British Convict Criminology (BCC) was established in 2011 after a meeting between Andy Aresti (Westminster University), Rod Earle (The Open University) and Sacha Darke (Westminster University). It is similar to the original US convict criminology group but developed from the recognition that in the UK prison conditions, prison histories, prisoner experiences and universities are very different from those in the USA. As in the USA, convict criminology is based around the principle of combining lived experience of criminal justice with criminological analysis.

This website is dedicated to promoting that work and building support for convict criminology in Britain. The website includes information about what we do and where to find out more about convict criminology.

Prisons, criminology,convictions

A SHORT ESSAY ON CONVICT CRIMINOLOGY IN THE UK

Not so long ago, in the middle of the twentieth century, many criminologists

were saying that there wasn’t much of a future for prisons. In the 1940s

Hermann Mannheim, the UK’s most eminent criminologist, even suggested

“The days of the prison as a method for the mass treatment of law breakers

are largely over”. In the 1960s post-war optimism prompted another

professor, Norval Morris, toward more of the same: “It is confidently

predicted that before the end of the century the prison in its present form

will become extinct”.

Looking back now from the third decade of the 21st century it is clear

these criminologists could hardly have been more wrong. The number of

prisons has grown dramatically, and the number of people sent to prison

has vastly increased. This has been a global trend and one in which the UK

has been an enthusiastic leader, although no country on earth has

managed to keep pace with the United States when it comes to incarceration. The two states that like to think of themselves as leaders of the free world,

are carceral champions, prison addicts. e)

A practical approach to reducing imprisonment – demolishing prisons.

Within the three criminal justice jurisdictions of the UK, England and Wales is the largest

and has the highest rate of incarceration. From a prison population of just below 20,000

people at the beginning of the 20th century, the number of people in prison has risen by

over 400% to more than 85,000 people. More prisons and bigger prisons are being built

and planned. Courts are using longer and longer sentences. At the end of the 1968 there

were only 168 people in prison serving a sentence of more than 10 years. In 2019 there

were more than 18,500. You might want to read those last two sentences again.

For criminologists the only consolation is that as prisons have swelled and multiplied,

so has the discipline of criminology. From being a relatively marginal sociological specialism

for most of the post-war period in the UK, it is now the second most popular social science

option for undergraduates. Only psychology attracts more students. And today’s

criminologists are still trying to unwrap the enigma of the extraordinary growth of

imprisonment, so at odds with the confident predictions of an earlier generation. In 1970s

, the sociologist Laurie Taylor’s astute assessment that “as a group, criminologists look to

have a comfortable future… the demand for criminology seems assured” seems to have

been more ‘on the money’ than either Herman Mannheim or Norval Morris. At

universities, criminology is coining it.

However, for convict criminologists prisons are more than a fascinating and lucrative

academic paradox. They are part of our personal history, the life we have lived. This makes

our work difficult and different. And we must be careful. Prisons seem to thrive on new ideas

about how to make them better places and they feed hungrily on the alternatives reformers

propose. In the US, where convict criminology began and is growing strongly, formerly

incarcerated people are beginning to become more influential in the campaigns against

the US prison industrial complex. Here in the UK, something similar is happening and

some of the people associated with this website have contributed a chapter to the

new edition of the Oxford Handbook of Criminology. The chapter develops critical

arguments about the potential of convict criminology and lived experience of incarceration

to contribute to reducing imprisonment, widening criminology’s horizons and including

more people who have traditionally been excluded from our work, such as women and

racialised minorities in the UK. Due for publication in 2023, we look forward to helping

convict criminology grow and prisons shrink.

Get

The idea of convict criminology is to combine first hand experiences of criminal justice, and particularly imprisonment, with robust academic knowledge and research training. Implicit to this approach is the need to support students and emerging scholars to develop criminological accounts of such experience. Imprisonment is taken to be a particularly significant experience because prisons crystallise the various social features of the criminal justice system into its most powerful, recognisable and iconic form – the prison. Imprisonment is the end-point of all the social processes around which the criminal justice system and punitive morality condense.

Our published work expands on these principles to widen criminological horizons and include more of those people who have historically been excluded from the discipline.

publications

publications

Please feel free to contact us(see contacts page for details) or the authors for copies if any of the articles below are behind a paywall.

publications

publications

Dr Rod Earle

rod.earle@open.ac.uk

c/o Dr Rod Earle, School of Health Wellbeing and Social Care, The Open University, Milton Keynes MK7 6RR

(please note mail is not checked frequently)

Danica Darley

djmdarley1@sheffield.ac.uk

Danica Darley, Department of Sociological Studies, The University of Sheffield, Northumberland Road, Sheffield,

S10 2TU

@BritishConvict