. The United Nations (UN) (2000abc) Convention on Transnational Organized Crime as well as the additional protocols on human trafficking and smuggling is oftentimes regarded as novel because they highlight a transnational notion of organized crime and the issues of sex trafficking and illegal migration as well as prostitution. The characteristics of these protocols diverge from those as adopted by previous conventions (League of Nations, 1933; United Nations [UN] 1949, 1950) in that they are more acutely aware of the expansion and regulation of illegal economic activities and migration due to a common understanding of globalization as well as “the hegemonic role that the U.S. has assumed in the contemporary world system” (Papanicolaou, 2008, p. 381). Yet again, the same emphases on the above key elements used throughout the Protocol are also included in the Convention on Action Against Trafficking in Human Beings, adopted on May 16, 2006 by the Council of Europe. In the final “Framework Decision,”4 this legislation not only details specific ways to combat human trafficking, but also notes the element of control as being primary.5 Overall, disagreements about how to define human trafficking still occur today, particularly when considering distinctions between sex trafficking and labor trafficking. These contestations and debates are discussed throughout much of the literature (Chapkis, 2003; Gerassi, 2015; Musto, 2009) and highlight the many assumptions associated with popular understandings of human trafficking broadly and of victims of human trafficking specifically. Human trafficking is more furtive than popular and political images associated. Now that we have outlined some of the basic concerns with estimated rates and definitional issues, it becomes important to understand the lineage of research dedicated to this multifaceted crime. For example, some research has suggested that the inclusion of sex work and prostitution, as depicted within human trafficking definitions, intimately reflect U.S. policies and the influx of very specific advocacy groups (Agustin, 2005; Dragiewicz, 2008; Lobasz, 2009; Weitzer, 2005, 2007). Though human trafficking encompasses a wide array of processes, research to date tends to focus on trafficking for the purpose of sexual and/or labor exploitation.

Current research on human trafficking: gaps and areas for improvement When reviewing past research on human trafficking, analysis is typically confined to a discussion of describing the phenomenon, indicating who is involved, depicting trafficking routes, explaining common practices used to traffic individuals, discussing legal consequences for those accused of trafficking, as well as outlining legal/law enforcement mechanisms for combating and/or controlling the phenomenon (Breuil, Siegel, Van Reene, Beijer & Roos, 2011; Chuang, 2006; Halley, Kotiswaran, Shamir, & Thomas, 2006; Musto, 2016). Other previous work has also adopted a method of indicating the most popular theoretical approaches as well as their convergences and divergences (Gozdiak, 2011; Gozdziak & Collett, 2007). These typically include trafficking for the purpose of prostitution, in a context of migration, as a labor issue, as a criminal problem, as a human rights problem, as modern-day slavery, and as abuse towards children. These approaches are still the most commonly cited. For this chapter, research on human trafficking for labor and sexual exploitation will be noted as well as research on other forms of human trafficking (child soldiering and organ harvesting). These have been selected due to their prominence as already established within criminological literature.

414

Research on human trafficking

Research on human trafficking for labor exploitation To date, most trafficking research and literature dedicated to labor exploitation implies that there has been no attempt to develop a theoretical framework that comprehensively analyzes the phenomenon in its entirety. Similar to existing international migration theories, few attempts have been made to examine trafficking for labor exploitation. However, some academics have developed macro-level analytical frameworks (Akee, Basu, Bedi & Chau, 2007) while others have theorized the connection between migration and trafficking for forced labor (Friebel & Guniev, 2006) including the trafficking of children for child labor (Dessy & Pallague, 2006). While theory is scarce, empirical evidence is even scarcer. Systematic knowledge about which countries/regions are most vulnerable to exploitation and to human trafficking is still in its infancy. A critical examination of the pressures exerted by socio-economic conditions and policies in post-industrial countries, including other countries where there is a high demand for foreign labor (i.e. stage of economic development and inequality of incomes between countries/ regions), should be a dominant theoretical rubric (Anker, 2004; Belser, 2005; Cole & Booth, 2007; Taylor & Jamieson, 1999). Recent scholarship on these trajectories will be summarized within this section. Several analytical frameworks discuss the ways in which host countries encourage a strong influence of consumerism which is tightly connected to an overall increase in the demand for goods and services; a trend that has only increased since the latter part of the twentieth century. Taylor and Jamieson (1999) have carefully outlined how, initially, such a trend occurred within the domestic service sphere and Ruggiero (1997) documents how black market-labor via agricultural, textile, fashion and construction sectors have also increased. During these timelines, not only did the illegal trafficking of persons increase but also trafficking of women for the sex trade. Similarly, Phongpaichit (1997) has also discussed how Thailand encouraged the immigration of sex trade workers to Japan and greatly benefited from the resulting influx of currency while Van Impe (2000) has documented how the Philippine government established a policy of exporting labor that viewed employment abroad as a way to positively stimulate the economy. Indeed, past research has shown that host counties purposefully maintain immigration policies that strictly control access to their national territories where, as Beare (1999), Clark (2003), and Friman and Reich (2007) note government officials and border authorities can define human trafficking as a political issue related to border protection and national security. Salt and colleagues (Salt, 2000; Salt & Hogarth, 2000; Salt & Stein, 1997) have proposed an analytical model based on understanding human trafficking as a commercial activity used for labor exploitation. This research articulates international migration (either legal or illegal) as a business that procures thousands of jobs throughout the world and is monitored and managed by individuals, organizations, and institutions that have an active interest in making sure it thrives. This research focuses on the process of trafficking at three key stages: mobilization (where immigrants are recruited in their countries of origin), implementation (the process of transporting individuals), and integration of those trafficked (what kind of integration, and definitions of successful integration). This analytical approach has since been adopted by Juhasz (2000), Okolski (2000b) and, of late, others (Gathmann, 2008; Mahmoud & Trebesch, 2010) have also incorporated similar frameworks that focus on both demand side (regions experiencing large-scale emigration/ immigration where labor markets are booming) and supply side (regions experiencing largescale out-migration where labor markets are dwindling) trajectories. This research suggests that

415

Emily Troshynski and Olivia Tuttle

migration flows are associated with higher rates of human trafficking for labor exploitation, particularly in areas where individuals are socio-economically deprived. However, models such as these lack consideration of the differences and similarities between experiences associated with defined lawful/unlawful activities conducted throughout each country/ region. Such an analysis would be careful to also point out that, when researching human trafficking and applicable trafficking trajectories, there are differences between countries of origin (supply) and host countries (demand) – but that both may or may not encourage immigration and subsequent trafficking. Is the experience of an individual trafficked for legal labor the same as an individual trafficked for illegal labor? What if that individual was a refugee? Are their experiences the same? For those who focus on human trafficking for labor, a critical analysis will always take these differences and similarities into consideration. In thinking about these divergences, past research shows that it seems to be more economical to immigrate/migrate through illegal channels to obtain regular labor than to utilize legitimate avenues available (Phongpaichit, 1997; Ruggiero, 1997; Shelley, 2010). Even though such scenarios seem to be more economically feasible, research has shown that experiences for those trafficked through illegal means is different than those trafficked and obtain legal work. Moreover, research on human trafficking for labor exploitation is oftentimes articulated under a rubric of globalization. Kempadoo and Doezema (1998) suggests that capitalist production has experienced a “global restructuring” (pp. 14–19) where capital moves towards those regions where labor is inexpensive, unions are not influential, and employment policies favor business and the employer over the employee. From this begets an increase in unemployment and parttime work, specifically in post-industrial countries where the erosion of national governments in favor of international organizations – like the World Bank, the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – is a damaging consequence for several national economies. Overall effects include mass displacement of rural populations, a general acceptance of lower wages and poorer working environments, and severe poverty. As a result, social programs dwindle while incentives to consume are amplified – another phenomenon to which human trafficking is tightly connected. Since the late 1990s, research on human trafficking for labor exploitation has also noted that discrimination against women in the areas of education, employment, and health care, as well as the disproportionate burden of economic restructuring, contribute to the “feminization of poverty” and render women and children particularly vulnerable to trafficking (Chuang, 2006; Shelley, 2010). Several reports promote that roughly two-thirds of the world’s poorest are women and girls while 2 million girls between the ages of 5 and 15 are forced into the commercial sex trade each year (United Nations [UN], 1994, 2006). These statistics are at the heart of academic dialogues that suggest that national governments – through their policies on immigration, employment, welfare, and education – are heavily implicated in the construction of both poor work and vulnerable workers. It is not surprising that issues related to local and global exclusion are consistently discussed as push and pull factors that help explain why women and girls are more susceptible to human trafficking (Ravnbøl, 2009). Future research on human trafficking for labor exploitation should continue to think about the similarities and differences associated with regional/country legal and political understandings of labor. What constitutes poor working conditions? Who are the workers in those spaces? Until only recently, research has fallen short on adequately describing and/or discussing the lack of humane treatment afforded to individuals in the trafficking for labor experience. Exceptions include research that carefully defines the problem of human trafficking as a problem related to the declining respect for human rights more generally whereas the vulnerability of trafficked

416

Research on human trafficking

persons is considered as nothing less than deplorable. For many, such practices are akin to modern forms of slavery and often include a focus on human trafficking for sexual exploitation (Anker & Doomernik, 2006; Bales, 2005; Kara, 2009)

Research on human trafficking for sexual exploitation Since the Cold War, a “gendered new world order” has been identified where women in Third World and developing countries experience heightened levels of exploitation via economic, social, and cultural disadvantages (Kempadoo, 2003, 2005; Turpin & Lorentzen, 1996; Wonders & Michalowski, 2001). Because of these local/global realities, recent estimates suggest that millions of individuals are trafficked each year while those trafficked for the purpose of sexual exploitation comprise roughly 80 percent of all human trafficking estimates (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime [UNODC], 2006, 2009). The U.S. Department of State further suggests that approximately 70 percent of the victims of sex trafficking are women and girls where 50 percent are under the age of 18. Research on human trafficking for sexual exploitation (often called “sex trafficking”) focuses on women and girls trafficked, either directly or indirectly, through promises of jobs in other countries. Victims of sex trafficking are often lured by recruiters who assure them well-paying jobs in factories, domestic work in restaurants, or positions as entertainers within the tourist industry (Farr, 2005; Troshynski & Blank, 2016). Assuming they know and understand that they are going into prostitution, young women may be openly enlisted into sex work. Conversely, they may be coerced, deceived, kidnapped, forced, and/or sold into the sex industry (Dragiewicz, 2014; McCabe & Manian, 2010; Milivojevic & Pickering, 2013). Additionally, with the purpose of suborning family debts, research has also documented that girls and young women are also sold to recruiters by their parents or other relatives (Bales, 2005; Kara, 2009). Some families sell their daughters with full knowledge of what will come of them; others offer their daughters to individuals who promise to find them well-paying jobs so that they may be able to work and help with their families’ economic situation. Research has further documented that, once these children leave the protection of their families, they are trafficked for the international sex trade (Bales, 2005; Farr, 2005; Papanicolaou, 2008). Recent feminist scholarship on the commercial sex industry has done a thorough job in placing the discussion of human trafficking within larger structural and ideological contexts under which the phenomenon occurs. For example, a Feminist Rights-Based Approach aims not only to preserve human rights, but to do so in a way that identifies and addresses gender-specific needs and root sources of human trafficking (Anker & Doomernik, 2006; Heyzer, 2006; Pourmokhtari, 2015). This research suggests that sex work and/or prostitution both result from and reproduce ingrained gender, race, class, and national inequalities (Kempadoo & Doezema, 1998; Miller & Jayasundara, 2001; Miller, 2002; Shin, 2011) and that the nature of these inequalities vary across locations thus resulting in culturally specific patterns of trafficking (Chung, 2009; Constable, 2006; Hodge & Lietz, 2007). Early sex trafficking research (Itzen, 1992, p. 65) demonstrates that prostitution and the sex tourism industry emphasize race discrimination that “exploits black and ‘Third World’ women and children” while perpetuating racist as well as sexist stereotypes. For example, research has further documented that the vast majority of pornography uses women and children of color to further reproduce and reinforce White supremacist stereotypes (Beeks & Amir, 2006; Goodey, 2004b). For these same reasons, South East Asia, Latin America, and Africa have become the preferred destinations for sex tourists (Bales, 2005; Farr, 2005; Glover,

417

Emily Troshynski and Olivia Tuttle

2006; Jeffreys, 2008). Research on the sex trafficking of men and boys, female/feminine selfidentified men and boys, and LGBT individuals is scant even though we do know that they too are trafficked for such purposes (Kempadoo, Sanghera & Pattanaik, 2015; McClain & Garrity, 2011). Research on human trafficking for sexual exploitation has focused predominantly on the trafficking of women and girls and, with exceptions, has been conducted by individuals involved in anti-prostitution campaigns. As documented throughout critiques of sex trafficking research (Agustin, 2005; Outshoorn, 2005; Weitzer, 2007, 2011, 2014), feminist abolitionists and anti-prostitution approaches view sex trafficking contrarily. These ideological orientations lead to different research objectives and policy goals. Therefore, research on human trafficking for sexual exploitation offers several alternative and conflicting ideological arguments surrounding the context, conceptualization, and responses to sex trafficking. A critical perspective should continue to account for these diverse lineages including moral judgments associated.6 Overall, there are several themes present in the literature on human trafficking for sexual exploitation. Only a few are mentioned here. Other topics include a focus on violence experienced by sex trafficking victims as well as long-term effects, the involvement of organized crime in sex trafficking, clients’ perspectives of prostitutes/sex workers and of prostitution/sex work, as well as research on those who recruit and traffic individuals for sexual exploitation.

Research on other forms of human trafficking The above-discussed modes of human trafficking are the two most common forms present in the literature; however, it is important to consider other types of exploitation that have been placed under the umbrella of human trafficking. The United Nations estimates that around half of all instances of human trafficking worldwide involve sexual exploitation, while around 40 percent are victims of forced labor. The remaining 10 percent of trafficking victims experience other forms of exploitation including trafficking for the purpose of committing crime, begging, or pornography, forced marriage, benefit fraud, child selling and illegal adoption, armed combat (e.g. child soldiering), and organ removal (UNODC, 2014, p. 35). The UN cites regional differences in these various “other forms of exploitation.” For example, Europe and Central Asia report cases of trafficking for crime and begging, while in Sub-Saharan Africa, instances of child soldiering are more common. Very little research has examined these other types of human trafficking. However, two in particular (i.e. child soldiering, organ removal) have recently begun to receive attention. Child soldiering The International Labour Organization (ILO, 2012) estimates that approximately 5.5 million children are victims of forced labor globally. Forced labor of children refers to any instance in which a child (person under 18) is forced to work and/or prevented from leaving work under circumstances of coercion or deception applied by a third party (either to the child or the parents). Examples include a child born into a bonded family and forced to work for the parents’ employer; a child sent by their parents to work to repay a debt; and, a child who has been kidnapped for the purpose of forced labor (ILO, 2012; West, 2016). Child soldiering refers to an instance in which a child is recruited or used by an armed group. This could involve employing the child in such activities as fighting, carrying messages, 418

Research on human trafficking

cooking, and spying (United Nations Children’s Fund [UNICEF], 2007). There are certain factors that increase the vulnerability of children to soldiering. The presence of armed conflict and political violence leads to blurred borders and economic turmoil. Some children are abducted or coerced, while others volunteer to join armed groups as a means to survive (Conradi, 2013; Hick, 2001). Stereotypical conceptions of child soldiering typically involve boys; however, girls are also recruited and used by armed forces, and their experiences can be quite different from that of boys. They are more often exploited for sex, as well as used for domestic caretaking and spying. They are also more likely to experience sexual assault (Chung, 2009; Conradi, 2013).

Trafficking in persons for the removal of organs Another form of human trafficking is trafficking in persons for the purpose of organ removal. Organ transplantation is a relatively recent medical innovation, with the first successful transplants taking place in the 1950s. While this practice has saved countless lives, it has also led to increased demand for organs (UNODC, 2015). In 2007, the World Health Organization estimated that approximately 5–10 percent of transplants worldwide involved trafficking (Shimazono, 2007). As with other forms of human trafficking, there are various driving forces that can increase vulnerability to becoming a victim of trafficking for the purpose of organ removal. Key root causes include poverty and poor education, as well as governmental inadequacies in legal frameworks and health care (Budiani-Saberi & Karim, 2009; UNODC, 2015). An interesting debate that has developed in response to increasing trafficking for the removal of organs centers on the question of whether the sale of organs (transplant commercialism, transplant tourism) should be illegal at all. Reminiscent of the ideological arguments surrounding trafficking for sexual exploitation discussed earlier in this chapter (i.e. abolitionist versus prorights feminism), there are two opposing perspectives in this debate. On one side, opponents of legalization argue that the sale of organs is morally wrong, and prohibition serves to combat trafficking and protect vulnerable populations. On the other, proponents argue that prohibition does not necessarily equate to protection. Further, legalization would avow for greater regulation, and thus allow for the development of more effective strategies to target root causes of exploitation of vulnerable donors (Radcliffe-Richards, 2012; Ambagtsheer, Zaitch, & Weimar, 2013). Ultimately, more research is needed to understand the phenomenon of trafficking for the removal of organs and the most effective responses.

Conclusion: critically thinking about human trafficking and potentials for the future This chapter began with a discussion of the tenets of critical criminology and how such a framework can be applied to future research on human trafficking. There is a lack of consistent definitions, general deficiencies in reliable estimates, and limitations of conducting research and structuring methodological analysis. Additionally, theoretical frameworks are limited. Yet, we do know that human trafficking is a highly complex phenomenon – a global, international, national, and local problem. It is not an isolated incident nor is it a temporary form of crime. It can take many forms and affect both men and women (and girls and boys) all over the world. Similar to theoretical approaches to understanding human trafficking, the development of innovative research methodologies is also in its infancy. As noted, estimates on the scope of human trafficking are rarely comparable. Most studies have relied on qualitative interviews with 419

Emily Troshynski and Olivia Tuttle

victims and are limited to small samples. Qualitative studies based on in-depth interviews with trafficking survivors provide foundational knowledge to help us better understand the characteristics and experiences of trafficking victims. However, too often victims of trafficking remain static one-dimensional figures whose stories are condensed and over-simplified. This does not bode well for the development of culturally sensitive services. Such narratives are important but would further benefit from other ethnographic research, particularly global and comparative multi-sited ethnographies. There is also a lack of alternative data sources based on the obstacle of gaining access to trafficked persons, clients, employers, and human traffickers themselves. There is a need to facilitate access to such individuals while also protecting those who willingly participate in such projects (Troshynski & Blank, 2008, 2016). Future research must continue to emphasize methodological limitations. When we acknowledge the lineage of trafficking research completed thus far, we should also think about how various methodological approaches determine political strategies for discussing and understanding the phenomenon (prosecution of traffickers, services for trafficking victims, etc.). A general concern with the politicizing of human trafficking comes with it a call for transparency with respect to available data, qualitative and quantitative methods used to collect and analyze data, and the rhetoric and logic behind the findings of any research project or report. Even so, when human trafficking is contextualized as a moral issue, a migratory problem, exploitative labor, criminal, or as a human rights issue; there is still a push to utilize solutions that involve control or punishment. It is because of this reason that all areas of human trafficking greatly benefit from a critical criminological lens. A critical criminological perspective will continue with this line of inquiry and address the possibility that special interest groups, nonprofit organizations, and governments may actually intensify the phenomenon of human trafficking to support their particular political interests and agendas. Past analysis on human trafficking suggests that the dominant anti-trafficking discourse is not “evidence-based” but grounded in the construction of a popular mythology of trafficking (Gozdziak & Bump, 2008, p. 11; Sanghera, 2005, p. 4). This is important to consider when we realize that the measurement of human trafficking is inundated with problems related to the consistency and classification of data. Be that as it may, national governments and international organizations are still in need of standardized data on which to base their human trafficking estimates. This quandary is further intensified when we consider that the empirical foundation for measuring human trafficking has become an integral part of current local, regional, national and international political decision-making processes. Further critical dialogue is needed and could include the following: a continuous account of definitional inconsistencies and historical lineages of key concepts used throughout international and national legislation and policy (i.e. incongruities and similarities in enforcement of legislation and their connections to policy); an understanding of popular methodologies used for the collection of human trafficking data including who (academics, activists, international/local governmental and/or non-governmental agencies) is conducting what type of research, what questions are being asked, and for what reasons (i.e., are they filling a gap in the literature or promoting an alternative agenda); and a critical analysis of the ways in which human trafficking is connected to political agendas – transparent or hidden – yet typically associated with other similar phenomena such as immigration, migration, and prostitution. Additionally, the continued development of theoretical and conceptual frameworks is needed, particularly an intersectional analysis of those most marginalized and trafficked via gender, sexuality, race, class, age, religion, national identity, etc. Lastly, critical criminologists studying human trafficking should continue to deconstruct the privileged meanings and discourses which frame the reality of crime and crime control while also 420

Research on human trafficking

drawing attention to the possibility for the implementation of inclusive and liberating alternatives to such research policies. Therefore, for future projects, central methodological and theoretical questions should not necessarily be about what works but what liberates, what diminishes oppression, what maximizes human potential, what respects human dignity, and what encourages social justice.

Notes 1 2

3 4 5

6

Please see the International Labour Organization (ILO) website at www.ilo.org/global/topics/forcedlabour/lang—en/index.htm. When comparing definitions, legislation, and policy on or about trafficking in persons, trafficking in human beings, illegal immigration, alien smuggling, smuggling of migrants, trafficking in women, and modern-day slavery, there are contested differences and similarities. Please see Grover (2006, 2007), Guild and Minderhoud (2006), and Lobasz (2009). Full text of the Protocol can be found online at www.unodc.org. Adopted on July 19, 2002. Please see Article 4 (2002/629/JHA, in Official Journal of the European Communities, L 203, August 1, 2002). Please see Article 1, “Offences concerning trafficking in human beings for the purpose of labour exploitation or sexual exploitation,” as well as the European Commission Report (COM, May 2, 2006) which is based on Article 10 of the Council Framework Decisions. Full text of the Convention can be found at www.coe.int. Debate among feminists regarding prostitution threatened to derail the UN Trafficking Protocol negotiations for close to a year where some abolitionists questioned other feminist abolitionists’ alliance with pro-life evangelical Christians while both camps of abolitions further questioned the sex workers’ rights groups for being under the economic vantage of pimps and traffickers. For more information on these and other debates over human trafficking, please see DeStefano (2007), Doezema (2004, 2005) and Dragiewicz (2008, 2014).

References Agustin, L. (2005). Migrants in the mistress’s house: Other voices in the ‘trafficking debate.’ Social Politics, 12(1), 96–117. Akee, R., Basu, A., Bedi, A., & Chau, N. (2007). Determinants of Trafficking in Women and Children: CrossNational Evidence, Theory and Policy Implications. Mimeo. Albanese, J., Schrock-Donnelly, J., & Kelegian, T. (2004). Cases of human trafficking in the United States: A content analysis of a calendar year in 18 cities. International Journal of Comparative Criminology, 4(1), 96–111. Ambagtsheer, F., Zaitch, D., & Weimar, W. (2013). The battle for human organs: Organ trafficking and transplant tourism in a global context. Global Crime, 14(1), 1–26. Anker, van den C. (2004). The Political Economy of New Slavery. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan. Anker, van den C. L., & Doomernik, J. (2006). Trafficking and Women’s Rights. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillian. Anthony, T., & Cunneen, C. (eds). (2008). The Critical Criminology Companion. Sydney: Hawkins Press. Bales, K. (1999). Disposable People: New Slavery in the Global Economy. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Bales, K. (2005). Understanding Global Slavery: A Reader. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Beare, M. (1999). Illegal Migration. In C. Hernandez & G. Pattugalan (eds) Transnational Crime and Regional Security in the Asia Pacific. Institute for Strategic and Development Studies, Philippines: Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific. Beeks, K., & Amir, D. (2006). Trafficking and the Global Sex Industry. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Belser, P. (2005). Forced Labour and Human Trafficking: Estimating the Profits. Geneva, Switzerland: International Labour Office. Blank, J. K. (2007). Sex trafficking: A ‘family business.’ In M. W. Karraker (ed.) Global Families. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Breuil, B.C. O., Siegel, D., Van Reenen, P., Beijer, A., & Roos, L. (2011). Human trafficking revisited: Legal, enforcement and ethnographic narratives on sex trafficking to Western Europe. Trends in Organized Crime, 14(1), 30–46. 421

Emily Troshynski and Olivia Tuttle

Budiani-Saberi, D. A., & Karim, K. A. (2009). The social determinants of organ trafficking: A reflection of social inequity. Social Medicine, 4(1), 48–51. Chapkis, W. (2003). Trafficking, migration, and the law: Protecting innocents, punishing immigrants. Gender and Society, 17(6), 923–937. Chuang, J. (2006). Beyond a snapshot: Preventing human trafficking in the global economy. Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, 13(1), 137. Chung, R. C.Y. (2009). Cultural perspectives on child trafficking, human rights and social justice: A model for psychologists. Counselling Psychology Quarterly, 22(1), 85–96. Clark, M. A. (2003). Trafficking in persons: An issue of human security. Journal of Human Development, 4(2), 247–263. Clawson, H. J., Dutch, N., Solomon, A., & Grace, L. G. (2009). Human Trafficking Into and Within the United States: A Review of the Literature. Washington, DC: Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, US Department of Human and Health Services. Cole, J., & Booth, S. S. (2007). Dirty Work: Immigrants in Domestic Service, Agriculture, and Prostitution in Sicily. Lexington, KY: Lexington Books. Conradi, C. (2013). Child trafficking, child soldiering: Exploring the relationship between two ‘worst forms’ of child labour. Third World Quarterly, 34(7), 1209–1226. Constable, N. (2006). Brides, maids, and prostitutes: Reflections on the study of ‘trafficked’ women. PORTAL Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies, 3(2). Conyers, J. (2007). The 2005 reauthorization of the violence against women act: Why congress acted to expand protections to immigrant victims. Violence Against Women, 13(5), 457. Cwikel, J., & Hoban, E. (2005). Contentious issues in research on trafficked women working in the sex industry: Study design, ethics, and methodology. Journal of Sex Research, 42(4), 306–316. Dessy, S., & Pallage, S. (2006). Some surprising effects of better law enforcement against child trafficking. Journal of African Development, 8, 115–132. DeStefano, A. (2007). The War on Human Trafficking: U.S. Policy Assessed. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Di Nicola, A. (2007). Researching into human trafficking: Issues and problems. In M. Lee (ed.) Human Trafficking (pp. 49–72). Cullompton: Willan. Doezema, J. (2004). Sex workers rights, abolitionism, and the possibility for a rights-based approach to trafficking. Global Association Against Traffic in Women (GAATW), Alliance News, 22, 15–22. Doezema, J. (2005). Now you see her, now you don’t: Sex workers at the UN Trafficking Protocol Negotiation. Social & Legal Studies, 14(1), 67–73. Dragiewicz, M. (2008). Teaching about trafficking: Opportunities and challenges for critical engagement. Feminist Teacher, 18(3), 185–201. Dragiewicz, M. (2014). Global Human Trafficking: Critical Issues and Contexts (Vol. 2). Routledge. Farr, K. (2005). Sex Trafficking: The Global Market in Women and Children. Portland, OR: Worth Publishing. Friebel, G., & Guriev, S. (2006). Smuggling humans: A theory of debt-financed migration. Journal of the European Economic Association, 4, 1085–1111. Friman, H. R., & Reich, S. (2007). Human Trafficking, Human Security, and the Balkans. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press. Gathmann, C. (2008). Effects of enforcement on illegal markets: Evidence from migrant smuggling along the South-western border. Journal of Public Economics, 92, 1926–1941. Gerassi, L. (2015). From exploitation to industry: Definitions, risks, and consequences of domestic sexual exploitation and sex work among women and girls. Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, 25(6), 591–605. Giampolo, A. D. (2006). The Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2005: The latest weapon in the fight against human trafficking. Temp. Pol. & Civ. Rts. L. Rev., 16, 195. Glover, K. (2006). Human trafficking and the sex tourism industry. Crime & Justice International, 22(92), 4–9. Goodey, J. (2004a). Promoting ‘good practice’ in sex trafficking cases. International Review of Victimology, 11(1), 89–110. Goodey, J. (2004b). Sex trafficking in women from Central and East European countries: Promoting a ‘victimcentered’ and ‘woman-centered’ approach to criminal justice intervention. Feminist Review, 76(1), 26–45. Gozdiak, E. M. (2011). Data and Research on Human Trafficking: Bibliography of Research-Based Literature. Collingdale, PA: DIANE Publishing.

422

Research on human trafficking

Gozdziak, E. M., & Bump, M. N. (2008). Victims No Longer: Research on Child Survivors of Trafficking for Sexual and Labor Exploitation in the United States., Georgetown University: Institute for the Study of International Migration. Gozdziak, E. M., & Collett, E. A. (2005). Research on human trafficking in North America: A review of literature. International Migration, 43(1–2), 99–128. Grover, S. (2006). Denying the right of trafficked minors to be classed as conventional refugees: The Canadian case example. International Journal of Children’s Rights, 14(3), 235–249. Grover, S. (2007). Children as chattel of the state: Deconstructing the concept of sex trafficking. International Journal of Human Rights, 11(3), 293–306. Guild, E., & Minderhoud, P. (2006). Immigration and Criminal Law in the European Union: The Legal Measures and Social Consequences of Criminal Law in Member States on Trafficking and Smuggling in Human Beings. Leiden, Germany: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. Halley, J., Kotiswaran, P., Shamir, H., & Thomas, C. (2006). From the international to the local in feminist legal responses to rape, prostitution/sex work, and sex trafficking: Four studies in contemporary governance feminism. Harvard Journal of Law & Gender, 29(2), 335–423. Heyzer, N. (2006). Combatting trafficking in women and children: A gender and human rights framework. In T.D. Truong, S. Wieringa, & A. Chhachhi (eds), Engendering Human Security: Feminist Perspectives (pp. 101–123). London: Zed Books. Hick, S. (2001). The political economy of war-affected children. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 575(1), 106–121. Hodge, D. R., & Lietz, C. A. (2007). The international sexual trafficking of women and children: A review of the literature. Journal of Women & Social Work, 22(2), 163–174. International Labour Organization (ILO) (2012). Hard to See, Harder to Count: Survey Guidelines to Estimate Forced Labour of Adults and Children. Geneva: ILO. Report available here: http://ilo.org/global/topics/forcedlabour/publications/WCMS_182096/lang—en/index.htm. International Labour Organization (ILO) (2016). Forced Labour, Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking. Geneva: ILO. Report available here: www.ilo.org/global/topics/forced-labour/lang—en/index.htm. Itzen, C. (1992). Pornography: Women Violence and Civil Liberties. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Jakobsson, N., & Kotsadam, A. (2013). The law and economics of international sex slavery: prostitution laws and trafficking for sexual exploitation. European Journal of Law and Economics, 35(1), 87–107. Jeffreys, S. (2008). The IndustrialVagina: The Political Economy of the Global Sex Trade. New York, NY: Routledge. Juhasz, J. (2000). Migrant trafficking and human smuggling in Hungary. Migrant Trafficking and Human Smuggling in Europe: A review of the evidence with case studies from Hungary, Poland and Ukraine. Geneva: IOM. Kara, S. (2009). Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery. New York, NY: Columbia University Press. Kempadoo, K. (2003). Globalizing sex workers’ rights. Canadian Woman Studies, 22(3/4), 143–150. Kempadoo, K. (ed.) (2005). Trafficking and Prostitution Reconsidered: New Perspectives on Migration, Sex Work, and Human Rights. Boulder, CO: Paradigm. Kempadoo, K., & Doezema, J. (eds) (1998). Global Sex Workers: Rights, Resistance, and Redefinition. New York, NY: Routledge. Kempadoo, K., Sanghera, J., & Pattanaik, B. (2015). Trafficking and Prostitution Reconsidered: New Perspectives on Migration, Sex Work, and Human Rights. New York, NY: Routledge. Laczko, F., & Gozdziak, E. M. (eds) (2005). Data and Research on Human Trafficking: A Global Survey. London: SAGE Publications. League of Nations (1933). International Convention for the Suppression of Traffic in Women of Full Age. Diplomatic Conference Concerning the Suppression of Traffic in Women of Full Age. Geneva, Switzerland. October 9–11. Lobasz, J. K. (2009). Beyond border security: Feminist approaches to human trafficking. Security Studies, 18(2), 319–344. Mahmoud, T. O., & Trebesch, C. (2010). The economics of human trafficking and labour migration: Microevidence from Eastern Europe. Journal of Comparative Economics, 38(2), 173–188. McCabe, K. A., & Manian, S. (2010). Conclusion: Anti-trafficking efforts. Sex Trafficking: A Global Perspective, 171. McClain, N. M., & Garrity, S. E. (2011). Sex trafficking and the exploitation of adolescents. Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic, & Neonatal Nursing, 40(2), 243–252.

423

Emily Troshynski and Olivia Tuttle

Milivojevic, S., & Pickering, S. (2013). Trafficking in people, 20 years on: Sex, migration and crime in the global anti-trafficking discourse and the rise of the global trafficking complex. Current Issues Crim. Just., 25, 585. Miller, J. (2002). Violence and coercion in sri lanka’s commercial sex industry: intersections of gender, sexuality, culture, and the law. Violence Against Women, 8, 1044–1073. Miller, J., & Jayasundara, D. (2001). Prostitution, the sex industry and sex tourism. In C. Rensetti, J. Edelsen, and R. Bergen (eds) Sourcebook on Violence Against Women (pp. 459–489). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Musto, J. L. (2009, August). What’s in a name? Conflations and contradictions in contemporary US discourses of human trafficking. In Women’s Studies International Forum (Vol. 32, No. 4, pp. 281–287). Pergamon. Musto, J. L. (2016). Control and Protect: Collaboration, Carceral Protection, and Domestic Sex Trafficking in the United States. Oakland, CA: University of California Press. O’Connell Davidson, J. (2006a). Men, mediators and migrants. The laws of the market place in human trafficking. Osteuropa, 56(6), 7–20. O’Connell Davidson, J. (2006b). Will the real sex slave please stand up? Feminist Review, 83, 4–22. Okolski, M. (2000a). Illegality of international population movements in Poland. International Migration, 38(3), 57–89. Okolski, M. (2000b). Recent trends and major issues in international migration: Central and East European perspectives. International Social Science Journal, 52(165), 329–341. Outshoorn, J. (2005). The political debates on prostitution and trafficking of women. Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society, 12(1), 141–155. Papanicolaou, G. (2008). The sex industry, human trafficking and the global prohibition regime: A cautionary tale from Greece. Trends in Organized Crime, 11, 379–409. Phongpaichit, P. (1997). Trafficking in people in Thailand. In P. Williams (ed.). Illegal Immigration and Commercial Sex: The New Slave Trade (pp. 74–104). London: Frank Cass Publishers. Pocar, F. (2007). Human trafficking: A crime against humanity. In E. U. Savona & S. Stefanizzi (eds) Measuring Human Trafficking (pp. 5–12). New York, NY: Springer. Pourmokhtari, N. (2015). Global human trafficking unmasked: A feminist rights-based approach. Journal of Human Trafficking, 1(2), 156–166. Radcliffe-Richards, J. (2012). The Ethics of Transplants: Why Careless Thought Costs Lives. New York: Oxford University Press. Ravnbøl, C. I. (2009). Intersectional Discrimination Against Children: Discrimination Against Romani Children and Anti-Discrimination Measures to Address Child Trafficking. Florence: UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre. Raymond, J. G. (2002). The new UN trafficking protocol. Women’s Studies International Forum, 25(5), 491–502. Ruggiero, V. (1997). Trafficking in human beings: Slave in contemporary Europe. International Journal of Sociology of Law, 25, 231–244. Salt, J. (2000). Trafficking and Human Smuggling: A European Perspective. Perspectives on Trafficking of Migrants. Reginald Appleyard and John Salt (eds). Geneva, Switzerland: IOM and OIM, 31–56. Salt, J., & Hogarth, J. (2000). Migrant trafficking and human smuggling in Europe: A review of the evidence. In F. Laczko and D. Thompson (eds) Migrant Trafficking and Human Smuggling in Europe: A Review of Evidence with Case Studies from Hungary, Poland and Ukraine (pp. 11–164). Geneva, Switzerland: International Organization for Migration. Salt, J., & Stein, J. (1997). Migration as a business: The case of trafficking. International Migration, 35(4), 467–494. Sanghera, J. (2005). Unpacking the trafficking discourse. Trafficking and prostitution reconsidered: New perspectives on migration, sex work, and human rights, 3, 14. Schwartz, M. D., & Friedrichs, D. O. (1994). Postmodern thought and criminological discontent: New metaphors for understanding violence. Criminology, 32, 221–246. Shelley, L. (2010). Human Trafficking: A Global Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shimazono, Y. (2007). Mapping Transplant Tourism, in World Health Organization’s Second Global Consultation on Human Transplantation. Geneva: World Health Organization. Report available here: www.who. int/bulletin/volumes/85/12/06–039370/en/. Shin, K. H. (2011). A theoretical view of the globalizing sex industry: World system position, local patriarchy, and state policy in South Korea. Analyzing Gender, Intersectionality, and Multiple Inequalities: Global, Transnational and Local Contexts, Advances in Gender Research, 15, 75–94.

424

Research on human trafficking

Sigmon, J. N. (2008). Combating modern-day slavery: Issues in identifying and assisting victims of human trafficking worldwide. Victims and Offenders, 3(2–3), 245–257. Taylor, I., & Jamieson, R. (1999). Sex trafficking and the mainstream of market culture. Crime, Law and Social Change, 32(3), 257–278. Troshynski, E. I., & Blank, J. K. (2008). Sex trafficking: An exploratory study interviewing traffickers. Trends in Organized Crime, 11(1), 30–41. Troshynski, E. I., & Blank, J. K. (2016). Interviews with human traffickers: Perceptions of sex and violence. In E. Heil and A. Nichols (eds) Broadening the Scope of Human Trafficking. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press. Turpin, J. E., & Lorentzen, L. A. (eds) (1996). The Gendered New World Order: Militarism, Development, and the Environment. New York, NY: Routledge. United Nations (UN) (1949). Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others. Approved by General Assembly Resolution 317 (IV), December 2, 1949. Available online at www.ohchr.org/english/law/trafficpersons.htm. United Nations (UN) (1950). International Agreement for the Suppression of the “White Slave Traffic.” Signed in Paris, May 19, 1904. Amended by protocol signed at Lake Success, New York. May 4, 1949. United Nations. (UN) (1994). General Assembly. Violence Against Women Migrant Workers, 49th Session, Item 100 of the provisional agenda. 1994. Available online at http://srch1.un.org/documents/ga/docs/49/ plenary/a49-354.htm. United Nations (UN) (2000a). Protocol Against the Smuggling of Migrants by Land, Sea and Air. Supplementing the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organised Crime. Adopted by the UN General Assembly, Resolution 55/25. November 15, 2000. United Nations (UN) (2000b). Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children. Supplementing the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organised Crime. Adopted by the UN General Assembly, Resolution A/RES/55/67. November 15, 2000. United Nations (UN) (2000c). United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organised Crime. Available online at www.uncjin.org/Documents/Conventions/dcatoc/. United Nations (UN) (2006). World Population Monitoring, Focusing on International Migration and Development: Report of the Secretary-General. New York, NY: United Nations. United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). (2007). The Paris Principles: Principles and Guidelines on Children Associated with Armed Forces or Armed Groups. Report available here: www.unicef.org/emerg/files/ParisPrinciples310107English.pdf. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) (2006). Trafficking in Persons: Global Patterns. Report available here: www.unodc.org/pdf/traffickinginpersons_report_2006ver2.pdf. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) (2009). Global Reports on Trafficking in Persons. Global Initiative to Fight Human Trafficking. Report available here: www.unodc.org/documents/humantrafficking/Global_Report_on_TIP.pdf. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). (2014). Global Report on Trafficking in Persons. Vienna: United Nations. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) (2015). Assessment Toolkit: Trafficking in Persons for the Purpose of Organ Removal. Vienna: United Nations. United States Department of State (2010). Trafficking in Persons Report, 2010. Washington DC. Report available here: www.state.gov/j/tip/rls/tiprpt/2010/. United States Department of State (2013). Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report, 2013. Washington DC. Report available here: www.state.gov/j/tip/rls/tiprpt/2013/. Van Impe, K. (2000). People for sale: The need for a multidisciplinary approach to human trafficking. International Migration, 38(3), 113–130. Weitzer, R. (2005). The growing moral panic over prostitution and sex trafficking. Criminologist, 30(5), 1–5. Weitzer, R. (2007). The social construction of sex trafficking: Ideology and institutionalization of a moral crusade. Political Sociology, 35(3), 447–475. Weitzer, R. (2011). Sex trafficking and the sex industry: The need for evidence-based theory and legislation. The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (1973–), 101(4), 1337–1369. Weitzer, R. (2014). New directions in research on human trafficking. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 653(1), 6–24. West, A. (2016). Child trafficking: A concept analysis. International Journal of Social Science Studies, 4(5), 50–56.

425

Emily Troshynski and Olivia Tuttle

Wijers, M., & Lap-Chew, L. (1997). Trafficking in Women. Forced Labour and Slavery-Like Practices in Marriage, Domestic Labour and Prostitution. Utrecht, the Netherlands: Foundation Against Trafficking. Winterdyk, J., & Reichel, P. (2010). Introduction to special issue: Human Trafficking: Issues and Perspectives. pp. 5–10. Wonders, N. A., & Michalowski, R. (2001). Bodies, Borders, and sex tourism in a globalized world: A tale of two cities – Amsterdam and Havana. Social Problems, 48(4), 545–571. Young, J. (1999). The Exclusive Society. London: Sage Publications. Zhang, S. (2012). Sex Trafficking in a Border Community: A Field Study of Sex Trafficking in Tijuana, Mexico. BiblioGov.

426

Part III

Policy issues Walter S. DeKeseredy and Molly Dragiewicz

Introduction1 We need . . . to develop ways of fostering a criminology that is more than a relatively passive witness to the destruction wrought by contemporary global forces – much less an accomplice – and instead vigorously steps up to take on the job of combating those forces and dedicating itself unapologetically to the reduction of needless pain, fear, and injustice around the world. That is the kind of criminology I want to be doing for as long as I’m capable of doing it. And the more people who join me, the happier I will be (Currie, 2016, p. 29)

Three years before he made the above statement, Elliott Currie (2013) published a scholarly book chapter titled “The sustaining society.” In this piece, he states, “I have a lot of friends who have told me lately that they no longer read newspapers. This isn’t because they get their news on the Internet now, but because they can’t stand to read the news at all because the news is so grim” (p. 3). Currie’s words still hold true today and perhaps a larger number of his friends have now followed suit. Such selective inattention is strongly correlated with an unexpected event that occurred on November 8, 2016 – Donald Trump was elected the 45th President of the United States. One of the key results of this widely perceived unlikely victory is what Currie also notes in the above chapter: “a kind of deep resignation – a profound pessimism, even among many progressive people about the possibilities of a better society” (p. 3). In the United Kingdom, the United States and other parts of the world, again to quote Currie (1985), “there has been a resurgence of the harsh and irresponsible themes of a resuscitated Social Darwinism” (p. 277). Consider that the United States is now a “vast gulag of 2.2 million people in prison” and that many people living in that country endorse the erosion of their civil liberties in the name of national security (DeKeseredy & Dragiewicz, 2012; Young, 2007/2008, p. 1). What is to be done? The answer is definitely not progressive retreatism. This involves progressives embracing parts of conservative policies to win elections (Currie, 1992). As well, “Criminality is, in all societies, too serious a matter to be left to experts and ideologues, and even less to the police and politicians to exploit it” (Wacquant, 2007/2008, p. 39). The chapters in Part III of this handbook provide us with progressive alternatives. They take up criminological forays

Part III Introduction

into efforts to promote social justice and ameliorate inequality. And, they provide us with some much-needed hope for the future. Earlier in this handbook, it was made explicit that many people with political and economic power are “trusted criminals” (Friedrichs, 2010), and that “great power and great crimes are inseparable” (Michalowski & Kramer, 2006, p. 1). This is a key theme of Ronald C. Kramer’s contribution to this anthology in Chapter 35. More importantly, he suggests some innovative means of curbing state crime and he compels us to engage in a “public criminology of state crime” (Kramer, Michalowski, & Chambliss, 2010). This is something that other progressives would strongly support, and Elliott Currie (2007) and Roger Matthews (2016) immediately come to mind. Opposing state crime and oppression is just as important for David Kauzlarich and Clay Michael Awsumb in Chapter 38. Moreover, they support feminists’ claims that music sends out powerful messages to large audiences about the pain and suffering caused by various forms of oppression, including physical, psychological, and economic harms caused by patriarchal men (DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 2013; DeKeseredy, Schwartz, & Alvi, 2000). Consider Tracy Chapman’s song, “Behind the Walls,” which is on her best-selling CD, Tracy Chapman. This song is about a battered woman and the selective inattention given her by the police. Like cultural criminologists (e.g., Ferrell, Hayward, & Young, 2015), Kauzlarich and Awsumb see music as a “cultural engagement” that can serve highly political or social organizational purposes. However, what makes their chapter distinct is that they fill a major gap in the criminological literature. There is, indeed, a dearth of criminological work on how contemporary popular music helps confront state oppression. Oppression of a different sort is the subject of Walter S. DeKeseredy’s offering in Chapter 37. He provides progressive answers to the question “What can we do about the porning of our culture?” (Dines, 2010, p. 163). He suggests some progressive means of confronting contemporary pornography, much of which is violent and racist. These measures involve taking an explicit stand for women and have the potential to help reduce much pain and suffering. There is a considerable amount of interpersonal violence in today’s Internet pornography (DeKeseredy & Corsianos, 2016). There is also, especially in areas characterized by high levels of poverty, much interpersonal violence in the street and in private places as noted for over 30 years by Elliott Currie. Consider that, as pointed out in Chapter 2, Chicago reported 762 homicides in 2016, which is this city’s highest number since 1996. In Chapter 36, Currie calls for the use of progressive social policies (e.g., universal health care, income support) which target the major social and economic forces that breed homicides, muggings and the like. This strategy might seem too radical for orthodox criminologists and conservative politicians because it moves the discussion of violence prevention out of the realm of failed criminal justice policy. However, violence is an outrageous problem that requires outrageous solutions (Gibbons, 1995), especially those that address unemployment, the needs of families and children, and the health and wellbeing of neighborhoods. Incidents of doping in professional and amateur sports garner much media attention. However, few of us are aware of the realities of such doping and testing practices. Directly relevant to this point is Chapter 39. Kathryn Henne, a former competitive athlete and one of the world’s leading experts in the law and science of anti-doping regulations, critically examines regulations aimed at controlling performance enhancement in international sports. This chapter, like her path-breaking 2015 book Testing for Athlete Citizenship: Regulating Doping and Sex in Sport, “attest to broader concerns related to biomedical surveillance, risk, and legality” (p. 3). Especially in the United States, there is a war on immigration, but it also exists in other countries, such as England and France. Coined by some progressive scholars as “the violence of 428

Part III Introduction

crimmigration” (Dingeman et al., 2017), as mentioned in the introduction to this handbook, we are witnessing wholesale deportation of undocumented immigrants living in the U.S., even if they are productive, law-abiding people. One fact to keep mind is that the U.S. deported 24,870 most Latin American women in 2013 (Dingeman et al., 2017), and the rabid anti-immigration movement and it seems to be growing stronger every day. Critical criminology, though, can make a difference as noted by Daniel E. Martínez in Chapter 40. His offering is a necessary response to “the scions of outrage radio, or the anti-immigrant border patrols who want to restore that past sense of entitlement, who insist on their right to ‘take our country back’” (Kimmel, 2013, p. 279). Conspicuously absent from Part III of the handbook are chapters on other progressive ways of advancing social justice and reducing crime in the streets, “suites,” homes, and elsewhere. Certainly, there are too many innovative alternative policies to fit in one collection. The main objective of this section is not to repeat in detail what has already been proposed, but rather to supplement these suggestions with some contemporary initiatives. What they all have in common is the firm belief that enhancing people’s health, safety, and well-being “requires a very different approach, with some social inclusion and more equality” (Stern, 2007/2008, p. 6).

Note 1

This introduction to Part III includes revised portions of work published previously by DeKeseredy and Dragiewicz (2012) and Dragiewicz and DeKeseredy (2014).

References Currie, E. (1985). Confronting Crime: An American Challenge. New York: Pantheon. Currie, E. (1992). Retreatism, minimalism, realism: Three styles of reasoning on crime and drugs in the United States. In J. Lowman & B. D. MacLean (Eds), Realist Criminology: Crime Control and Policing in the 1990s (pp. 88–97). Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Currie, E. (2007). Against marginality: Arguments for a public criminology. Theoretical Criminology, 11, 175–190. Currie, E. (2013). The sustaining society. In K. Carrington, M. Ball, E. O’Brien, & J. Tauri (Eds), Crime, Justice and Social Democracy (pp. 3–15). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Currie, E. (2016). The violence divide: Taking “ordinary” crime seriously in a volatile world. In R. Matthews (Ed.), What is to be Done About Crime and Punishment? Towards a ‘Public Criminology’ (pp. 9–30). London: Palgrave Macmillan. DeKeseredy, W. S., & Corsianos, M. (2016). Violence Against Women in Pornography. London: Routledge. DeKeseredy, W. S., & Dragiewicz, M. (2012). Part IV: Policies. In W. S. DeKeseredy & M. Dragiewicz (Eds.), Routledge Handbook of Critical Criminology (pp. 437–441). London: Routledge. DeKeseredy, W. S., & Schwartz, M. D. (2013). Confronting progressive retreatism and minimalism: The role of a new left realist approach. Critical Criminology, 21, 273–286. DeKeseredy, W. S., Schwartz, M. D., & Alvi, S. (2000). The role of profeminist men in dealing with woman abuse on the Canadian college campus. Violence Against Women, 9, 918–936. Dines, G. (2010). Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked our Sexuality. Boston: Beacon Press. Dingeman, K., Arzhayev, Y., Ayala, C., Bermudez, E., Padama, L., & Tena-Chávez, L. (2017). Neglected, protected, ejected: Latin American women caught by crimmigration. Feminist Criminology, 12(3), 293–394. Dragiewicz, M., & DeKeseredy, W. S. (2014). Critical interventions: Engaging social justice. In W. S. DeKeseredy & M. Dragiewicz (Eds), Critical Criminology, Volume 4 (pp. 1–6). London: Routledge. Ferrell, J., Hayward, K., & Young, J. (2015). Cultural Criminology: An Invitation (2nd ed.). Los Angeles: Sage. Friedrichs, D. O. (2010). Trusted Criminals: White Collar Crime in Contemporary Society (4th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. 429

Part III Introduction

Gibbons, D. (1995). Unfit for human consumption: The problem of flawed writing in criminal justice and what to do about it. Crime & Delinquency, 41, 246–266. Henne, K. E. (2015). Testing for Athlete Citizenship: Regulating Doping and Sex in Sport. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Kimmel, M. (2013). Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era. New York: Nation Books. Kramer, R. C., Michalowski, R. J., & Chambliss, W. (2010). Epilogue: Toward a public criminology of state crime. In W. Chambliss, R. J. Michalowski, & R. C. Kramer (Eds.), State Crime in the Global Age (pp. 247–261). Uffculme, Devon: Willan. Matthews, R. (Eds.). (2016). What is to be Done About Crime and Punishment? Towards a ‘Public Criminology.’ London: Palgrave Macmillan. Michalowski, R. J., & Kramer, R. C. (2006). The critique of power. In R. J. Michalowski & R. C. Kramer (Eds.), State-Corporate Crime: Wrongdoing at the Intersection of Business and Government (pp. 1–17). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Stern, V. (2007/2008). Creating criminals: A recipe for an insecure world? Criminal Justice Matters, 70, 5–6. Wacquant, L. (2007/2008). How to escape the law and order trap. Criminal Justice Matters, 70, 39–40. Young, J. (2007/2008). Vertigo and vindictiveness: Some notes on the political economy of punishment. Criminal Justice Matters, 70, 21–22.

430

35 Curbing state crime by challenging the U.S. empire Ronald C. Kramer

Whatever Americans may have ushered in with the events of 11/8/2016, one thing is increasingly certain about the country that Donald Trump will govern. Forget Vladimir Putin and his rickety petro-state: the most dangerous nation on the planet will now be ours. Led by a man who knows remarkably little . . . and at least in part, by the frustrated generals from America’s war on terror, the United States is likely to be more extreme, belligerent, irrational, filled with manias, and heavily armed, its military funded to even greater levels no other country could come close to, and with staggering powers to intervene, interfere, and repress. (Engelhardt, 2016, p. 4)

Introduction In a 1967 speech, “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence,” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. boldly stated that he could never again raise his voice “against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today – my own government” (Washington, 1991, p. 233). As the Engelhardt epigram above notes, the United States today under President Donald Trump still has “staggering powers” to engage in numerous forms of state crime and violence, and remains “the most dangerous nation on the planet.” Thus, following Dr. King’s injunction, this chapter argues that criminologists cannot adequately address the larger issue of curbing international state crime without first taking into account the fact that, primarily for reasons of empire, the United States is still, 50 years later, the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today. As Iadicola (2010) observes, “The largest, most powerful, violent, and rarely defined ‘criminal’ organization in the world today is the empire of the United States of America” (p. 31). Not only does the U.S. continue to engage in the most state violence in the world, “an enduring historical pattern” according to Boggs (2010, p. xv), but the attempted imperial domination of the globe by the U.S. also creates or supports conditions that lead to state crimes on the part of other nations (structural violence, the illegal use of military force, political repression and human rights violations, torture and other war crimes). Furthermore, the strong and distorting American influence on the international political

431

Ronald C. Kramer

community and international legal organizations (e. g., the United Nations and the International Criminal Court) not only provides “sovereign impunity” for the U.S. (Welch, 2009), but also raises the specter of a “lawless world” (Sands, 2005) rendering the international community and its organizations incapable of exercising much formal social control over the state crimes of other nations, except in specific circumstances that do not impinge on the economic and geopolitical interests of the United States. And, given his campaign rhetoric, the U.S. influence on international legal institutions is likely to be even more disruptive under a Trump presidency. One necessary, although clearly not sufficient step in the effort to curb state crime then, is to challenge, resist and ultimately change the American empire. If we take seriously his campaign slogan “To Make America Great Again” and his foreign policy pronouncements, then the election of Donald Trump has made this an even more difficult task. Critical criminologists engaged in a “public criminology of state crime” (Kramer, Michalowski & Chambliss, 2010; Kramer, 2016) could play an important role in this project. However, before presenting some broad approaches to challenging the American empire we must first sketch out its historical development and understand its structural and cultural influence on U.S. state criminality.

Empire, American exceptionalism and state criminality The United States has been an imperial project from its earliest years (Anderson and Cayton, 2005; Ferguson, 2004; Nugent, 2008), and “empire as a way of life” (Williams, 1980) is a strong determining structural factor in the U.S. propensity to commit state crimes (Boggs, 2010; Iadicola, 2010). Furthermore, these crimes are almost always rationalized within a broad, historical, cultural narrative often referred to as American exceptionalism (Fiala, 2008; Hodgson, 2009; Koh, 2003). Empires seek to cover themselves in “the myth of morality” (Lens, 1971), and in the U.S., “such myths permeate a political culture that gives policy-makers a relatively free hand to pursue geopolitical ambitions” (Boggs, 2010, p. 6), and commit state crimes. Nugent (2008) argues that the United States has actually created three empires during its history. The first form of empire building involved continental expansion from 1782 to 1853. The “settler-colonialism” (Dunbar-Ortiz, 2014) of this period resulted in the genocide of indigenous peoples, the extension of slavery and an expansionist war against Mexico. Then came the offshore empire building from the 1850s to 1917 that resulted in territorial acquisitions and formal colonies. An imperial war against Spain and other foreign interventions led to the people of the Philippines, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Samoa, Guam and Hawaii being annexed and colonized. The third empire did not involve the acquisition of territory per se, but the extension of American political, economic and military power around the world. According to Nugent (2008), this “new, virtual-global empire” (p. 306), which was “only embryonically evident during the interwar years of 1918–1939” (p. 306), emerged most dramatically after World War II, particularly during the Cold War, and it continues in strong form today through what has been called the “warfare state” (Boggs, 2017) or the “corporate state” (Hedges, 2009). This chapter focuses on this third form of empire. The three historic American empires described by Nugent (2008) have all rested, not only on an “ideology of expansion” (p. xvi), but also on the cultural narrative of American exceptionalism that served to justify that expansion and the violent criminal actions that often accompanied it at each stage. American exceptionalism generally portrays the United States as a nation of exceptional virtue, a moral leader in the world with a unique historical mission to spread “universal” values such as freedom, democracy, equality, popular sovereignty, and increasingly global capitalism. This mythic cultural construction of exceptionalism “thoroughly informs U.S. constructs of its identity” (Ryan, 2007, p. 119). 432

Curbing state crime

As it rose to ever greater power after World War I and then World War II, the United States developed a self-image as a “reluctant superpower,” a key theme within American exceptionalism that claims that the U.S. involves itself in world affairs only under duress, and then always for selfless reasons (Bacevich, 2002). President Woodrow Wilson’s famous claim that the United States must enter the First World War because “The world must be made safe for democracy,” exemplifies this narrative theme in action. The need to ensure the U.S. could play a significant role in creating a new political and economic order out of the collapse of the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires was interpreted as selflessness rather than self-interest (Johnson, 2004). Such “idealism” would continue to inform American foreign policy for the rest of the twentieth century and on into the next. While isolationist sentiments at home would stymie Wilson’s particular vision for a new political and legal world order, World War I did mark the emergence of a “new order of power” in the world that featured a “new centrality” for the United States. Tooze (2014, p. 6) argues that the U.S. emerged from the war “unscathed” and “vastly more powerful” as a “novel kind of ‘superstate’, exercising a veto over the financial and security concerns of the other major states of the world.” Although American leaders at this time were not yet committed to asserting their full military power, they did indirectly exercise forms of economic and political power that would eventually led to the full-blown creation of the Pax Americana that still defines the world today (Tooze, 2014). The coming of World War II would provide the United States with new and unique opportunities for various forms of empire building (Freeman, 2012). As the war progressed and it became clear that the U.S. would be able to exercise hegemonic power in the post-war era, American political leaders began to plan for the construction of new global institutions that would greatly advance the country’s dominance. As Zinn (1980) points out: “Before the war was over, the administration was planning the outlines of the new international economic order, based on partnership between government and business” (p. 414). The war, and this new international economic order, would finally lift the United States out of economic depression, and establish it as both the world’s dominant military power and the economic hegemon in charge of the key institutions of global capitalism such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. The most significant result of World War II was the emergence of the phenomenon of perpetual war and a “warfare state” that has become the most important feature of contemporary American politics. According to Boggs (2017, p. 3), the “warfare state” in the U.S. refers to “a broad ensemble of structures, policies, and ideologies: permanent war economy, national security state, global expansion of military bases, merger of state, corporate, and military power, an imperial presidency, the nuclear establishment, superpower ambitions.” This behemoth warfare state has been “sustained and legitimated,” not only by the myth of American exceptionalism, but also by a deeply entrenched “culture of militarism” that is itself a product of World War II (Boggs, 2017). As we shall see, the warfare state has not only transformed American politics and culture – it has also resulted in a wide variety of state crimes. World War II also provided the opportunity to create a new political and legal order under international law. With the signing of the Atlantic Charter in 1941, the establishment of the United Nations and the adoption of the Nuremberg Charter in 1945, and the passage of the Geneva Conventions in 1949, the United States and Great Britain “led efforts to replace a world of chaos and conflict with a new, rules based system” (Sands, 2005, p. xi). This new set of international rules was indeed a significant accomplishment, although always actively opposed by some on the American Right. Indeed, by the end of the twentieth century some political leaders, particularly hard-core nationalists and neoconservatives, came to believe that the existence 433

Ronald C. Kramer

of such an international legal framework for judging aggression, war crimes and human rights violations was illegitimate when used to judge U.S. actions. President Trump appears to believe so also. There were two great, interrelated challenges to the American imperial project in the postWorld War II era: the threat of independent nationalism and the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Both would fuel state criminality on the part of the U.S. and its client states. Nations on the periphery and semi-periphery of the world system, many of them former colonies of the world’s wealthy capitalist nations, were to be limited to service roles in the global capitalist economy, providing resources, cheap labor, and retail markets for consumer products and finance capital (Frank, 1969; Wallerstein, 1989). U.S. planners were concerned that “radical and nationalistic regimes” more responsive to popular pressures for immediate improvement in the living standards of the masses than advancing the interests of foreign capital could become a “virus” infecting other countries and threatening the “overall framework of order” that the leaders of the corporate state in Washington had constructed (Chomsky, 2003). The Soviet Union was accused of frequently provoking or providing assistance to these nationalistic movements. Thus, the U.S. military and the new Central Intelligence Agency, in direct violation of international law, engaged in dozens of foreign interventions around the world to overthrow such “threatening” governments or prop up friendly repressive client states that would serve American economic and geo-political interests (Blum, 2004; Kinzer, 2006; Boggs, 2010). The U.S. created a worldwide system of over 700 military bases and installations to facilitate these illegal interventions, “contain” the Soviet Union, and maintain the overall global political system (Johnson, 2004). In the postwar era, planners within the U.S. corporate state also advanced a fundamentalist version of free market capitalism, such as that advocated by University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman. This U.S.-imposed economic “shock doctrine,” sometimes referred to as “neo-liberalism” or the “Washington Consensus,” created conditions that would lead to massive state–corporate crimes (Klein, 2007; Michalowski & Kramer, 2006). With the imposition of Friedman’s radical economic program, new legal frameworks favorable to transnational corporations and investors are adopted, business regulations are gutted, taxes are slashed, and welfare services and other public interventions on behalf of social and economic equality are withdrawn. The consequences of these fundamentalist free market policies and practices are great crimes; that is, preventable social harms such as extreme economic inequality, severe poverty, massive environmental destruction, hunger, disease, violence and premature death. Not only does this economic “shock therapy” create higher levels of structural and interpersonal violence, it also fosters additional state crimes such as torture and repression. As Klein (2007) documents, in country after country where these radical free market policies are adopted, people resist. Because these economic programs benefit only foreign corporations and local elites and produce nothing but misery for the majority of the population, organized resistance develops. People fight back. And when they do, they are often subjected to state violence, repression, and even torture by their own governments in an effort to break their will to resist. These forms of state violence are often supported, either directly or indirectly, by the U.S. government (Gareau, 2004; Grandin, 2006; Petras, 2007). In addition to derailing independent nationalism and imposing a fundamentalist version of capitalism, another key concern for leaders of the U.S. corporate state in the postwar period was access to Middle Eastern oil. This resource concern motivated efforts to ensure stability in the region by defusing Arab nationalism and countering Soviet moves, primarily through covert actions and military surrogates (Bacevich, 2005, 2016; Klare, 2004). Not only did the U.S. support and arm repressive Arab regimes such as Saudi Arabia, it also, in the words of Dreyfuss (2005), played the “Devil’s game” by cultivating and colluding with radical, right 434

Curbing state crime

wing Islamist groups. The Islamic right was seen as a valuable ally against the Soviets during the Cold War, particularly in Afghanistan in the late 1970s. This alliance, however, would later produce a severe “blowback” (Johnson, 2000) for the U.S. with the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. In this latter period, given America’s growing dependence on imported petroleum, particularly in the aftermath of 9–11, the U.S. military came to be viewed as a “global oil-protection service” (Klare, 2004, p. 7), and the illegal U.S. invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 were explained in part as “resource wars” (Klare, 2001, 2004; Kramer and Michalowski, 2005, 2011). Although the U.S. supports repressive Arab regimes such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, its key military surrogate in the Middle East is the state of Israel. The U.S. and Israel are deemed to have a “special relationship” (Bennis, 2007), and because of this special relationship the United States often aids and abets the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine and the human rights violations and war crimes this occupation entails (Zunes, 2003). U.S. support, financial, military and diplomatic, for the Israeli government increased dramatically after the 1967 War and today is extremely generous. Currently, Israel receives over $5 billion annually in economic assistance, along with most of the weapons the Israeli military uses in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza (Bennis, 2007). Furthermore, as Bennis (2007) points out: “Diplomatically, the U.S. alone protects Israel in the United Nations and other international arenas and keeps it from being held accountable for its violations of international law” (p. 87). Although it represented some real constraints, the Cold War with the Soviet Union also provided an opportunity for growth-oriented government and corporate leaders in the United States to justify expanding military budgets, establish a permanent war economy, and strengthen the military-industrial complex (Zinn, 1980). America’s post-World War II imperial project operated with a far-flung system of military bases justified as necessary tools in the fight against communism, thereby linking U.S. imperialism to the mythic ideal of liberation rather than one of geo-political expansion (Johnson, 2004). Or in Ferguson’s words (2004), “For an empire in denial, there is really only one way to act imperially with a clear conscience, and that is to combat someone else’s imperialism” (p. 78). The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 brought the Cold War to an end, presenting the U.S. with a new set of opportunities and challenges. With the Soviet Union out of the way and American military supremacy unrivaled, the “unipolar moment” as some called it (Krauthammer, 1991), had arrived. The goals of market fundamentalism and U.S. imperial domination never seemed more realizable. American military power, already normalized as a primary tool to achieve global hegemony, could now be used with even more political impunity, whether it was punishing small neighbors such as Panama and Grenada for their failure to fall in line with U.S. interests, or using Iraq’s 1990 incursion into Kuwait as a pretext to establish a more overt and permanent U.S. military presence in the oil-rich Persian Gulf region (Bacevich, 2005, 2016; Klare, 2004). Still, the end of the Cold War produced a sharp struggle between rival factions of the ruling elite over how to capitalize on the opportunities offered by the fall of the Soviet Union while deflecting threats presented by the possibility of a new isolationism. One group supported a globalist and internationalist approach, often referred to as “open door imperialism” (Bacevich, 2002; Williams, 1959), which was typical of the administrations of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. The other faction, that included hard-core nationalists and neo-conservatives, argued for a more nationalist, unilateralist, and militarist revision of American imperialism, in some ways a return to earlier models of neo-colonialism. Both the elder Bush and Clinton viewed America as a global leader that should use its economic and military power to ensure openness and integration in the world economic system 435

Ronald C. Kramer

(Bacevich, 2002). Thus, their foreign policy remained consistent with the system of informal imperialism practiced by the U.S. since the beginning of the twentieth century, stressing global economic integration through free trade and democracy (Dorrien, 2004; Williams, 1959). But neither of these presidents shied away from the use of military violence in violation of international law when deemed necessary to accomplish American imperial designs as the Gulf War of 1991 and the bombing campaigns in the former Yugoslavia in the mid-1990s demonstrate (Chomsky, 2000). The selection of George W. Bush as president in 2000 brought the unilateralist neoconservative group to power, with more than 20 neocons and hard line nationalists being awarded highranking positions in the new administration (Dorrien, 2004). The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks then presented this faction with the “catalyzing event” they needed to transform their imperialist and militarist agenda into actual policy. These officials regarded the 9/11 attack as a political godsend because it created a climate of fear and anxiety that these unipolarists could exploit to promote their geopolitical strategy and mythic ideals (Chernus, 2006). As a result, the George W. Bush administration became one of the most lawless in U.S. history, perpetrating a veritable state crime wave, a crime wave for which they have not been held accountable (Gordon, 2016). By invading Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 in violation of the UN Charter Bush engaged in two illegal wars of aggression, the “supreme international crime” according to the Nuremberg Tribunal. His administration also committed a variety of war crimes, violations of International Humanitarian Law, during the brutal occupations that followed these illegal invasions. The criminal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands. Detainees in U.S. custody at bases in Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and Guantanamo, Cuba were also tortured in violation of the 1949 Geneva Conventions and the 1984 UN Convention Against Torture. And these offenses are only the top of a long list of state crimes the Bush administration engaged in with complete political impunity (Welch, 2009; Gordon, 2016). Despite some hopeful rhetoric from Barack Obama during the 2008 campaign and in the early months of his presidency, little changed with regard to American imperial policies and the use of state violence during his two terms in office. Even after accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in late 2009, using eloquent language expressing the best ideals that are woven into American exceptionalism, President Obama announced shortly thereafter that he would send an additional 30,000 troops to the war in Afghanistan (which he had termed the “good war” during the campaign). While Obama sought to end what Bacevich (2016) calls “America’s War for the Greater Middle East,” in the final analysis “ending that conflict eluded his grasp, in no small part due to actions on his part that expanded and thereby perpetuated it” (p. 295). In addition, under Obama the killing of innocent civilians by illegal drone airstrikes in Afghanistan, Pakistan and other places not only continued but also increased during his years in office (Ritter, 2009; Turse, 2010; Benjamin, 2013; Gardner, 2013; Kramer and Smith, 2014). Thus, we must conclude that the empire of the United States still today, after eight years of Obama, remains the greatest purveyor of state crime and violence in the world, and any effort to curb state crime more generally must challenge the structure of the imperial political—economic system that generates this criminality. This will be even more imperative as Donald Trump takes the reins of the American empire.

Challenging empire This section sketches out three very broad approaches to challenging empire to which critical criminologists may be able to contribute. The first approach is to counter the denial and 436

Curbing state crime

normalization that usually cover state crimes. The second approach is to help build progressive social movements to contest state power and change the political and economic arrangements of global capitalism. Finally, we can work to enhance the democratization of the international political community in general and the ability of specific international legal institutions to better control state crimes. These approaches will be difficult to pursue and the goals they hope to accomplish extremely hard to attain. But critical criminologists can assist in these efforts to challenge empire by engaging in a “public criminology” of state crime (Kramer, Michalowski & Chambliss, 2010; Kramer, 2016). Public criminology brings criminologists into “a conversation with publics, understood as people who are themselves involved in a conversation” (Burawoy, 2007, p. 28). The content of these conversations will be quite varied but should in some form be a dialogue about the moral and political implications of our research findings and theoretical explanations concerning state crime. A public criminology of state crime can take several different forms. Following Burawoy (2007), we can distinguish between traditional and organic public criminology. Traditional public criminology attempts to initiate a conversation, instigate a debate, or provoke a critical questioning within or between publics through the publication of books and articles addressed to audiences outside the academy or opinion pieces in national or international newspapers that comment on important issues related to state crime. With organic public criminology, criminologists work directly with specific groups, organizations, social movements or state officials, engaging in a dialogue or a process of mutual education that may or may not lead to specific actions related to the prevention or control of state crime. Working directly with various publics, criminologists can share their research findings and theoretical analyses concerning the crimes of empire, help draw out the moral implications of their “reflexive knowledge,” participate in the crafting of political actions or policy choices and engage in further research on state crime by evaluating particular control policies or gathering additional evidence concerning specific criminal acts. What follows are all too brief descriptions of the three broad approaches to challenging empire with suggestions for how critical scholars acting as public criminologists may contribute to these efforts.

Countering denial and normalization Empires, and the state crimes they routinely produce, are enmeshed in a “culture of denial” (Cohen, 2001) and a socio-historical process that results in their “normalization” (Kramer, 2010). One of the most important things a public criminology can do is to counter this denial and normalization concerning the empire of the United States. Unless we disrupt the denial and negate the normalization of the crimes of empire, none of the other public conversations concerning the prevention and control of state criminality are likely to take place. Cohen (2001) has demonstrated how individuals, organizations, publics, political cultures and governments, whether victims, perpetrators or observers, frequently incorporate statements of denial into their social definitions, beliefs, knowledge and practices in such a way that atrocities and suffering, such as those related to state crimes, are not acknowledged or acted upon. According to Cohen (2001), denial “refers to the maintenance of social worlds in which an undesirable situation (event, condition, phenomenon) is unrecognized, ignored or made to seem normal” (p. 51). He identifies two major categories of denial: literal and interpretive. A literal denial is: “the assertion that something did not happen or is not true” (p. 7). With an interpretive denial, the basic facts are not denied, however, “they are given a different meaning from what seems apparent to others” (p. 7). 437

Ronald C. Kramer

U.S. history is replete with the literal denial of imperial crimes. However, as Iadicola (2010) points out, U.S. “crimes of empire” are usually covered by some form of interpretive denial: some narrative that justifies the state actions that cause harm or could be labeled as criminal. He points out that wars of aggression, assassinations, torture, and even genocide, are often justified by imperial “myths” of bringing liberation, achieving “manifest destiny” or accomplishing a civilizing mission. As noted above, U.S. state crimes have often been interpretively denied by, among other things, a reference to the cultural narrative of “American exceptionalism” that shields the state from a critical examination of its imperial motives and justifies its criminal acts. Cohen also observes that denial is closely linked to the phenomenon of normalization. In general agreement with Vaughan (1996), he argues that state atrocities and other deviant acts can, over time, come to be socially defined as normal and acceptable to individuals and societies. Criminologists who present research evidence to document state crimes and counter literal denials, or who challenge the narratives of interpretive denial and the often-resulting normalization of deviance with empirically grounded theoretical counter-narratives are engaging in an important form of public criminology. We are entering into a conversation with various publics that may impact whether or not these acts of empire will be “problematized;” that is, socially defined as crimes that can become suitable targets for prevention and control efforts. When critical scholars disrupt denials or negate normalization in their role as public criminologists they are participating as “claimsmakers” in the process of the social construction of crime as a social problem to be addressed by society (Blumer, 1971; Specter & Kitsuse, 1977). There are problems and pitfalls to this form of engagement that arise from the elusiveness of consensus among scholars, the power of the state to attack and dismiss our work, and the uncertainty of fair and balanced coverage by the mainstream media of the positions we advocate (McCarthy & Hagan, 2009). Despite these difficulties and other obstacles (i.e., lack of funding, denial of access to data, academic pressures, etc.), it is important for critical scholars to take on the roles and responsibilities of the public criminologist by challenging empire. Whether we act as traditional public criminologists and seek to influence publics through our books, articles, newspaper op-ed columns and media appearances, or whether we work directly with victims, social movements, international justice organizations, NGOs or government agencies as organic public criminologists, we can use our criminological knowledge and intellectual skills to break through denial and normalization, and help define U.S. imperial harms as state crimes and legitimate targets for social control efforts.

Assisting social movements to change the global political economy Once the crimes of empire are “problematized,” progressive social movements working to contest state power under global capitalism may be energized and their political efforts enhanced. A second strategy then for public criminologists of state crime is to work with progressive movements in their efforts to challenge the corporate capitalist state and change policies that result in state crimes. By contesting state power, movement organizations may be able to block imperial policies, help develop progressive alternatives, create structural changes in the capitalist political economy, and thus better control and prevent the crimes of empire. As Coleman and his colleagues (2009) point out: “Those who have adopted a neo-Marxist analysis of the state have therefore not only consistently emphasized the contradictory nature of its institutional power base, but also its place as a site of struggle, which has been, and can be, mobilized by powerless groups to subvert policy proposals and challenge social injustice” (p. 15).

438

Curbing state crime

Zinn (1980) demonstrated that throughout American history powerless groups and people’s movements have repeatedly challenged social injustices, fought against corporate domination, resisted imperialism and contested state power, frequently winning important victories. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries a many sided social movement also known as “progressivism” achieved important liberal reforms at all levels of government through its participation in the political process (Nugent, 2010); although such reforms may have blunted the broader challenge to the capitalist system mounted by the socialist movement of the era (Zinn, 1980). A strong anti-imperialist movement also existed during this “progressive” era (Nichols, 2004). Later, during the Great Depression, the socialist challenge and radical labor agitation helped to push President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Congress to enact many of the important New Deal social and economic programs (Zinn, 1980). During the “long sixties,” an extremely broad array of movements and countercultures arose to challenge the “Machiavellians” who represented the U.S. corporate state (Hayden, 2009). The civil rights and the anti-Vietnam war movements played central roles in contesting state power in this era. Although the progressive movements of the long sixties won some important civil rights victories, ended the imperial war against Vietnam and produced some significant social and cultural changes in American society, an extremely well funded and well organized conservative countermovement developed in the 1970s to fight back against progressive people’s movements and protect corporate interests (Hacker & Pierson, 2010; Madrick, 2011). The election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 represented a significant victory for this countermovement and further enhanced the corporate domination of the state. Today, corporate power increasingly “holds the government hostage” (Hedges, 2009, p. 143), and corporate interests have the ability to subvert democracy in the U.S., a phenomenon that Wolin (2008) called “inverted totalitarianism.” As Harvey (2009) points out, “raw money power wielded by the few undermines all semblances of democratic governance” (p. 4). The 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission only enhances this subversion of democracy (Barnes & Eggen, 2010). The grip of the corporate forces that control the state is strong, and the liberal class that once provided a minimal level of opposition to such private tyranny now appears to be dead (Hedges, 2010). The limited progress against militarism, war, and environmental destruction achieved in the 1960s and 1970s has been derailed. Further rollbacks can be expected under the Trump administration. Barak (2015) has recently proposed a worldwide people’s movement on behalf of a variety of progressive reforms and utopian system level changes. Through theory and research on state crime, and active participation in movement organizations, critical criminologists can help bring about these progressive reforms and structural changes by contesting the corporate capitalist state and reinvigorating democratic governance. They can offer their expertise and energy to peace movement organizations to end the illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, eliminate nuclear weapons and reduce the Pentagon budget and the power and influence of the military-industrial complex. They can likewise use their skills to work with anti-globalization groups to reveal and resist predatory corporate globalization practices and oppose free trade agreements that neuter (criminalize) individual state efforts to protect workers, consumers and the environment from these predatory corporate acts. They can describe and analyze state–corporate climate crimes and offer, as White and Kramer (2015) have, a matrix of an action plan against climate change. Such an action plan could help to galvanize the climate justice movement that Klein (2014) thinks could be the catalyzing force for a powerful and comprehensive mass movement; a broad based political force that could challenge capitalism and address a variety of progressive issues, not just global warming. Obviously, much more would

439

Ronald C. Kramer

need to be done to genuinely contest the corporate state and change the prevailing political and economic arrangements under capitalism, but these would be important steps in that process and state crime criminologists have an important activist role to play in such a movement.

Enhancing the crime controls of international political and legal institutions In the global era, reformed internal controls on state crime are not likely to be effective. However, enhancing the power and control of international political and legal institutions may have greater potential. As Rothe and Kauzlarich (2010, p. 183) have noted, “Control over state crime is strongest at the international level.” Formal international controls include public international law, international military tribunals, intergovernmental organizations, the International Court of Justice (World Court), and the relatively new International Criminal Court. In the postWorld War II era the United States often took the lead in the creation of these new international laws and organizations. But as Chambliss’ structural contradictions theory would suggest, the imperial domination of this international legal order by the US has resulted in political impunity for the crimes of the American empire and has undermined the ability of these political and legal institutions to control the crimes of other states (Kramer and Michalowski, 2005). But this may be changing. Bennis (2006) argues that the illegal US war of aggression against Iraq in 2003 helped to generate three specific challenges to the American empire. These challenges came from the global peoples’ movement that arose to protest the invasion of Iraq, an assortment of governments around the world who recognized that this war and the American empire were not in their best interests, and the United Nations which defended its charter’s prohibition against the use of military force and rejected the US pressure for a resolution authorizing the invasion. Thus, the third broad form of resistance to state crimes that we can offer as public criminologists is to enter into conversations with various publics concerning the strengthening of these challenges and other formal international controls over state crimes. In these conversations we can offer to share our research findings and theoretical narratives, our methodological and interpretive skills, with others who are struggling to react to or reduce the harms that flow from the crimes of the American empire and other state powers. We may be able to use our criminological knowledge and intellectual tools to advocate for or even help construct policies related to the greater social control of state criminality. As Rothe and Mullins (2006) point out, the creation of a permanent International Criminal Court (ICC) provides a new, but partial, opening for holding state officials accountable for their crimes. Ideally, this could be an effort to end political impunity and legal immunity for powerful state actors. White and Kramer (2015) call for the establishment of a permanent environmental justice people’s tribunal in their action plan matrix to deal with climate change. Yet some neoMarxist theorists dispute the notion, advanced by some criminologists and legal scholars like Sands (2005), that any progress toward greater accountability for the state officials of capitalist societies has occurred, arguing that international legal norms have always been complicit with the violence of empires (Mieville, 2006). Many critical criminologists might agree with this assessment, particularly as it applies to the empire of the United States (Iadicola, 2010). To this point, Michalowski (2013) reminds us of Audre Lorde’s observation that the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. But if critical criminologists can effectively help to challenge empire by countering the denial and normalization of imperial crimes and by assisting progressive social movements that are contesting the corporate state, then a space may be created that would allow for the enhancement of international controls over state crimes. With our knowledge of social control practices, 440

Curbing state crime

criminal justice policies, punishment processes and transitional and restorative justice approaches, critical criminologists are potentially in a position to contribute to the efforts of the international political community to prevent and control state crimes by the US and by other states around the world. Curbing state crime by challenging empire will not be easy. It will require a long and difficult march. But I would argue that we, as critical criminologists, have a moral obligation to act as public intellectuals and use our knowledge and skills to assist in the effort to prevent the crimes of empire and help keep the struggle for political and economic justice alive. This has never been more important than in the age of Trump!

References Anderson, F. & Cayton, A. (2005). The dominion of war: Empire and liberty in North America, 1500–2000. New York: Penguin Books. Bacevich, A. (2002). American empire: The realities and consequences of U.S. diplomacy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Bacevich, A. (2005). The new American militarism: How Americans are seduced by war. New York: Oxford University Press. Bacevich, A. (2016). America’s war for the greater Middle East: A military history. New York: Random House. Barak, G. (Ed.) (2015). The Routledge international handbook of the crimes of the powerful. London: Routledge. Barnes, R. & Eggen, D. (2010). Supreme Court rejects limits on corporate spending on political campaigns. Washington Post, January 22, A01. Benjamin, M. (2013). Drone warfare: Killing by remote control. Revised and updated. London: Verso. Bennis, P. (2006). Challenging empire: How people, governments, and the UN defy US power. Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press. Bennis, P. (2007). Understanding the Palestinian–Israeli conflict. Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press. Blum, W. (2004). Killing hope: U.S. military and C.I.A. interventions since World War II. Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press. Blumer, H. (1971). Social problems as collective behavior. Social Problems, 18, 298–306. Boggs, C. (2010). The crimes of empire: Rogue superpower and world domination. London: Pluto Press. Boggs, C. (2017). Origins of the warfare state: World War II and the transformation of American politics. New York: Routledge. Burawoy, M. (2007). For public sociology. In D. Clawson, R. Zussman, J. Misra, N. Gerstel, R. Stokes, D. Anderton and M. Burawoy (Eds), Public sociology: Fifteen eminent sociologists debate politics and the profession in the twenty-first century (pp. 23–64). Berkeley: University of California Press. Chernus, I. (2006). Monsters to destroy: The neoconservative war on terror and sin. Boulder, Co: Paradigm Publishers. Chomsky, N. (2000). Rogue states: The rule of force in world affairs. Boston: South End Press. Chomsky, N. (2003). Hegemony or survival: America’s quest for global dominance. New York: Metropolitan Books. Cohen, S. (2001). States of denial: Knowing about atrocities and suffering. Cambridge: Polity Press. Coleman, R., Sim, J., Tombs, S. & Whyte, D. (Eds) (2009). State power crime. London: Sage. Dorrien, G. (2004). Imperial designs: Neo-conservatism and the new Pax Americana. New York: Routledge. Dreyfuss, R. (2005). Devil’s game: How the United States helped unleash fundamentalist Islam. New York: Metropolitan Books. Dunbar-Ortiz, R. (2014). An indigenous peoples’ history of the United States. Boston: Beacon Press. Engelhardt, T. (2016). Was 11/8 a new 9/11? TomDispatch.com (December 1). Retrieved from: www. tomdispatch.com/blog/176216. Ferguson, N. (2004). Colossus: The price of America’s empire. New York: The Penguin Press. Fiala, A. (2008). The just war myth: The moral illusions of war. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Frank, A.G. (1969). Capitalism and the underdevelopment of Latin America. New York: Monthly Review Press. Freeman, J.B. (2012). American empire: The rise of a global power, the democratic revolution at home 1945–2000. New York: Viking. Gardner, L. (2013). Killing machine: The American presidency in the age of drone warfare. New York: The New Press. 441

Ronald C. Kramer

Gareau, F. (2004). State terrorism and the United States: From counterinsurgency to the war on terrorism. Atlanta: Clarity Press. Gordon, R. (2016). American Nuremberg: The U.S. officials who should stand trial for post-9/11 war crimes. New York: Hot Books/Skyhorse Publishing. Grandin, G. (2006). Empire’s workshop: Latin America, the United States and the rise of the new imperialism. New York: Metropolitan/Henry Holt. Hacker, J. & Pierson, P. (2010). Winner-take-all politics: How Washington made the rich richer-and turned its back on the middle class. New York: Simon & Schuster. Harvey, D. (2009). Organizing for the anti-capitalist transition. Monthly Review. Retrieved from: http:// mrzine.monthlyreview.org/harvey151209.html. Hayden, T. (2009). The long sixties: From 1960 to Barack Obama. Boulder, Co: Paradigm Publishers. Hedges, C. (2009). Empire of illusion: The end of literacy and the triumph of spectacle. New York: Nation Books. Hedges, C. (2010). The death of the liberal class. New York: Nation Books. Hodgson, G. (2009). The myth of American exceptionalism. New Haven: Yale University Press. Iadicola, P. (2010). The centrality of empire in the study of state crime and violence. In W. Chambliss, R. Michalowski & R. C. Kramer, (Eds), State crime in the global age (pp. 31–44). Uffculme, Devon: Willan Publishing. Johnson, C. (2000). Blowback: The costs and consequences of American empire. New York: Henry Holt. Johnson, C. (2004). The sorrows of empire: Militarism, secrecy, and the end of the republic. New York: Metropolitan/Holt. Kinzer, S. (2006). Overthrow: America’s century of regime change from Hawaii to Iraq. New York: Times Books/ Henry Holt. Klare, M. (2001). Resource wars: The new landscape of global conflict. New York: Metropolitan/Owl Books. Klare, M. (2004). Blood and oil: The dangers and consequences of America’s growing petroleum dependency. New York: Metropolitan Books. Klein, N. (2007). The shock doctrine: The rise of disaster capitalism. New York: Metropolitan Books. Klein, N. (2014). This changes everything: Capitalism vs. the climate. New York: Simon & Schuster. Koh, H.H. (2003). Foreword: On American exceptionalism. Stanford Law Review, 55, 1479–1527. Kramer, R.C. (2010). From Guernica to Hiroshima to Baghdad: The normalization of the terror bombing of civilian populations. In W. Chambliss, R. Michalowski & R.C. Kramer (Eds), State crime in the global age (pp. 118–133). Uffculme, Devon: Willan Publishing. Kramer, R.C. (2016). State crime, the prophetic voice and public criminology activism. Critical Criminology, 24, 519–532. Kramer, R.C. & Michalowski, R. (2005). War, aggression, and state crime: A criminological analysis of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. British Journal of Criminology, 45, 446–469. Kramer, R.C. & Michalowski, R. (2011). Empire and exceptionalism: The Bush administration’s criminal war against Iraq. In D.L. Rothe and C.W. Mullins (Eds), State crime: Current perspectives (pp. 94–121). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Kramer, R.C. & Smith, A.M. (2014). “Death flies down”: The bombing of civilians and the paradox of international law. In D.L. Rothe and D. Kauzlarich (Eds), Towards a victimology of state crime (pp. 110–130). London: Routledge. Kramer, R.C., Michalowski, R. & Chambliss, W. (2010). Epilogue: Toward a public criminology of state crime. In W. Chambliss, R. Michalowski and R.C. Kramer (Eds), State crime in the global age (pp. 247–261). Uffculme, Devon: Willan Publishing. Krauthammer, C. (1991). The unipolar moment. Foreign Affairs, 70, 23–33. Lens, S. (1971). The forging of the American empire: From the revolution to Vietnam: A history of U.S. imperialism. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company (new edition published 2003 by Pluto Press). Madrick, J. (2011). Age of greed: The triumph of finance and the decline of America 1970 to the present. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. McCarthy, B. & Hagan, J. (2009). Counting the deaths in Darfur: Pitfalls on the pathway to a public sociology. In V. Jeffries (Ed.). Handbook of public sociology (pp. 319–337). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Michalowski, R. (2013). The master’s tools: Can supranational law confront crimes of powerful states? In E. Stanley and J. McCulloch (Eds), State crime and resistance (pp. 210–224). London: Routledge. Michalowski, R. & Kramer, R. (2006). State-corporate crime: Wrongdoing at the intersection of business and government. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Mieville, C. (2006). Between equal rights: A Marxist theory of international law. Chicago: Haymarket Books. 442

Curbing state crime

Nichols, J. (Ed.) (2004). Against the beast: A documentary history of American opposition to empire. New York: Nation Books. Nugent, W. (2008). Habits of empire: A history of American expansion. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Nugent, W. (2010). Progressivism: A very short introduction. New York: Oxford University Press. Petras, J. (2007). Rulers and ruled in the US empire: Bankers, Zionists, militants. Atlanta: Clarity Press. Ritter, S. (2009). Our murderers in the sky. Truthdig. Retrieved from: www.truthdig.com/report/item/ our_murderers_in_the_sky_20091210/. Rothe, D.L. & Kauzlarich, D. (2010). State crime theory and control. In H.D. Barlow & S.H. Decker (Eds), Criminology and public policy (pp. 166–187). Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Rothe, D.L. & Mullins, C.W. (2006). Symbolic gestures and the generation of global social control: The international criminal court. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Ryan, D. (2007). Frustrated empire: U.S. foreign policy, 9/11 to Iraq. London: Pluto Press. Sands, P. (2005). Lawless world. New York: Penguin Books. Spector, M. & Kitsuse, J. (1977). Constructing social problems. Menlo Park, CA: Cummings. Tooze, A. (2014). The Great War, America and the remaking of the global order, 1916–1931. New York: Viking. Turse, N. (2010). The drone surge: Today, tomorrow, and 2047. TomDispatch.com. Retrieved from: www. tomdispatch.com/blog/175195. Vaughn, D. (1996). The Challenger launch decision: Risky technology, culture, and deviance at NASA. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wallerstein, I. (1989). The modern world system. New York: Academic Press. Washington, J.M. (Ed.) (1991). A testament of hope: The essential writings and speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr. New York: HarperCollins. Welch, M. (2009). Crimes of power & states of impunity: The U.S. response to terror. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. White, R. and Kramer, R. (2015). Critical criminology and the struggle against climate change ecocide. Critical Criminology, 23, 383–400. Williams, W.A. (1959). The tragedy of American diplomacy. New York: Norton. Williams, W.A. (1980). Empire as a way of life. New York: Oxford University Press. Wolin, S.S. (2008). Democracy incorporated: Managed democracy and the specter of inverted totalitarianism. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Zinn, H. (1980). A people’s history of the United States. New York: HarperCollins. Zunes, S. (2003). Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East policy and the roots of terrorism. Monroe, Maine: Common Courage Press.

443

36 Violence and social policy Elliott Currie

Introduction The most important thing to understand about violence and social policy from the perspective of critical criminology is that social policy matters: the level of violence a society suffers is fundamentally shaped by both past and present social policies, and it can be substantially mitigated, or exacerbated, by the policies put in place for the future. That may seem obvious, but this fundamental insight challenges a variety of perspectives, both within and beyond formal criminology, on the sources of violence and strategies to reduce it. The idea that social policy matters in terms of violence, for example, profoundly undercuts those biological perspectives that insist that violence is simply a reflection of individual genetic differences. It also challenges those versions of “control” theory that ignore social structure and social policy in favor of an ahistorical and anti-structural argument about the role of socialization in the first few years of life—as if broader social policies had nothing to do with the way in which that socialization takes place. It likewise challenges the common conservative view that, since the roots of violent crime lie either in individual propensities or family processes that are impervious to deliberate changes in social policy, there is little or nothing that governments can do to address them. Similarly, the insight that social policy powerfully influences the level of violence across different societies runs against the related argument that violent crime is a reflection of mostly beneficent trends that affect all modern societies—including economic growth, prosperity and the culture of modernity in general. Finally, the understanding that social policy significantly determines the dimensions of violence illuminates the limits of the kind of narrow and technocratic criminology that, in whatever country it may be found, takes the surrounding social structure and broad thrust of social policy as given, brackets them from serious consideration, and narrows its focus to working within them. In contrast, most versions of critical criminology would place the role of deliberate social policy at the heart of the understanding of violence and what it would take to reduce it. Foregrounding the impact of social policy on violence highlights the fact that not only are there larger structural forces operating to produce varying levels of violence, but that what social and political actors do in the real world makes a difference as well. Put another way, the focus on the connections between violence and public policy reminds us that, to an important degree, the level of violent 444

Violence and social policy

crime in a given society represents a social and political choice—not simply an individual one, or even a reflection of abstract, impersonal forces operating pristinely above deliberate human intervention. To a significant extent, in short, we make the world of violence that surrounds us. Many critical criminological perspectives also raise the prior question of what we define as “violence” in the first place—and who gets to do the defining. The choice of what kinds of violence are worthy of investigation and of condemnation as criminal is by no means a given: it is a deeply contested issue with profound implications for both theory and social policy. Historically, critical criminology, in many of its variants, has insisted on the salience for criminology of the violence of institutions, not just the violence of individuals acting in response to them. This understanding points toward investigating the violent character of some kinds of white collar crime, but also, more subtly, to social policies that predictably lead to serious harm but that are not usually defined as criminal—such as those that produce extreme economic deprivation, social dislocation, the systematic denial of health care, or the elimination of livelihoods—whose destructive impact is far greater than that of ordinary street crime. It also points us to the need to confront analytically the mass crimes against humanity that also kill, maim and terrorize far more people than street crimes (Maier-Katkin et al., 2009; Hagan & Rymond-Richmond, 2008). Putting these issues of definition and priorities squarely on the table has always been among the main aims of critical criminology. Here, however, I will focus on “ordinary” violence in the streets and homes, and on the way its distribution is influenced and shaped by social policies—in part because other articles in this Handbook address other forms of violence directly, and in part because the issue of how social policy affects “ordinary” violence is a large and complex one in itself—and one with enormous human consequences.

Two worlds of post-industrial violence A critical understanding of serious violent crime must confront the fact that it varies enormously across different societies. The chances of being the victim of violence on the streets or in the home in Johannesburg, San Salvador, Rio de Janeiro, or New Orleans are vastly greater than they are in London, Paris, Stockholm or Tokyo. Even within the advanced industrial societies, the differences in levels of serious violent crime are extreme—particularly the striking distance between the United States of America and all other fully developed nations, whether in Asia, Europe, North America or the Pacific. This pattern stands out starkly when we look at data on homicide deaths—the least compromised empirical evidence we have on the prevalence of violent crime. The risk of dying by violence in the United States is more than triple that of its close neighbor, Canada, five times that in Denmark or Australia. It is roughly five and one-half times that in Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, ten times that in Austria and Switzerland, and over sixteen times that in Japan and Singapore (UNODC, 2017). Viewed through the prism of age and gender, the differences are even more dramatic. The chances of dying by intentional violence among young men aged 15–24 in the United States are, on average, 17 times those of young men in the other 22 high-income countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) (Grinshteyn & Hemenway, 2016). Indeed, the violent death rate for young Americans more closely resembles those of youth in Russia or some Latin American nations than it does the rest of the affluent industrial world. And though American women are far less likely to die by violence than American men, their homicide death rate is almost triple the rate for both sexes combined in those 22 countries of the OECD. 445

Elliott Currie

Adding race to the picture along with gender and age produces numbers than are even more telling: at last count, a black man in the state of Indiana was more likely to die by violence than men in South Africa or Brazil, and more than 100 times as likely as men in Germany (Currie, 2015, p. 56). Yet race alone does not account for the disparities in fatal violence between the United States and other advanced industrial countries: the homicide death rate for white, nonHispanic men in the United States is almost six times that of men of all races in Germany and more than eight times the rate for men in Japan (Currie, 2015, p. 56). The particular prominence of the United States among advanced industrial societies is one aspect of a broader phenomenon—what I’ve elsewhere called the “violence divide”: the increasingly sharp bifurcation in the experience of violence around the world (Currie, 2016). With the startling exception of the United States, that divide falls along lines of social and economic development. By far the highest levels of homicide, for example, are found in parts of the developing world—notably Central and South America, the Caribbean, and parts of Africa. The risk of violent death in South Africa is 47 times that in South Korea, the risk in Jamaica 72 times that in Austria, and—at the extreme—the risk in Honduras nearly 250 times that in Japan (UNODC, 2017). Much has been made of the “crime drop” that took place in the United States and many countries, generally beginning around the early 1990s. But that decline has been revealingly uneven, at least in the case of homicide, with most of the largest declines taking place in countries with already relatively low rates—while a number of countries with perennially high levels of violence, especially in Central and South America, experienced smaller declines or even increases. This trend has cemented and in some instances widened the gap between what we might call public safety “haves” and “have-nots”—contributing to the overall bifurcation of “winners” and “losers” in the global economic order (LaFree, Curtis, & Mcdowall, 2015; Weiss et al., 2016). It is important to understand, moreover, that even these dramatic differences are sharply understated because of several fundamental inadequacies in the way we define and measure the problem of violent crime—three of which are especially significant. First, with the exception of international health data on homicide mortality, most of the evidence on levels of violence across advanced industrial societies comes from either notoriously flawed police report data or, more recently, from victimization surveys—which are widely but wrongly believed to be free of serious limitations. In fact, the victimization survey data on violent crime systematically minimize the differences between a country such as the United States and its counterparts in the advanced societies of Europe and Asia. The key problem is that the victimization surveys radically under-sample some of the kinds of people who are most likely to be the victims of serious violence—notably those behind bars, the homeless and other socially marginal and difficult to reach groups, and those who are themselves involved in serious offending. The practical exclusion of these people from the surveys becomes highly significant when, as in the United States, these categories come to include very large numbers of people. With an incarceration rate several times higher than that of its closest European competitors; levels of homelessness, social marginality and extreme deprivation that dwarf those of most other advanced industrial societies; and very high rates of serious offending, the United States contains comparatively vast numbers of people who are both among the most likely to suffer victimization by violence and the least likely to show up in victimization surveys. To be sure, such people are not absent in the advanced societies of Europe or Asia, but they are far smaller as a proportion of the population. By leaving out great numbers of those who are most victimized by violence, comparisons based on victimization surveys will substantially understate the gap in violence between the United States and other advanced countries. That gap is also minimized by the conventions of measuring what we call the “crime rate.” The degree to which American social institutions and social policies have bred serious violence 446

Violence and social policy

is routinely masked by the fact that so many violent offenders are taken off the street and placed behind bars, where they are no longer counted as part of the problem of criminal violence. This amounts to a kind of conceptual sleight of hand, by which many of the most troubled products of criminogenic social policies are simply removed from view and, accordingly, from our statistics on violence. This problem is a consequence of the way in which we define the “crime rate,” which refers only to the offenses committed by people who are still “on the street” and ignores the implications of the vast amount of social and personal damage represented by those behind bars. It is as if we set out to measure the extent of some serious disease, but excluded those among the sick who have been admitted to hospitals (cf. Currie, 2003). Again, this problem is less severe in societies with lower levels of incarceration, but it becomes very severe in a society like the United States, with close to 2.5 million people at any given moment behind bars and thus removed from the empirical radar screen. A true accounting of the tendency of American social policies to produce violent people, in short, would need to factor in not only the current rate of violent crime but the extraordinary rate of incarceration of violent offenders as well. Finally, the role of social and economic policies in breeding violence is greatly understated if we restrict our lens to levels of violence within single countries. It is a truism that today the reach of the policies of predatory late capitalism, or neoliberalism, has become global. Policies made in Washington, DC or New York with respect to investment and disinvestment, drugs, or firearms no longer affect levels of violence within the United States alone, but also profoundly shape the experience of violence in, for example, Mexico and Central America. Mexico in the early part of the 21st century offers a particularly compelling illustration—a country where a toxic combination of mass economic displacement and rising inequality resulting from neoliberal economic policies, the increasing flow of guns from the unregulated United States firearms markets, and a vast drug trade fueled by high demand within the United States, has created startling levels of criminal violence and bred large-scale criminal organizations that have come close to destabilizing large parts of the country. A significant part of the violence that is produced by disruptive social and economic policies, in other words, is now “exported” to other countries and does not appear on the statistical “balance sheet” of the country where those policies originate. Yet as the world economy becomes ever more integrated into the orbit of a heedless economic model that is profoundly destructive of social institutions and communities, criminology has not caught up with these developments by devising new tools to measure the globally criminogenic impact of policies launched in a handful of highly developed postindustrial societies.

Markets, social policy, and violence The unequal distribution of violence across different social worlds, then, is a fundamental global reality. But how do we explain that stark pattern of inequality? What policies in particular help to account for the extraordinary variability of violence? It may be most useful to look at this issue within the ranks of advanced industrial societies, because in doing so we can isolate the effects of policy choices among a group of societies that in many ways are remarkably similar—in levels of technological development, demographic patterns, overall productive capacity, and formal political institutions. Within those societies, the evidence is clear that a significant part of the differences in levels of violence reflects the degree to which social policy has been successful in mitigating the adverse social and personal impacts of unregulated market capitalism. To be sure, this is not the entire story. The levels of violent crime in any particular society are influenced not only by the degree to which they have or have not reined in the excesses of the private market, but also by a variety of culturally and historically specific factors. In the United States, for example, it is impossible to 447

Elliott Currie

understand the historical trajectory of violence without understanding the central role of racial subordination in the country’s economic and social development. A full understanding of American violence, therefore, would require us to consider the enduring impact of generations of discriminatory policies in jobs, housing, social benefits, and more (Brown et al., 2003), as well as the long shadow of official and private violence against black Americans (Litwack, 1999; Currie, 2017). Similarly, societies differ on cultural dimensions that are very important in understanding the nature and extent of violence within them—including norms encouraging the subordination and exploitation of women and the use of physical violence in child rearing, and attitudes about the consumption of alcohol, among others (Lysova, Shchitov, & Pridemore, 2012). But while the presence of broad social policies that either exacerbate or mitigate the socially destructive tendencies of global capitalism is not the only force that shapes the level of violence among post-industrial countries, it is a central one. Those advanced societies that have most fully developed policies that counter capitalism’s tendency to produce extremes of inequality and social exclusion and to create a surplus jobless population, that support the welfare of families and the socialization of children through reliable income support, universal childcare, and other “family-friendly” policies, and that stringently regulate the private market in firearms, consistently show lower levels of serious violent crime as compared with those—most notably the United States—that have historically resisted such “social democratic” intervention into the un-buffered play of the forces of profit seeking (Hall & McLean, 2009; Currie, 2016). In what follows, I want to focus on several of those realms in which deliberate policy choices strongly influence the level of post-industrial violence: the reduction of inequality and material deprivation, the provision of social supports for families and children, and policies for the regulation of firearms. It’s important to recognize, however, that these are not really separate, autonomous policy realms, but reflections of a larger commitment—or lack of one—to mitigate the impact of private market forces on social life. 1. A fundamental difference between the United States and other advanced industrial societies, from which many others flow, is the far greater degree to which most of them have created and sustained policies to blunt the edges of economic inequality and deprivation that naturally arise from the operation of the private economy. What makes this of central importance for our purposes is that the connection between extremes of inequality and violent crime is one of the strongest and most predictable in criminology, confirmed by a host of empirical studies at both national and local levels, using a wide variety of research methods and definitions of what inequality means. Those societies that have most allowed the market to run its course without strong intervention to buffer the resulting extremes of inequality and deprivation—including Russia and parts of Eastern Europe since the 1990s, parts of Central and South America, and, within the advanced post-industrial societies, the United States—are not surprisingly those with the highest levels of serious violent crime (Currie, 2015). It is hardly accidental that, however we choose to measure it, the gap between top and bottom in the United States is far wider than in other fully advanced industrial societies, and indeed falls uncomfortably in between those societies and many countries of the developing world. The Gini index of inequality in the United States is closer to that of El Salvador or the Philippines than to that of Australia or Canada—countries that are in turn among the most unequal among the advanced industrial societies aside from the United States—and about one and onehalf times that of countries like Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. Relative poverty rates—that is, poverty defined as having an income below a certain proportion of a society’s median—are similarly far higher in the United States than in most other advanced industrial countries, and indeed far closer to those of Mexico or Russia than to those of societies at a more comparable level of development. Roughly 1 in six American children lives in a family with income less than 448

Violence and social policy

40 percent of the median, versus one child in 27 in France and Sweden (Currie, 2015, p. 52). Measured by the number of children under 18 who grow up in economic circumstances that are far from the norm, several European countries have come close to eliminating relative child poverty altogether. By contrast, the United States continues to tolerate levels of social exclusion that more closely resemble some of the middle income countries of the former Soviet Union and the developing world. The lower levels of extreme poverty and the narrower gap in income distribution in many advanced industrial countries are a reflection both of better wages (enforced by stronger unions and labor oriented governments), and more generous social benefits. Social benefits, for example, reduce the child poverty rate in France from a “pre-transfer” level of about 19 percent to 9 percent. In the United States, an unusually high level of pre-transfer poverty (25 percent) is brought down only to 23 percent by government benefits—leaving the country with the highest child poverty rate in the advanced industrial world (UNICEF, 2012). As this suggests, the startlingly disparate levels of serious violent crime in the United States must be seen as one of many costs of consistent policy choices that have both deregulated the U.S. labor market and inhibited the provision of an adequate floor of income through a system of at least modestly generous benefits for those who cannot make an adequate living from market earnings alone. 2. A similar disparity holds for a number of other social policies that are designed to buffer the market’s impact on the well-being of individuals and families. Societies that have achieved low levels of violence do so not only by reducing the income gap between haves and have-nots, excluded and included, but also by providing a mesh of supports for families and children that help substantially to stabilize families and promote the effective socialization of the young. It’s not surprising, therefore, that public benefits targeted specifically for families and children, as a proportion of gross domestic product, are roughly four times higher in Denmark than in the United States—and that indeed the United States proportion was considerably lower that of Mexico (OECD, 2015). The United States, moreover, remains one of only a handful of countries around the world, developed or undeveloped, that lacks comprehensive policies to mitigate the stress between work and family life. One study, for example, finds the U.S. aligned with only three other countries— Liberia, Papua New Guinea, and Swaziland—in having no national level guaranteed paid leave for women in connection with childbirth (Heymann, Earle, & Hays, 2007). More generally, a United Nations report ranks the United States near the bottom of 29 industrialized countries on the material and interpersonal well-being of families. Importantly, a number of less affluent European countries score better on these measures—including material well-being, health and safety, and education—than does the United States, including Poland, Estonia, and Greece (UNICEF, 2013). The United States is characterized by a particularly unfavorable combination of high levels of family disruption and low levels of public support for families, whether in the form of income benefits or the provision of universal access to child care, health care, or parental leave. That combination contributes substantially to high levels of violent crime in the United States—not only because it exacerbates the broader problem of social exclusion, but because it strains families in ways that breed violence, both within the family and outside of it. Extreme material deprivation coupled with minimal social supports for families under stress leads to higher levels of child abuse, which not only represents a devastating form of violence in its own right, but also raises the risks of further violence later, as abused children grow into adolescence and adulthood. The relative absence of family supports also puts women at heightened risk of domestic violence, by forcing them to remain in dangerous relationships because they cannot support themselves and their children on their own. 449

Elliott Currie

3. The United States is again in the position of an outlier when it comes to the regulation of firearms. This has sometimes been taken as evidence that the differences in violence between the United States and otherwise comparable societies are almost wholly the result of the remarkable absence of national policies to regulate guns in the United States—as a result of which violence, even if it is no more prevalent in America, is often more lethal. And some startling figures drive home the special place of gun violence within the overall picture of violence in America. The U.S. firearm homicide death rate is 25 times that of the other 22 high-income OECD countries: for young men aged 15–24, it is 50 times higher (Grinshteyn & Hemenway, 2016). But that argument takes an important point too far. The evidence suggests that the role of the availability of firearms in violent crime is considerably more complex. Societies that have achieved high levels of equality and social inclusion can tolerate relatively wide ownership of firearms without that being translated into high rates of violent crime— Switzerland being a classic example. Conversely, societies that suffer extremes of social exclusion and inequality are likely to suffer high levels of violent crime even in the absence of widespread private ownership of guns—as is the case, for example, in Russia (Lysova, Shchitov, & Pridemore, 2012). The worst levels of lethal violence appear in societies that combine wide availability of firearms with extremes of social inequality and marginalization, including some Latin American countries and, among the advanced societies, the United States. The rate of non-gun homicide in the U.S., not too surprisingly, is itself almost triple the rate in the other 22 highincome OECD countries. It is important to recognize that the choice to regulate firearms seriously does not take place in a vacuum: nor is it understandable simply as a reflection of a “culture” of guns in the United States. High levels of firearm violence in the United States are sometimes attributed to the lingering cultural impact of America’s “frontier” past. But the frontier societies of Australia and Canada have done far more to regulate guns than has the United States—and suffer far lower levels of gun violence. The deregulation of firearms is better understood as another reflection of the broader willingness in the United States to allow private businesses—in this case, gun manufacturers and dealers—to pursue maximum profit without public interference, no matter what the consequences for social order and public health.

Minimalist social policy and reactive justice An important corollary of the unwillingness to intervene in the destructive tendencies of the “market” is a corresponding reliance on strategies of force, fear, and incapacitation to contain the high levels of criminal violence that predictably result. The flip side of the absence of effective policies to maximize social solidarity and inclusion, in other words, is the growth of an outsized apparatus of repressive control. It is therefore not accidental that the country with the least developed policies of social inclusion in the advanced industrial world is also the one with an incarceration rate that towers over that of other advanced societies—or that other countries with unusually high incarceration rates are often ones (like Russia or Brazil) where market relations hold sway in a particularly extreme fashion. It is also not coincidental that the prison has risen as a social presence in many societies simultaneously with the retreat of more positive and inclusive policies under the global impact of neoliberalism (Downes & Hansen, 2006; Wacquant, 2009). But it is also increasingly apparent that these reactive and punitive strategies are no longer simply responses to high levels of crime but, at the extreme, have become an integral part of the mix of policies that contribute to it. As a growing body of research—much of it from the United States—makes clear, mass incarceration, especially on the level that it has reached in the U.S., has “iatrogenic” effects on violent crime, in several mutually reinforcing ways. 450

Violence and social policy

On the simplest level, the growing investment in prisons drains scarce public resources from other realms—income support, schools, health and mental health care, employment programs, housing, and more—that could serve as more reliable bulwarks against violence. Heavy investment in repression thus contributes to the stripping away of social and personal supports and the undermining of the possibility of implementing more inclusive strategies—the domestic version of the clash between guns and butter. More subtly, the experience of incarceration, especially in a society that already suffers from a hollowed opportunity structure and thin social supports, is often a disabling one that sharply reduces the prospects of a good job and decent earnings—and thus serves in practice to cement great numbers of former offenders into a condition of permanent marginality. That is especially true when these disabilities are coupled, as they have often been in the United States, with legal provisions that specifically disempower offenders in the realms of work, housing, and political participation (Western, 2008; Mauer & Chesney-Lind, 2002; Currie, 2013). And since the stream of offenders into the swollen prisons flows with startling disproportion from a relative handful of especially disadvantaged communities, the growth of mass incarceration has simultaneously undermined the capacity of those communities to provide informal social support and social control (Clear, 2009). All of this helps to explain why recent research confirms the longstanding critical understanding that prison is often counterproductive in its effect on crime: a substantial proportion of people who go to prison are likely to commit more crimes, not fewer, on release (Cullen, Nagin, & Johnson, 2009). The upshot is that beyond a certain point, the resort to mass incarceration as the first line of defense against violent crime under a regime of minimalist social policy has clearly contradictory effects: on the one hand, it can, at least in the short term, have some significant “incapacitation” effect on violent crime—but at the same time, it further erodes the personal, communal and institutional conditions that are essential in reducing violence over the longer term.

Looking to the future It is evident, then, that societies that have moved deliberately to counter the intrinsically destructive tendencies of market society suffer less from serious violent crime—a testimony to the substantial capacity of societies to address, successfully, the kinds of social and economic conditions that predictably breed violence. The lesson, again, is that policy, broadly defined, matters when it comes to violence, just as it does for other social ills: poverty, preventable disease, drug abuse, infant and maternal mortality, and more. And this reality challenges the passive and pessimistic tendency, in some versions of criminological thinking, to deny that societies have much control over the amount of violence they suffer, other than by deploying repressive measures on a mass scale. Indeed, the achievement of levels of serious violence that are quite low by historical standards represents one of the great accomplishments of progressive governments in the last century. Much of that achievement, it should be emphasized, resulted from policies that were not primarily, if at all, directly designed to address violent crime itself. These low levels of violence were not achieved by mass incarceration, by local neighborhood watch programs, or by efforts to frighten children into behaving better: nor were they achieved by the proliferation of closed-circuit television cameras or the creation of buildings designed to provide “defensible space.” They were achieved, to a large extent, by macro-level efforts to integrate citizens into a common social and economic life, reduce extremes of social exclusion and deprivation, control the technology of violence, and refrain from abusive and counterproductive forms of social control. 451

Elliott Currie

But that generally encouraging historical record is no cause for complacency. Those advances in social equality and inclusion have remained incomplete even in those societies that have taken them the farthest: and they are now everywhere threatened by a combination of adverse economic, political, and cultural forces. The extension of the values of social inclusion and solidarity through social democratic policies was a compelling civilizing force in the modern world: but it is not hard to envision a process of “de-civilization” in which those gains are not only stalled, but reversed (Hall & Wilson, 2014). And these two concerns are closely related. On the first count, the most consequential limitation of the social democratic project has been the inability to gain significant control over the destructive patterns of investment and disinvestment within the global economy. Among other things, this has meant that national governments, even those most committed to the idea of social inclusion and full employment, have been unable to effectively counter the forces that shift jobs to regions with the lowest wages and benefits or that eliminate livelihoods altogether through technological change and the reduction of public employment. Even the most progressive governments have historically been better at creating and sustaining strong inclusionary policies with respect to social benefits—ranging from income support to universal health care—than ensuring full employment in meaningful and supportive jobs. No other advanced industrial society presents the degree of devastation that exists in some of the most impacted neighborhoods in the United States, where only a small minority of young African-American men can expect to work steadily in the legitimate labor force at all. But many countries, including some with otherwise quite advanced social policies when it comes to social benefits, family support, or health care, have come increasingly close—now tolerating as part of the social and economic landscape a large swath of people, especially the minority young, who are so far removed from the world of meaningful work that they seem to be permanently disenfranchised economically, and who tend to be concentrated in communities where a resulting culture of alienation and desperation is increasingly entrenched. That same inability to exert substantial control over patterns of investment and disinvestment now also threatens the capacity of even the most progressive societies to maintain the hard-won policies that have promoted social inclusion and solidarity and, in the process, substantially reduced levels of violence. Around the world, long-held gains in progressive social policy are under siege as governments have adopted, to a greater or lesser degree, a “race to the bottom” in the name of fiscal austerity and attracting global investment in a harshly competitive economic and financial climate. From Canada to France to Scandinavia, governments are facing increasing pressures to deregulate labor markets, slash social benefits, and reset the balance of power between labor and employers—pressures, in short, to turn most of the world’s traditionally more egalitarian and inclusive societies into something more closely resembling the United States or some parts of the developing world. Needless to say, these moves do not bode well for the longterm health of the institutions that have kept these societies relatively free from serious violence for many decades. It would be a mistake, however, to assume that these trends are inevitable. In many societies, the institutions of solidarity and inclusion have remained remarkably resilient even in the face of a global economy that has increasingly pushed against them with great and heedless force. And there has been a significant, if uneven, movement against the excesses of runaway capitalism, especially in Europe. But there is no denying the seriousness of these threats, and no guarantee that more inclusive institutions will be indefinitely sustainable, short of a more concerted and effective effort on an international scale to rein in the antisocial forces of an increasingly chaotic and predatory global economic order. No one can at this point claim to predict the future. But the fundamental choices seem hard to deny: at one extreme, what we might call the 452

Violence and social policy

Brazilianization, or at least Americanization, of global society, in which the distinctions between the most and least violent societies in the world become increasingly blurred or erased: at the other, a world in which, through global collective action, we will have brought even the most unequal and volatile societies toward a long-term commitment to sharing the fruits of productivity in egalitarian and sustainable ways. On that score, there are reasons for both cautious optimism and its opposite. On the one hand, the global economic crisis of the early 21st century has made the destructive character of unregulated capitalism more visible and less tolerable. The widespread recognition that an increasingly out-of-control economy could lead to social catastrophe has made skepticism about the natural beneficence of the “free market” acceptable again, and has brought at least modest efforts, even in the United States, to increase public intervention in the economy and to re-regulate the financial sector. A number of countries around the world, particularly in Latin America, have also moved toward a more sustaining model of social and economic development designed to include low income people in the fruits of economic growth, through policies ranging from family support to more serious investment in public education. On the other side, however, is the troubling absence of social movements within the advanced industrial world that are sufficiently powerful, cohesive, and focused to mount an effective political challenge to the intensification of the global economic and social policies that exacerbate violence. No one, of course, can predict exactly how the onward march of a predatory and destructive global capitalism will affect the rate of violent crime in any particular country. But what is certain is that the continued advance of market-driven policies will put strong limits on the capacity of societies around the world, whether developed or undeveloped, to keep communities secure and families and individuals reasonably safe from victimization. In some places this may mean a significant rise in violence: in others, it may simply mean the persistence of already devastating levels of victimization that not only destroy lives, but contribute to a widening gulf in the quality of social life. The good news is that we know enough about the roots of violence to avoid that future, if we choose to use that knowledge. The bad news is that we may not have the political capacity to put that knowledge into practice on a scale that can realistically affect the experience of violence in more than local or marginal ways. Building that capacity will require much more extensive public education and consciousness-raising than we have mustered so far: and that will surely be one of the most important tasks of a critical criminology in the decades to come.

References Brown, M.K., Carnoy, M., Currie, E., Duster, T., Oppenheimer, D., Schultz, M. and Wellman, D. (2003). Whitewashing Race: The Myth of a Color-Blind Society. Berkeley: University of California Press. Clear, T. (2009). Imprisoning Communities. New York: Oxford University Press. Cullen, F., Nagin, D., and Johnson, C. (2009). “Imprisonment and reoffending,” Crime and Justice, 38(1), 115–200. Currie, E. (2003). “Of punishment and crime rates: some theoretical and methodological consequences of mass incarceration,” in Thomas Blomberg and Stanley Cohen, Punishment and Social Control, 2nd edition, San Francisco: Aldine-DeGruyter, pp. 483–494. Currie, E. (2013). Crime and Punishment in America, revised edition, New York: Picador. Currie, E. (2015). The Roots of Danger: Violent Crime in Global Perspective, revised edition, New York: Oxford University Press. Currie, E. (2016). “The violence divide: taking ‘ordinary’ crime seriously in a volatile world,” in Roger Matthews, ed., What is to be Done About Law and Order? London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 9–30. Currie, E. (2017). “Confronting the North’s South: Race and Violence in the United States,” International Journal of Crime, Justice, and Social Democracy, 6(1), 23–34. Downes, D. and Hansen, K. (2006). “Welfare and punishment in comparative perspective,” in Sarah Armstrong and Lesley McAra, eds, Perspectives on Punishment, New York: Oxford University Press. 453

Elliott Currie

Grinshteyn, E. and Hemenway, D. (2016). “Violent death rates: the US compared with other high income OECD countries, 2010,” The American Journal of Medicine, 129, 266–273. Hagan, J. and Rymond-Richmond, W. (2008). Darfur and the Crime of Genocide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hall, S. and McClean, C. (2009). “A tale of two capitalisms: preliminary spatial and historical comparisons of homicide rates in Western Europe and the USA,” Theoretical Criminology, 13(3), August, 313–339. Hall, S. and Wilson, D. (2014). “New foundations: Pseudo-pacification and special liberty as potential cornerstones for a multi-level theory of homicide and serial murder,” European Journal of Criminology, 11(5), 635–655. Heymann, J., Earle, A., and Hayes, J. (2005). The Work, Family, and Equity Index: How Does the United States Measure Up? Montreal and New York: Project on Global Working Families. LaFree, G., Curtis, K., and McDowall, D. (2015). “How effective are our better angels? Assessing countrylevel declines in homicide since 1950,” European Journal of Criminology, 12(4), 282–504. Litwack. L. (1999). Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow. New York: Vintage. Lysova, A., Shichitov, N., and Pridemore, W.A. (2012). “Homicide in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.” In Liem, E. and Pridemore, W.A., eds, Handbook of European Homicide Research, New York: Springer, pp. 451–469. Maier-Katkin, D., Mears, D. P., & Bernard, T. J. (2009). “Towards a criminology of crimes against humanity,” Theoretical Criminology, 13, 227–255. Mauer, M. and Chesney-Lind, M., eds, (2002). Invisible Punishment. New York: New Press. OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) (2015). Family Benefits Public Spending. www.data.oecd.org/socialexp/family-benefits-public-spending.htm (accessed May 2015). UNICEF (2012). Measuring Child Poverty; New League Tables of Child Poverty in Rich Countries. Florence: UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre. UNICEF (2013). Child Well-being in Rich Countries. Florence: UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre. UNODC (United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime), 2017. Intentional Homicide: Counts and Rates per 100,000 Population. https/data.unodc.org (accessed February 2017). Wacquant, L. (2009). Punishing the Poor. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Weiss, D., Santos, M., Testa, A., and Kumar, S. (2016). “The 1990s homicide decline: A Western world or international phenomenon? A research note,” Homicide Studies, 20(4), 321–334. Western, B. (2008). Punishment and Inequality. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

454

37 Confronting adult pornography Walter S. DeKeseredy

Introduction1 What can we do about the porning of our culture? I wish I had a magic bullet but I don’t; we are up against an economic juggernaut. Fighting the porn industry demands that we resist both as individuals and as part of a collective effort. (Dines, 2010, p. 163)

At London, Ontario, Canada’s Fanshawe College, on September 26, 2008, University of Western Ontario2 nursing scholar Helene Berman gave a powerful presentation at a conference titled “Overcoming Violence in the Lives of Girls and Young Women: Stories of Strength and Resilience.” She asked the audience to imagine what an anthropologist from outer space would see if she or he come to study Canadian society. As well as the beautiful landscape, people involved in scholarly and athletic activities, and many other pleasant things, the anthropologist would be hard pressed not to notice an alarming number of pornographic images on the television, on the Internet, in video outlets, and elsewhere, many of them including children. What Robert Jensen told London Free Press journalist Ian Gillespie (2008) 10 years ago still holds true today. Pornography has “become as common as comic books were for you and me” (p. A3). Related to this point is Gail Dines’ (2010) reflection “We are so steeped in the pornographic mindset that it is difficult to imagine what a world without porn would look like” (p. 163). Described in Chapter 23, we live in a “post-Playboy world” (Jensen, 2007), where violent and racist Internet pornography has become normalized or mainstreamed. What mostly men and boys watch on adult Internet pornographic Internet sites are not simply “dirty pictures that have little impact on anyone” (Funk, 2006, p. 165). Rather the images typically endorse “women as second-class citizens” and “require that women be seen as second-class citizens” (Funk, 2006, p. 165). Consider what Dines (2010) discovered while studying cyber-porn: A few more clicks and I was at GagFactor.com owned by JM productions, a much-talkedabout site in the porn trade magazines. When I clicked on it I was invited to “Join us now to Access Complete Degradation.” On the site, there are hundreds of pictures of young 455

Walter S. DeKeseredy

women with penises thrust deep into their throats. Some are gagging, others crying and virtually all have faces, especially their eyes covered in semen. The user is bombarded with images of mascara running, hair being pulled, throats in a vicelike grip, nostrils being pinched so the women can’t breathe as the penis fills their mouth, and mouths that are distended by either hands pulling the lips apart or penises inserted sideways. (pp. xix–xx) What makes Dines’ observation even more disturbing is that there is a huge market for such “gonzo” images that depict “hard core, punishing sex in which women are demeaned and debased” (p. xi). Moreover, it is men who do not consume pornography in our society that are atypical (DeKeseredy, 2016). Every second, over 30,000 Internet users view pornography, and again, the clear majority of them are men and boys (DeKeseredy & Corsianos, 2016). What is more, cyber-porn is big business and has “moved from the backstreet to Wall Street” (Dines, 2010, p. 47), with earnings estimated to be over US$100 billion (DeKeseredy, 2015; MacKinnon, 2011). Featured in Chapter 23 are data showing that pornography consumption is a powerful correlate of woman abuse, and men’s consumption of porn can negatively affect their intimate partners in a variety of other ways, such as the following described by Bridges and Jensen (2011): Partners of identified “sexual addicts” reported feelings of hurt, betrayal, lowered selfesteem, mistrust, anger, feelings of being unattractive and objectified, feeling their partners have less interest in sexual contact, pressure from the partner to enact things from the online fantasy, and a feeling that they could not measure up to the women online. (p. 144) What is to be done? Some feminists, such as Anna Gronau (1985), assert that pornography, even its most violent forms, should be freely available in private and public places because it reminds women of the patriarchal forces that victimize and exploit them. If it is banned, then it is much more difficult for women to struggle against hidden patriarchy than it is to fight against the blatant and extreme forms of sexism found in pornography. There are other feminists with different perspectives, like those who embrace the postmodernist view that pornography can be subversive, liberatory, and pleasurable (Cruz, 2016; Lehman, 2006; McNair, 2002; Ward, 2013). Additionally, some sex-positive feminists assert that pornography is just as important to women as to men and that there is nothing inherently degrading to women about such media (Lush, 2013; McElroy, 1995; Strossen, 2000). Most feminists, however, including me, view pornography as purposely designed to humiliate and degrade women and that efforts to make it socially unacceptable are necessary. They do not advocate the elimination of all sexually explicit media, only those that objectify and hurt people described in Chapter 23 and elsewhere. The porn industry is, as Dines (2010), among others, notes, a financial powerhouse and not easy to defeat. Still, there are strategies that can put chinks in its armor until radical change transpires. One obvious way of dealing with pornography is to simply not view it, read it, or participate in any public or private events that involve pornographic words, behaviors, or images. Yet, it is clearly not enough to change our own behavior. As Jensen (2007) states, “That’s a bare minimum. Such change must be followed by participation in movements to change the unjust structures and the underlying ideology that supports them” (p. 182). The main objective of this chapter, then, is to suggest progressive individual and collective means of confronting pornography. These measures involve taking an explicit stand for women and have the potential to help reduce much pain and suffering. 456

Confronting adult pornography

The home and school Male-to-female violence in intimate relationships is one prime example of a world-wide, highly injurious social problem. The number of females affected by this harm would, in the words of former Canadian politician and current human rights activist Stephen Lewis, “numb the mind of Einstein” (Vallee, 2007). There are many other examples of hurtful male behavior spawned by familial and social patriarchy that could easily be listed here, but we must also remember that most men do not beat, rape, psychologically assault or abuse women in other ways (DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 2013). They are what Tony Porter (2006) coins as “well-meaning men.” This type of man is one: who believes women should be respected. A well-meaning man would not assault a woman. A well-meaning man, on the surface, at least, believes in equality for women. A wellmeaning man believes in women’s rights. A well-meaning man honors the women in his life. A well-meaning man, for all practical purposes, is a nice guy, a good guy. (p. 1) If most men are like this, why is there so much woman abuse in this world? Why is there so much misogyny? Why does patriarchy still exist in societies and within families? Why do we live in an increasingly pornified society? There are three key answers to this question. First, most men are seldom asked to contribute to the struggle to overthrow patriarchy. Second, many men are reluctant to participate in antiviolence efforts (DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 2013). And, third, by remaining on the sidelines praising themselves for being well-meaning, these men’s silence supports abusive behavior and the pornography industry (Bunch, 2006). Definitely, there are more men actively working to end men’s violence, to confront pornography, and to eliminate other symptoms of gender inequality than ever before, but a key challenge raised by Jackson Katz (2006) 12 years ago still exists: “How to increase dramatically the number of men who make these issues a priority in their personal and professional lives” (p. 254). One step toward achieving this goal is for men to have meaningful discussions with their sons about pornography and sexism in general. Katz’s advice is warranted here: Clearly one of the most important roles a father – or a father figure – can play in his son’s life is to teach by example. If men are always respectful toward women and never verbally or physically abuse them, their sons in all likelihood will learn to be similarly respectful. Nonetheless, every man who has a son should be constantly aware that how he treats women is not just between him and the women – there is a little set of eyes that is always watching him and picking up cues about how a man is supposed to act. If a man says demeaning and dismissive things about women, his son hears it. If he laughs at sexist jokes and makes objectifying comments about women’s bodies as he watches TV, his son hears it. (p. 234) Obviously, mothers also have a role in the antiviolence and anti-sexism socialization process. One approach that proved to be highly successful for my friend Darlene Murphy was to have frank, ongoing discussions with her sons about sexuality and healthy intimate relationships (something fathers should do too). She emphasized that when a woman says “No” she means “No.” She also stressed that sex is a powerful source of energy, but one that can be, and should be, controlled. Darlene is a highly-skilled and well-respected mediator in Oshawa, Ontario, Canada, and boys raised by strong, assertive women like her and who have close 457

Walter S. DeKeseredy

relationships with their mothers during their teenage years grow up to be kind, successful men (DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 2013). They have “already seen the world through women’s eyes” (Katz, 2006, p. 236). Meaningful family discussions about pornography need to start early since the average age at which boys first start consuming porn is 11 years (Foubert, 2017), and by then most of them have sophisticated computer skills enabling them to access sites like the above described by Dines (2010). Schools, too, should be contexts for discussing pornography. Unfortunately, the harm done by porn is rarely mentioned in U.S. elementary, middle, and high schools and thus sex education needs to move well beyond “the mechanics of reproduction” (Lyons, 2014, p. 1). As Tarrant (2015) correctly points out: The pop-culture industrial complex thrives on churning out imagery attempting to bring sex-infused fantasy and pleasure, as well as shock-value, into our living rooms and smartphones. Pornography itself is ubiquitous and easily accessed part of our media landscape. Yet for all the punditry and moral panic about young-adult sexuality, there is little opportunity for teens and young people to discuss how to critically watch and think about pornography. (p. 419) For educators, it is essential to recognize that student consumption of pornography is a widespread problem that will only get worse due to easy access offered by the Internet. It is time for more male teachers and administrators to “step up to the plate” and demonstrate some progressive leadership by offering programs on gender issues that address porn in their schools. They can also do many things on a personal level (Katz, 2006), such as talking to male students and male faculty in assemblies, classes, at sporting events, in faculty and staff training, and in private conversations. It would also be useful for school staff to employ the following strategies informed by the work of feminists Thorne-Finch (1992, pp. 236–237) and Warshaw (1988, pp. 161–164): • • • •

Confront students, teachers, and athletic staff who speak about violent and dehumanizing pornography in an approving manner. Confront students and staff who perpetuate and legitimate rape myths. Take every opportunity to speak out against harmful porn and other symptoms of gender inequality. Create a Facebook page about the harms of pornography and how men and boys can work together to reduce consumption, production, and distribution of hurtful sexual imagery.

Developed in Australia by Maree Crabbe as part of the Brophy Family and Youth Services’ community education project Reality & Risk: Pornography, Young People and Sexuality, the film In the Picture is a valuable pedagogical tool, one that is receiving considerable praise “down under” and could be beneficial in many other parts of the world. To be used in secondary schools, In the Picture comes on a DVD and has 82 resources designed to comprehensively address the issues of explicit sexual imagery that many our youth are encountering on a regular basis. Turning again to Australia, in addition to using The Picture, some primary prevention programs involve encouraging youth to visit the website “The line” (www.theline.org.au). Instead of instructing youth to “just say no” to sexting, “The Line” provides the following advice to reduce the potential for harm:

458

Confronting adult pornography

• • •

Keep your face OUT of the image and make sure it’s not recognizable as you. Send a sexy text message or provocative emoji as a substitute for a “nude.” Download “Send this instead,” an app that provides users with images that they can send as humorous responses to unwanted requests for a “nude.” (Salter, 2017, p. 157)

Will such advice help make a difference? This is an empirical question that can only be answered empirically. Yet, many leading experts in the field likely agree with Salter’s (2017) hypothesis: “Furnishing young people with multiple strategies to prevent online abuse and negotiate technologically mediated relationships is likely to be far more effective in reducing online abuse than punitive or shaming responses to young people’s online practices” (p. 157). Related to Salter’s point is the call for replacing punitive Social Darwinist school environments with what Currie (2004) defines as a “culture of support.” Klein’s (2012) term for this is a “compassionate community.” Regardless of what label is used, schools need to be more inclusive and offer troubled youth places to go and people to speak to in their time of need. In this day of constant demands for evidence-based-practice,3 there is considerable empirical support for such strategies (DeKeseredy, 2011b). This is especially important because “the youth running into particular troubles online are often the very youth who have communication problems with partners and other adults to begin with” (Jones & Mitchell, 2016, p. 581). Still, schools today make many people uncomfortable because of their strong belief in punitive strategies and opposition to open discussions of sexuality in school settings (Tarrant, 2015). However, defenders of the status quo need to heed Klein’s (2012) warning: Yet in a historical moment, when, as a result of sexual slurs and related attacks, students are being killed, committing suicide and perpetrating massacres – as well as enduring high levels of depression, anxiety, and other emotional breakdowns – we can no longer afford to keep these issues out of schools. Policies are needed to support discussion and respect among community members, especially around difficult issues related to gender and sexuality. Students don’t need more punishment and criminal charges; they need guidance, support, and education. (pp. 227–228) The progressive school-based initiatives discussed here, albeit not exhaustive, emphasize the development of curricula that make gender, healthy relationships, and sexuality core subject matters (Messerschmidt, 2012). Part of the problem of many programs that have not worked in the past is that they operated on a “haphazard, one-classroom-at-a-time approach” (Jaffe et al., 1992, p. 131). The challenge is that while any single teacher or counselor may be very effective and be deeply committed to creating peaceful, equitable learning environments and relationships, it is very difficult to counteract the broad variety of influences that students encounter daily. If only one or very few teachers are engaged in programming against pornography and image-based sexual abuse, then the influence of the students in other classes, when combined with new and older electronic technologies, and other broader societal influences will weaken the effectiveness of these programs. Therefore “whole-school efforts” are necessary (Klein, 2012). Only when all the teachers, counselors, and administrators at the school are in complete agreement, providing a consistent and regular message over a long period of time, supported by the parents and other members of the family, is there a hope that many of the students will begin to seriously engage with these issues (DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 2013).

459

Walter S. DeKeseredy

Broader community-based initiatives We often hear that education is a life-long process. Hence, education efforts should not be restricted to children, adolescents, or college students. Adults in the general population also need to be targeted. Feminist male scholars and educators suggest that one effective way to help achieve this goal is for male advocates, who aim to stop hurtful porn, to make contacts with like-minded males in other communities to broaden their social support network (DeKeseredy & Corsianos, 2016). Personal experiences can be shared, which helps alleviate stress and other problems associated with doing feminist work in a hostile political climate characterized by a rabid anti-feminist backlash (DeKeseredy, Fabricius, & Hall-Sanchez, 2015; Dragiewicz, 2011). With the support of their feminist male peers, depending on their time, energy, and resources, some men work on the dual level of changing individual people and social institutions. Rus Funk (2006) is one example and he constructed a manual that can assist other progressive males in their efforts to educate men about pornography. Titled Reaching Men: Strategies for Preventing Sexist Attitudes, Behaviors, and Violence, it includes a useful chapter on pornography and prostitution, one that has proven to be effective in community-based presentations and workshops. Funk encourages critical thinking and asks his audience these questions that are designed to humanize women in the pornography industry: • • • • •

Does the woman in pornography really like that? Does she like the names that men in pornography call her? Does she really like being ejaculated upon, probably several times? Does she really like double or triple penetration? Would she want her sister or daughter doing the same things? Would they (the male audience members) want their sister, mother, daughter, or girlfriend to be in the pornography they watch? (p. 168)

A cautionary note, however, is required here. As Funk (2006) observes, in a society that is highly “pornified” (Paul, 2005), many men in the audience may be titillated by images used in workshops and are likely to answer these questions with a “resounding yes” (p. 168). Even when feminist male educators attempt to generate “honest talk and careful hearing” (Jensen, 1995, p. 52), such events can turn into celebrations of male sexual and patriarchal power (DeKeseredy, 2015). Thus, Funk recommends that educators engage men in the audience who oppose pornography and facilitate a conversation and debate among men who disagree with each other. Again, the goal is to promote critical thinking and perhaps a number of men will leave the workshop or presentation with a different way of thinking about pornography. One more cautionary note is necessary. Educators and activists must be very careful when using pornographic images to make points about the harm they cause. Some instructors show these images in a select few university courses (e.g., classes on woman abuse) and understand their use as educational tools in the right environment. Nonetheless, many women have not been exposed to pornography and are unaware of the level of anti-women hatred embedded in many Internet sites and other pornographic media (DeKeseredy, 2015; Gronau, 1985). Showing pornographic media, then, may cause some women much discomfort or trigger painful memories.4 Therefore educators need to work closely with campus counselors to prepare for possible traumatic outcomes. The most common activities of feminist men involve protesting, attending, lectures and seminars, lobbying for services, and shaming men who make sexist comments and who engage in 460

Confronting adult pornography

patriarchal practices (DeKeseredy et al., 2017). Another common approach is shifting community culture. This strategy calls for the creation of “shared history” in communities (Cleveland & Saville, 2003). Occasionally defined as “placemaking” (Adams & Goldbard, 2001), it entails the use of plays, concerts, and paintings that send out powerful messages to people about pornography, violence against women, and other highly injurious symptoms of patriarchy. Such cultural work, including designing tee shirts to memorialize the victimization and objectification of women,5 is done in schools, places of worship, county fairs, community centers, and other visible places with the assistance of community members (Donnermeyer & DeKeseredy, 2014). Although the activities may appear mundane and traditional, perhaps even trivial, their revised context represents one set of strategies for breaking down patriarchy and promoting greater awareness of pornography by giving public voice to the issue and confronting such public expressions of patriarchy. Shifting community culture in the context of pornography directly addresses community dynamics that facilitate the production and distribution of pornography and creates new prosocial forms of community relations that can reduce porn consumption, rapes, and other serious harms to women (DeKeseredy & Corsianos, 2016; DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 2009). Boycotting is another tried and true approach used by feminist men. Keep in mind some of the work done by the Minnesota Men’s Action Network (MMACN): Alliance to Prevent Sexual and Domestic Violence touched on in Chapter 2. Again, MMCAN calls for encouraging businesses, government agencies, and other organizations to only hold conferences and meetings in hotels that do not offer in-room adult pay-per-view pornography (Derry, 2014). This will soon be unnecessary because large hotel chains are phasing out this type of porn for reasons also discussed in Chapter 2.

Is the feminist anti-porn movement tantamount to censorship? The progressive solutions suggested here constitute just the tip of the iceberg. Many more could easily be provided and are elsewhere (e.g., DeKeseredy & Corsianos, 2016; DeKeseredy et al., 2017; DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 2013), including methods of responding to pornography advocates’ freedom of speech arguments.6 Anti-pornography feminists and others opposed to hurtful sexual media are often accused of censorship and this issue warrants some attention here. Why is it in the U.S., Canada, and elsewhere we have very strong reactions against movies showing approvingly the mass execution of Jews by Nazis in World War II but find it appropriate, or at least a free speech issue, to allow films approvingly showing women being beaten, raped, and degraded in a myriad of ways that are difficult if not impossible for the average person to comprehend? Here, informed by my earlier policy work on pornography (see DeKeseredy & Corsianos, 2016; DeKeseredy & Schwartz, 1998), I am not calling for censorship. Rather, I argue that in a better, equitable society, it would be considered morally reprehensible to view or show pornography, just as it is now for non-documentary films advocating proslavery violence and Nazi killings (DeKeseredy & Olsson, 2011; Schwartz, 1987). Regardless of the different porn genres available, it is necessary to remain critical of the dominant representations of violence and degradation against women in pornography today. Being critical of pornography is the not the same as advocating for censorship (DeKeseredy & Corsianos, 2016). On the contrary, as Rus Funk (2006) puts it: Critiquing pornography, even critiquing pornography harshly, is not censorship. This behavior, in fact, is honoring freedom of speech. Furthermore, there have been more efforts to silence the voices of feminists who are critical of pornography, and the people who have 461

Walter S. DeKeseredy

been victimized in pornography, than there have been efforts by feminists or activists to shut down pornography. (p. 171)

Conclusion As described in Chapter 23 and in other sources, adult gonzo pornography is hurting our society on many levels, including contributing to various types of violence against women. One or two methods alone will not succeed. The work involved in confronting porn is destined to be ongoing and ever-changing, as will the porn industry and its collaborators’ resistance to attempts to eliminate degrading, violent, and racist sexual media. For example, DeKeseredy and Corsianos (2016) found that Pornhub, a widely-visited Internet porn site, tried to paint itself as environmentally responsible by planting trees during the week following Arbor Day (April 25, 2014). The Pornhub site, www.pornhub.com/event/arborday, presents this message: Pornhub gives America wood. 13473 trees planted. Help Pornhub support the environment. This Arbor day Pornhub will do what it does best and give America some serious wood by donating 1 tree for every 100 videos viewed in our Big Dick category. The more videos that are viewed, the more trees we will plant. How can you help? Click below to see the Big Dick videos on Pornhub. While you are watching some nice pieces of ash, you’ll also be helping to spruce America up! (Bushes are optional). This may remind criminologists of Sykes and Matza’s (1957) concept of techniques of neutralization. These techniques provide people with easy and acceptable rationales for committing crimes or violating social norms. One of them directly pertinent to the discussion of Pornhub is appealing to a higher loyalty.7 In other words, porn producers and consumers assert that while they may have offended or hurt many people, they are adhering to progressive environment protection norms, which are higher principles that justify their actions. What will the future bring? At this point in time, it seems that Internet pornography will continue to grow and feature even more injurious images of women and other types of people. Even so, there is a chance for change if more people decide to make a difference and use the strategies suggested here and elsewhere (e.g., DeKeseredy, 2016; Funk, 2006). Certainly, the world we live in today is “the pornographers’ world. They are the ones telling the most influential stories about gender and power and sex. But that victory is just for the moment, if we can face ourselves and then build a movement that challenges them” (Jensen, 2007, p. 184).

Notes 1

This chapter includes revised portions of work published previously by DeKeseredy (2011a, 2015, 2016), DeKeseredy and Corsianos (2016), DeKeseredy and Funk (2017), and DeKeseredy and Schwartz (2013). 2 This school was rebranded Western University in 2012. 3 See DeKeseredy and Drageiwicz (2013), DeKeseredy, Dragiewicz, and Schwartz (2017), and Gondolf (2012) for critiques of the conceptualization and implementation of evidence-based practice. 4 Frequently used in feminist courses that examine pornography is the 2014 documentary Pornland: How the Porn Industry has Hijacked Our Sexuality. Based on Dines’ (2010) book of the same title, this pedagogical tool is arguably “restrained in its tone,” but it is known to cause some students discomfort and trigger some painful memories. 5 This is also commonly referred to as the Clothesline Project, which was started in 1990 by a group of women in Cape Cod, Massachusetts to address the problem of violence against women. 462

Confronting adult pornography

6 7

See DeKeseredy (2011b), DeKeseredy and Schwartz (1998), and Funk (2006) for more in-depth suggestions about how to respond to claims of censorship. The four others are: denial of responsibility, denial of injury, denial of the victim, and condemnation of the condemners.

References Adams, D., & Goldbard, A. (2001). Creative community: The art of cultural development. New York: Rockefeller Foundation. Bridges, A.J., & Jensen, R. (2011). Pornography. In C.M. Renzetti, J.L. Edleson, & R. Kennedy Bergen (Eds), Sourcebook on violence against women (2nd ed.) (pp. 133–148). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Bunch, T. (2006). Ending men’s violence against women. New York: A Call to Men: National Association of Men and Women Committed to Ending Violence Against Women. Cleveland, G., & Saville, G. (2003). An introduction to 2nd generation cpted – part 1. Retrieved from www.cpted.net. Cruz, A. (2016). The color of kink: Black women, BDSM, and pornography. New York: New York University Press. Currie, E. (2004). The road to whatever: Middle-class culture and the crisis of adolescence. New York: Metropolitan Books. DeKeseredy, W.S. (2011a). Violence against women: Myths, facts, controversies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. DeKeseredy, W.S. (2011b). Contemporary critical criminology. London: Routledge. DeKeseredy, W.S. (2015). Patriarchy.com: Adult Internet pornography and the abuse of women. In C.M. Renzetti & R. Kennedy Bergen (Eds), Understanding diversity: Celebrating difference, challenging inequality (pp. 186–199). Boston: Pearson. DeKeseredy, W.S. (2016). Pornography and violence against women. In C.A. Cuevas & C.M. Rennison (Eds), The Wiley handbook on the psychology of violence (pp. 501–516). West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons. DeKeseredy, W.S., & Corsianos, M. (2016). Violence against women in pornography. London: Routledge. DeKeseredy, W.S., & Dragiewicz, M. (2013). Gaps in knowledge and emerging areas in gender and crime studies. In C.M. Renzetti, S.L. Miller, & A.R. Gover (Eds), Routledge international handbook of crime and gender studies (pp. 297–307). London: Routledge. DeKeseredy, W.S., & Funk, R.E. (2017). The role of adult pornography in intimate partner sexual violence perpetrators’ offending. In L. McOrmond-Plummer, J.Y. Levy-Peck, & P. Easteal (Eds), Perpetrators of intimate partner sexual violence: A multidisciplinary approach to prevention, recognition, and intervention (pp. 134–142). London: Routledge. DeKeseredy, W.S., & Olsson, P. (2011). Adult pornography, male peer support, and violence against women: The contribution of the “dark side” of the internet. In M. Vargas Martin, M. Garcia-Ruiz, & A. Edwards (Eds), Technology for facilitating humanity and combating social deviations: Interdisciplinary perspectives (pp. 34–50). Hershey, PA: IGI Global. DeKeseredy, W.S., & Schwartz, M.D. (1998). Woman abuse on campus: Results from the Canadian national survey. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. DeKeseredy, W.S., & Schwartz, M.D. (2009). Dangerous exits: Escaping abusive relationships in rural America. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. DeKeseredy, W.S., & Schwartz, M.D. (2013). Male peer support and violence against women: The history and verification of a theory. Boston: Northeastern University Press. DeKeseredy, W.S., Dragiewicz, M., & Schwartz, M.D. (2017). Abusive endings: Separation and divorce violence against women. Oakland, CA: University of California Press. DeKeseredy, W.S., Fabricius, A., & Hall-Sanchez, A. (2015). Fueling aggrieved entitlement: The contribution of women against feminist postings. In W.S. DeKeseredy & L. Leonard (Eds), Crimsoc report 4: Gender, victimology and restorative justice (pp. 1–33). Sherfield Gables, UK: Waterside Press. Derry, C. (2014). Clean hotels initiative. Retrieved from http://menaspeacemakers.org/programs/mnman/ community/. Dines, G. (2010). Pornland: How porn has hijacked our sexuality. Boston: Beacon Press. Donnermeyer, J.F., & DeKeseredy, W.S. (2014). Rural criminology. London: Routledge. Dragiewicz, M. (2011). Equality with a vengeance: Men’s rights groups, battered women, and antifeminist backlash. Boston: Northeastern University Press. 463

Walter S. DeKeseredy

Foubert, J.D. (2017). How pornography harms: What today’s teens, young adults, parents, and pastors need to know. Bloomington, IN: LifeRich Publishing. Funk, R.E. (2006). Reaching men: Strategies for preventing sexist attitudes, behaviors, and violence. Indianapolis, IN: JIST Life. Gillespie, I. (2008, June 11). Nowadays, it’s brutal, accessible: Pornography. London Free Press, A3. Gondolf, E.W. (2012). The future of batterer programs: Reassessing evidence-based practice. Boston: Northeastern University Press. Gronau, A. (1985). Women and images. Feminist analysis of pornography. In C. Vance & V. Burstyn (Eds), Women against censorship (pp. 127–155). Toronto: Douglas and McIntyre. Jaffe, P., Sundermann, M., Reitzel, D., & Killip, S. (1992). An evaluation of a secondary school primary prevention program on violence in intimate relationships. Violence and Victims, 7, 129–146. Jensen, R. (1995). Pornographic lives. Violence Against Women, 1, 32–54. Jensen, R. (2007). Getting off: Pornography and the end of masculinity. Cambridge, MA: South End Press. Jones, L.M., & Mitchell, K.J. (2016). Online harassment. In C.A. Cuevas & C.M. Rennison (Eds), The Wiley handbook on the psychology of violence (pp. 571–587). West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons. Katz, J. (2006). The macho paradox: Why some men hurt women and how all men can help. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks. Klein, J. (2012). The bully society: School shootings and the crisis of bullying in America’s schools. New York: New York University Press. Lehman, P. (2006). Introduction: “A dirty little secret”: Why teach and study pornography? In P. Lehman (Ed.), Pornography: Film and culture (pp. 1–24). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Lush, L. (2013). My decadent decade: Ten years of making and debating porn for women. In T. Taormino, C.P. Shimizu, C. Penley, & M.M. Miller-Young (Eds), The feminist porn book: The politics of producing pleasure (pp. 70–78). New York: The Feminist Press at the City University of New York. Lyons, J. (2014, February 28). Schools urged to give lessons on pornography and sexting to prevent “distorted image” of sex. Retrieved from www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-new/porn-lessons-schoolsurged-give-3194200. MacKinnon, C.A. (2011). X-underrated: Living in a world the pornographers have made. In M. Tankard Reist & A. Bray (Eds), Big porn inc.: Exposing the global pornography industry (pp. 9–15). North Melbourne, AU: Spinifex Press. McElroy, W. (1995). XXX: A woman’s right to pornography. New York: St. Martin’s Press. McNair, B. (2002). Striptease culture: Sex, media, and the democratisation of desire. London: Routledge. Messerschmidt, J.W. (2012). Gender, heterosexuality, and youth violence: The struggle for recognition. Lanham, MD: Roman and Littlefield. Paul, P. (2005). Pornified: How pornography is damaging our lives, our relationships, and our families. New York: Owl Books. Porter, T. (2006). Becoming part of the solution. New York: A Call to Men: National Association of Men and Women Committed to Ending Violence Against Women. Salter, M. (2017). Crime, justice and social media. London: Routledge. Schwartz, M.D. (1987). Censorship of sexual violence: Is the problem sex or violence? Humanity & Society, 11, 212–243. Strossen, N. (2000). Defending pornography: Free speech, sex and the fight for women’s rights. New York: New York University Press. Sykes, G.M., & Matza, D. (1957). Techniques of neutralization: A theory of delinquency. American Sociological Review, 22, 664–670. Tarrant, S. (2015). Pornography and pedagogy: Teaching media literacy. In L. Comella & S. Tarrant (Eds), New views on pornography: Sexuality politics and the law (pp. 417–430). Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger. Thorne-Finch, R. (1992). Ending the silence: The origins and treatment of male violence against men. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Vallee, B. (2007). The war on women: Ellly Armour, Jane Hurshman, and criminal violence in Canadian homes. Toronto: Key Porter Books. Ward, J. (2013). queer feminist pigs: A Spectator’s Manifesta. In T. Taormina, C. Parrenas Shimizu, C. Penney, & M. Miller-Young (Eds), The feminist porn book: The politics of producing pleasure (pp. 130–139). New York: The Feminist Press. Warshaw, R. (1988). I never called it rape. New York: Harper & Row.

464

38 Confronting state oppression The role of music David Kauzlarich and Clay Michael Awsumb

Introduction Music is a universal form of communication that provides avenues for artists and listeners to explore and critique an unlimited variety of social problems, including state crime and oppression. Ferrell (2013) and his cultural criminological colleagues (Ferrell, Hayward, & Young, 2008) have called for increased attention to the relationship between deviance and crime, and the reactions to them, through an intellectual prism that views the phenomena as dynamic and ever-changing processes linked to creating and maintaining meaning through resistance, power, and reactions to everyday conflict and dilemmas (Ferrell, 2013). Music is indeed a multi-faceted cultural vehicle through which meaning is created and recreated. The effects of protest music, for example, on ideology and attitudes toward state polices has been painstakingly researched by ethnomusicologists, sociologists, and those in the area of cultural studies (Peddie, 2006). Most research finds that music can be an important component of social movements in a variety of contexts (Bennett & Peterson, 2004; Street, 2013; Roberts & Moore, 2009). For example, there is ample evidence to show that the historic work of popular musicians such as Bob Dylan, Woodie Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and John Lennon made some impact on more than those already sympathetic to anti-war messages during the Vietnam era (Lee, 2009). Further, labor organizations, civil rights groups, and various other interest organizations have been found to benefit from the galvanizing power of words put to music (Street, 2013). Punk music has been particularly influential for groups of youths who feel alienated from traditional social institutions such as school and family, largely because of its technical and technological simplicity, do-it-yourself spirit, and rejection of traditional self-indulgent rock song structure and performance (Dunn, 2008; Roberts & Moore, 2009). Even more, entire subcultures have developed directly out of punk music, with the most visible being “straight edge,” a youth movement which rejects the use of alcohol, drugs, and sexual promiscuity (Mullaney, 2012). Although we are interested in addressing the progressive political messages offered by punk musicians in this chapter, like any form of communication, music reflects a range of political and social ideologies and commentaries. Understanding the meaning of these direct or indirect messages has been greatly enhanced by an increasing number of content analyses of song lyrics and music videos (Atkin & Abelman, 2009). One topic that has received considerable attention 465

David Kauzlarich and Clay Michael Awsumb

is the degree of misogyny or sexism found in musical offerings, especially in modern gangsta rap music (Armstrong, 2001; Oliver, 2006; Weitzer & Kubrin, 2009). While these studies have found that most rap music is not misogynistic, Weitzer & Kubrin (2009) determined that almost one-quarter of the songs in their sample of platinum selling rap albums contained language and imagery that are substantially degrading to women, especially in their themes of sexual objectification. Further, other genres of music, such as rock, country, metal, punk, and pop have also been found to contain either misogynous lyrical messages or otherwise reflect the longstanding patriarchal culture and structure of the music industry in general (Leonard, 2007). Few expressly critical criminological studies have been conducted on the relationship between music and deviance. One exception is Hamm’s (1995) impressive work on music and how it helps neo-Nazi skinhead groups recruit and sustain membership. Another critical criminological example can be found in the work of Finley (2002), who has shown that the band Rage Against the Machine created songs critical of mainstream criminal justice policy and their art might be productively used to illustrate the spirit of radical criminology to students. Muzzatti (2004) has examined how the defiant and confrontational music of Marilyn Manson was identified by some audiences as a cause of youth violence, especially the 1999 Columbine school shootings. Kauzlarich’s (2012) work on punk rock appears to be the only publication that specifically addresses, from a critical criminological perspective, how modern popular music relates to resisting state crime. Using autoethnographic and secondary interview and documentary data through interviews with active musicians, Kauzlarich (2012) develops a way to understand how musicians see their emotional and political work through writing and performing punk rock. In this chapter, we continue on that path by examining the lyrical content, social movement activities, and political activism of three punk artists and some of our own experiences as active musicians to further develop an understanding of the role of modern underground music as a component of opposing state violence and oppression.

Music and society Before delving into music as a modern oppositional tool, let us first consider the social development of the art form. Indeed, a complex system of organizations, cultures, communities, economies, ideas, experiences, skills, objects, people, and knowledge are all tied together by music. Music is ubiquitous and spans many of the centuries of human existence. As integrated as music is in contemporary society, its beginnings are found in the cultural rituals of our ancestors. Simple chants, rhythmic beats, and primitive noise-making instruments were used by people to punctuate times of celebration, war, hunt, harvest or some other poignant and significant ceremony to the group (Wallin, Merker, & Brown, 2000). Music was a means to heighten the experience, focus people’s attention, and mark the event with something that was sacred and not an everyday experience. As civilizations grew and moved into settlement societies, music changed. With labor specialization, the technological growth of new tools and materials, and the dedication of specialized players and performers with the extra time agricultural life provided, the musical rituals, instruments, number of musicians and complexity of the events became more intense, varied, and specialized. Viewed as an economically driven part of culture, the production and distribution of modern popular music is primarily controlled by large corporations who employ musicians contractually for their works to be sold in stores, used in film and television, and placed on the radio. Instruments are designed and produced mainly by industrial corporations who sell them to shop owners who sell them to consumers. Performers in symphonies, concert bands, and choirs are 466

Confronting state oppression: the role of music

the products of years of formal training beginning most often at young ages and through some degree of college education. With the industrialization and now post-industrialization of musical technology, the objects of music are widely available in society. Instruments are at countless stores. Sheet music, instructions for how to play, lessons, recording equipment and venues for performances are all abundantly available. The internet also has many resources to offer those interested in both the consumption of music and the performance. Free sources of music both for recordings and for lessons exist. Instructions on how to build one’s own instruments along with videos demonstrating the techniques can be found. Online communities for performers connect musicians with listeners, other musicians and places in which to perform. This form of individualized and small scale engagement with music is mirrored in the larger economic structures of society. While large record companies dominate the production and market of music, thousands of small independent record companies are started as outlets for artists who cannot achieve or desire major-label contracts. Alternatives to the venues where corporatebacked national and international signed artists perform exist in local bars and clubs that offer not only places for bands to perform, but also for open mics and karaoke. Large institutions of culture embrace individual musical activities as well, in shows like The Voice, American Idol, and America’s Got Talent. As a cultural activity, reflexive to society and the systems of organization, norms and values it represents, interprets and re-defines, music possesses unique qualities. Individuals who engage in the production of original musical authorship are interacting with the cultural identities of a society and producing works that are self-referent while contributing to the cultural landscape of a particular society in a very individualized and significant way. These cultural products are developed from the same influences of the given culture they are created within, but have the potential to achieve outcomes and meanings that are very different from institutionalized massproduced and economically driven cultural products. Hall and Jefferson’s (1977/2006) classic anthology on resistance rituals is helpful here, as it points to the relativity of cultural options and how oppositional behavior, attitudes, and practices can develop in spite of strong mainstream cultural hegemony. Indeed, in the continuum of options available to engage in a cultural practice, knowledge of alternatives largely depends on networks (e.g., family, friends) as well as the perceived viability of subcultural options (Critcher, 1977). Radical music, then, is one form of communication that can be created, accessed, and used as a cultural tool provided there are perceived structural and subjective advantages to both the musician and the listener.

Transformative music Normative understandings of music are likely to regard it as entertainment, much like popular culture films, but this overlooks the extent to which popular music can convey and reflect more important messages about problematic social arrangements and practices. Counter-hegemonic cultural production by musicians is certainly nothing new, as any serious examination of the roots of folk, blues, punk, and even country music would reveal (Martinez, 1997; Pratt, 1990). We posit that music can be understood through outcome categories of pure, applied, and transformative, the latter of which is of most interest to us here. Knowledge, to us in this context, is quite simply meaningful exposure and accurate memory of songs and this is no less factual than a census statistic; the reaction to the facts/knowledge is what really matters in terms of political action. Pure knowledge of music includes the understanding of musicological structure (harmony, progressions, and scales), song arrangement techniques, and technical proficiency. While those 467

David Kauzlarich and Clay Michael Awsumb

in this category are likely to be academics or otherwise serious students of music, some are less formally trained musicians and perhaps some are even critics and producers. The emotive aspect of music is less important to those in this category than the underlying structure of music per se. Just like exposure to facts about social inequality, global atrocities, or human rights violations, having knowledge may produce little or nothing in the way of implications for action. Applied knowledge of music includes a much broader spectrum of people and is largely composed of people who say “they love music.” While they do not likely understand the structure of musical composition, they do find their knowledge of music, whether in a song, an artist, or a group, meaningful in their daily lives. The melody might be hummed at work, the lyrics mouthed in the car, or the rhythm pounded out by taps on their desk. The ubiquitous presence of music at weddings, funerals, and other important events further illustrates applied knowledge. More sociologically, applied knowledge of music is a major form of social activity whether in the collective singing and listening to songs in recreational settings, talking about and researching bands and artists, or even materialized in severe emotional reactions to the death of famous artists, as was the case with millions upon the deaths of Kurt Cobain and Michael Jackson. For any number of reasons, the songs and/or the artists become a part of the person and integral to her or his social networks and moments of individual existence. The third general form of knowledge and music is transformative. By this we do not mean anything other than political awakening in the deepest sense of the term. If social conditions are right, music, especially the lyrics, can open up new ways of political consciousness rather than simply help a party go better or cheering someone up for the night (the applied function of music). Rather, as a tool of education, a la Freire’s (2006) hope of a “pedagogy of liberation,” music, unlike words alone, can cast powerful emotional energy. If buttressed in other contexts, it can create a sense of social consciousness, but there is always a problem to be faced: Traditional applied commercial music has conditioned the masses, largely because of predatory record companies and the corporatization and commodification of music more generally, against really studying, absorbing, digesting, and wrestling with lyrics that are not deeply personal. The profound social conditioning to use music in only limited ways (to get through the day, perhaps), endangers music to a hyperreality (Baudrillard, 1994), a sign that signifies nothing, only a prop for the ephemeral moment. This superficiality, masquerading as meaning, but in actuality divorced from the real social conditions of oppression and violence (e.g. hunger, genocide, exploitation, war, and oppression) acts as a temporary relief and distraction, which obviously people think they need, but which they do not really need at all. Here Gramsci’s (1971) notion of hegemony and Marx’s (1970) notion of false consciousness may be applied in full force. Indeed, as Adorno (1976) wrote, the revolutionary potential of music is compromised by the specter of saleability, marketability, and feeding the masses what they think they want rather than want they probably really want: A life free from oppression along with the freedom to be creatively engaged in solidarity with others. At its core, we believe many critical criminologists studying state crime share this perspective, and to that subject we now turn.

State crime Genocide, human rights violations, war crimes, illegal war, and crimes against humanity are actions that fall under the category of state crime, which is defined as crimes committed by individuals acting on behalf of, or in the name of, a state in violation of the principles or spirit of international public law and/or a state’s own domestic law (Rothe & Kauzlarich, 2016). State crimes are historically and contemporarily ubiquitous and result in more injury and death 468

Confronting state oppression: the role of music

than traditional street crimes such as robbery, theft, and assault. Consider that genocide during the 20th century in Germany, Rwanda, Darfur, Albania, Turkey, Ukraine, Cambodia, BosniaHerzegovina and other regions claimed the lives of tens of millions and rendered many more homeless, imprisoned, and psychologically and physically damaged (Rothe & Kauzlarich, 2014, 2010). Unlike political white-collar crime in which offenders benefit personally from an act or omission, state crime is organizational in nature wherein motivation is tacitly or explicitly related to larger structural or cultural goals and objectives of government or its agencies. One example of a state crime is the U.S. war on Iraq, and given that the bands discussed later in this chapter have written songs that concur with this conclusion, let’s briefly review the issue. Wars are illegal if they are not conducted out of strict self-defense or with the express approval of the United Nations’ Security Council. The illegality of the United States’ recent war on Iraq has been thoroughly documented by criminologists (Kramer, Michalowski, & Rothe, 2005; Kramer & Michalowski, 2005). On the most basic level, any war not clearly in self-defense is prohibited by international law. The United Nations’ Charter, a principle source of the laws of war, specifies that “All members shall refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any state in which the United Nations is taking preventive or enforcement action” (United Nations Charter, Article 2, Chapter 1:4). The only exception to Article 2(4) is found in Article 51 of the Charter: “Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security” (United Nations, 2010). The intention of this article is to allow a state under direct attack to defend itself. Importantly, however, such a right is limited and only executable until the U.N. Security Council provides an international plan of action (Kauzlarich, 2007; Kauzlarich & Kramer, 1998). In the history of the United Nations, the specific legal meaning of the Article 51 exception in relationship to Article 2(4) has been defined in only one case: Nicaragua v. The United States (1986). Here the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Article 51 applies only when a state has been subject to an armed attack, and thus the decision reaffirms a fundamental precept of international law that war must be the very last measure taken in times of international dispute and conflict (Kramer & Kauzlarich, 1999). The Bush administration did half-heartedly attempt to gain the U.N. Security Council’s permission to launch a war on Iraq in February 2003 when U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell presented what is now known to be mostly fictional information on Iraq’s apparent possession of weapons of mass destruction and ties to Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, and the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. Finding the evidence unconvincing, the U.N. Security Council voted not to support a U.S. attack on Iraq, but this was ignored by the Bush administration and the war commenced shortly thereafter in violation of the most basic principles of international law. While the war could be labeled criminal through a variety of non-legal and humanistic definitions, there appears to be no clearer prohibition of the action than that found in the United Nations Charter (Kauzlarich, 2007). Following a cultural criminological approach, we see music as cultural engagement which can take on highly political or social organizational purposes. As Ferrell (2001, 2006, 2013) has found in his ethnographic studies of urban graffiti artists, dumpster diving, and others on the street, “crimes of style” are partly developed out of the desire to share creativity with others and to perform individual artistic expression (which is often quashed in schools, jobs, and home-life) while at the same time having qualities of resistance to agencies of social control such as the police, schools, and government. Expanding upon the latter, the following discusses how several punk bands extend their critique of power and inequality to state crime. Of course, many other genres and even musical groups within punk could have been selected to examine below, but 469

David Kauzlarich and Clay Michael Awsumb

based on the authors’ knowledge of punk and politics, these bands represent the firmest and most consistent anti-state crime messages.

Three bands Punk music has its roots in opposition to traditional authority and is thought to have emerged in the early 1970s with the work of many obscure bands in the United Kingdom (Sabin, 1999). Most people, however, tend to think that the early pioneers of punk are The Ramones and the Sex Pistols, who indeed became much more known in the larger cultures of England and the United States. As the genre developed, more political artists emerged who wrote songs critical of capitalism, war, the state, and inequality. The bands reviewed below, Leftover Crack, Anti-Flag, and Propagandhi, are among the most radical and politically active bands in the punk/hardcore genre. The New York-based hardcore punk band Leftover Crack is among the most politically active and explicit groups in the genre. Formed in 1998, the band has released over a dozen full-length albums, toured the world, performed at many informal and formal political rallies and protests, and most importantly for our purposes, consistently delivered lyrical content that is anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-homophobic, anti-globalization, anti-imperialist, and highly critical of the use of state violence, especially by police. Even a cursory glance at their album titles reveals their standpoints: Give ’Em The Boot II (1999), Give ’Em The Boot III (2002), Against Police Injustice (2003), Fuck World Trade (2004), and Constructs of the State (2015). The second to last album is arguably the band’s most radical album release which contains numerous angry songs directed toward state abuses, including the haunting track “Operation M.O.V.E.,” which recounts the Philadelphia Police department’s 1985 tear gassing and bombing of a house occupied by members of MOVE, at that time a small but active black liberation organization. Eleven MOVE members were killed in this widely condemned atrocity. Another song on the album, “Burn Them Prisons,” excoriates U.S. penal policy, the incarceration of minor property offenders, and the growing privatization of prisons. The song speaks of a radical solution to the expanding net of control over the oppressed: bombing the police state and assassinating a magistrate. The song “Super Tuesday” provides a broader critique of globalization and state preference to the wealthy at the expense of the poor. It identifies the historical legacy of genocide and slavery in the U.S. as a path leading to continued class struggle and again, calls for violent revolt. The band sells t-shirts that have a number of both political and non-political themes. Of the former, one shirt reads “World Trade is a Death Machine” while another reads “under the guise of protecting society from ‘crime,’ people are harassed, beaten, brutalized and murdered . . .” However, Stza Crack, the leader, guitarist, and main vocalist of Leftover Crack is careful not to glorify himself as a social movement leader. In a 2008 interview with Roya Butler of thepunksite. com, the artist says this about his lyrics: It is poetry. It is art. It is free speech. It’s not a textbook. It’s not a law. It’s not a decree. I’m not here espousing lyrics that I expect people to take completely seriously. I don’t expect people to go out and kill cops. But if a day came, per se, where all the poor people in the world were backed up against the wall—where you’re going to die unless you fight back against the police and the government—maybe people will think about some things that we had to say. Or other people that are like-minded to us in what they think about the government and the police will use our lyrics to express themselves. (thepunksite.com, 2008) 470

Confronting state oppression: the role of music

Sentiments such as these are common among progressive musicians and songwriters, and demonstrate the reality that music, like all forms of premeditated communication, may have direct or indirect effects on opinions and attitudes (Longhurst, 2007). Canadian punk-hardcore band Propagandhi, formed in 1986, uses the transformative properties of music to deliver and provide the political, cultural and philosophical messages the band has maintained since its conception. Politically out-spoken, critical and satirical of modern capitalist economic and political structures, the band takes on a seriously activist nature at times. In 2005, the band went as far as to take several years off from writing and performing to volunteer and fundraise for a number of activist groups including the Sea Shepherd Society and the CanadianHaiti Action Network. Throughout the five albums released by the band, Propagandhi has communicated a radical message against human rights and animal rights violations. While the titles of their albums are less overtly political or critical in their names, every album has been released with informational materials, links, essays, and videos to various liberal and radical political organizations, including human rights and animal rights non-profit groups. Album sales have also been used to support various causes, such as AK Press, an anarchist publishing company, the Grassy Narrows blockade, and the Middle East Children’s Alliance. Two members of the group, Chris Hannah and Jord Samolesky, formed the G7 Welcoming Committee Records label in 1997, which has functioned as the group’s label since their third album. As a critique of the then G7 economic summit held annually by the world’s wealthiest nations, the label was founded with the economic structure of Participatory Economics, an anarchistic economic model, founded by Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel. The label is defined as the means for politically radical messages to find support and a place to call home. Musically, Propagandhi is a fast-tempo and energetic punk band which found popularity within the punk scene in the 1990s. Their songs continue the band’s theme of resistance to political, cultural, and economic inequality that their overall message proclaims. Their second album Less Talk, More Rock, released in 1996 on Fat Wreck Chords, we find songs such as “Apparently I’m a P.C. Fascist” and “. . . And We All Thought Nation States Were a Bad Idea” which attack the ideas of what the group perceives as the status quo. In the former song, they write of the exploitations of workers, women, and Native Americans. In a 2001 interview with Al Burian, the band said “we hope that our lyrics and the content of our records create more potential for somebody to be hostile towards the ideas in this culture” (www.mediareader.org). Like the other bands discussed in this chapter, members of Propagandhi are keenly aware of the highly commodified nature of the popular music industry and actively work to produce, support, and advance the opposite: transformative and oppositional forms of art that deliver socially conscious commentary on a range of issues important to progressive and leftist radicals. In the song “Resisting Tyrannical Governance”, for example, they discuss eradicating capitalism and how privileged people (including themselves) must resist and revolt. Perhaps the most commercially popular political punk band is the Pittsburgh born Anti-Flag, a group that has been together since 1988. The band’s album titles speak volumes about their commitment to social justice and anti-war causes: Die for the Government (1996), Their System Doesn’t Work for You (1998), A New Kind of Army (1999), Mobilize (2002), The Terror State (2003), For Blood and Empire (2006), The People or the Gun (2009), The General Strike (2012), and American Spring (2015). Members of Anti-Flag, especially lead singer and guitarist Justin Sane, have been very involved with peace, anti-war, and anti-globalization organizations, demonstrations, and protests, such as those against the World Bank, G20, International Monetary Fund, and numerous other corporate-capitalist adventures. Amnesty International supported one of their tours and the band has brokered contracts with record labels for a certain portion of album sales to be donated to left of center charitable organizations. The group also regularly works with small 471

David Kauzlarich and Clay Michael Awsumb

local homeless, animal rescues, and women’s rights organizations in addition to playing shows supporting leftist political candidates. The band regularly includes political action materials and resources in their CD packaging and provides numerous links, information, and protest gathering details on their various websites. In terms of lyrical content, a surprisingly popular song, Turncoat, released on The Terror State album, is a searing indictment of war, and presumably about former President Bush and his administrative team. The chorus is simple but telling as it pegs the subjects as traitors, murderers, liars, and thieves who go unpunished because of their privilege. “Depleted Uranium Is A War Crime,” a song from the For Blood and Empire album also invokes critical criminological themes comparing the use of uranium ammunition to Agent Orange in the Vietnam War in which soldiers and citizens alike suffered long term health problems because of exposure to these elements. Many other songs speak to issues of injustice and victimization, such as the song “Exodus,” which is about escaping genocide, “Fuck Police Brutality,” a tale of punk youths being harassed by police, “Kill the Rich” about greedy and selfish capitalists, and “Free Nation?” which attacks state-supported discrimination of gays, lesbians, and people of color. Some of Anti-Flag’s merchandise, especially their t-shirts, is equally direct in their political messages. For example, t-shirts read “Fuck War,” “This Much Madness is Too Much Sorrow,” and “We pledge allegiance to our flags. Pieces of cloth that cloak like daggers. Material that is immaterial to our humanity. That divides us but never unites us. Patriotism is nationalism is Jingoism. As long as we identify by country we will never know who the other is.” In an interview with Skratch Magazine (2008), Sane commented that “the goal is that once people are educated about ideas, they will take action in some way.” In another 2008 interview with Julie Conney of absolutepunk.net, Sane elaborates: while we are not against those enlisted in the military per say (I even have family in the military – a lot of good people serve in the armed forces), we have seen time and again that people in power too often send the military into harm’s way unnecessarily – more than often to enrich the pockets of a few. I believe Iraq is an example of this. For this reason we strongly encourage people NOT to serve in the military. This has always been a core message of Anti-Flag because nationalism, especially in the form of flags, is a powerful powerful tool of those trying to lure people into the military. Attacking nationalism was a central inspiration in the formation of Anti-Flag. Hence, the name. (absolutepunk.net, 2008) Ferrell’s (2013) call for more creative research in cultural criminology suggests that autoethnographical approaches to understanding crime, deviance, and resistance can be useful. To that end we offer insight into our experiences as practicing musicians, songwriters, and performers in the Saint Louis, Missouri original scene. Our now defunct bands wrote many songs about exploitation, racism, inequality, and other social justices and we performed these as well as non-political songs regularly at small venues. Kauzlarich’s band, Resoldered, played original punk and post-punk rock while Awsumb’s group, The Union Blue, wrote original songs with a mixture of blues, punk, and rock. Our shows, usually performed on a bill with two other independent bands, were short 45–60-minute sets with an audience ranging from 15–100 people, depending on the venue. We performed songs from our independently released albums for both personal and political reasons. On a personal level, we enjoyed sharing our creations with others and performance allowed us to express ourselves without constraint. And quite frankly, most of the time it was just fun to play music. On a political level, we hoped that our songs do much more than entertain by educating and helping 472

Confronting state oppression: the role of music

produce a collective understanding of inequality, whether through the telling of stories of struggling workers, oppression of racial and ethnic minorities, or victims of war crimes. One song Kauzlarich’s band played is entitled “Stolen,” and is a condemnation of the theft of Native American land and culture. The lyrics read: You thought in me was you That thought has died That dream you told was true Became a lie You’re time has clearly come To face my eyes Peltier lives in my heart Despite your cry You took me from my home To make me like a clone Now that the world has grown, you’re left with you. Kauzlarich’s band has played this song over a dozen times live and it has been freely downloaded or listened to thousands of times over the internet, but audience reactions seemed to range from apathetic to a moderate degree of excitement over the content. Usually the excitement over the song was strong when the story line and topic was introduced before the song was played live. Disappointingly, we were rarely engaged by an audience member about the song’s lyrics or meaning except by those who were already politically energized and active in radical social movement activities, which is entirely expected given what scholars know about entrenched political ideology (Lakoff, 2004). In “Waters Lit by Fire”, a song Awsumb’s band The Union Blue wrote about the United States’ response to September 11, 2001, the lyrics are similarly critical of government officials’ actions which come at the cost of lives. The following lyrics are taken from the second and fourth versus, respectively: I’ve seen the night lit up in fire, as the black-hawks screamed all through the sky. You say we won, but what a prize. I’ve read the numbers, they’re on the rise. Now we’ve shamed ourselves. Yeah, we told some lies. I saw no one take blame or no one resign. [. . .] I’ve seen their face lit up with fire. Away on missions, they don’t plan to die. A road-side grave, oh is where they’ll lie. Another American soldier all burned alive. Oh any day now, it’ll be my time. Are you ready baby, were you born to die? The Union Blue’s shows attempted to prompt audience interaction, contemplation and consideration for a number of social topics. Between songs, the band frequently gave short dialogues about workers’ rights and history, economic inequality and political activism, which received mixed reactions. “Waters Lit by Fire” in particular has been met with very enthusiastic responses and those of disapproval. 473

David Kauzlarich and Clay Michael Awsumb

Conclusion The presence of music in most aspects of daily life suggests that the art form contains numerous and diverse functions and roles. As entertainment or education, a release from reality or a mechanism to engage in certain realities, the power of music to shape and reflect social and political life makes it necessary to consider the extent to which it can be a valuable form of communication for resisting state violence and oppression. As we have discussed throughout this chapter, there are some artists who engage in directly political forms of musical expression, and who have achieved some degree of publicity from their efforts. The three punk bands we previously discussed have created radical art that is critical of war, state oppression, and inequality, and at least two of the bands collaborate with other left-leaning organizations and social movement to advance their political agendas. Our own music is also aimed toward transformative goals, although like the larger and more successful groups, the largest question to be answered is “Does the music really make a difference?” The short answer is that it depends. From the standpoint of the musician, delivering messages critical of injustice and violence is generally a meaningful form of activism that satisfies the need to do something about social problems. But activism can be tiring, especially if responses to the messages are inconsistent (Downton & Wehr, 1997). For example, as the now defunct Saint Louis radical post-punk band Softer than Yesterday wrote after years of feeling like their anti-war and anti-capitalist lyrics were not getting through to their listeners: Another curtain closes on another night And I wonder if a thing has changed . . . If you take one thing home with you tonight Let it be a mind for change And take it to your workplace And take it to your school And do something great (“Are We Listening?” by Softer than Yesterday, reprinted with permission) Audiences, on the other hand, will differ in their reactions depending on a variety of variables and situations. Beyond the fact that much music is never heard by people because of distaste for a genre, delivery of vocals and instruments, or performing style, there are literally billions of songs from which anyone with an internet connection can choose to experience. With that kind of choice, the most likely impact of music on resisting and confronting state violence is to be found in existing groups and organizations already organized around anti-war and anti-state violence efforts. As Hamm (1995) notes, this is among the most empirically supported notions in the literature, and as such makes sense from both our personal experiences as musicians and activists as well as our review of political punk bands.

References absolutepunk.net (2008). Interview with Justin Sane. Retrieved from www.absolutepunk.net/showthread. php?t=321863. Adorno, T.W. (1976). Introduction to the sociology of music. Translated by E. B. Ashton. New York: Seabury. Armstrong, E.G. (2001). Gangsta misogyny: A content analysis of the portrayals of violence against women in rap music, 1987–1993. Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture, 8, 96–126. 474

Confronting state oppression: the role of music

Atkin, D. & Abelman, R. (2009). Assessing social concerns over the impact of popular music and music video: A review of scholarly research. The Open Social Science Journal, 2, 37–49. Baudrillard, J. (1994). Simulacra and simulation. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press. Bennett, A. & Peterson, R.A. (2004). Music scenes: Local, translocal and virtual. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press. Critcher, C. (1977). Structures, cultures, and biographies. In S. Hall & T. Jefferson (Eds), Resistance through rituals: Youth subcultures and post-war Britain (pp. 167–173). London: Routledge. Downton, J. & Wehr, P. (1997). The persistent activist: How peace commitment develops and survives. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Dunn, K.C. (2008). Never mind the bollocks: The punk rock politics of global communication. Review of International Studies, 34, 193–210. Ferrell, J. (2001). Tearing down the streets. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Ferrell, J. (2006). Empire of scrounge. New York: New York University Press. Ferrell, J. (2013). Cultural criminology and the politics of meaning. Critical Criminology, 21(3), 257–271. Ferrell, J., Hayward, K. & Young, J. (2008). Cultural criminology: An invitation. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Finley, L.L. (2002). The lyrics of rage against the machine: A study in radical criminology? Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture, 9, 150–166. Freire, P. (2006). Pedagogy of the oppressed, 30th anniversary edition. New York: Continuum. Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the prison notebooks, edited and trans. by Quinton Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith. New York: International Publishers. Hall, S. & Jefferson, T. (1977/2006). Resistance through rituals: Youth subcultures and post-war Britain. London: Routledge. Hamm, M. S. (1995). Hammer of the gods revisited: Neo-Nazi skinheads, domestic terrorism, and the rise of the new protest music. In J. Ferrell & C.R. Sanders (Eds), Cultural criminology (pp. 190–212). Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press. Kauzlarich, D. (2007). Seeing war as criminal: Peace activist views and critical criminology. Contemporary Justice Review, 10, 67–85. Kauzlarich, D. (2012). Music as resistance to state crime and violence. State crime and resistance, 11, 154. Kauzlarich, D. & Kramer, R.C. (1998). Crimes of the American nuclear state: At home and abroad. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press. Kramer, R.C. & Kauzlarich, D. (1999). The International Court of Justice opinion on the illegality of the threat and use of nuclear weapons: Implications for criminology. Contemporary Justice Review, 4, 395–413. Kramer, R.C. & Michalowski, R.J. (2005). War, aggression and state crime: A criminological analysis of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. British Journal of Criminology, 45, 446–469. Kramer, R.C., Michalowski, R.J. & Rothe, D.L. (2005). The supreme international crime: How the US war in Iraq threatens the rule of law. Social Justice, 32, 52–81. Lakoff, G. (2004). Don’t think of an elephant! White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing. Lee, R.A. (2009). Protest music as alternative media during the Vietnam era. In P.M. Haridakis, B.S. Hugenberg & S.T. Wearden (Eds), War and the media: Essays on news reporting, propaganda and popular culture (pp. 24–40). Jefferson, NC: Mcfarland. Leonard, M. (2007). Gender in the music industry: Rock, discourse and girl power. Aldershot: Ashgate. Longhurst, B. (2007). Popular music and society. Cambridge: Polity Press. Martinez, T. (1997). Popular culture as oppositional culture: Rap as resistance. Sociological Perspectives, 40, 265–286. mediareader.org/Issue4Stories/4_Propagandhi.html. Marx, K. & Engels, F. [1845–49] (1970). The German ideology. 3rd revised edition. Moscow: Progress Publishers. Mullaney, J.L. (2012). All in time age and the temporality of authenticity in the straight-edge music scene. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 41(6), 611–635. Muzzatti, S.L. (2004). Criminalising marginality and resistance: Marilyn Manson, Columbine, and cultural criminology. In J. Ferrell, K. Hayward., W. Morrison & M. Presdee (Eds), Cultural criminology unleashed (pp. 143–154). London: GlassHouse Press. Oliver, W. (2006). The streets: An alternative black male socialization institution. Journal of Black Studies, 36, 918–937. Peddie, I. (2006). The resisting muse: Popular music and social protest. Aldershot: Ashgate. Pratt, R. (1990). Rhythm and resistance: The political uses of American popular music. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institutional Press. 475

David Kauzlarich and Clay Michael Awsumb

Roberts, M. & Moore, R. (2009). Peace punks and punks against racism: Resource mobilization and frame construction in the punk movement. Music and Arts in Action, 2, 21–36. Rothe, D.L. & Kauzlarich, D. (2010). State-level crime: Theory and policy. In D. Barlow & S. Decker (Eds), Crime and public policy: Putting theory to work, 2nd edition (pp. 166–187), Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. Rothe, D.L. & Kauzlarich, D. (2014). Towards a victimology of state crime. New York: Routledge. Rothe, D.L. & Kauzlarich, D. (2016). Crimes of the powerful: An introduction. New York: Routledge. Sabin R. (1999). Punk rock: So what?: The cultural legacy of punk. London: Routledge. Skratch Magazine (2008). Retrieved from www.skratchmagazine.com/interviews/interviews.php?id=162. Street, J. (2013). Music and politics. New York: John Wiley & Sons. thepunksite.com (2008). Retrieved from www.thepunksite.com/interviews.php?page=leftovercrack. United Nations (2010). United Nations’ Charter. Retrieved from www.un.org/en/documents/charter/ index.shtml. Wallin, N.L., Merker, B. & Brown, S. (2000). The origins of music. Boston, MA: MIT Press. Weitzer, R. & Kubrin, C.E. (2009). Misogyny in rap music: A content analysis of prevalence and meanings. Men and Masculinities, 12, 3–29.

476

39 Regulating fair play in sport Kathryn Henne

Introduction Sport is not a mainstay of criminology; however, it is a domain of increasing criminological interest. In response to scandals around performance-enhancing drug use, sexual assault, violence, match-fixing (the practice of predetermining the outcomes of games, usually for financial gain), white-collar crime, and other forms of corruption, scholars are beginning to map out a sports-specific critical criminological agenda (Groombridge, 2016) and the challenges of reforming practices within international sport (Henne, 2015a). Their work builds upon earlier observations that contemporary global sport is etched and shaped by neoliberal capitalism, resulting in profound socio-economic inequalities (Andrews & Ritzer, 2007). Indeed, global sport is a big business: 2015 sports revenues totalled an estimated US$145 billion worldwide (PricewaterhouseCoopers, 2011). While critical criminologists acknowledge the important influence of capitalism on sport and sport-related crime and deviance, their analyses illustrate that the role of power in this domain is not limited to corporate influences or that the inequalities underpinning sport and its regulation are simply socio-economic in nature. To demonstrate how critical criminology is engaging questions of sport-related crime and deviance, this chapter discusses the regulation of fair play. Although there is a wide range of behavior and practices that fall under the umbrella of fair play, it focuses primarily on two issues that have received significant public attention in recent years: drug use, particularly doping, in sport and sex verification,1 which only affects women’s sport. After discussing the genesis of both forms of regulation, I reflect on how critical criminology might contribute more generally to the critical study of sport, crime, and deviance in the twenty-first century.

What is fair play? Fair play often emerges as a core value in sport competition, even though it is a vague concept. As many scholars observe, it is not clear what constitutes fair play or what social good it delivers (e.g., Sheridan, 2003, p. 163). The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) statement on ethics in sport and physical education describes fair play as “much more than playing with the rules”; rather, fair play reflects a “respect for others and always playing 477

Kathryn Henne

within the right spirit.”2 The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the international organization charged with regulating and preventing doping in sport, asserts that doping is antithetical to fair play. WADA, however, provides no clear definition of the term. Instead, its campaigns usually evoke the notion of a “level playing field”—that is, one that allows for athletes to fairly compete—as doping-free sport and thus reflective of fair play. Despite the positive imagery associated with fair play, critical scholars convincingly argue that the foundational ideas informing WADA’s campaign are historically grounded in older ideologies cultivated in elite English schools during the nineteenth century (e.g., Henne, 2015b). Specifically, it is rooted in ideologies of amateurism, which framed sport’s virtues as the bonds of camaraderie and was limited to a “homogenous elite (i.e., moneyed, educated, aristocratic, leisured males)” (Butcher & Schneider, 2007, p. 119). Allan Guttmann (1992, p. 12) explains clearly how amateurism—and, in turn, fair play—have classist roots: “Sportsmen for amateurism attempted to justify their snobbery with the claim that the ‘lower orders’ were incapable of acts of fair play and good sportsmanship.” Further, fair play also has colonial dimensions. Deployed as part of the nineteenth-century Muscular Christianity movement, which promoted religious piety through physical activity, sport has a history of being used as a method of “civilizing” colonialized peoples. Thus, fair play, although purported as an important positive value, has a problematic past.

How is fair play regulated in sport? Contemporary regulatory efforts that promote a level playing field as the foundation of fair play do not overcome earlier legacies. They often fail to acknowledge that athletes do not actually start on a level playing field. Rather, athletes from across the globe have access to different resources and training facilities. Moreover, gendered, national, and socio-economic disparities shape whether certain people can participate in certain sports, the arenas in which they compete, and the forms of performance enhancement (drug-related or otherwise) they can access. In short, the notion of a level playing field, with doping framed as the primary threat to fair play, is a clear misrepresentation. By “framing individuals as cheats and holding individuals accountable,” anti-doping regulation “obscures the organizational dimensions of performance enhancement” (Reichman & Sefiha, 2014, p. 116). In addition, it directs attention away from the inequalities underpinning global sport. By focusing primarily on individual behaviors deemed to be transgressions of fair play, the rules not only overlook organizational considerations, but they also veil structural concerns that render certain athletes, particularly athletes of color, as suspicious or deviant (Henne, 2015b). In other words, the rules around fair play often ensure the punishment of certain athletes, while other dimensions of sport-related violations, usually carried out by more powerful actors, remain invisible or overlooked. They can, in turn, perpetuate inequalities in punishment. When considering how fair play is regulated, it is important to address ideological, historical, and material conditions. Even though sport is no longer guided by the classist beliefs enshrined in amateurism, socio-economic inequalities still influence the regulation of competition. These issues center around the fact that, even though fair play encompasses issues related to the governance of sport, most regulation targets athletes. Marxist sociologists, most notably Connor (2009), argue that this disproportionate regulatory focus reflects the inequitable structure of international sport. As many sports become increasingly commercialized, some professional athletes can secure lucrative contracts, even becoming multi-millionaires. Most elite sportspersons, however, are precarious workers. Despite often being high-profile figures, they are relatively powerless when considered as laborers: there is often a large pool of prospective workers, many of whom are often poorly compensated, enabling widespread exploitation. Their 478

Regulating fair play in sport

exploitation, according to Connor (2009), is not limited to financial payments: athletes bear the burden of injury (often with limited medical assistance or disability support) and sole responsibility for complying with increasingly intrusive and complicated anti-doping rules. Further, aspiring high-level athletes rarely reach the upper echelons of competition, even though they pay significant costs, both social and financial, for the opportunity to do so; they are essentially “widgets in a bigger commercial machine” (Connor, 2009, p. 1369). To illustrate how the regulation of fair play reflects these broader dynamics, the next two sections outline the development and deployment of anti-doping and sex verification rules in sport.

Anti-doping regulation in sport Most commentaries and debates about the regulation of doping in sport focus on athletes, with comparatively less public scrutiny of the bodies charged with regulating doping in sport. McDermott’s (2016) analysis of doping documents how public discourses, particularly media portrayals of sporting scandals, fuel the social construction of a moral panic around doping, rendering individuals as folk devils deserving of punishment while protecting the interests of elite groups. She, along with other critical criminologists (Henne, 2015b), underscore the need to study how anti-doping agendas take shape and often veil deeper issues of regulatory power at work. WADA, the agency that spearheads the anti-doping movement, was established in 1999. Its mission is to protect fair play in sport by counteracting doping in sport, presenting artificial enhancements as a transgression of the ethics of sport. However, WADA bans thousands of substances, including many recreational drugs without evident performance-enhancing effects. The formal definition of doping captures behaviors not limited to the use of artificial performanceenhancing methods. A substance can be prohibited in sport if it satisfies two of the following criteria: (1) it is performance enhancing, (2) it is a risk to the health of the athlete, or (3) it violates “the spirit of sport” (WADA, 2015, p. 30). If an athlete uses a substance that is not performance enhancing, they can be found to violate the “spirit of sport” if their intent is to do so. As a result, the ingestion of a broad range of substances, regardless of reason, can constitute doping. To reinforce this principle, anti-doping rules require applying a strict liability standard in cases of a positive drug test, which means intention is not a mediating factor; the detection of the banned substance is enough to sanction an athlete for an anti-doping rule violation. WADA implements a multifaceted approach against doping in accordance with the World Anti-Doping Code (commonly referred to as “the Code”), a document that aims to harmonize anti-doping efforts across national jurisdictions and sports. The UNESCO International Convention Against Doping in Sport legally backs the regime, ensuring that more than 175 State Parties to the Convention pass legislation that supports WADA’s mission. One of the key reasons why the Convention has widespread governmental endorsement is that the WADA Code prohibits nonsignatory countries from certain sport-related privileges, such as hosting mega-events like the Olympic Games, and receiving sport-specific forms of funding. The International Olympic Committee (IOC), which governs the Olympic Movement, is a key stakeholder that provides the incentives to enforce this clause. It also funds 50 percent of WADA’s budget. Thus, the formal arrangements of anti-doping regulation are, in large part, enabled by the commercial growth of international sport. Private interests profoundly shape it. In fact, the IOC is responsible for the first systematic drug testing regime in global sport, which it initiated in 1968 out of fears that the rise of professional and state-sponsored sport was leading to unethical and dangerous methods of performance enhancement. The professionalization of sport and expansion of anti-doping regulation go hand in hand. 479

Kathryn Henne

WADA’s specific tasks include revising the official list of banned substances annually, funding scientific and medical research to enhance anti-doping detection methods, hosting a global webbased database, and supporting the work of regional and national anti-doping organizations. It also manages education, outreach efforts, and out-of-competition testing. Anti-doping regulation polices athletes through a variety of means, relying on a host of regulatory actors and techniques. For example, biometric surveillance—such as random in- and out-of-competition drug testing, blood profiling, and retaining information about athletes’ daily whereabouts—is common practice in elite sports, and it is increasingly used in lower-level competitions and recreational contexts (Henne, 2015b; Henning, 2013). The pervasiveness of these modes of surveillance, such as the Whereabouts program—which requires athletes to let authorities know where they will be each day so that samples can be collected without advance notice—and the Athlete Biological Passport system—which tracks the biological variables of athletes with the aim of detecting abnormalities linked to doping—means that athletes’ bodies are subject to regular scrutiny. When called for urine sample collection, athletes must remove most of their clothing and urinate in front of a chaperone. They must also list all food supplements they take and apply for a therapeutic-use exemption if they are taking medicines that contain banned substances. If they fail to comply with any of these conditions, they can be sanctioned—that is, they can receive anti-doping rule violations not simply for doping, but also for not making their bodies fully visible to the scrutiny of authorities. Through these tactics, the anti-doping regime fosters and perpetuates a culture of suspicion, one that renders athletes’ bodies inherently suspect and untrustworthy, in the name of safeguarding the ethics of sport (Reichman & Sefiha, 2014; Henne, 2015b). In doing so, it reinforces the depowered position of athletes in sport and directs public scrutiny towards the athletes being punished, not the fairness of the broader structures overseeing them (Connor, 2009). As other scholars observe (Beamish & Ritchie, 2006), anti-doping policing strategies have made practices of doping more dangerous by incentivizing the development and use of more potent substances that the body can absorb and discharge more quickly in order to avoid detection. Researchers also question the effectiveness of this approach: approximately 2 percent of samples yield positive tests, but survey findings (which WADA initially withheld from publication) indicate much higher rates of doping among track-and-field athletes (29–45 percent) (Rohan, 2013). Instead, the surveillance-and-sanctions approach has increased risks for athletes without fully considering the extent to which doping is an act of deviance or the health-related implications. The campaign against doping in sport shares elements with the better-known punitive approach adopted during the U.S. War on Drugs, as well as important distinctions. Many athletes, particularly those without the resources to evade detection or a support staff that can proactively help them to be compliant with rules, face the increased likelihood of punishment, a reality that many drug users who lived in areas subject to high levels of surveillance and police scrutiny endured. In addition, analyses of anti-doping discourses and sanctioning processes reveal that contextual, socio-economic, gendered, and racialized concerns affect who gets punished, even though anti-doping regulation relies heavily on objective scientific testing (e.g., Henne, 2015b, 2016). Despite parallels with other punitive responses to drug use, the arrangements that enable intrusive anti-doping tactics are distinct. Many of them seem to violate enshrined legal values of privacy, bodily integrity, and procedural justice. In a sense, they do: athletes consent to giving up these rights as part of their contractual agreements. These conditions can apply to minors who are not of the legal age to consent (Teetzel & Mazzucco, 2014). Another overlooked dimension of anti-doping regulation is the role of corporate partners. The reliance on surveillance also means that technology firms and pharmaceutical companies, including F. Hoffman LaRoche, Ltd. and 480

Regulating fair play in sport

GlaxoSmithKline, support the expansion of the regime’s regulatory tactics. The companies that profit from making drugs therefore also benefit from developing tests to detect them, which can be sold to markets beyond sport (Henne, 2015a). Critical criminological analysis is essential to identifying and understanding these processes, especially as they are not always visible when public discourses center on the athletes being sanctioned for violations.

Sex verification practices in women’s sport While anti-doping regulation presents the violations of fair play as the result of artificial or ergogenic aids, the regulatory practice of sex verification in women’s sport disrupts that narrative. In women’s sport, sex verification assumes that some women are naturally too masculine to participate fairly in female-only events. Accordingly, athletes not taking doping substances have been banned from competition and, in some cases, prescribed drugs or hormones that have the potential to reduce their natural athletic abilities. The official rationale for this additional regulatory measure has been to protect fair play in women’s sport, which simultaneously communicates gendered messages that women’s physical capacities are inherently limited, if not inferior, compared to men. This practice, sometimes also referred to as gender verification or sex testing, has taken shape alongside anti-doping regulation. Although rarely characterized as crime, sex verification reveals additional contradictions embedded in attempts to protect fair play in sport, particularly how gendered notions of deviance come to inform the differential policing of athletes’ bodies. Sport authorities have historically employed sex-verification practices targeting competitors in women’s athletic events in order to distinguish female competitors from so-called gender frauds. These “frauds” were usually more muscular participants historically characterized as hypermasculine, male, intersex, or transgender. In other words, certain competitors in women’s events have been scrutinized and subject to scientific testing when they appear to be “too good” for women’s sport and do not look like natural women, both of which cast suspicion upon “superior female athletic performances,” implying that “athletic process is the natural domain of men,” not women (Birrell & Cole, 1990, p. 18). The practice reinforces binary constructions of sex by depicting gendered differences as based in biology. Sex verification rules are still in place, although (at the time of writing) temporarily suspended since 2015. The suspension is a result of a Court for Arbitration for Sport (CAS) ruling on an appeal by Indian sprinter Dutee Chand, who challenged the International Association of Athletics Federations’ (IAAF) Hyperandrogenism Regulations. The Regulations establish a limit on the level of naturally occurring androgenic hormones that elite women athletes can have under the rationale that women with high levels of testosterone have an unfair advantage over female athletes with lower levels. In other words, the Regulations divide female athletes into two categories—one eligible and one ineligible—on the basis of natural biological traits. Testing, however, is often selective, only affecting those suspected of having high levels of testosterone. Thus, under the Regulations, subjective assessments play a role in who was deemed suspicious. Historical and contemporary analyses of sex verification reveal that bodies that do not appear to fit first-world feminine ideals often emerge as suspect, cast as not “real” women (Henne, 2015b; Pieper, 2016). In the past, women from Eastern Bloc countries occupied this space in Western imaginations. Today, the targets of regulation tend to be women of color from non-Western countries. Under the Hyperandrogenism Regulations, women athletes found to be above the testosterone threshold could be required to take hormone-suppressing drugs and sometimes to have genital surgery to limit testosterone production—that is, if they wished to continue to compete. At least 30 female athletes received some kind of treatment to lower their testosterone levels 481

Kathryn Henne

when the Regulations were enforced between 2012 and 2015 (Pape, 2016). Some procedures did not even aim to reduce testosterone levels; they included estrogen replacement therapy, clitoris reductions, and feminizing plastic surgery (Fénichel et al., 2013). Chand, the athlete who filed an appeal to CAS, refused to be subject to forms of “corrective” therapy, and, upon appealing, the CAS panel ruled to suspend the Hyperandrogenism Regulations, giving the IAAF two years to provide new evidence outlining the degree to which hyperandrogenic women enjoy a competitive advantage. The CAS ruling is part of a longer history of sex verification in sport. In the 1960s, the IOC began conducting scientific analysis of buccal smears to verify the sex of female competitors. Prior to that, verification practices varied, including the issuing of sex certifications completed by doctors who had conducted gynecological examinations on women, while some governing sport organizations also required the visual inspection of women’s genitals because of suspicions that documents could be falsified (Henne, 2015b). Women athletes would no longer be subjected to physical examinations—referred to colloquially as naked parades. The subsequent failures of scientific testing to catch the intended targets of sex-verification is well documented by sport historians (e.g., Pieper, 2016). In fact, over the years, when mandatory testing was in place, many women who authorities assumed were “normal” (based on aesthetics and performance) were disqualified under the rules. In other words, sex-verification testing has failed to prove what it sets out to do, because, as simply put by feminist biologist Fausto-Sterling (2000, p. 3), “a body’s sex is too complex.” It does not reflect (Western) binary notions of gender. Although sex verification is not a common topic of criminological study, it provides important critical reminders about gendered forms of social control. As a specific form of biometric regulation targeting women, including women who may be transgender or intersex, it reflects longstanding and widespread practices of regulating women’s bodies that rarely apply to men. In this case, athletes are again depowered; even in Chand’s successful appeal, CAS justifies authorities’ desire to regulate women’s bodies under the rationale of fair play and gives them the opportunity to find proof of its necessity. Further, the procedures carried out so certain women could regain eligibility to compete goes largely unaddressed. Although distinct, it reflects the additional barriers that women and intersex people have faced in terms of pursuing legal recognition of bodily transgressions (e.g., Chase, 1998). The case of sex verification illustrates that while athletes are depowered, they are not equally so. Regulation in practice has evident intersectional contours. Women, particularly women who do not adhere to heteronormative standards and women of color from the Global South, are subject to additional forms of scrutiny by authorities.

Toward a critical sports criminology The chapter covers one small area of an emergent interdisciplinary field of sports criminology, which scholars have only recently started to map out systematically (e.g., Groombridge, 2016). Using the regulation of fair play as an example to anchor its analysis, it highlights the entanglements of regulation and inequality in shaping a field of policing and surveillance, one that is dependent upon both public and private actors and legal and nonlegal agreements. In this case, regulation’s aims are not simply about managing unfair performance enhancement in sport; rather, it seeks to protect ideologies around a presumed bodily purity that athletes are to embody— values that are also profitable in a world of corporatized sport that also relies heavily on the (often willing, but nonetheless coerced) exploitation of athlete labor. It showcases critical criminology’s longstanding attention to issues of power as well as the pressing need for criminologists to query 482

Regulating fair play in sport

the multi-faceted roles that regulation can play in shaping constructions of crime and the lived experiences of their consequences (Braithwaite, 2000). In relation to performance and image enhancing drug (PIED) use beyond sport, critical criminologists were among the first to glean empirical insight into illicit production and trafficking schemes (Kraska et al., 2010). More recently, with the growing recognition that recreational PIED use is a public health concern, critical criminologists have scrutinized national-level regulations alongside anti-doping frameworks. For example, research in Belgium and the Netherlands demonstrates that existing approaches are seemingly unsuccessful in terms of undermining PIED markets (Van de Ven, 2016). Findings reveal that criminal sanctions and law enforcementbacked strategies in both countries not only have the potential to exacerbate health risks, but also prevent the exploration of alternative regulatory frameworks, including harm-reduction and prevention approaches. Further, the embeddness of dealers and buyers in gym subcultures is an influential factor that has yet to receive adequate regulatory consideration (Van de Ven & Mulrooney, 2017). Beyond PIED use and distribution, a wide range of sport-related concerns are ripe for critical criminological analysis, such issues related to corporate crime and corruption. The 2015 indictment of senior Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) officials on 47 charges related to an alleged bribery and kickback scheme involving US$150 million exemplifies this growing awareness of corporate misconduct in sport. In recent years, though, match-fixing has become a central concern, fueling calls for stronger anti-corruption measures. A report published by the IOC and UN Office of Drugs and Crime (2013, p. 1) states, “The phenomenon of matchfixing brings to the surface its links to other criminal activities such as corruption, organized crime and money-laundering.” Investigative journalist Declan Hill concurs that organized crime and sport make for a “natural marriage,” which others say is evidenced by the diversity of criminal actors—from the Italian mafia to Asian organized crime groups—influencing professional sport (Cayli, 2013; Hill, 2008). However, most calls for greater law enforcement intervention fail to account for the overt power dynamics of sport: that is, what actors are setting the agenda, who is being policed, and which actors stand to benefit most from increased legal intervention. Few critical criminologists have outlined the particular challenges of intervening in sport-related issues, a space where the actions of powerful corporate actors are far from transparent and existing arrangements often protect them from scrutiny (Henne, 2015a). Moreover, these same actors are often setting regulatory agendas in relation to sport-related reforms, which raises questions about how more effective checks and balances might be put in place. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that the agenda around fair play in sport—which has been driven primarily by elite and more powerful actors in the field—is so narrowly construed around the policing in individual athletes. Finding ways to address broader issues of fairness are not in the interests of those actors who benefit most from contemporary corporatized sport. These power dynamics have very real consequences for how sport-related crimes are addressed. Not all demands for greater legal and regulatory enforcement have received comparable levels of attention or support from influential sport organizations or law enforcement agencies. Sexual violence in sport, for example, has received ample media attention, yet it remains an issue against which few organizations and governing sports bodies have actively mobilized (e.g., Brackenridge, 2001; Luther, 2016). In fact, some scholars have gone so far as to say the concealment of abuse is a historically engrained feature of sport (Hartill, 2013). These observations point to the critical need for further criminological study that is attentive to the multiple ways that power and inequality shape not only sport-related crime and deviance, but also domains of sport more generally. This task is one that critical criminologists are particularly well equipped to undertake. 483

Kathryn Henne

Notes 1

2

Sex verification is the regulatory practice of determining the eligibility of an athlete by attempting to verify her sex. It has only been implemented in women’s sporting events and is sometimes referred to as gender verification or sex testing. UNESCO. Physical education and sport: Fair play – the winning way (Qui joue loyalement est toujours gagnant). Retrieved from http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php-URL_ID=2223&URL_ DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html.

References Andrews, D., & Ritzer, G. (2007). The Grobal in the Sporting Glocal. Global Networks, 7, 113–153. Beamish, R., & Ritchie, I. (2006). Fastest, highest, strongest: A critique of high-performance sport. New York: Routledge. Birrell, S., & Cole, C.L. (1990). Double fault: Renee Richards and the construction and naturalization of difference. Sociology of Sport Journal, 7, 1–21. Brackenridge, C.H. (2001). Spoilsports: Understanding and preventing sexual exploitation in sport. London: Routledge. Braithwaite, J. (2000). The new regulatory state and the transformation of criminology. British Journal of Criminology, 40, 222–238. Butcher, R., & Schneider, A. (2007). Fair play as respect for the game. In W. J. Morgan (Ed.), Ethics in sport (2nd ed.), pp. 119–140. Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics. Cayli, B. (2013). Using sports against the Italian mafia: Policies and challenges on the path of cultural renewal. Sociology of Sport Journal, 30, 435–466. Chase, C. (1998). Hermaphrodites with attitude: Mapping the emergence of intersex political activism. GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 4, 189–211. Connor, J. (2009). The athlete as widget: How exploitation explains elite sport. Sport in Society, 10, 1369–1377. Fausto-Sterling, A. (2000). Sexing the body: Gender politics and the construction of sexuality. New York: Basic. Fénichel, P., Paris, F., Philibert, P., Hiéronimus, S., Gaspari, L., Kurzenne, J., Chevallier, P., Bermon, S., Chevalier, N., & Sultan, C. (2013). Molecular diagnosis of 5α-reductase deficiency in four elite young female athletes through hormonal screening for hyperandrogenism. Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 98, E1055–E1059. Groombridge, N. (2016). Sports criminology: A critical criminology of sport and games. Bristol: Policy Press. Guttmann, A. (1992). The Olympics: A history of the modern games. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Hartill, M. (2013). Concealment of child sexual abuse in sports. Quest, 65, 241–254. Henne, K. (2015a). Reforming global sport: Hybridity and the challenges of pursuing transparency. Law & Policy, 37, 324–349. Henne, K. (2015b). Testing for athlete citizenship: Regulating doping and sex in sport. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Henne, K. (2016). Defending doping: Performances and trials of an anti-doping program. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 40, 175–196. Henning, A.D. (2013). (Self-)surveilliance, anti-doping, and health in non-elite road running. Surveillance & Society, 11, 494–507. Hill, D. (2008). The fix: Soccer and organized crime. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart. International Olympic Committee (IOC) and UN Office on Drugs and Crime. (2013). Criminalization approaches to combat match-fixing and illegal/irregular betting: A global perspective. Retrieved from www.unodc.org/documents/corruption/Publications/2013/Criminalization_approaches_to_combat_ match-fixing.pdf. Kraska, P.B., Bussard, C.R., & Brent, J.J. (2010). Trafficking in bodily perfection: examining the late-modern steroid marketplace and its criminalization. Justice Quarterly, 27, 159–185. Luther, J. (2016). Unsportsmanlike conduct: College football and the politics of rape. New York: Akashic Books. McDermott, V. (2016). The war on drugs in sport: Moral panics and organizational legitimacy. New York: Routledge. Pape, M. (2016). Why I now stand with Caster Semenya. SBS, August 8. Retrieved from www.sbs.com.au/ topics/zela/article/2016/08/08/why-i-now-stand-caster-semenya.

484

Regulating fair play in sport

Pieper, L.P. (2016). Sex testing: Gender policing in women’s sports. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. PricewaterhouseCoopers. (2011). Changing the game: Outlook for the global sports market to 2015. Retrieved from www.pwc.com/gx/en/hospitality-leisure/changing-the-gameoutlook-for-the-globalsports-market-to-2015.jhtml. Reichman, N., & Sefiha, O. (2014). Regulating performance-enhancing technologies: A comparison of professional cycling and derivatives trading. ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 649, 98–119. Rohan, T. (2013). Study revealing doping in track strikes hurdle. New York Times (August 23), A1. Sheridan, H. (2003). Conceptualizing ‘fair play’: A review of the literature. European Physical Education Review, 9, 163–184. Teetzel, S., & Mazzucco, M. (2014). “Minor problems: The recognition of young athletes in the development of international anti-doping policies.” International Journal of the History of Sport, 31, 914–933. Van de Ven, K. (2016). ‘Blurred lines’: Anti-doping, national policies, and the performance and image enhancing drug market in Belgium and the Netherlands. Performance Enhancement & Health, 4, 94–102. Van de Ven, K., & Mulrooney, K.J.D. (2017). Social suppliers: Exploring the cultural contours of the performance and image enhancing drug (PIED) market amongst bodybuilders in the Netherlands and Belgium. International Journal of Drug Policy, 40, 6–15. World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA). (2015). World anti-doping code. Retrieved from www.wada-ama.org/ en/resources/the-code/world-anti-doping-code.

485

40 The role of critical criminology in confronting the “war on immigration” Daniel E. Martínez

Introduction The election of populist and nationalist candidate Donald J. Trump as the 45th President of the United States has drawn significant alarm from many within the country and around the world. Of notable concern has been the discourse surrounding immigration that set the tone for his presidential campaign as well as the actions taken by his administration in the first couple of months following the inauguration. During his official announcement for the presidential bid, Trump stated, When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people. ( Washington Post Staff, 2015) Despite substantial empirical evidence suggesting otherwise, immigrants have long been scapegoated for a host of social problems, including crime (Lee, 2013). Although the connection between immigration and crime has largely been disproven by dozens of social scientific studies over several decades (Ousey & Kubrin, 2017; Ewing, Martı´nez, & Rumbaut, 2015; Martinez, Stowell & Lee, 2010), the topic of immigration and the myth of immigrant criminality quickly became central to Trump’s campaign. Trump vowed to deport millions of unauthorized immigrants, build a border wall, and block federal funds to municipalities engaging in “sanctuary” practices (Luhby, 2016; Carroll, 2016; Lee, Rudy Omri, & Preston, 2016). The immigration-related executive orders and memos signed into effect in the first few months of 2017 sent a clear message that Trump intended to make good on his campaign promises, despite the obvious social harms these actions would entail for immigrants, their family members, and US society as a whole. Largely rooted in symbolic politics and “post-truth” notions, Trump’s “law-and-order” agenda surrounding immigration in general, and unauthorized migration in particular, struck a chord with a segment of the electorate that has felt increasingly disenfranchised in an era of

486

Confronting the “war on immigration”

increased globalization, automation, and identity politics. Ironically, this segment of the population embraced a candidate that represented the very epitome of the source of their concerns—a global capitalist who has consistently searched for lower costs and higher profits throughout various regions of the world and who has directly benefited from immigrant labor through his business interests in the United States. Despite being one of the most controversial presidential candidates in recent memory, the profound sense of ontological insecurity perceived by working-class White voters in America’s rustbelt and Deep South created a window of opportunity that Trump seized by effectively deploying nationalistic and anti-immigrant rhetoric. But anti-immigrant sentiment and xenophobia, which have ebbed and flowed with structural changes throughout US history, have been firmly embedded within US society and long precede the current presidential administration (Tichenor, 2002; Alba & Nee, 2003; Telles & Ortiz, 2008). In other words, Trump’s election is a reflection of a society whose very foundation was based on the exclusion of “otherized” groups. And while there are still opportunities to heal these centuries-old wounds, it is clear that these opportunities are quickly fading under the current administration. The contemporary so-called “war on immigration,” not immigration itself, has been the source of notable social harms. Criminology as a discipline aims to understand the etiology of social harms. But all too often the perspective of the powerless is disregarded—or even criminalized—within mainstream criminology. Given this consideration, the aim of this chapter is to further interrogate the social harms that have been and will continue to be inflicted upon immigrants and their families in US society in the absence of major institutional reforms and structural transformations. These social harms are likely to intensify during the Trump administration’s tenure. My intention here is to give voice to the powerless through a thoughtful and critical approach to understanding various power differentials that have led to human rights violations and social injustices in the current “war on immigration.” After all, focusing on “the unequal distribution of power and material resources within contemporary societies provides a point of departure for all strains of critical criminology” (Friedrichs, 2009 as cited by DeKeseredy & Dragiewicz, 2012, p. 1). While there are several different directions from which critical criminology can confront the “war on immigration,” this chapter focuses on the ways in which people engage in unauthorized migration as a means of overcoming structural inequalities, the ways in which the dominant discourse surrounding human smuggling has served to drive a wedge between unauthorized immigrants and their migration facilitators, the routine abuse migrants experience while in US custody, and the increased criminalization of immigration over the past two decades. These specific examples draw largely on my research experience on unauthorized migration along the US–Mexico border; however, I believe that they can readily be applied to other undocumented immigrants from diverse regions of the world. Throughout US history, immigration violations have been largely treated as an administrative matter. However, in recent years unauthorized immigration has been increasingly framed as “law and order,” crime control, and national security issues. In short, unauthorized immigration has become increasingly criminalized. The US’s current approach to immigration control has largely mirrored its approach to crime control in that it has taken an increasing punitive turn since the 1980s. Calling attention to the criminalization and human rights violations experienced by unauthorized immigrants in the “war on immigration” helps highlight the increasing parallels between immigration control and the inherent structural inequalities in the US’s criminal justice system.

487

Daniel E. Martínez

Unauthorized migration and human smuggling Unauthorized migration as a mode of adaptation Although beyond the scope of this chapter, theories of migration—including unauthorized migration—tend to focus on the mechanisms that initiate, facilitate, and sustain migration (Massey et al., 1993; Massey et al., 2008). These mechanisms can operate at various levels ranging from the global to the individual. At the global level, scholars have tended to focus on notable “push” and “pull” factors rooted in global inequality, disparate levels of development across the world system, and structural dislocations stemming from neoliberal reforms (Massey et al., 1993; Massey et al., 2008; Wise, 2010). At the individual level, when people engage in international migration, they are ultimately responding to structural inequalities and the redistribution of resources at higher levels of order; they are reacting to forces that are largely beyond their control. But many aspiring migrants throughout the world do not have access to legitimate migration channels. For example, the current US family-based visa system is extremely backlogged and the demand for employment-based visas in the low-skilled service sector of the economy far exceeds the supply (Sumption & Papademetriou, 2013). Moreover, access to legal migration channels to the United States is cost-prohibitive and therefore largely out of reach for the working-class in Mexico and Central America who possess a strong economic or social need to migrate (Massey, Durand, & Malone, 2002; Spener, 2009). For many aspiring migrants the only option is to engage in autonomous international migration, which Rodriguez (1996) defined as “the movement of people across nation-states outside of state regulations” (as cited by Spener 2009, p. 19). The current immigration system in the United States is deeply flawed, or at the very least is structured in ways that serve the interests of the owners of capital by keeping immigrant labor undocumented, wages low, and working conditions precarious for racialized workers. The contemporary “war on immigration” in general, and heightened border enforcement along the US–Mexico border specifically, operate as a form of global apartheid, which is defined as the “reliance on the principle of national sovereignty as a pretext for grossly unequal distribution of wealth, power, and well-being among nation-states in a way that mirrors the operation of the domestic regime of white supremacy in South Africa from 1948–1994” (Spener, 2009, p. 11; Nevins & Aizeki, 2008). In a Mertonian sense, unauthorized migration as a direct response to these inequalities represents a form of “innovation” (Merton, 1938)—a mode of adaptation that autonomous migrants utilize to overcome anomie, structural inequality, and a profound sense of powerlessness in their countries of origin. That is, autonomous migrants engage in clandestine migration as a means of alleviating various forms of strain and blocked opportunities to legitimate migration channels, which are integral to the operation and continuance of global apartheid (Spener, 2009). Nonetheless, the unauthorized migration process is a social one, and scholars would be remiss to assume that autonomous migrants respond to strains as lone individuals rather than as members of larger collectives.

Unauthorized migration as a social process Although increasingly criminalized in the US context, unauthorized migration continues to be a largely social process (Massey & Garcia España, 1987; Singer & Massey, 1998; Martínez, 2016). Aspiring unauthorized immigrants often rely on experienced family members and friends to help them cross the border (Singer & Massey, 1998; Donato, Wagner, & Patterson, 2008; Martínez, 2016), as well as to find housing, employment, and higher wages once in the 488

Confronting the “war on immigration”

United States (Aguilera & Massey, 2003). As migrants gain first-hand migration experience, they become important sources of information and knowledge for future unauthorized migrants, contributing to what has been described as a cumulative migration process (Massey et al., 2008). Thus, autonomous migration cannot be simply understood as an aggregation of “innovators” responding to strain caused by a gap between material needs and blocked opportunities to legal migration channels. Rather, it must be recognized as a collective strategy utilized by the relatively powerless. David Spener (2009) uses the term resistencia hormiga (ant-like resistance) to capture this idea, particularly as it pertains to “clandestine border-crossing by autonomous migrants” (p. 23). Resistencia hormiga represents an agentic, peaceful, and covert “weapon of the weak” that unauthorized migrants utilize in the struggle against global apartheid (Spener, 2009).

Human smuggling: coyotaje along the US–Mexico border Human smugglers, known colloquially in Spanish as coyotes, play an important role in autonomous migrants’ fight against global apartheid. Unauthorized migrants routinely rely on the services of coyotes to reduce the risk of physical injury and the probability of detection by US authorities while engaging in clandestine migration across the US–Mexico border (Fuentes, L’Esperance, Pérez & White, 2007; Kimball et al., 2007). Although prior research has found that migrants realize that hiring a coyote is against the law, “many view it as necessary to evade apprehension and to mitigate the danger of crossing clandestinely” (Kimball et al., 2007, p. 99) and “do not necessarily perceive the work performed by smugglers as criminal” (Sanchez, 2017, p. 15). The prevalence of coyote use varies across studies; however the consensus appears to be that heightened border enforcement over the past two decades have kept the demand for human smuggling services high: between 70 and 80 percent of unauthorized Mexican migrants rely on a coyote to cross the border (Singer & Massey, 1998; Donato, Wagner, & Patterson, 2008; Slack et al., 2013; Martínez, 2016). Border securitization has also been associated with an exponential increase in the fees smugglers command. For instance, Gathmann (2008) found that fees charged to unauthorized Mexican migrants tripled from $400 in 1986, to nearly $1,200 in 2003. By 2008 the going rate had increased to $1,625 (Martínez et al., 2017), while a more recent study found that smuggling fees had jumped to around $2,500 between the 2010–2012 period (Slack et al., 2013). Increased border enforcement efforts along the US–Mexico border, coupled with a broken US immigration system, have led to a thriving informal economy of human smuggling services. What is more, increased securitization along the US–Mexico border has transformed coyotaje (the coyote business) from a rather informal community-based set of services to a more formalized enterprise, leading the emergence of “border business” coyotes operating along the border who seldom personally know their clients (Lopez-Castro, 1998; Martínez, 2016). This represents an important change, as personal and community ties between unauthorized migrants and coyotes may serve as important forms of social control that decrease the likelihood of human smugglers exploiting, mistreating, or abandoning migrants during border crossing attempts (Martínez, 2016). The emergence of “border business” coyotes along the border does not necessarily suggest that coyotes increasingly belong to “human smuggling syndicates,” as some scholars have noted (Michalowski, 2007, p. 67), but rather that they have become more organized and have begun to operate exclusively near the border at higher rates when compared to decades past. And while interactions between organized crime groups and coyotes do take place (Slack & Campbell, 2016; Sanchez, 2017), these exchanges tend to consist of information regarding day-to-day operations and gaining access to smuggling routes, but are not necessarily an indication of market domination by any one particular group with regards to human smuggling (Sanchez, 2017). 489

Daniel E. Martínez

Nevertheless, it would also be misguided and analytically imprecise to conclude that coyotaje and drug trafficking are isolated activities that operate completely independently of one another (Slack & Campbell, 2016). Prior research has demonstrated that increased border enforcement has funneled human smuggling and drug smuggling into the same contested geographic spaces (Martínez, 2016; Slack & Campbell, 2016), leading to “a criminal hierarchy prioritizing the most powerful and profitable clandestine activity, in this case, drug trafficking” (Slack and Campbell, 2016, p. 16). In fact, recent studies have found that migrants and their coyotes are often forced to pay tolls known as derecho de piso to access certain crossing-corridors controlled by drug trafficking organizations and have been told when they can and cannot cross through specific areas (Slack & Campbell, 2016; Slack & Martinez, 2016). These routine interactions have clearly altered the unauthorized migration experience and have implications for the various forms of risk to which migrants are exposed during their journeys (Slack and Campbell, 2016). But again, this itself is not evidence that human smuggling is now controlled by organized crime groups or that coyotes are involved in drug trafficking. In fact, in a review of the extant human smuggling literature, Sanchez (2017) reminds readers “that the evidence shows smugglers work independently, connecting with multiple other facilitators and not for a single, specific group” (p. 18). Critical criminologists must guard against wide-sweeping assertions regarding the increasing connections between organized crime and human smuggling while also remaining critical of the ways in which state practices alter the functioning of informal economies along the US–Mexico border. Claims that coyotes are increasingly tied to organized crime may also be a function of the dominant frames in the news media and popular culture surrounding human smuggling. Coyotes are often portrayed by the news media as greedy, villainous, delinquents who cannot be trusted (Spener, 2009). In a similar vein, some academic accounts have described coyotes as treating migrants as “exploitable commodities” or sources of fast-cash (Michalowski, 2007, p. 67; O’Leary, 2009). But these dominant narratives tend to come from law enforcement officials (Zhang, 2007; Spener, 2009) and are seldom scrutinized by media outlets. Clearly, accounts from law enforcement officials are attractive to the media because they have “legitimizing effect on news stories” (Fogarty, 2012, p. 276 as cited by Sanford, Martínez, & Weitzer, 2016) by virtue of coming from bureaucratic authority figures (Spener, 2009). However, these accounts are biased because law enforcement officials routinely encounter the most extreme cases of smugglinggone-wrong, use these examples as justification for increased enforcement practices, and have a vested interest in advancing a law-and-order agenda to protect their budgets (Zhang, 2007; Spener, 2009; Sanchez, 2017). As a consequence of relying heavily on government sources, the media may inadvertently be reinforcing official frames (Sanford, Martínez, & Weitzer, 2016), which are then utilized by policymakers to enact more restrictive and punitive immigration controls. Moreover, policies focused on efforts to prosecute human smugglers by securing testimonies from apprehended unauthorized migrants who have relied on their services further strain the migrant–coyote relationship with the end goal of advancing the State’s interests. However, critical criminologists and other scholars have begun to provide less sensationalized accounts of human smuggling, with some focusing on the ways in which migrants view their interactions with coyotes and others offering greater insight into how smugglers perceive themselves and the services they provide (Spener, 2009; Sanchez, 2015, 2017). For example, Spener noted that Mexican immigrants often see their coyotes as providing a “valuable service,” as “expert migrants,” or as “normal people” (2009, p. 217). And while some migrants certainly agree that “most coyotes are bad,” they often emphasize that that is not the case with the ones with whom they have worked: “You have to know which ones to choose” (Spener, 2009, p. 217). On the other hand, many coyotes are likely to have once been unauthorized migrants at some point in the past and view themselves as helping out fellow compatriots, with migrants 490

Confronting the “war on immigration”

perceiving the work with which coyotes engage as compulsory or altruistic considering the limited opportunities they have to legal migration (Sanchez, 2017). These more positive perceptions of coyotes are consistent with the results of a survey of more than 1,100 recently repatriated Mexican migrants conducted by Slack and Martínez (2016). The authors found that 75 percent of migrants who had relied on a coyote during their most recent unauthorized migration attempt reported being “satisfied” with their smuggler’s services, and that 45 percent suggested that they would willing to recommend them to a family member or friend. Slack and Martínez also noted that “satisfaction” tended to be a function of instrumental outcomes (e.g., a “successful” crossing), while “willingness to recommend” was more closely associated with the quality of treatment and care one experiences during the journey. The fact that nearly half of coyote users would recommend their smuggler to a family or friend directly calls into question law enforcement’s commonly deployed trope characterizing coyotes as greedy, opportunistic criminals. Rather than relying on over-determined and simplified notions of “vulnerable” migrants and “exploitative, callous, and greedy” coyotes, much sociological insight can be gained from understanding the complexities of the migrant–coyote relationship in the current era of increased border militarization, especially when considering the State’s vested interest in driving a wedge between these actors as well as the media’s tendency to perpetuate law enforcement narratives of human smugglers. In sum, autonomous migration is a response or adaptation to various strains stemming from material needs and blocked opportunities (i.e., legal migration channels). And this response is a collective one encompassing various actors operating within the unauthorized migration system, including human smugglers. But rather than criminalizing unauthorized migrants and their coyotes in a legal sense (e.g., increasing the penalties associated with unauthorized migration and human smuggling) or socially (e.g., by deploying negative frames surrounding human smuggling), greater analytic leverage can be attained by understanding the root causes of unauthorized migration and how they relate to structural inequalities around the world as well as state practices focused on stemming unauthorized migration. The root causes of unauthorized migration are economic and social in nature, therefore the solutions to the so-called immigration problem lie in addressing these root causes, not in increased securitization and criminalization.

The routine abuse of unauthorized migrants while in US custody There exists an undeniable power differential between unauthorized migrants and agents of the State tasked with enforcing immigration law. This power differential has real implications for unauthorized migrants’ day-to-day encounters with immigration officials and increases their risk of victimization while in US custody. As with other “offender-victims” (Sparks, 1982; Lauritsen, Sampson, & Laub, 1991), unauthorized migrants’ precarious immigration status places them at risk because, 1) they may be reluctant to report victimization, especially if committed by US officials, and 2) migrants’ claims of victimization may be discredited or not thoroughly investigated by US authorities. According to the Southern Border Communities Coalition, at least 50 people were killed and another 20 shot or seriously injured by US Customs and Border Protection (CPB) between January of 2010 and July of 2016 (SBCC, 2017). While some victims were US citizens or legal permanent residents, most were unauthorized immigrants. Several of these cases received national media attention, including the 2012 death of 16-year-old Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez who was shot in the back ten times and killed in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico, by a Border Patrol agent on the US side of the border (Planas, 2015; O’Dell, 2016) as well as the 2010 death of Anastasio Hernandez Rojas who was tased near San Diego, California, as he was being deported 491

Daniel E. Martínez

to Mexico. Agent Lonnie Schwartz, whose name was not released publically until two years after the shooting, has been charged with second-degree murder in Elena Rodriguez’s death and has pled “not guilty.” His trial was scheduled for February of 2017—nearly five years after Elena Rodriguez’s death (O’Dell, 2016). No one has been charged with the death of Hernandez Rojas (Foley, 2016). Aside from a few high-profile incidents, most cases of excessive use-of-force by CBP receive relatively little media attention beyond the local level and quickly fade from the public eye after a few weeks. Perhaps more problematic is that CBP appears to operate with impunity and behind a veil of secrecy. An investigation by the Arizona Republic determined that federal agents who use deadly force rarely, if ever, face “public repercussions, even in cases in which the justification for the shooting seem dubious” (Ortega & O’Dell, 2014, paragraph 4). The Arizona Republic’s investigation consisted of a review of “nearly 1,600 use-of-force cases by Customs and Border Protection between 2010 and May of 2012” as well as “documents relating to use-of-force deaths and use of firearms by agents since 2005” (O’Dell, 2016, paragraph 14). However, many of the documents released by the federal agency were heavily redacted, making it difficult to determine the circumstances of the incidents and whether use-of-force was justifiable. This raises serious concern regarding CBP’s transparency when investigating excessive use-of-force cases. A 2014 report by the American Immigration Council based on data acquired through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request supports the assertion that CBP operates with a high rate of impunity (Martínez, Cantor, & Ewing, 2014). The report, which was based on 809 formal complaints filed against Border Patrol agents between January 2009 and January 2012, found 58 percent of cases “resulted in ‘No Action Taken,’ while 40 percent of complaints were still being investigated when the Council received the data in response to the FOIA request” (Martínez, Cantor, & Ewing, 2014, p. 8). Complaints lodged against the agency included physical abuse, excessive use of force, verbal abuse, improper search, sexual abuse, and medical issues, with physical abuse (40 percent) and excessive use of force (38 percent) constituting the most prevalent types of complaints (Martínez, Cantor, & Ewing, 2014, p. 10). Among cases in which a formal decision was issued, 97 percent of complaints resulted in “No Action Taken,” and took 122 days on average to arrive at that decision (Martínez, Cantor, & Ewing, 2014, p. 1). CBP officials encounter hundreds-of-thousands of immigrants each year, so it is entirely possible that some cases of seemingly excessive use-of-force represent isolated incidents arising from extenuating circumstances where the use-of-force was justifiable. Nevertheless, several academic studies and reports by nongovernmental organizations over time have found that the physical and verbal abuse of immigrants while in US custody is quite prevalent and routine. For example, Phillips, Rodriguez, and Hagan (2002), interviewed 211 Salvadoran deportees during the fall of 1999 and spring of 2000 and found that 16 percent reported being physically abused (i.e., more physical coercion than handcuffs) when apprehended by US authorities. Drawing on a separate sample of 300 Salvadoran deportees two years later, Phillips, Hagan, and Rodriguez (2006), found that 16 percent experienced excessive use of force (i.e., non-justifiable) by US authorities when apprehended and 11 percent during detention. Furthermore, 25 percent experienced verbal abuse (racial slurs, specifically) when apprehended, and 26 percent during detention (Phillips, Hagan, and Rodriguez, 2006). A similar pattern seems to hold among unauthorized Mexican migrants. Based on a sample of 415 repatriated Mexican migrants surveyed between 2007 and 2009 in Nogales, Sonora, Martı´nez and colleagues (2017) found that 11 percent experienced physical abuse (e.g., being punched, kicked, slapped, or thrown to the ground) and 34 percent verbal abuse (e.g., racist, sexist, or homophobic slurs) when apprehended by US authorities. These findings are similar to those reported by the nongovernmental organization No More Deaths, which noted that 10 percent of Mexican deportees reported experiencing 492

Confronting the “war on immigration”

physical violence by US authorities (No More Deaths, 2011). A report by Slack and colleagues (2013) based on more than 1,100 surveys with repatriated migrants between 2009 and 2012 in five Mexican border cities and Mexico City observed similar patterns. Eleven percent of migrants surveyed reported physical abuse and 23 percent verbal abuse by authorities while in US custody (Slack et al., 2013; Martínez, Slack, & Heyman, 2013). Conservative estimates from these empirical studies would suggest that at least one-in-ten apprehended immigrants experience some form of physical abuse or excessive use of force while in US custody. However, the relatively low number of formal complaints officially filed to CBP each year, as reflected in Martínez, Cantor, and Ewing’s report, implies that immigrants may 1) not have access to the appropriate channels to file complaints, 2) not have the opportunity to file their grievances against their abusers while in custody, or 3) fear repercussion by US authorities for bringing their abuse to light. And even if they do report their abuse, the evidence suggests that few agents, if any, will held be accountable (Ortega & O’Dell, 2014; Martínez, Cantor, & Ewing, 2014). The lack of transparency and impunity with which agents of the State operate certainly stand out as powerful factors perpetuating the routine abuse of immigrants while in US custody. But the gross underreporting of migrant abuse may also be a function of what Spener (2009) describes as the “normalization of suffering” that migrants internalize during their northward journeys (pp. 226–227). Spener argues that the “normalization of suffering” is a direct function of the precarious living conditions and structural inequalities they experience in their communities of origin as well as “their socialization to specific gender norms of masculinity involving strength, toughness, and the ability to withstand pain and discomfort without complaint” (p. 227). Although Spener was referring to migrants’ possible negative experiences with coyotes, the same logic can be applied to their encounters with US authorities. As Spener notes, “the general situation of structural violence that constitutes their lived experiences can prepare migrants to ‘pardon’ all but the most egregious abuses committed against them by their coyotes” (2009, p. 227), and in this case, US authorities. In other words, hegemonic notions of masculinity coupled with a desire to improve the living conditions of one’s family may result in an understanding that one must endure pain and suffering throughout the migration process. The “normalization of suffering” articulated by Spener may certainly be illuminating in terms of why migrants may not report the abuse they experience at the hand of US authorities. But research conducted by Martínez and Slack (2013) offers yet another layer of understanding to this phenomenon. When they interviewed recently apprehended unauthorized immigrants about their experiences in federal court proceedings and detention, the authors noted that it was quite common for respondents to “justify” their criminal prosecution and detention by stating “‘We broke the law’. ‘We came illegally’” (2013, p. 545). It is possible that some unauthorized immigrants may internalize these labels and draw on them to “excuse” the various egregious human rights violations they experience at the hands of US authorities. Understanding routine migrant abuse through these lenses is not intended to rationalize their victimization. Rather, my intention is to highlight the ways in which migrant subjectivities as well as the power differentials between migrants and CBP officials structure migrants’ interactions with agents of the state and result in routine, underreported abuse. Collectively, the reliable findings across the aforementioned studies, which came from different samples collected across time, geography, and subpopulations, supports the assertion that the physical and verbal abuse of immigrants is a systematic problem relating to an ongoing punitive institutional culture rather than simply a consequence of a few rogue agents. Activist scholars and immigrant rights activists must continue to demand that CBP be more transparent in terms of not only how they are investigating cases of the use of deadly force, but also in terms of how 493

Daniel E. Martínez

they are handling complaints filed against their agents and whether or not immigrants have an opportunity to file complaints while in custody.

The increased criminalization of immigration Immigrants have long been scapegoated as being the source of various social ills in the United States, including crime (Lee, 2013). However, an extensive body of sociological research spanning several decades has largely negated the immigration-crime link in the US context (Ewing, Martínez, & Rumbaut, 2015). In fact, a meta-analysis of more than 50 research articles empirically testing the immigration-crime hypothesis found that the overall average immigration-crime association across these studies was negative, although somewhat weak (Ousey & Kubrin, 2017). However, other community-specific studies have demonstrated a relatively strong inverse relationship between immigration and crime such that an influx of immigrants to previously dilapidated neighborhoods has led to decreased crime rates, a phenomenon that scholars have described as the “immigrant revitalization hypothesis” (Lee & Martinez, 2002, p. 365; Martinez, Stowell, & Lee, 2010). Immigrants provide dilapidated neighborhoods with added social and financial capital, and neighborhoods with high concentrations of immigrants tend to also have high levels of employment relative to other communities. These factors are thought to increase and maintain high levels of collective efficacy, which has been shown to reduce crime rates (Sampson, Raudenbush, & Earls 1997). Despite the robust findings across studies consistently disproving the alleged immigration-crime link, the fallacy persists and continues to shape the way in which the United States has approached immigration control in the interior of the country as well as along the US–Mexico border.

Interior immigration enforcement Being unauthorized in the United States is not a criminal offense but rather an administrative violation. However, several notable pieces of legislation enacted in the wake of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the 9/11 terrorist attacks have led to the increased criminalization of immigration in the United States (Stumpf, 2006; Coleman, 2007). Among these policy changes are the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA), the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), and the 2001 USA PATRIOT Act. These legislative changes were largely made possible by the continued myth of immigrant criminality as well as a “moral panic” over potential future terrorist attacks and have resulted in notable negative consequences for immigrants in the United States. First, because immigration policy is a federal matter, immigration enforcement is the responsibility of federal authorities, not local law enforcement officials. Nevertheless, these policies have led to the devolution of immigration enforcement from the federal level to the local level (Coleman, 2007). Federal initiatives such as the 287(g) program, the Secure Communities program, and the Criminal Alien Program have facilitated the identification of unauthorized immigrants residing in the United States that come into contact with local authorities, leading to the arrest and removal of hundreds-of-thousands of immigrants stopped by local law enforcement agents for non-immigration-related matters over the past two decades, including minor traffic and drug offenses. Second, the 1996 laws and 2001 USA PATRIOT Act effectively blurred the lines between immigration law and criminal law by expanding the list of deportable offenses and “aggravated felonies,” which in some cases have been applied retroactively, by limiting judicial review in cases of immigration enforcement, and by allowing for the use of secret evidence under certain circumstances (Kanstroom, 2003; Welch, 2003; Coleman, 2007; Golash-Boza, 2015). Ultimately, these policies have resulted in 494

Confronting the “war on immigration”

substantial collateral damage by deporting millions of immigrants from the United States for relatively minor offenses and labeling them “criminal aliens.”

“Zero tolerance” along the US–Mexico Border Beginning in the late 2000s the US Department of Homeland Security enacted a “zero-tolerance” approach to unauthorized migration near the US–Mexico border. The goal of this zero-tolerance initiative has been to increase the criminal penalties associated with crossing the border without authorization and to ultimately deter immigrants from making subsequent crossing attempts. Until the mid-2000s, if an unauthorized Mexican migrant was caught crossing the border, they would have most likely been granted a “voluntary return” and sent back to Mexico, a process that does not carry notable legal repercussions. But Border Patrol has substantially decreased the use of voluntary returns in recent years in favor of orders of formal removal (i.e., deportation). If an immigrant attempts to return to the United States without authorization following a formal removal they can be charged with “illegal reentry” and sentenced to up to 20 years in prison, depending on prior criminal convictions. Moreover, the “zero-tolerance” initiative carries a multiplier effect in that each subsequent failed border crossing attempted is associated with an increasingly harsher penalty. The zero-tolerance initiative along the US–Mexico border has largely been driven by Operation Streamline as well as “fast-track” proceedings carried out in federal courts throughout the southwest. These programs systematically criminalize recent border crossers by charging and convicting them of “illegal entry,” which is a misdemeanor, or “illegal reentry,” which is a felony. Operation Streamline is a federal program that operates on a daily basis in the Tucson, Del Rio, and Laredo sectors of the Border Patrol. This program prosecutes up to 70 recent border crossers at a time for these federal immigration crimes. Although only three of Border Patrol’s nine sectors currently practice Operation Streamline, recent border crossers caught in other sectors can also be convicted of “illegal entry” or “illegal reentry” in federal courts on an individual basis through “fast-track” proceedings. Fast-track sentencing programs give federal prosecutors the ability to “offer a below-Guidelines sentence in exchange for a defendant’s prompt guilty plea and waiver of certain pretrial and post-conviction rights” (Gorman, 2010, p. 479). While fast-track sentencing may reduce the length of sentences associated with federal immigration crimes, it also ensures that district courts get through a higher caseload and secure more guilty pleas. In fact, Light, Lopez, and Gonzalez-Barrera (2014) found that “the number of offenders sentenced in federal courts more than doubled,” increasing from 36,564 in 1992 to 75,867 in 2012 (p. 4). Nearly half of this growth was attributed to “unlawful reentry convictions alone” (Light, Lopez, & Gonzalez-Barrera, 2014, p. 4). Operation Streamline and “fast-track” sentencing have also led to an overrepresentation of noncitizens in the US federal court system, with immigration crimes (i.e., illegal reentry and other immigration convictions) now constituting a much larger proportion of all federal convictions than in the past (Light, Lopez, & GonzalezBarrera, 2014). For instance, in 1992, less than 5 percent of all federal convictions were for immigration crimes (Light, Lopez, & Gonzalez-Barrera, 2014). As of 2015, federal immigration offenses accounted for 29 percent of all federal convictions, second only to drug convictions, which make up 32 percent of convictions (US Sentencing Commission, 2016).

Constructing immigrant criminality The Criminal Alien Program is a federal program that has expanded substantially since its inception in 1998 to include several other initiatives attempting to identify, apprehend, and remove 495

Daniel E. Martínez

“deportable” immigrants within the United States that come into contact with local law enforcement agents, including the Secure Communities Program and 287(g) (Cantor, Noferi, & Martinez, 2015). In fact, most immigrants removed from the U.S. interior are now done so through the Criminal Alien Program (Cantor, Noferi, & Martínez, 2015). Nevertheless, a report by Cantor, Noferi, and Martinez (2015) found that nearly 28 percent of immigrants removed through the Criminal Alien Program between 2010 and 2013 had not been convicted of a crime, while 43 percent had been convicted of relatively minor offenses such as federal immigration crimes, traffic violations, or drug offenses. Yet, these individuals were ultimately labeled “criminal aliens” and deported. Because the overwhelming majority of immigrants removed through the Criminal Alien Program have either not been convicted of a crime or have been convicted of non-serious, nonviolent offenses, some scholars have argued that the use of term “criminal alien” has amounted to a sleight of hand by the State to redefine what it means to be an unauthorized immigrant in the United States (Ewing, Martínez, & Rumbaut, 2015; Abrego et al., 2017). Clearly, the name of the Criminal Alien Program itself is quite misleading and further perpetuates the myth of immigrant criminality by naturalizing the link between immigrants and crime whenever the State touts its metrics of success focusing on the removal of so-called “criminal aliens” (Abrego et al., 2017). The Criminal Alien Program has played and continues to play a fundamental role in the criminalization of immigrants as a state project. As Turk (1969) argued nearly five decades ago, “criminalization” consists of the process of “assignment of criminal status to individuals (p. xi), which results in the production of criminality” and that “criminal status may be ascribed to persons because of real or fancied attributes, because of what they are rather than what they do, and justified by reference to real or imagined or fabricated behavior” (Lilly, Cullen, & Ball 2015, p. 184).

Conclusion The social problems stemming directly and indirectly from the “war on immigration” detailed in this chapter are often disregarded, overlooked, or discredited largely because the victims of these injustices are, 1) relatively powerless and pushed to the margins of the US, and 2) perceived as violators of immigration law and therefore implicit in their own criminalization and victimization. Not only do these factors allow for the routine mistreatment of unauthorized immigrants to continue unabated, but also remain important drivers of increasingly punitive immigration control policies that largely based on increased securitization, criminalization, and deportation. The reduction of structural inequality and the expansion of opportunity structures within immigrant sending-countries would go a long way in reducing the powerful factors that propel immigrants into the unauthorized migration stream. Nevertheless, doing this is easier said than done, especially as increased globalization has exacerbated—rather than reduced—global inequalities. Therefore addressing the root causes of unauthorized migration, which are largely economic and social, would require significant structural transformations at the global level that are largely beyond the control of any single nation-state. In the absence of major structural transformations in sending-countries, the social injustices discussed in this chapter could largely be reduced through sensible and comprehensive immigration reform in the United States that is not predicated upon increased border militarization, expanded immigration enforcement, and enhanced securitization. For instance, expanding legal migration channels to the United States would reduce immigrants’ reliance on human smugglers, limit unauthorized immigrants’ encounters with US authorities that have resulted in routine physical and verbal abuse, and decrease the number of people that are being labeled “criminal aliens” and subsequently removed from the country. In a similar vein, increasing transparency 496

Confronting the “war on immigration”

and accountability when it comes to immigration officials’ excessive use-of-force against immigrants while in US custody may help alleviate an institutionalized culture of routine abuse and mistreatment. But even these sensible policy changes seem far from possible in a current political context that has lamentably linked immigrants to crime, and border control to the war on terrorism. The so-called “war on immigration” continues to be the source of various social problems rather than the solution to said problems. Because of this, it is imperative that critical scholars continue to be vigilant of the dominant discourse framing the current immigration debate and call attention to the gross human rights violations that occur on a daily basis under the guise of the immigration control.

References Abrego, L., Coleman, M., Martinez, D. E., Menjivar, C., & Slack, J. (2017). Making immigrants into criminals: Social and legal processes of criminalization in the post-IIRIRA era. Journal on Migration and Human Security, 5(3), 694–715. Aguilera, M. B., & Massey, D. S. (2003). Social capital and the wages of Mexican migrants: New hypotheses and tests. Social Forces, 82(2), 671–701. Alba, R., & Nee, V. (2003). Remaking the American mainstream: Assimilation and contemporary America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Cantor, G., Noferi, M. L., & Martinez, D. E. (2015). Enforcement overdrive: A comprehensive assessment of ICE’s Criminal Alien Program. American Immigration Council Special Report, November. Carroll, R. (2016). ‘No amnesty’: Trump vows to deport millions during ‘first hour in office’. The Guardian. Retrieved from www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/01/donald-trump-vows-to-deportmillions-during-first-hour-in-office-in-hardline-speech. Coleman, M. (2007). Immigration geopolitics beyond the Mexico–US border. Antipode, 39(1), 54–76. DeKeseredy, W. S., & Dragiewicz, M. (Eds.). (2012). Handbook of critical criminology. Abingdon: Routledge. Donato, K. M., Wagner, B., & Patterson, E. (2008). The cat and mouse game at the Mexico-US border: Gendered patterns and recent shifts. International Migration Review, 42(2), 330–359. Ewing, W. A., Martínez, D. E., & Rumbaut, R. G. (2015). The criminalization of immigration in the United States. American Immigration Council Special Report, July. Fogarty, B. J. (2012). Local newspapers, house members, and source usage. The Social Science Journal, 49, 275–283. Foley, E. (2016). Family seeks justice at human rights panel for man who died after border patrol altercation. The Huffington Post. Available at: www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/anastasio-hernandezrojas-death-complaint_us_56fd4893e4b0daf53aeef92d. Fuentes, J., L’Esperance, H., Pérez, R., & White, C. (2007). Impacts of US immigration policies on migration behavior. Impacts of border enforcement on Mexican migration: The view from sending communities, 53–73. Gathmann, C. (2008). Effects of enforcement on illegal markets: Evidence from migrant smuggling along the southwestern border. Journal of Public Economics, 92(10), 1926–1941. Golash-Boza, T. M. (2015). Deported: Immigrant Policing, Disposable Labor and Global Capitalism. New York: New York University Press. Gorman, T. E. (2010). Fast-track sentencing disparity: Rereading Congressional intent to resolve the circuit split. University of Chicago Law Review, 77(1), 479–519. Kanstroom, D. (2003). Criminalizing the undocumented: Ironic boundaries of the post-September 11th Pale of Law. North Carolina Journal of International Law and Commercial Regulation, 29, 639. Kimball, A., Acosta, Y., Dames, R., Cornelius, W., Fitzgerald, D., & Fischer, P. L. (2007). Impacts of US immigration policies on migration behavior. Mayan Journeys: The New Migration from Yucatan to the United States, 91–114. Lauritsen, J. L., Sampson, R. J., & Laub, J. H. (1991). The Link between Offending and Victimization among Adolescents. Criminology, 29(2), 265–292. Lee, M. T. (2013). The need for social policies that support the revitalizing effects of immigration rather than law enforcement initiatives that assume disproportionate immigrant criminality. Criminology & Public Policy, 12(2), 277–282. Lee, M. T., & Martinez Jr, R. (2002). Social disorganization revisited: Mapping the recent immigration and black homicide relationship in northern Miami. Sociological Focus, 35(4), 363–380. 497

Daniel E. Martínez

Lee, J., Omri, R., & Preston, J. (2016). What are sanctuary cities? The New York Times. Retrieved from www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/09/02/us/sanctuary-cities.html?_r=0. Light, M. T., Lopez, M. H., & Gonzalez-Barrera, A. (2014). The rise of federal immigration crimes. Washington, DC: Pew Research Center. Retrieved from www.pewhispanic.org/2014/03/18/the-riseof-federal-immigration-crimes. Lilly, J. R., Cullen, F. T., & Ball, R. A. (2015). Criminological theory: Context and consequences. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. López-Castro, G. (1998). Coyotes and alien smuggling. Binational Study: Migration between Mexico and the United States, 3, 965–74. Luhby, T. (2016). Trump condemns sanctuary city cities, but what are they? CNN. Retrieved from www. cnn.com/2016/09/01/politics/sanctuary-cities-donald-trump. Martínez, D. E. (2016). Coyote use in an era of heightened border enforcement: New evidence from the Arizona-Sonora border. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 42(1), 103–119. Martínez, D. E., & Slack, J. (2013). What part of “illegal” don’t you understand? The social consequences of criminalizing unauthorized Mexican migrants in the United States. Social & Legal Studies, 22(4), 535–551. Martínez, D. E., Cantor, G., & Ewing, W. A. (2014). No action taken: Lack of CBP accountability in responding to complaints of abuse. American Immigration Council Special Report, May. Martínez, D. E., Slack, J., & Heyman, J. (2013). Migrant mistreatment while in US custody. Part I of bordering on criminal: The routine abuse of migrants in the removal system. American Immigration Council’s Immigration Policy Center. Reports, December. Martínez, D. E., Slack, J., Beyerlein, K., Vandervoet, P., Klingman, K., Molina, P., Manning, S., Burham, M., Walzak, K., Valencia, K., & Gamboa, L. (2017). The Migrant Border Crossing Study: A methodological overview of research along the Sonora–Arizona border. Population Studies, 71(2), 249–264. Martinez, R., Stowell, J. I., & Lee, M. T. (2010). Immigration and crime in an era of transformation: A longitudinal analysis of homicides in San Diego neighborhoods, 1980–2000. Criminology, 48(3), 797–829. Massey, D. S., & Garcia España, F. (1987). The social process of international migration. Science, 237, 733–739. Massey, D. S., Durand, J., & Malone, N. J. (2002). Beyond smoke and mirrors: Mexican immigration in an era of economic integration. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Massey, D. S., Arango, J., Hugo, G., Kouaouci, A., & Pellegrino, A. (2008). Worlds in motion: Understanding international migration at the end of the millennium. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Massey, D. S., Arango, J., Hugo, G., Kouaouci, A., Pellegrino, A., & Taylor, J. E. (1993). Theories of international migration: A review and appraisal. Population and Development Review, 431–466. Merton, R. K. (1938). Social structure and anomie. American Sociological Review, 3(5), 672–682. Michalowski, R. (2007). Border militarization and migrant suffering: A case of transnational social injury. Social Justice, 34(2), 62–76. Nevins, J., & Aizeki, M. (2008). Dying to live: A story of US immigration in an age of global apartheid. San Francisco, CA: City Lights Books. No More Deaths/No Más Muertes (2011). A culture of cruelty: Abuse and impunity in short-term US border patrol custody. Tucson, AZ: No More Deaths. O’Dell, R. (2016). Border patrol agent: ‘I shot and there’s someone dead in Mexico’. The Arizona Republic. Available at: www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/border-issues/2016/07/25/documentsborder-patrol-agent-charged-murder-not-assigned-fence-night/87525868/. O’Leary, A. O. (2009). The ABCs of migration costs: Assembling, bajadores, and coyotes. Migration Letters, 6(1), 27. Ortega, B., & O’Dell, R. (2014). Deadly border agent incidents cloaked in silence. The Arizona Republic. Available at: www.azcentral.com/story/news/arizona/2014/03/28/arizona-border-forcedeadly-incidents/7013023/. Ousey, G., & Kubrin, C. (2017). Are immigration and crime related? A meta-analysis. Annual Review of Criminology, 1, 1–22. Phillips, S., Hagan, J. M., & Rodriguez, N. (2006). Brutal borders? Examining the treatment of deportees during arrest and detention. Social Forces, 93–109. Phillips, S., Rodriguez, N., & Hagan, J. (2002). Brutality at the border? Use of force in the arrest of immigrants in the United States. International Journal of the Sociology of Law, 30(4), 285–306. Planas, R. (2015). Border patrol agent indicted in 2012 killing of Mexican teen. The Huffington Post. Available at: www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/border-patrol-indictment_us_56043561e4b0fde8b0d1a11e. 498

Confronting the “war on immigration”

Rodríguez, N. (1996). The battle for the border: notes on autonomous migration, transnational communities, and the state. Social Justice, 23(3), 21–37. Sampson, R. J., Raudenbush, S. W., & Earls, F. (1997). Neighborhoods and violent crime: A multilevel study of collective efficacy. Science, 277(5328), 918–924. Sanchez, G. (2015). Border crossings and human smuggling. New York: Routledge. Sanchez G. (2017). Critical perspectives on clandestine migration and facilitation: An overview of Migrant Smuggling Research. Journal on Migration and Human Security, 5(1), 9–27. Sanford, R., Martínez, D. E., & Weitzer, R. (2016). Framing human trafficking: A content analysis of recent US newspaper articles. Journal of Human Trafficking, 2(2), 139–155. Singer, A., & Massey, D. S. (1998). The social process of undocumented border crossing among Mexican migrants. International Migration Review, 561–592. Slack, J., & Campbell, H. (2016). On Narco-coyotaje: Illicit regimes and their impacts on the US–Mexico border. Antipode, 48(5), 1380–1399. Slack. J., & Martinez, D. (2016). “What makes a good smuggler? Customer satisfaction among undocumented migrants.” Conference paper, Critical Approaches to Irregular Migration Facilitation: Dismantling the Smuggler Narrative Conference, April 5–6. Florence: European University Institute. Slack, J., Martínez, D. E., Whiteford, S., & Peiffer, E. (2013). In the shadow of the wall: Family separation, immigration enforcement and security. Tucson, AZ: Center for Latin American Studies, University of Arizona. Southern Border Communities Coalition (SBCC) (2017). Border patrol abuse since 2010. Retrieved from http://southernborder.org/border-patrol-brutality-since-2010/. Sparks, R. F. (1982). Research on Victims of Crime. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. Spener, D. (2009). Clandestine crossings: Migrants and coyotes on the Texas–Mexico border. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Stumpf, J. P. (2006). The crimmigration crisis: Immigrants, crime, and sovereign power. American University Law Review, 56(2), 367–419. Sumption, M., & Papademetriou, D. G. (2013). Legal immigration policies for low-skilled foreign workers. Washington, DC: Migration Policy Institute. Telles, E. M., & Ortiz, V. (2008). Generations of exclusion: Mexican-Americans, assimilation, and race. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Tichenor, D. J. (2002). Dividing lines. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Turk, A. T. (1969). Criminality and legal order. Skokie, IL: Rand McNally. US Sentencing Commission. (2016). Overview of Federal Criminal Cases: Fiscal Year 2015, ed. U.S.S. Commission, 15. Washington, DC. Washington Post Staff (2015). Full text: Donald Trump announces a presidential bid. Washington Post. Retrieved from www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/06/16/full-text-donald-trumpannounces-a-presidential-bid/. Welch, M. (2003). Ironies of social control and the criminalization of immigrants. Crime, Law and Social Change, 39(4), 319–337. Wise, T. A. (2010). Agricultural dumping under NAFTA: Estimating the costs of U.S. agricultural policies to Mexican producers. Princeton, NJ: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Zhang, S. X. (2007). Chinese human smuggling organizations: Families, social networks and cultural imperatives. Redwood City, CA: Stanford University Press.

499

Index

Locators in italics refer to figures, and those in bold to tables. 9/11 attacks 213, 214, 436 abuse see child sexual abuse; image-based sex abuse; substance abuse; violence against women; woman abuse accountability: power of the state 274–5; private prisons 262, 263 activism: green criminology 128–9; left realism 34–5; police militarization 230, 230–1; queer criminology 97–8 administrative criminology, gangs 378–9 adolescents: juvenile justice systems 348, 351, 354–5; left realism 34; schools 351–2, 355, 458–9; see also child sexual abuse; girls’ violence advertising: green cultural criminology 136–7; greenwashing 135–6 affirmative postmodern criminology 156–7 affluence, trends in crime 22–3 Afghanistan war: criminality 204; democracy 67; interventions 214; picturing violence 402, 406–7; state crime 435, 436, 439 agriculture, rural criminology 394 amateur journalism 400 amateur sports 478 America see United States American Society of Criminology (ASC): critical criminology 6; feminist criminology 342; marginalization 7–8; prisoners 145; state crime 182; substance abuse 373; theoretical context 14 animal exploitation 169; critical explanations 175–7; future of 177–8; meaning of 169–71; scenarios 171–4; theoretical context 174–5 antifeminist backlash 334–5, 341–3; critical criminology 337–8; defining 335–7; extremism 340–1; intersectionality 338–40, 342; tactics 338 Anti-Flag 471–2 anti-immigration movement 428–9, 486–7, 496–7 Australia: child sexual abuse 318; confronting pornography 458, 458–9; green criminology

133; image-based sex abuse 286, 307–8, 310; left realism 31; masculinity 89; progressivism 5; queer criminology 100–1; rural crime 389–90; urban criminology 63–4 Awsumb, Clay Michael 472–3 backlash see antifeminist backlash back-talk interviews 288 Ball, Matthew 98 Barclay, E. 391 Bikini Atoll 207–9 biodiversity 125, 137–9 bodies: performance enhancement drugs 480, 481–2; photography 406; pornography 310–11; prisoners 261, 265; war criminology 206–8 Bonger, Willem: political economy 20–1; war criminology 202–4, 206–7, 209 borders: migration system 489–95; war criminology 206–7, 208 Bouhlel, Mohamed Lahouaiej 215, 217–18 boycotting: feminism 461; left realism 38 Britain see United Kingdom Brown, Sheila 399 Bush, George W. 436 business see corporations capital punishment see death row, power and accountability study capitalism: child sexual abuse 324–5; and criminology 1, 15; cultural criminology 109–10, 112–13; inequality 453; political economy 20–1; ultra-realism 45–6, 49, 50–1, 53; violence 447–9; war criminology 202–4 capitalist realism 45, 53 Carrington, Kerry 389–90 catastrophe theory 158–9 CC (Convict Criminology) group 146–9, 150–2 censorship, pornography 461–2 chaos theory 157–8

501

Index

Charleston shooting (2015) 234–5 Cherry, Elizabeth 174 Chicago: critical criminology 5; left realism 30; School of Criminology 33, 389 child sexual abuse 316; critical criminology 316–20; female offenders 359; future research 322–9; girls’ violence 350; theoretical context 320–2 child soldiering 418 children see adolescents; child sexual abuse; girls’ violence; juvenile justice systems civilizing process: disappearing crimes 24, 27–8; pornography 289 class: child sexual abuse 325; intimate partner violence 300; left realism 34; masculinity 87–8; neoliberal penality thesis 251; rural crime 389; southern criminology 61 classical perspectives, political economy 19, 20 climate change 124 cocaine 374–5 coercion: child soldiering 418; human trafficking 413–14; image-based sex abuse 307; private prisons 307 Cohen, Albert 32, 84 Cohen, Stanley: denial and normalization 437; folk devils 384; humanization 380; moral panics 108–9, 166–7, 398 colonialism: southern criminology 60–1, 63, 67; United States 432–3 color see racial context community policing: female offenders 362–4; police militarization 229–30 community-based initiatives, pornography 460–1 compensation, death row study 272–4 conflict see violence; violence against women; war Connell, Raewyn: masculinity 84, 91; southern criminology 57, 58 conservation 124–7 Conservative Classical Liberal Alliance (CCLA) 45, 47 constitutive criminology 159–60 consumerism: cultural criminology 113; forced labor 415; green criminology 121–2, 127; green cultural criminology 134–9; left realism 38 content analysis: child sexual abuse 323; cultural criminology 111–12 control theory: cultural criminology 108; disappearing crimes 27; political economy 22; violence 444 convict criminology 15, 143; CC group 146–9, 150–3; contemporary context 146–7; convict perspective 147; ethnography 146, 149; historical context 144–6; language 149–50; masculinity 91–2; meaning of 143–4; policy 150–2 corporations: crimes of the powerful 183–4; green criminology 121–2, 127; left realism 37–8;

502

private prisons 264–6, 267; state-corporate crime 122, 182 Coulibaly, Amedy 215–17 Court for Arbitration for Sport (CAS) 481–2 Cressey, Donald 373–4 crime decline narrative: political economy 23–8; ultra-realism 53–4 crime news: cultural criminology 109; media 399, 400–5; progressive retreatism 427 crime trends see trends in crime crimes of the powerful 180–1, 184–6; radical criminology 181–2; state crime 182–3, 428; symbolic nature of 182–4; Trump, Donald 186–8; white-collar crime 180–2 Criminal Alien Program 495–6 criminal justice hypotheses 23–4 criminal opportunities 22, 24, 26 criminalization: drugs 371; masculinity 91–3; migration 494–5; queer criminology 98–9 criminological closure 44–7 critical criminology: contemporary context 5–7; future of 7–8; historical context 4–5; meaning of 1–4; this edition 8–9 critical political economy 19; see also political economy critical realism 50–2 cultural context: confronting pornography 460–1; music 467–8, 469–70; police militarization 229; state crime 437–9 cultural criminology 15, 107–8; ‘big-bang of ’ 112; capitalism 109–10, 112–13; conflict 110; crime news 109; critical scholarship 109; future of 113–16; left realism 31–2, 34; masculinity 88–9; methodologies 110–12; progenitors 108; subcultural and interactionist theory 108–9; see also green cultural criminology cultural hardening, ultra-realism 54 Currie, Elliott: capitalism 1, 15–16; crime news 427; critical criminology 4, 7, 8; left realism 30–1, 32, 34, 38–9 Darwinism 34, 427 data see trends in crime datasaurs 2–3 death row, power and accountability study 269–75, 278 decline in crime narrative: political economy 23–8; ultra-realism 53–4 deindustrialization, masculinity 89 DeKeseredy, W. S.: left realism 33–4; militarism 203; rural criminology 389, 390–1 demographics: southern criminology 65; ultra-realism 54 denial: gangs 384–5; state crime 436–41 deprivation: gangs 380; left realism 32; violence 448, 449; see also poverty

Index

Dewey, John 239–40, 243 digital media 400–2; see also Internet Dines, Gail 281, 282, 455–6 discourse analysis: cultural criminology 111–12; postmodern criminology 158 discrimination: hate crime 240, 240–4, 242–3; queer criminology 100–1; violence against women 193, 197 dispersion effect, police militarization 227, 228–9 diversity: critical criminology 7–8; queer politics 97 Division on Critical Criminology (DCC) 5, 6 documentary making 401–2 documentary photography 403–5 domestic violence see intimate partner violence; violence against women Donnermeyer, J. F.: left realism 33–4; rural criminology 390, 391 doping in sport 428, 479–81 Dragiewicz, M. 33, 35, 287 drug war 227–8, 372, 373–4 drugs see substance abuse dualism: critical realism 52; feminist criminology 76 dynamic systems theory 157–8 eco-centrism 136–7 ecocide 123–4, 137–8 eco-global criminology 123; see also green criminology eco-horror films 133–4 eco-justice 123 ecology 122–4; see also green criminology economics, disappearing crimes 25–6 edgework, postmodern criminology 159 egocentrism 136–7 Eisenhower, President 264 Elias, Norbert 24 emancipation, feminism 77, 337–8, 350 empire, southern criminology 60–1, 63 empire, United States 432–7 empiricism 3, 50–1; see also ethnography employment see labor exploitation; work/life balance engagement see public engagement Engels, Friedrich 5, 20–1 Enlightenment 20 environmental crime: state level 59; Trump, Donald 187; types of 121–7 environmental criminology see green criminology environmental hypotheses, disappearing crimes 24–5 Ericson, Richard 398 ethical context: confronting pornography 458, 461; crimes of the powerful 186; cultural criminology 108–11, 113; image-based sex abuse

312–13; masculinity 87; picturing violence 399, 403–5; political economy 20–1, 23, 27–8; private prisons 261–3; species justice 124–7, 137–9; sport 477–8, 479, 480; ultra-realism 45, 47, 48–9, 51, 52–3; see also moral panics ethnography: convict criminology 146, 149; cultural criminology 110–12; gangs 381–2; masculinity 88–91 excessive force, policing 245 exonerations, death row study 269–75 exploitation, human trafficking 413–14 extremism, violent see terrorism eyewitness photography 407–8 family: confronting pornography 457–8; violence against women 194–7 farming, rural criminology 394 female offenders 358–9; community supervision 362–4; gangs 382; gender responsive services 364–5; justice system 361–2; pathways 359–61; rural criminology 391–2; see also girls’ violence femininity 74–5, 80, 84–5 feminism: left realism 33, 35–6, 50; pornography 285–7, 455–62; southern criminology 64–5, 66; see also antifeminist backlash feminist criminology 14; contemporary context 80–1; cultural criminology 114; future of 80–1; image-based sex abuse 310–12; liberal 77–9; Marxism 79; meaning of 7406; radical 78; socialism 79–80; typologies 76–7 Ferrell, J. 107, 111, 113, 465, 469, 472 film industry: documentary making 401–2; masculinity 88; nature 133–4; pornography 281–2, 458, 461 firearms 450 firms see corporations folk devils 383, 384 food, meat industry 176–7 food security, rural criminology 394 forced labor 415, 418 forced marriage 194–6 Foucault, Michel: child sexual abuse 320–1; sexuality 97 France, terrorism 215–18 Frazier, Alistair 381–2 free markets: privatization 267; United States 434 Funk, Rus 460, 461–2 Galtung, J. 206, 209 gangs 378, 384–5; administrative criminology 378–9; critical criminology 379–84; masculinity 87 gender: animal exploitation 171–2, 174; antifeminist backlash 337, 339–41; family 194–6; feminist criminology 74–5, 80–1; gangs 382; girls’ violence 349–51; homicide deaths 446; image-based sex abuse 308–9, 309–12;

503

Index

inclusivity 7–8; intimate partner violence 297–8; masculinity 90; music 466; pornography 455–62; queer identity 99–101; rural criminology 390–2; southern criminology 64–6; sports sex verification 481–2; and the state 192–4, 197–8; theoretical context 14; see also female offenders; femininity; feminism; masculinity; violence against women gender-based violence see violence against women Gibbs, J. C. 33, 35 Gini index 448–9 girls’ violence: case study 352–4; contemporary context 354–5; historical context 348–51; relabeling status offenses 351–2; see also female offenders global context: inequality 61; North/South divide 57–8, 60–1; see also southern criminology Global North 60–1 Global South see southern criminology global warming 124 globalization: human trafficking 416; imperialism 434–6; southern criminology 58 government see state green criminology 15, 120; critical vs mainstream 127–9; ecology 122–4; political economy 121–2; rural criminology 392; southern criminology 58; species justice 124–7; ultra-realism 54 green cultural criminology 132–3; consumption 134–9; nature ‘bites back’ 133–4 greenwashing 135–6 Gronau, Anna 456 gun ownership 450 habitat loss 126–7 Hall, Stuart 109, 398 Hamm, Mark 110, 111, 466 harm concept 47, 48, 49–50 hate crime 234–5, 246; direction of 243; expanding the frame 238–45, 242–3; extension 243–5; intention 240–2; rural criminology 167, 393–4; seeing 239–40; terminology 236–8 Hate Crime Statistics Act (HCSA) 236 health care: drug policy 371–2; female offenders 361–2 hedonism, green cultural criminology 134–5 hegemonic masculinity 84–5 heroin 371 Hogg, Russell 389–90 holography theory 160–1 homicide deaths 445–6 homosexuality see LGBTQ; queer criminology human trafficking 411–12; contemporary research 414–19; data 412–13; defining 412–14; future research 419–20; rural criminology 394; sex trafficking 74, 415, 416–18; women 166, 413 hypermasculinity 92–3

504

identity, queer criminology 99–101 image-based sex abuse 305; feminist criminology 310–12; future research 312–13; prevalence, nature and impacts 307–9; revenge porn 305–7; see also pornography immigration see migration imperialism, state crime 432–7 incarceration see prisons inclusivity: critical criminology 7–8; queer politics 97 indigenous communities: masculinity 92; rural crime 389–90; sexual assaults 92; southern criminology 63–4 inequality 1–2; antifeminist backlash 336–7; disappearing crimes 25–6; feminist criminology 77, 79–80; global context 61; left realism 32; masculinity 90; pornography 285–6; poverty 448–9; speciesism 125, 171–3, 175, 176–8; ultrarealism 48–9; and violence 448–53 institutional crime, masculinity 88 institutions: international crime 440–1; neoliberalism 253–4 interactionist theory 108–9 International Association of Athletics Federations’ (IAAF) 481–2 international crime: human trafficking 412–13, 415; legal institutions 440–1 internationalization, rural criminology 395 Internet: digital media 400–2; disappearing crimes 27; image-based sex abuse 305–9; pornography 283–5, 289–90; see also social media intersectionality: antifeminist backlash 338–40, 342; child sexual abuse 324–6; cultural criminology 114; feminist criminology 80–1; intimate partner violence 299–300; southern criminology 65; ultra-realism 44 intimate partner violence 295–6, 300–1; mandatory arrest 298–9; pornography 457; rape 296–7; women as perpetrators or victims 297–8; women of color 299–300; see also pornography; violence against women Iraq war: criminality 204; gender 192–3; masculinity 88; photography 402–3; state crime 435, 436, 439, 440, 469; terrorism 213, 214 Irwin, John 145 Islam: feminism 66; terrorism 213, 214–19 Islington Crime Survey 35–6 Jakobsen, H. 393 Jamieson, Ruth 201–2, 209–10 Jensen, Robert 281, 285, 288, 455, 456 journalism, participatory 400 juvenile justice systems 348, 351, 354–5 Katz, Jack 381, 457 Kauzlarich, David 180, 191, 209–10, 440, 466, 472–3

Index

King, Martin Luther 431 Kircheimer, O. 21, 250 Klein, J. 115, 459 Klein, N. 434, 439–40 knowledge: global context 57–8; music 467–8 Kouachi, Cherif 215–17 Kouachi, Said 215–17 Kramer, R. C. 209–10 labelling: convict criminology 144–5; cultural criminology 108; disappearing crimes 26; political economy 21; relabeling status offenses 351–2 labor exploitation (human trafficking) 414–16 laissez-faire, political economy 22–3 language: convict criminology 149–50; postmodern criminology 156, 158 Lea, J. 32–3, 34 lead poisoning theory 24 left realism 30–1; feminism 33, 35–6, 50; future of 38–9; inequality 3–4; policy and practice 36–8; political economy 21; research 35–6; roots of 31–2; rural criminology 389, 390, 391; theoretical context 32–5; ultra-realism 47 left wing see political left; progressivism Leftover Crack 470–1 legal context: animal exploitation 169–71; antifeminist backlash 339–40; child sexual abuse 319–20, 327–9; female offenders 358–62; forced marriage 195–6; international crime 440–1; migration 487, 491–5; performance enhancement drugs 479–81; queer criminology 98–102; rural criminology 389; war 469; World War II 433–4 legitimacy, private prisons 262, 263 LGBTQ: hate crime 244; inclusivity 97; intersectionality 80–1; masculinity 86; transgender prisoners 101–2; see also queer criminology liberal feminist criminology 77–9 Liberal Progressive Social Administration (LPSA) 45, 47 liberalism 43; see also neoliberalism; progressivism Liddle, M. 321 life-histories research 89–91 locality: gangs 381; postmodern criminology 160; rural criminology 395 McCleary, Richard 145 mainstream criminology see orthodox criminology Mannheim, H. 203, 204, 207 marginality: female offenders 359–60; gangs 380; girls’ violence 355; hate crime 242, 246; masculinity 90, 91, 92; prisoners 451; rural criminology 387; violence against women 299, 300–1

marketing see advertising markets, violence 447–8; see also capitalism; free markets; production marriage: forced 194–6; rape 296–7 Marshall Island, Bikini Atoll 207–9 Marxism: critical criminology 4–5; feminist criminology 79; political economy 20–1 masculinity: child sexual abuse 321–2; contemporary context 85–8; and crime 83–4; criminalization conundrum 91–3; ethnography 88–91; feminist criminology 74–5, 80; revenge porn 282–3; theoretical context 84–5 master-slave relations, ultra-realism 48–9 materialism, ultra-realism 52–3 Matthews, R. A. 34–5, 191 means, political economy 22, 27 measuring crime: disappearing crimes 23–8; left realism 35–6; political economy 22–8; see also trends in crime meat industry 176–7 media 398–400, 408; aftermath photography 405–8; child sexual abuse 320, 324–5, 326–7; cultural criminology 108–9; digital 400–2; masculinity 88; nature ‘bites back’ 133–4; picturing violence 398, 402–5; police militarization 222–3; Trump, Donald 186–8; violence against women 190; see also crime news; social media mental health: child sexual abuse 319, 323–4; female offenders 363 meritocracy 20 Merton, R. K. 20, 488 Messerschmidt, J. W.: child sexual abuse 321–2; feminism 79; masculinity 85, 88, 90 metropoles, southern criminology 58–9, 61–4 Mexico, migration 65–6, 489–91, 495 middle class: left realism 34; masculinity 88; neoliberal penality thesis 251; southern criminology 61 migration: abuse in custody 491–4; antiimmigration movement 428–9, 486–7, 496–7; constructing immigrant criminality 495–6; criminalization of 494–5; southern criminology 65–6; unauthorized 488–91 militarism: as concept 224; historical context 433–6; see also police militarization; war criminology militarization see police militarization; war criminology Miller, W. J. 191 Mills, C. W. 390 mobiles: image-based sex abuse 306–7; participatory journalism 400 modernization 59 monopoly capitalism 112

505

Index

moral panics 166–7; child sexual abuse 318–19, 326; cultural criminology 108–9; visual media 398–9; see also ethical context motivation: animal exploitation 170; disappearing crimes 26; political economy 21–2 music: case studies 470–3; and society 466–7; state crime 428, 465–6, 468–70; transformative 467–8, 474 narratives, cultural criminology 115–16 nation state see state National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP) 100 National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) 238, 241, 297 national security: progressive retreatism 427; terrorism 436 National Transgender Victimization Survey (NTVS) 99–100 nature, commodification of 121; see also environmental crime; green criminology neoliberalism: child sexual abuse 324–5; future of 255–7; institutions 253–4; neoliberal penality thesis 249–54, 256–7; southern criminology 67–9; state punitiveness 252–3; theoretical context 254–5; trends in crime 23; ultra-realism 43, 49, 53 neutralization: climate change 135; pornography 462 news see crime news Nibert, David 176 Nice attacks (2016) 217–18 normalization: antifeminist backlash 334–5; police militarization 222, 228; pornography 280, 284, 455–6; state crime 437–41; suffering in immigration system 493–4; violence against women 190, 195 nuclear weapons testing 207–10 Obama, Barack 436 objectivity: feminist criminology 76; gangs 379 objectless anxiety 53 oil, global supply chains 434–5 ontology, ultra-realism 45, 51 opportunities (criminal) 22, 24, 26 oppression: and the family 194–7; inequality 79; racial context 80–1; state crime 428, 431, 468 organ transplantation, human trafficking 419 organized crime: crimes of the powerful 180–1; southern criminology 62 orthodox criminology 3, 4; cultural criminology 107; and feminism 81; theoretical context 13 paedophilia 320–1; see also child sexual abuse parallax views 54–5 Paris attacks (2015) 215–17

506

parole, female offenders 362–3 participatory journalism 400 patriarchy: feminist criminology 75, 78; left realism 34, 41; pornography 456; southern criminology 66; ultra-realism 46–7 pelvic exams 361 penality: neoliberal penality thesis 249–54, 256–7; southern criminology 66–9; see also punishment performance and image enhancing drug (PIED) 483 performance enhancement drugs 428, 478, 479–81 pessimism 2, 427 phones: image-based sex abuse 306–7; participatory journalism 400 photography: picturing violence 402–5; visual media 405–8 physical violence see violence; war Pinker, S.: disappearing crimes 24–5, 27; violence 205 police militarization 222–3, 231–2; political and conceptual context 223–5, 224; problematic consequences of 228–31; rise of 226–8 policing: hate crime 235, 236–8, 242, 245; intimate partner violence 298–9; political economy 20, 23–8; queer criminology 99–100 policy 427–9; confronting pornography 455–62; convict criminology 150–2; left realism 36–8; prisons 450–1; progressivism 427–9; queer criminology 102–4; state crime 432–3, 436; substance abuse 370–1, 372–5; violence 428, 444–5, 447–53 political context: music 465–6, 470–3; police militarization 223–5 political economy: contemporary crime 21–3; criminological theory 20–1; critical 19; disappearing crimes 23–8; green criminology 121–2; policing 20, 23–8; theoretical context 13–14 political left: inequality 2; ultra-realism 43–4, 46–7, 48; see also left realism; progressivism political right 3; political economy 28; ultra-realism 46, 48, 51; see also neoliberalism population: prisons 144, 145, 150–1, 256, 261; rural criminology 167; southern criminology 65; ultra-realism 54 pornography 280, 290; censorship debate 461–2; children 323; community-based initiatives 460–1; feminism 285–7, 455–62; home and school 457–9; left realism 38; meaning of 280–5; new research directions 287–9; policy 428, 455–62; rape 281, 286; revenge porn 282–3, 305–7; see also image-based sex abuse positionality, green cultural criminology 134–5 positivism: critical criminology 3; political economy 20; ultra-realism 51

Index

post-Foucauldian approaches, child sexual abuse 317, 320–1 post-industrial violence 445–7 postmodern criminology 15; first wave 156–7; future of 161–2; green cultural criminology 137; second wave 157–60; third wave 160–1; zemiology 47–8 post-structuralism 44 poverty: disappearing crimes 25–6; forced marriage 195; human trafficking 416; inequality 448–9 power: animal exploitation 176; child sexual abuse 324–7; crimes of the powerful 183, 185; cultural criminology 114–15; feminist criminology 77–8; human trafficking 413–14; left realism 37–8; police militarization 230–1; war violence 205; see also crimes of the powerful power of the state 269, 275; accountability 274–5; post-exoneration remedies 272–4; stolen lives 270–1; victims 271–2 practitioners, criminology 4 Presdee, Mike 107, 112, 116 prisons: animal exploitation 173–4; convict criminology recommendations 150–2; death row exonerations study 269–75; female offenders 360–3; neoliberal penality thesis 249–54, 256–7; private 261–7; social policy 450–1; transgender people 101–2; trends in 427; see also convict criminology Private Finance Initiatives (PFI) 261 private prisons 261, 267; industrial complex 263–6; moral concerns 261–3 privatization 260–1; free markets 267; neoliberalism 252 probations, female offenders 362–3 production: green criminology 121; green cultural criminology 134–5; music 467; see also capitalism progressive retreatism, crime news 427 progressivism: animal rights 171, 172; critical criminology 5; left realism 36–7; policy 427–9; theoretical context 13, 15–16; ultra-realism 43–4 Propagandhi 471 prostitution see pornography; sex trafficking protest masculinity 85 protests: and music 465–6, 468; police militarization 230, 230–1; see also activism psychology, animal exploitation 174–5 public engagement: critical criminology 8; police militarization 228; privatization 260; state crime 437–9 Public Private Partnerships (PPP) 261 punishment: death row study 269–75; neoliberal penality thesis 249–54, 256–7; political economy 21; private prisons 262; southern criminology 66–9 punk music 466, 470–3

quantum theory 160–1 queer criminology 96; debating queer 97–8; legal system 98–102; need for 14; policy 102–4 Quinney, Richard 181 racial context: antifeminist backlash 338–41; child sexual abuse 325–6; critical criminology field 7–8; disappearing crimes 24–5; female offenders 360–1, 363–4; hate crime 234–5, 245, 246; homicide deaths 446; intimate partner violence 299–300; masculinity 86; pornography 281–2 radical criminology: contemporary context 6; crimes of the powerful 181–2; historical context 4–5; political economy 20 radical feminist criminology 78, 285, 287 radicalization: antifeminist backlash 340–1; terrorism 214–15 rape: intimate partner violence 296–7; pornography 281, 286; violence against women 190–1, 196–7 realism see critical realism; left realism; ultra-realism reciprocity, feminist criminology 76 re-entry to prison, female offenders 362–3 regulatory context see legal context rehabilitation: neoliberal penality thesis 250, 256; private prisons 263 relativism, ultra-realism 48; see also inequality religion see Islam Resoldered 472–3 restorative justice 67, 328 revenge porn 282–3, 305–7 right wing see political right rights: animal 169, 170–1; green criminology 128; prisoners 151 risk assessment, female offenders 364–5 Ristelhueber, Sophie 405 root causes: political economy 20–1, 26, 28; terrorism 219 Rothe, Dawn 180, 440 rural crime: intimate partner violence 300; pornography 282, 288 rural criminology: approaches 387–9; criticality 392–3; development of 389–92; future of 393–5; hate groups 167; locality 395 Rusche, G. 21, 250 Russell, Diana 286, 296 Sanders, C. 111 schools: girls’ violence 351–2, 355; pornography 458–9 Schwartz, Martin: critical criminology 13; left realism 33; rural criminology 390–1 science of police 20 Scott, J. 391 securitisation: migration system 489–91; national security 427, 436; ultra-realism 49–50

507

Index

Sedgwick, M. 213 selfies 310 sex roles 84; see also femininity; masculinity sex trafficking 74, 415, 416–18; see also pornography sexting 284, 307, 323; see also image-based sex abuse sexual crime see child sexual abuse; image-based sex abuse; intimate partner violence; pornography sexuality 97; see also queer criminology Shields, David 402–3 shifting community culture 461 ‘shock doctrine’ 434 slavery see human trafficking Smart, C. 319–20, 337–8 smart phones: image-based sex abuse 306–7; participatory journalism 400 Smith, Adam: political economy 19 smuggling persons see human trafficking social class see class social constructionism: gender 74; masculinity 84; ultra-realism 44 social disorganization theory 391, 392–3 social hypotheses, disappearing crimes 24–5 social justice: antifeminist backlash 335, 336–7; feminism 311; left realism 37; music 471, 472–3 social media: child sexual abuse 326–7; crime news 400, 401; left realism 34–5, 37; pornography 286–7; rural criminology 394–5 social movements: antifeminist backlash 338–9, 343; capitalism 453; feminist criminology 74, 75–6; music 465, 470, 473, 474; state crime 438–40 social policy see under policy social structures: animal exploitation 176; child sexual abuse 321; feminism 75; neoliberal penality thesis 250; ultra-realism 49, 51–2; violence 444; violence against women 191, 195, 197–8 socialist feminist criminology 79–80 sociology: animal exploitation 174; migration 491, 494; militarism 202–3; online abuse 289 Softer than Yesterday 474 southern criminology 57–8; gender 64–6; and Global North 60–1; metropoles 58–9, 61–4; punishment 66–9; theoretical context 58–60 special liberty 49, 52, 53, 54 species justice 124–7, 137–9; see also animal exploitation; green criminology speciesism 125, 171–3, 175, 176–8 sport: critical criminology 482–3; fair play 477–8; regulations 478–82; sex verification 481–2; substance abuse 428, 479–81 Stanford Environmental Law Society 137 state: cultural criminology 114–15; and gender 192–4, 197–8; green criminology 122, 128; left 508

realism 34; neoliberal penality thesis 252–3; southern criminology 59; see also power of the state state crime 166; crimes of the powerful 182, 428; denial and normalization 437–41; environmental crime 59; imperialism 432–7; music 428, 465–6, 468–70; United States 431–2; violence against women 191–4 state-corporate crime 122, 182 statistics see trends in crime storytelling see narratives strain theory 32, 219 street crime: crimes of the powerful 185; left realism 30–1; masculinity 86–7; violence 445–7; violence against women 196–7; see also gangs structural approaches: political economy 20; terrorism 219; war criminology 206, 208–9; see also social structures subcultural theory 108–9 subcultures, left realism 32–4 subjective hardening, ultra-realism 54 substance abuse 369–70; female offenders 363; historical context 371–2; policy 370–1, 372–5; rural criminology 391–2; sport 428, 479–81, 483; theoretical context 372–5; trafficking drugs 490; war on drugs 227–8, 372, 373–4 Sutherland, Edwin 84, 144, 181, 185 symbiotic relationships, crimes of the powerful 182–4 symbolic interactionism, animal exploitation 175 Tannenbaum, Frank 144 technology: green cultural criminology 134–5; image-based sex abuse 305, 311–13; music 467; pornography 289; rural criminology 394–5; see also Internet; media; social media teenagers see adolescents teenagers, left realism 34; see also schools terrorism 213–14, 219; antifeminist backlash 340–1; critical criminology 218–19; France 215–18; hate crime 234–5; national security 436; radicalization 214–15 theoretical context overview 13–16 theriocide 125–6; see also animal exploitation; green criminology topics, critical criminology overview 165–7 traditional criminology see orthodox criminology trafficking: drugs 490; rural criminology 394; see also human trafficking transcendental materialism 52–3 transgender prisoners 101–2; see also LGBTQ; queer criminology transgressive cultures 108, 110, 113–14 transnationalism 251 trauma: child sexual abuse 328, 359; death row study 271–2, 274; female offenders 359–60; girls’ violence 355; picturing violence 403, 404, 407; ultra-realism 48

Index

treadmill of production 121, 134–5 trends in crime: child sexual abuse 316–17; crime decline narrative 23–8, 53–4; female offenders 358–9; gangs 380–1; girls’ violence 348–51; hate crime 236–8, 237–8; homicide deaths 445–6; intimate partner violence 295–7; left realism 35–6; masculinity 83, 86–7; measuring crime 22–8, 35–6; neoliberal penality thesis 252–3; political economy 22–3; substance abuse 369–70; ultra-realism 51; violent crime 446–7 Trump, Donald: antifeminist backlash 334–5; crimes of the powerful 186–8; migration 486–7; repercussions 1; state crime 432 Turk, Austin 223 UK see United Kingdom ultra-realism: contemporary context 53–5; criminological closure 44–7; critical realism 50–2; theoretical context 14, 43–4; transcendental materialism 52–3; zemiology 47–50 The Union Blue 473 United Kingdom: critical criminology 5; gangs 383; image-based sex abuse 307; left realism 36–7 United States: death row study 269–75, 278; disappearing crimes 23–4; drug policy 371–2; hate crime 236–8, 237–8; imperialism 432–7; left realism 30; migration system 488–96; police militarization 222–3, 225, 229–32; private prisons 261; state crime 431–2, 436–41; Trump presidency 1, 186–8; violence 445–50, 446 United States critical criminology 5, 6 urban areas: normativity 394; southern criminology 58–9, 61–4 urban street gangs see gangs US see United States vagrancy laws 389 victimization: female offenders 360; feminist criminology 78–9; girls’ violence 349–51, 354; green criminology 127–8; pornography 287–8; power of the state 271–2; queer criminology 98–9, 100, 102, 103; southern criminology 64–5; violence 446; violence against women 193 victimology: animal exploitation 172–3; left realism 35 violence: aftermath photography 405–8; animal exploitation 169–78; conceptualising war violence 204–6; cultural criminology 112; hate crime definition 242; and inequality 448–53; masculinity 85–7; migration 491–3; policy 428, 444–5, 447–53; post-industrial 445–7; southern criminology 61–2; visual media 398, 399–400, 402–5; see also girls’ violence; terrorism; war

violence against women: animal exploitation 171–2; antifeminist backlash 337; family and oppression 194–7; hate crime 244; pelvic exams 361; pornography 281, 285–7; rape 190–1, 196–7, 296–7; state-perpetrated 165–6, 190–4, 197–8; war 192–3; see also intimate partner violence ‘violence divide’ 446 visual media: aftermath photography 405–8; cultural criminology 113–14; digital media 400–2; picturing violence 398, 402–5; see also image-based sex abuse; pornography von Clausewitz, Carl 204 Wacquant, Loïc 68, 250, 251 war: music 471–2, 474; state crime 469; violence against women 192–3; World War II 433–4 war criminology 201–2, 209–10; conceptualising war violence 204–6; contaminated borders 207–8; historical context 202–4; structural violence 206, 208–9; violence of militarism 206–7 war on drugs 227–8, 372, 373–4; see also substance abuse Washington Corrections Center for Women 174 welfare: female offenders 364–5; neoliberalism 254–5 white-collar crime 180–2; see also crimes of the powerful Winders, Bill 176 woman abuse: human trafficking 166, 413, 415, 415–18; music 466; pornography 285–7, 456, 457, 459–60; see also violence against women women’s studies: antifeminist backlash 342; origins 75; see also female offenders; feminism; girls’ violence Wood, Darryl 33, 389, 390 work/life balance 449 World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) 478, 479–80 World Bank, violence estimates 61–2 World Health Organization, intimate partner violence 295–6 World War II: state crime 203; trends in crime 24, 25; United States 264, 432, 433–4, 440; war criminology 207, 208 Young, Jock: cultural criminology 109, 113; gangs 380–1, 382; green cultural criminology 135; left realism 31–2, 32–3, 34; moral panics 398; rural criminology 390 youths see adolescents zemiology 47–50 zero-tolerance approaches: juvenile justice 352, 360; US–Mexico border 495 Zina offences 66

509