Criminology and Socio-Legal Research Seminars 2009-2010
ALL WELCOME
Wednesday 21 April 4:00 – 5:30, University Place, 5.205
Professor Scott Decker, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Arizona State University, will deliver a seminar entitled ‘Drug Smugglers on Drug Smuggling’.
Abstract
This presentation will examine the process, organizational structure, motivations and risks of international drug smuggling. The study is based on a sample of thirty-four drug smugglers who were among the fifty most serious drug traffickers incarcerated in US prisons. They faced average prison sentences in excess of twenty years and on average were caught with more than 400 kilograms of cocaine. The organizational structure within which they worked resembled a loosely coupled series of nodes rather than a formal corporate structure. The risks they faced from enforcement as well as drug pirates are also discussed. The presentation ends with a discussion of what future drug smuggling patterns may resemble, particularly given the shift in drug trafficking from the Caribbean to Mexico.
Questions and discussion to follow.
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Wednesday 28 April 4:00 – 5:30, University Place, 4.204
Professor Shadd Maruna, School of Law, Queen’s University, Belfast, will deliver a seminar, entitled 'Thinking of Ex-Prisoner Reintegration as a Rite of Passage'
Anthropologists argue that there are some social and developmental transitions that simply cannot be experienced without the involvement of ritual and rites of passage. Ex-prisoner reintegration may be one of them. The punishment process involves an inordinate amount of ritual behavior, from the drama of the courtroom to the elaborate de-individuation processes involved in institutionalization. Yet, when it comes to reintegration, all such rituals are typically forgone and efforts are made to make the process as stealthy and private as possible. Yet, if “reintegration” is to be meaningful, it presumably involves more than just physical resettlement into society after incarceration, but also includes a symbolic element of moral inclusion involving forgiveness, redemption and reconciliation. It is argued that the process of successful reintegration involves a number of organic rituals. The talk concludes by exploring the policy implications of such a ritual analysis for prisoner resettlement work.
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Previous seminars this year:
Wednesday 21 October 4:00 - 5:00, University Place, Room 4.204.
Professor Nick Crossley, School of Social Sciences, University of Manchester, will speak about his research on covert social networks. His talk is entitled ‘The Dynamics of Covert Networks: the case of the UK Suffragettes’.
Wednesday 9 December 4:00 - 5:30, Council Chamber, Whitworth Building
Professor Ian Loader, Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford & Professor Richard Sparks, Edinburgh School of Law, will deliver a seminar entitled ‘Criminology’s Public Roles: A Drama in Six Acts’.
Abstract
The issue of criminology’s public roles has been receiving renewed interest of late, prompted in part by a worry that the recent expansion of the field has coincided with a waning of criminological influence on public debate and policy-making. In this presentation, we address some of the questions that this renewal of concern raises: what contribution can criminological knowledge make to shaping social responses to crime? What in a democratic polity is the public value of criminology? What collective good do we want criminological enquiry to promote? What modes intervention – and what institutional arrangements – can best realize that good? In an effort to answer these questions, we introduce the figure of the ‘democratic under-labourer’ and use it to promote and defend the idea that criminology’s overarching public purpose is to contribute to a better politics of crime and its regulation. In the drama that follows, the under-labourer is taken to task by adherents to other existing conceptions of criminological intervention in public life. In responding to each, the democratic under-labourer begins to make clear what it means for criminology to under-labour in the service of democracy and how criminology might best organize itself to perform that task.
Wednesday 7 April 4:00 – 5:30, University Place, 5.209
Max Travers, School of Sociology and Social Work, University of Tasmania, Australia, will deliver a seminar entitled ‘Sentencing in the Children’s Court: An Ethnographic Perspective’
Abstract
This paper presents some findings from an ethnographic study, based on observing hearings and interviewing practitioners in the Youth Division of the Magistrates’ Court in Hobart, Tasmania. The focus is not so much on political debates about youth justice, but on what hearings reveal about the practical work involved in sentencing. Although there is a large academic literature by jurists on the philosophical principles, and social scientists on the attitudinal and institutional factors shaping the decision, there have been few studies that examine what happens in the courtroom. This paper argues that one can learn a great deal about the collaborative nature of judicial work, the administrative side of decision-making (neglected by most studies) and the welfare values informing work in this court, through examining sentencing hearings.
Questions and discussion to follow.
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