The Centre for Criminology at the ESC 2015 Conference

The 2015 annual conference of the European Society of Criminology (ESC) was held from 2-5 September in sunny Porto, Portugal. Several members of the Centre for Criminology attended and contributed to the conference as panel organisers, presenters, and chairs.

On Thursday, 3 September, Ines Hasselberg, postdoctoral research fellow and associate director of Border Criminologies, presented a paper entitled ‘Envisioning release: Foreign-national prisoners, return, and the management of sentence time.’ This presentation draws on data collected as part of Ines’s project, The Postcolonial Prison, to examine how the end of the sentence is envisioned and planned for by foreign national prisoners subject to deportation orders.

Departmental lecturer Ben Bradford presented a paper (co-authored with the University of Edinburgh’s Sarah Macqueen) entitled ‘Enhancing public trust and police legitimacy during road traffic encounters: Results from a randomized controlled trial in Scotland.’ This presentation outlines the process and pitfalls of replicating such a trial, and what the implications for future research and policy might be.

A paper by research associate Sharon Shalev, ‘In the belly of the beast: Researching solitary confinement,’ considers the uses, abuses, and consequences of solitary confinement practices, drawing on her previous work on supermax prisons in the US and segregation units across Europe, and on emerging findings from a recent research project carried out with the Prison Reform Trust in a number of prisons in the UK.

MPhil student Jasmina Arnez presented in a panel on juvenile justice interventions. Her paper, ‘Institutional responses to youth deviance and parenting styles: Exploring the lived experience of social class in criminological theory and practice,’ offers a theoretical framework to better conceptualize the balance between structure and agency when children and their parents cope with delinquency and try to negotiate new identities.

Ben also co-presented a paper with Jonathan Jackson (London School of Economics and Political Science), Sarah Macqueen (University of Edinburgh), and Mike Hough (University of Birkbeck, University of London) on ‘Truly free consent? On the nature of duty to obey.’ Drawing on data from a randomized controlled trail, the presentation makes the case that provided it is appropriately defined and measured, duty to obey can reasonably be seen as a constituent part of legitimacy.

Postdoctoral research fellow Julia Viebach presented her exciting new project, ‘Atrocity’s archives: Interrogating transitional justice through legal archival documents.’ The presentation proposes new ways of interrogating transitional justice mechanisms, particularly legal procedures, through archival narrative analysis, bringing together theoretical work on archives and cultural memory studies, and the literatures on transitional justice and international criminal law.

DPhil candidate Richard Martin’s paper, Policing human rights: What role does human rights play in how officers ‘do’ policing?,’ presents findings from extensive fieldwork across the Police Service of Northern Ireland, demonstrating how human rights are understood and engaged with by officers of various rank.

In a panel on ethnographic research in prisons, Ines also presented a paper on ‘Research access and the production of knowledge,’ which draws on her field research as part of a comparative study on the experiences of foreign-nationals in prisons in the UK and Portugal.

Sarah Turnbull, postdoctoral research fellow and associate director of Border Criminologies, presented a paper entitled ‘Making and remaking national identity in and through immigration detention and deportation in the United Kingdom.’ This paper draws on Sarah’s research, Home and Away, to examine the ways in which national identities are shaped and reshaped through the interconnected practices of detention and deportation in the UK.

On Friday, 4 September, Ben presented a paper on ‘Migration and trust in the police: Evidence from the Crime Survey of England and Wales.’ Drawing on data from the Crime Survey for England and Wales to explore the relationship between immigration and trust in the police, the findings suggest that trust is actually higher among immigrants than among the native born population, although there is important variation by date of first arrival.

Professor Ian Loader’s co-author Richard Sparks (University of Edinburgh) presented their paper, ‘Reasonable hopes? Criminology, democracy and penal politics.’ The presentation highlighted some resources that could contribute to the task of more hopeful, and less grim, form of analysis and engagement with contemporary penal politics.

Professor Carolyn Hoyle, with Mai Sato (University of Reading), presented ‘Responses to wrongfully convicted asylum seekers by the Criminal Cases Review Commission of England and Wales,’ which presents findings of a study focused on the decision making process within the CCRC for asylum cases.

On Saturday, 5 September, Sarah and Ines co-presented a paper entitled, ‘From prison to detention: The carceral trajectories of foreign national prisoners in the United Kingdom.’ This paper combines empirical data from both research projects (Home and Away and The Postcolonial Prison) to explore prisoners’ narratives of punishment as they face deportation from the UK.

The next Annual Conference of the ESC will take place in Münster, Germany, from 21 to 24 September 2016.