Tony Bottoms talks about desistance in the Sheffield Study

Last week the Dutch Society for Criminology (NVK- Nederlandse Vereniging voor Kriminologie) held their annual conference and invited our own professor Sir Anthony Bottoms to give a keynote lecture on desistance. He gave an interesting presentation about results found with the Sheffield Desistance Study. People who are interested, can read an interview with him on the website of Crimelink, a magazine about crime and safety.

Distinctions and Distinctiveness in the Work of Prison Officers: Legitimacy and Authority Revisited

Tomorrow the Institute of Criminology’s 13th Annual Nigel Walker Lecture will be given by professor Alison Liebling

The purpose of this lecture is to provide a framework for thinking about the work of prison officers, and in particular, their relationships with prisoners. Drawing on important recent theoretical contributions to the policing literature, several empirical research projects on the work of prison officers and staff-prisoner relationships conducted by the author and colleagues, and various analyses of the quality of prison life as evaluated by prisoners, this lecture explores the ‘flow of power’ in prison through staff-prisoner relationships. It is a well-known maxim that relationships are ‘at the heart’ of prison life (Home Office 1984). In this lecture, I develop and illustrate this proposition, arguing that the moral quality of prison life is enacted by the attitudes and conduct of prison officers. There are important distinctions to be made in their work: between ‘good’ and ‘right’ relationships; ‘tragic’ and ‘cynical’ perspectives; ‘reassurance’ and ‘relational’ safety; ‘good’ and ‘bad’ confidence; and between ‘positive peer relations’ and ‘oppositional peer loyalty’. These cultural and philosophical distinctions are largely ‘unseen’ but decisive in shaping the prison’s moral and social climate. Failure to find the “ethical space” necessary for reflection on officers’ conceptual understandings, attitudes and practices, brings about serious organisational and operational risks, and threats to justice. The best prison officer work can be described using these kinds of distinctions.

Alison Liebling is Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice, and Director of the Prisons Research Centre, Institute of Criminology, University of Cambridge.


Wednesday 26th May 2010, 18.00-19.30 hrs

Venue: Institute of Criminology (Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge)

BOOKING ESSENTIAL

To book a seat please contact: Joanne Garner, Institute of Criminology, Sidgwick Avenue, Cambridge, CB3 9DA Tel: 01223 335360, Email: jf225@cam.ac.uk (When booking, please state if you have problems with mobility)

The Many Lives of Secret Police Files

Wednesday 28 April, 5pm - 6.30pm

DR CHRIS KAPLONSKI (University of Cambridge)

CRASSH, 17 Mill Lane

"The Many Lives of Secret Police Files: Repression, Rehabilitation and the Hermeneutics of Documents in Mongolia"

Dr Kaplonski examines the implications of the legal rehabilitation of victims of political repression from the socialist 1930s in contemporary, post‐socialist Mongolia.

In a span of about 18 months, approximately 5% of the population were convicted as counter‐revolutionaries or spies and executed, roughly half of whom were Buddhist monks. Since the collapse of socialism twenty years ago, the Mongolian state has initiated a process of rehabilitation for those repressed during the socialist period (1921‐1990). This process is contingent upon the existence of records of the original act of repression, and it is the implications of this contingency that will be explored.

In particular, the paper focuses upon the way documents are used to judge the fitness of a particular person for rehabilitation while simultaneously constructing the past they seek to document. There is a curious triple process taking place whereby the documents used to originally convict a person, and the descendants of the documents, are used to reinvestigate, reconstruct and overwrite the documentable past..

Informal discussion over wine and refreshments.

Podcast and video of Loic Wacquant talk

Loic Wacquant gave a talk at the LSE in October called 'Bringing the Penal State Back In,' and a video and audio version of this talk are now available on the LSE website. You can find the video here and the audio version here.