HCNet online workshop

Registration open

#HCNet, The British Society of Criminology's Historical Criminology Network, is pleased to announce plans for a workshop which will be held online on 15 June 2020. Registration is open now and closes on Monday 1 June.

The workshop is designed to bring together scholars to initiate conversations around common interests or new directions for research in criminology, and follows an earlier call for ideas.

Interested participants are welcome irrespective of disciplinary or institutional affiliation; participants do not have to be existing members of the Historical Criminology Network or the British Society of Criminology.

Registration instructions, programme and information on each of the working groups is available to view and download below. All times refer to UK: GMT+1 (BST).

  

Public talk at Northumbria University

“13 yards off the big gate and 37 yards up the West Walls”: Crime scene investigation in mid-nineteenth-century Newcastle-upon-Tyne

#HCNet's last blogpost announced publication of an edited volume of essays, one of which will be represented at an upcoming public talk at the University of Northumbria.

Helen Rutherford and Clare Sandford-Couch will be sharing their research on the history of forensic investigation in Newcastle. They say:

“We have recently published on role of the uniformed police in crime detection in connection with a murder case in Newcastle in 1863, and are currently researching the role of the police in gathering evidence in a murder case from 1838. Our research into nineteenth-century policing in Newcastle indicates a level of sophistication in policing and a methodical, almost scientific, approach to crime scene analysis far earlier than has previously been appreciated.”

The talk will be held on 1st April 2020 at 3pm in Room CCE1 410. 

Network members may also be interested in a public lecture at Northumbria University by Professor Carole McCartney on 25th March 2020 titled 'The Forensic Science Paradox'. For more information visit the Northumbria University Events pages.

Forensic Ornithologist Roxie Collie S. Laybourne (1912-2003) identifying bird feathers (c) Smithsonian Institution via Flickr.

Recent publication featuring #HCNet authors

Crime and the Construction of Forensic Objectivity from 1850

The biennial British Crime Historians' Symposium is coming up in September and it's always a great place to hear about current research in Historical Criminology and network with others. At a past BCHS conference, #HCNet member Alison Adam, Professor of Science Technology and Society at Sheffield Hallam University, sowed the seeds of an idea which came to fruition last month as a published book.

Crime and the Construction of Forensic Objectivity from 1850 features twelve chapters, including an excellent introduction by Professor Adam which draws out the significance of the historical development of forensic knowledge to a variety of contexts. Two centuries, six countries and multiple disciplines are represented in the edited collection which is published by Palgrave MacMillan as part of their Histories of Policing, Punishment and Justice series.

Some of the chapters develop ideas presented at past BCHS conferences, while others introduce new subjects. Several #HCNet members are among the chapter authors, including Angela Sutton-Vane who won the Clive Emsley Prize for the best postgraduate paper at BCHS 2018.

A list of the book chapters and authors is included below.

The CFP deadline for the next BCHS is 8th April 2020. More about the event here. 


Contents

Crime and the Construction of Forensic Objectivity from 1850: Introduction
Alison Adam

Forensic Representations: Photographic, Spatial, Dental and Mathematical

Bodies in the Bed: English Crime Scene Photographs as Documentary Images
Amy Helen Bell

Murder in Miniature: Reconstructing the Crime Scene in the English Courtroom
Alexa Neale

The Biggar Murder: ‘A Triumph for Forensic Odontology’
Alison Adam

Making Forensic Evaluations: Forensic Objectivity in the Swedish Criminal Justice System
Corinna Kruse

The Professional Development of Forensic Investigation

The Police Surgeon, Medico-Legal Networks and Criminal Investigation in Victorian Scotland
Kelly-Ann Couzens

‘13 Yards Off the Big Gate and 37 Yards Up the West Walls’. Crime Scene Investigation in Mid-nineteenth Century Newcastle upon Tyne
Clare Sandford-Couch, Helen Rutherford

The Construction of Forensic Knowledge in Victorian Yorkshire: Dr Thomas Scattergood and His Casebooks, 1856–1897
Laura M. Sellers, Katherine D. Watson

Reporting Violent Death: Networks of Expertise and the Scottish Post-mortem
Nicholas Duvall

The Media and Ethics in Constructing Forensic Objectivity

Detecting the Murderess: Newspaper Representations of Women Convicted of Murder in New York City, London, and Ireland, 1880–1914
Rian Sutton, Lynsey Black

‘Children’s Lies’: The Weimar Press as Psychological Expert in Child Sex Abuse Trials
Heather Wolffram

Murder Cases, Trunks and the Entanglement of Ethics: The Preservation and Display of Scenes of Crime Material
Angela Sutton-Vane

Book cover (c) Palgrave Macmillan

The Uses of Historical Criminology: Guest posts

Replies to Churchill, Lawrence and Yeomans

Late last year, a thematic section of the journal Criminology & Criminal Justice was published on ‘The Uses of Historical Criminology: Explanation, Characterisation and Context’, featuring three articles by #HCNet members David Churchill, Paul Lawrence and Henry Yeomans. This was published along with a short post for the BSC blog, outlining the focus of the three articles and their contribution to developing work in historical criminology.

In two guest posts for this site, #HCNet members Tom Guiney and Vicky Nagy offer their reflections on the articles and on future directions for Historical Criminology more broadly:

• Historical criminology, theory building and the importance of social ontology
• Historical Criminology and Southern Criminology by Vicky Nagy

Further replies to the articles are welcome. Simply comment below or email us to submit a guest post to share your thoughts on these, or any publications relevant to Historical Criminology.

Historical Criminology and Southern Criminology

by Victoria Nagy, University of Tasmania

In a recent issue of Criminology and Criminal Justice the possibilities of historical criminology were well articulated by Henry Yeomans, David Churchill and Paul Lawrence. To see three articles devoted to the building of theory in historical criminology is gratifying; it is a benefit for those who champion it, and it speaks to those criminologists who may not yet be sold on the benefits of an anchoring in history.

This blog post isn’t a review of the three pieces per se but an addition to the conversation about historical criminology started so well by the thematic section in C&CJ. This involves bringing the Global South into the discussion. The uniqueness to the Global South is what is often missing in criminology and from the theorisations of historical criminology in C&CJ’s thematic issue.

Recently Australian, New Zealand, South American, South East Asian and South African criminologists have been turning attention to the questions of where knowledge is created, who it benefits, and how relevant it is to those living in the Global South. This new theoretical branch of criminology is termed Southern Criminology and employs southern theory (Connell 2007) to consider the power relations embedded in the production of criminological knowledge and how traditional criminology ‘privileges theories, assumptions and methods based largely on empirical specificities of the Global North’ (Carrington, Hogg and Sozzo 2016, 1). The aim of Southern Criminology is not to fragment the field further into those who do southern theory versus those who do not; rather it makes the argument that there is a need for a transnational criminology that is inclusive of the Global South (Carrington et al., 2016; Hogg, Scott and Sozzo 2017; Travers, 2019). As Carrington et al (2016) put it, it is about de-colonising and democratising criminological knowledge.

This leads us back to the articles in C&CJ. The discussions in this thematic issue read as very Global Northern-centric. This in and of itself is not a problem, and it is not surprising seeing as the social sciences as a field are dominated by the Global North: most publishing houses, journals, and conferences that direct how we think about and do social science are located either in the UK or the US (Graham, Hale and Stephens 2011; Carrington, Hogg, Sozzo and Walters 2019). The way in which criminology (and arguably history) has operated has also tended to assume that a relocation of theory was all that was needed, especially with countries such as Australia and New Zealand. For example, well-meaning reviewers have oftentimes outed themselves as not being from either Australia or New Zealand when requesting the use of British laws or examples that have no relevance to either southern colony but are considered fundamental if one views criminology just from a northern perspective.  This does not mean that Australian and New Zealand criminologists are immune from this. There is still a tendency for the theories generated in the North to be picked up and transplanted here in the South thereby ignoring the history and context of the south while evidence is procured to support of these northern theories (Connell, 2014; Carrington et al., 2016).

The history of the Global South is closely interwoven with the Global North. Churchill (2019) rightly points out that our discussions of history as stadial are limiting to how we can do historical research in criminology and there is a perfect example of this in practice. For both Australia and New Zealand, indeed for all of the Global South, history is not in the past but here and now for the people who were colonised by those in the Global North. History has bled into the present through the over-representation of indigenous people in our criminal justice systems. Intergenerational trauma originating from colonisation by the British plays no small role in the poverty, oppression and violence experienced by Australian Aboriginal communities today (Funston and Herring 2016). Discussing the flow of history must go beyond a discussion of flow of multiple dimensions past and present and consider the flow from north to south as well.

For those of us working in historical criminology, Lawrence’s (2019) argument that the past can be used to explain the present in a long-term fashion and that historical data can be an immense support to criminologists today is one we’d all agree with. However, how or what parts of the past are used is important to consider. The violence that was used to subject the rightful owners of these lands in the Global South to their colonisers did not appear in official records. Only the most egregious example of colonist violence appears in our social or legal records, and once the frontier wars in Australia came (somewhat) to an end in the early twentieth century that violence continued in acts such as the forceable removal of Aboriginal children from their families which led to the Stolen Generation in Australia and the intergenerational trauma mentioned above. It is only with mapping the effect of the frontier wars in Australia, for instance, that we’re starting to see emerge the level of devastation wrought on this country by colonisers. Dispossession, bloodshed, and genocide of indigenous peoples cannot be so easily translated or understood by criminology if we do not accommodate it in our data collection and analysis (Carrington et al 2016).

And finally, Yeomans (2019) makes a strong case for the creation of a more “historically sensitive criminology” (p.456) that is three-dimensional, but that cannot be done without understanding that the history of these colonised nations in the Global South is not settled, nor does it manifest in a way seen in UK, US or other northern criminologies. Arguably the Global North where the criminological theories were developed at a time of peace is not reflective of the experiences of many in the Global South who were at the same time experiencing genocide and struggling for democratic freedoms from colonisers or dictators, and these criminological theories presuppose that crime is an urban phenomenon where disorganisation was changing the face of the urban landscape with rural locations as “naturally cohesive” spaces (Carrington et al. 2016).

So what does this mean? It doesn’t mean that Southern Criminology is better than other criminology theories for those of us in the Global South but rather that we need to ask what can be done to ensure that the emerging branch of historical criminology and discussions of its theory is democratic and decolonised.

Historical criminology, theory building and the importance of social ontology

A (short) reply to Yeomans, Churchill and Lawrence by Thomas Guiney, Oxford Brookes University

In a recent thematic edition of Criminology & Criminal Justice (September 2019), Henry Yeomans, David Churchill and Paul Lawrence embark upon a welcome theoretical ground-clearing exercise intended to both demarcate, and elaborate upon, the emerging field of historical criminology.

A detailed review of these contributions is beyond the scope of this blog post. However, in a follow-up comment piece for the British Society of Criminology, the authors helpfully distil their position down to three cross-cutting propositions with regards to the value of historical research in criminology:

• First, that criminology is preoccupied with the present and new developments.
• Second, that the past is frequently presented in overly reductive terms in order to establish the novelty of the present.
• Third, that a long-term perspective can yield new insights on contemporary crime and justice.

When taken as a whole the authors express hope that the thematic edition will, ‘provide some foundations for more sustained engagement with historical approaches, perspectives and data in criminology, and thus help pave the way toward a more fully historical criminology.’

In this short reply, I want to suggest that while the authors make a very significant contribution to the first plank of this important project, they do not entirely succeed in their aspiration to promote a more fully historical criminology. 

By focusing almost exclusively on epistemological concerns – of definition, measurement and classification – the authors side-step a series of current debates in social ontology which animate, and give texture to, history, time and temporality in criminological perspective.

As I have argued elsewhere, the positions we occupy within the structure and agency debate, the relative merits of materialism and idealism or the extent to which a distinction can, and should, be made between the ‘appearance’ and ‘reality’ of things continue to do much of the conceptual heavy lifting within accounts of crime and criminal justice (Guiney, 2018).

By downplaying these areas of contestation in the pursuit of a cleaner inter-disciplinary exchange, my worry is that we risk inadvertently collapsing historical criminology into history. That we lose sight of what is distinctive and complimentary about the criminological scholarship.

This would be a misstep in my view. As Sewell has argued theory building ‘has a strikingly less central place in history than in the social science disciplines’ (Sewell, 2006: 3) and criminology – a ‘rendezvous discipline’ with a longstanding tradition of theoretical exchange and methodological innovation – can greatly enrich both the ‘how’ and the ‘why’ of crime and criminal justice. 

While we may agree that a ‘three-dimensional criminology’ should attend to the linkages between questions, forms and functions (Yeomans, 2019: 467), these analytical choices surely present a series of parallel ontological considerations. Agent-centred accounts of political elites and grass-roots activism may be well calibrated to the rhythm(s) of everyday life, but institutional norms and social structures often come into focus when societal change is located within a broader historical perspective.

There may be very good reasons to reject a ‘stadial’ view of history, which reduces social change to a series of transitions from one settled stage of human development to another (Churchill, 2019: 478). But does this not demand some critical engagement with the forces which mediate the continuities and dislocations of a pluralized conception of historical temporality? Should historical criminologists focus their analytical gaze upon the genius of those who seem able to bend history to their will, or seek out the invisible hand of shifting material interests?

If long time-frame analysis over several centuries is ‘the only robust means by which to evaluate the potential of the past to help explain the present’ (Lawrence, 2019: 494) does this not imply that historians have access to a deeper, or more complete view of reality, than those who live through such events? If so, what is the nature of this reality and what general laws govern the long sweep of history – a civilizing process? Historical materialism? A whiggish belief in progress?

These lines of enquiry go largely unexplored. Yes, history matters. But a confident, reflexive and fully historical criminology is also one that embraces theory building and the inherent contradictions of social ontology.

SSHA 2020

Call for Papers

The Social Science History Association’s 2020 conference will be held in Washington, DC on November 19-22, 2020.  The conference website can be found at: http://ssha2020.ssha.org/

The Program Committee is eager to receive proposals for panels or individual papers on all aspects of social science history. They are especially interested in research that makes imaginative use of historical data and tools from the social sciences to analyze how politics, society, and the economy interact over time.  The full call for papers can be found here (opens PDF).

The Crime, Justice and the Law Network has also issued a call for papers attached below. Their Network Chair Glenn Svedin hopes for an extension but please note that the submission deadline is currently this Sunday, 16 February 2020.

  

  

Workshop invitation

Police, Justice, Crime and Punishment

Sergio Vaquero Martínez (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) and Foster Chamberlin (Boğaziçi University) invite #HCNet members to participate in a workshop they are organizing entitled “La administración de orden público en el mundo contemporáneo: policía, justicia, crimen y castigo” (The Administration of Public Order in the Contemporary World: Police, Justice, Crime and Punishment) at the 15th Conference of the Asociación de Historia Contemporánea (Association of Contemporary History) which will take place in Córdoba, Spain on 17-19 September 2020. The conference is entitled “La Historia habitada. Sujetos, procesos y retos de la Historia Contemporánea del siglo XXI" (Inhabited History: Subjects, Processes and Challenges of the Modern History of the 21st Century).

The working language of the session will be Spanish, although communications and interventions performed in the Spanish state’s co-official languages as well as in English, Portuguese, Italian or French are also welcome.

The workshop will be two-and-a-half hours in length. The deadline for proposals is January 31st, see the conference website for more information: http://congresoahcordoba2020.es/. If you have any questions about the content of the workshop, please contact the organisers using the links above.  

'Moriska bron, Cordoba, 1910' Sigurd Curman, Tekniska museet via Flickr

  

Conference: After Strangeways

The past, present and future of prisons

Thirty years to the day from the start of the protest at Strangeways Prison, a major conference is being held at Kings College's Strand Campus to discuss the past, present and future of prisons.

"The root causes of the protests lay in many years of unjust and abusive prison policies and practices that affected not just Strangeways, but the British prison system as a whole. The conference will consider the deep history of British prisons, using the Strangeways protests as a signal moment in a wider history of problematic and abusive institutions. 

Thirty years on, the dysfunctions and problems of the prison system that gave rise to the Strangeways protest are as pressing as ever. Indeed some would argue they are worse. Many prisons across Britain appear locked in a terminal spiral of decline and decay. The conference will take stock of the present state of prisons across the UK, and what current conditions say about British society and the way it treats some of the most vulnerable and marginalised groups. 

The conference will also look forward, at the potential futures of prisons. Do prisons protect prisoners and the wider society? If not, do we need to think differently about the meaning of protection and safety in the twenty-first century?Are prisons eternal and immutable institutions, destined forever to be a feature of British society? Is it possible to think about different futures, including ones where far fewer people are imprisoned, or where prisons are no longer a mainstay of our response to crime?"

For registration and a list of confirmed speakers go to the KCL event page.

Prison Jail Cell, free photo by Ichigo121212 via Pixabay

  

Conference: How did Thatcher’s Children Fare?

27 February 2020: The British Academy, Carlton Terrace, London

This Conference looks at the legacies of Thatcherism. Ranging across crime, social policy and politics, the conference will explore the continuing relevance of Thatcherism and what the research reveals about the study of legacies.

A draft programme is provided below. Anybody interested in attending must register directly with Steve Farrall, the conference organiser (s.farrall@derby.ac.uk).

  

  

Call for Chapters: Activism through the language of criminality

Historical perspectives on the criminalization of social and political engagement

Chapter abstracts are invited for a proposed book with the above title. The book will be proposed to Routledge and edited by Dr Valeria Vegh Weis (Buenos Aires University) and Prof. John Lea (Goldsmiths College London University) who say:

"Criminal justice and political and social activism have been systematically interrelated throughout history. The use of criminal law, criminal justice agencies and the mass media to define and prosecute political and social activism as 'criminal' has been a significant tool of powerful elites in the modern period. This collaborative book will aim to explore aspects of the criminalization of activism from the beginning of the 19th century through to the present. It will seek to reflect diverse perspectives on the issue..."

The deadline for chapter abstracts is 1 March 2020. More information can be found on the below Call for Chapters document or by emailing the editors:

valeriaveghweis@derecho.uba.ar
J.Lea@gold.ac.uk

  

  

Call For Papers: Murder and True Crime in the Media

Interdisciplinary conference at St. Mary's University, Twickenham

Proposals are invited for a free, one-day, interdisciplinary conference at St Mary’s University, Twickenham on Friday 29th May 2020 to explore 'Murder and True Crime in the Media'. Confirmed Keynote Speakers include Dr Sarah Moore and Dr Jane Monckton-Smith.

The full CFP can be found on the university website here. The CFP deadline is Friday 14th February 2020.

Papers are invited from a broad range of disciplines including Media, Film, Criminology, Sociology and Law. The CFP says:

"Through the consideration of murder in the press, documentaries, films and novels, this conference will interrogate the different representations of true crime and how these can contribute to important debates in contemporary culture and society. For instance, can analysis into victims shed light on the way that social groups are constructed in the media, and whether there is a process of selection occurring? How can the study of murder cases provide further insight into coercive control? How might the representations of crimes vary, from knife crime, organised crime, to the glamorisation or even celebrification of some serial killers? What are the ethical considerations when producing murder content and how do platforms such as podcasts and YouTube, pose issues of regulation?"

Please submit a maximum 500-word abstract by Friday 14th February 2020 to Dr Maria Mellins, maria.mellins@stmarys.ac.uk

© 'Filming of Mindhunter Season 2: News reporters in 1970s' by Can Pac Swire via Flickr CC-BY-NC-2.0

  

Call for Papers: British Society of Criminology Conference 2020

‘Criminology in an Age of Global Injustice(s)’ 

This year’s British Society of Criminology (BSC) Conference will take place at the University of Liverpool, from 7 to 10 July 2020. For more information about the conference visit the BSC Conference webpage.  

The call for papers deadline falls a little earlier than in previous years: 16 March. Members of all specialist networks of the BSC are encouraged to submit proposals for papers, panels and other kinds of session (author meets critics, roundtable discussions, etc.). #HCNet, the BSC Historical Criminology Network, is therefore asking members to please consider proposing historically-themed sessions for the Conference in 2020. 

At 2019's Conference in Lincoln, a stimulating roundtable discussion broadly on the theme of Historical Criminology was organised by #HCNet member Alex Tepperman and was very successful. Network Chair Dave Churchill is eager to re-create something similar this year, and asks anyone with ideas to get in touch with him. He is able to circulate suggestions or proposals through the network or guage interest from members on particular themes or topics. 

Email Dave at d.churchill@leeds.ac.uk

Add the Conference dates and CFP deadline reminder to your own Calendar via our Events page.

  

New publications

by Dr Louise Brangan

#HCNet Network member Louise Brangan has recently published two articles of interest to Historical Criminologists, one in the British Journal of Criminology and another in Theoretical Criminology.

Both articles are historical accounts of significantly under-researched periods in anglophone penal history, and both offer new analysis of how and why punishment transformed as it did in Ireland and Scotland, respectively.

Brangan L (2019) Pastoral penality in 1970s Ireland: Addressing the pains of imprisonment. Theoretical Criminology. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362480619843295

Brangan L (2019) Civilizing Imprisonment: The Limits of Scottish Penal Exceptionalism. British Journal of Criminology, 59 (4), pp. 780-799. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azy057

Don't forget to share your latest publications and related announcements by emailing historicalcriminology@gmail.com

If you come across an article you think relevant to Historical Criminology, you can also use the 'share article via email' option on the webpage and input our email address.

Printing press in 11 Shop, Elswick Works, Newcastle upon Tyne, September 1946 (c) Tyne & Wear Archives and Museums via Flickr (TWAM ref. 1027/5178)

  

#HCNet Workshop Event: Call for Ideas

Plans and Call for Ideas from #HCNet Chair

Following on from the highly successful #HCNet (Historical Criminology Network) Conference at the University of Plymouth in April 2019, plans are currently in formation for a dedicated #HCNet event this year. (A retrospective on the conference can be found here.) Following discussions among network members, the plan for this academic year is to hold a one-day workshop-style event, which will provide space for small(ish) groups to work together on a particular project or activity. The aim of the event is to bring together groups of people who don’t normally work together – possibly from across disciplines – to explore working toward some concrete goal. This could take a variety of forms.

Ideas for group objectives that have been suggested so far include:

• Pooling historical source materials/quantitiative data already collected individually to explore opportunities for combining datasets/analysing eixtsing material from new perspectives
• Scoping and workshopping new approaches to analysing data from digital source collections
• Scoping and workshopping unconventional, possibly inter-/cross-disciplinary research techniques and methods
• Scoping opportunities for comparative research on particular themes, pooling expertise from across periods and places
• Working to develop a new public engagement or ‘impact’ initiative, possibly pooling the insights from related pieces of research or complementary projects
• Comparing and refining teaching materials/course designs for modules in crime history, historical criminology or similar

#HCNet Chair Dave Churchill, who is coordinating the event as a whole, says:

Doubtless there are lots of other good ideas out there too. The important thing is for each group to have a fairly clear sense of its aims and some idea of what it hopes to get out of the day. With that in mind, we are looking at this stage to identify people interested in coordinating a group. So if you have an idea of something you might like to collaborate with others over, or something you’d like wider expertise to help develop, then please get in touch via email (d.churchill@leeds.ac.uk)

It doesn’t matter if the idea is very speculative or half-formed at this stage – and we are really keen to welcome ideas from people at all stages of their career, including postgrads and early career researchers. This is potentially a really good opportunity to work with new people and develop something of direct use in terms of our research, engagement and teaching plans and priorities. So please do get in touch, and share this invitation with anybody who might be interested in getting involved.

Further information on the event will be circulated once the workshop groups have been identified.

Please direct any queries/informal enquiries to Dave Churchill: d.churchill@leeds.ac.uk 

Replica of Thomas Edison's first lightbulb, (c) NPS (US National Parks Service)

  

British Crime Historians Symposium 2020: Call for Papers

2nd – 4th September 2020, Centre for Criminal Justice Studies, School of Law, University of Leeds

The British Crime Historians Symposium (BCHS) meets every two years to discuss and debate original historical research on all aspects of crime, policing, punishment, law, criminal justice and social regulation. Since the first meeting in 2008, the BCHS has become a leading academic forum in this broad and vibrant field of research.

The next conference is hosted by the Centre for Criminal Justice Studies in the School of Law, University of Leeds. Confirmed keynote speakers include Professor Louise Jackson (University of Edinburgh) and Professor Randolph Roth (The Ohio State University).

The conference welcomes proposals for papers, panels and other sessions concerned with the history of crime and criminal justice, especially (though not exclusively) in connection with Britain and its former colonies. Papers on all topics and periods within this broad remit are welcomed. Submissions are encouraged from researchers across a wide range of disciplines (including, but not limited to, history, criminology, law, socio-legal studies and sociology), and from postgraduate and early career researchers. Postgraduate presenters will be invited to submit their papers for the Clive Emsley Prize, awarded for the best postgraduate paper at the conference. (We posted about the winner of the 2018 prize here.)

Typically speakers will have 20 minutes to present their paper. Panels should each consist of three papers selected to illuminate an overarching topic, theme or issue, and organisers are encouraged to consider including postgraduate and early career researchers in their panels. Suggestions for alternative formats (roundtable sessions, source/method-based workshops, ‘author meets readers’ sessions, etc.) are welcome; please discuss any ideas with the conference organising committee in the first instance.

For individual paper proposals, please include: paper title; name(s) of author(s); institutional affiliation (if applicable); email address (of proposing author); paper abstract of no more than 250 words.

For panel proposals, please include full details (as outlined above) for each constituent paper, in addition to: panel title; name, institutional affiliation (if applicable) and email address of the panel organiser; abstract of the panel’s aims (no more than 150 words); name of panel chair (if nominating a specific chair).

The deadline for submission of proposals is Wednesday 8 April 2020. Please send proposals by email attachment to: bchs@leeds.ac.uk

The conference organising committee consists of: Roger Baxter (University of Sheffield); Eleanor Bland (University of Leeds); David Churchill (University of Leeds); Kisby Dickinson (University of Leeds); Elliott Keech (University of York); Henry Yeomans (University of Leeds).

Please direct any queries to: bchs@leeds.ac.uk

Typewriter belonging to Nathan Leopold Jr., part of the evidence against him and Richard Loeb for the murder of Robert Franks, Chicago, 1924. Chicago Tribune Historical Photo. 

  

Special Edition of the Prison Service Journal

‘Understanding from the Past’: 

A new edition of the Prison Service Journal has been published, edited by Alana Barton and Alyson Brown, advancing new historical perspectives on prisons, punishment and criminal justice in local, national and international contexts.

Made up of seven short articles, the issue covers a wide range of topics from prison planning and building, female prison reformers, prisoner suicides, drunkenness in prison, the experience of Suffragette prisoners and representations of prisoner uprisings in Hollywood films.

Contributors include Allan Brodie, Helen Elfleet, Thomas Guiney, Chris Holligan, Rhiannon Pickin, Craig Stafford and Alex Tepperman. The edition is available Open Access and can be downloaded here (links directly to PDF). 

  

Prison Service Journal No. 246 cover, cover photograph (c) Allan Brodie, Senior Investigator, Historic England.

Thematic Issue of Criminology and Criminal Justice

‘The Uses of Historical Criminology’ 

A thematic issue of Criminology and Criminal Justice has been published which presents three original articles on the uses of historical enquiry for criminology. The articles focus on the value of historical enquiry for contextualising, characterising and explaining contemporary issues in crime and criminal justice.

Common themes across the articles include the pitfalls of ‘presentism’ and ‘epocahlism’ in contemporary criminology and the importance of long-term historical perspectives. The contributors are David Churchill, Paul Lawrence and Henry Yeomans.

The issue can be accessed here. A short introduction to the issue is available Open Access via the British Society of Criminology blog at thebscblog.wordpress.com

A man wearing a magnifying glass... (1940) Åhlen & Åkerlund via IMS Vintage Photos via Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain).

Strategic Policing Review - Insights from Police History?

Call for expressions of interest

The Strategic Review of Policing in England and Wales – hosted by The Police Foundation – has recently issued a call for evidence. The Review has wide-ranging aims to consider the police mission, public expectations of the police, police capabilities and resources, the future of police service and accountability, cross-sector working and police funding. The current call for evidence covers four areas:

1. Understanding crime, threat and demand.
2. Understanding public and societal expectations.
3. Reconsidering the police mission and purpose.
4. Looking ahead.

The deadline for submission of evidence is 20 December 2019. Further information is available here.

Though oriented primarily to current issues and future developments, there is the opportunity to bring some longer-term historical perspectives to bear on these questions. Informal contact with those involved in the Review (via Twitter) indicates they are keen to put current events and debates in the context of historical examples/precursors. So, police historians – and others – this could be a good opportunity to feed some historical context into contemporary policing debates. Should we team up? Dave Churchill is trying to gauge interest – so get in touch with him (d.churchill@leeds.ac.uk) if you might have something to add. 

Bigg Market [inc. police box], Newcastle upon Tyne ca. 1970 by Laszlo Torday. Public Domain from Newcastle Libraries via Flickr. 

  

Public event in Cambridge this Thursday: 31 October 2019

‘A Poor Prospect Indeed: The State’s Disavowal of Child Abuse Victims in Youth Custody.’

A public seminar is taking place at the Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge this Thursday, 31 October 2019 at 5.30pm.


Caroline Lanskey and Ben Jarman say:

"Child abuse in youth custody in England and Wales has received an unprecedented degree of official attention in recent years. Historic allegations of abuse by staff in custodial institutions which held children are now being heard by the courts and by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA); some criminal trials have resulted in convictions. More recent allegations have also been investigated in institutions which hold children today. Two persistent questions these investigations prompt are why the victimisation of children in custody went unrecognised for so long, and why its victims have been denied any form of redress. Drawing on original documentary research, we aim to explain why and how state authorities in England and Wales failed to recognise the victimisation of children held in penal institutions between 1960 and 1990, and argue that this failure constitutes a disavowal of the state’s responsibility..."


For more information about this event and to be added to the mailing list for future seminars click here.

'Old dark brick wall 02' by Alexandre Boucher via Flickr.com CC BY 2.0