First Annual Emotion and Criminal Justice Conference 2016
The Community and Criminal Justice Division's Emotion and Criminal Justice Cluster successfully launched its first conference in 2016at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK on Thursday 18th February 2016.
We welcomed Dr Ben Crewe of University of Cambridge and Dr Charlotte Knight of De Montfort University as our keynote speakers along with a series of exciting workshops that reflected current research on emotion in the criminal justice context. We had 24 presentations from academics and researchers from a range of disciplines.
This conference brought together a range of scholars and practitioners with a passion for debate and interest in the developing field of emotion and criminal justice. Our exciting schedule drew upon national and international research and offered important additions to the debates about emotions in this sector.
Presentations included the following:
Chris Alcott: Confidence and legitimacy in the Police Service and the need for emotionally intelligent practitioners.
Traditionally the Police Service has recruited all Police Officers via the probationary Constable gateway, with that specific practitioner role in mind. Prior to the 1980s this role appeared to focus primarily on knowledge and understanding of legislation, policy and practice, with the vital application element being provided by existing experienced practitioners in the work place.
In the light of a number of serious case reviews (Scarman 1981 and later MacPherson 1999) government supported pressure was app
lied to the Police Service to ensure that practitioners, when making critical decisions not only considered greater community engagement and the relevant social context, but also their own attitudes and behaviours. The impact of this initiative is contended. REF
Over recent years, in response to further serious case reviews (Pilkington (et al)) and a change in the expectations and demands of the public, there has been a desire to move away from transactional policing practice towards a more transformational approach. The growing eminence of the need to demonstrate legitimacy and confidence (Myhill and Quinton) along with a more realistic understanding of the social terrain calls out for a better consideration by practitioners of their own values and level of emotional intelligence (Hochschild).
It is argued that the effective application of policy, procedure and practice cannot effectively take place without an appreciation of the specific needs, history and mores of individuals and the community, along with the social context in which the scene is set. This requires staff with the values, emotional intelligence and motivation/direction to appreciate and act on this information.
It is our contention that in order for the Police Service to develop to meet its recognised future challenges, it`s recruitment process needs to capture and appropriately respond to the values and level of emotional intelligence of candidates.
Sundari Anitha University of Lincoln. Affective discourses about violence and the self: Women’s narratives about transnational marriage abandonment
Transnational marriage abandonment (estimated to affect 25,000 women in India) takes place when a non-resident Indian man marries a woman settled in India, secures a dowry and returns to his country of residence but does not apply for a visa that would enable his wife to join him; or when a woman of Indian nationality residing in the West with her husband is deceptively/coercively abandoned in India with no money, passport or visa to rejoin her husband. The consequences for women include poverty, domestic violence from natal and affinal family, and infraction of their financial rights. Based on the narratives of 59 women who have experienced such abandonment we argue that in a context where women’s identity and social status are closely connected to marriage, such neglect, abuse and instrumental deprivation of rights results in range of ongoing harms. This paper will consider how such violence can be theorised utilising existing conceptualisations of violence against women and gendered geographies of power. Additionally, this paper explores how women’s accounts foreground affective dimensions of desire, the (thwarted) promise of happiness and narratives of suffering – particularly when set against legal constructions of abandonment by criminal justice practitioners and within legal documents drawn up on behalf of the women, where discrete acts of violence and dowry-related appropriation are given prominence in conformity to dominant legal scripts about domestic violence. Life history narratives allow us to understand women’s constructions of violence, their self and active process of the management of their identities within the interview context and beyond.
Estella Baker.Professor of European Criminal Law and Justice Punishment ;Sharing confidences in European (EU) criminal justice.
When it was founded in the 1950s the entity that we now know as the European Union had no criminal competence. This is no longer the case. Particularly since 1999, when it became a formal objective of the EU to maintain and develop itself as an "area of freedom, security and justice", the Union has become increasingly deeply involved in matters of criminal justice. There is no detectable sign that this state of affairs is liable to change in the foreseeable future.
The emergence of the Union as a criminal justice and penal actor raises a multitude of issues, of diverse kinds, which are susceptible to a rich variety of disciplinary approaches and analytical interpretations. Among them are questions to do with the nature of its profile and behaviour. This paper seeks to address these latter issues through the lens that is provided by Jack Barbalet's dissection of the emotion of confidence, which formed part of his seminal work Emotion, Social Theory, and Social Structure (Barbalet, 2001). In so doing it will also offer some passing reflections on the persuasiveness of that dissection itself.
Lucy Baldwin: Senior Lecturer In Criminology .De Montfort University. Emotions Confined: Recognizing the Importance ‘Motherhood’ adds to the layers of Complexity when Working with Mothers & Grandmothers in the Criminal Justice System.
Since 1995 the female prison population has doubled. In 1995 6,000 children were affected annually by maternal incarceration – in 2015 The Prison Reform Trust suggest this figure is closer to 18,000. Ergo 18000 children and on average 12000 mothers annually are all experiencing a plethora of emotions triggered by a separation that arguably neither would wish for but all are deeply affected by.
Research such as that of Hedderman (2004), Gelsthorpe & Worrall (2009) and the Corston report (2007) have proved invaluable and insightful in terms of understanding the ‘cost’ of imprisoning mothers, financially, psychologically and socially in relation to women and their children. Indeed valuable and influential research in relation to women and their lived experience of custody also exists, (Devlin 1998: Carlen 2004 : Padel 1988) Furthermore there is an ever growing strand of research in relation to Emotion and Criminal Justice (Jewkes 2012: Crawley 2011 :Crewe 2014 ) However there is little in published existence which brings Emotion, Mothers and their ‘voices’ and Criminal justice together.
This paper seeks to discuss the justification for exploring emotion related to mothering & criminal justice- how best it might be achieved and what value such research together with developed understanding might have in relation to working with Mothers in the Criminal Justice System.
Colette Barry, PhD Candidate .Dublin Institute of Technology ;Keeping up appearances? Exploring emotion management and performance among prison staff who have experienced a death in custody
The prison is an emotional work environment. Like other workplaces, prisons have their own rules delineating which emotions are acceptable (and unacceptable) to express, obliging staff to engage in continuing management of their emotional display. While there has been a welcome expansion in understanding of the emotional lives of prisoners, scholarly interest in the emotional experiences of prison staff has remained limited in comparison. Adopting a phenomenological approach, this paper explores emotion management and performance among prison officers who have experienced a prisoner death in custody. Particular focus is given to the role of occupational and institutional culture in shaping officers’ emotional responses in this context. Findings from a qualitative study comprising a series of in-depth narrative interviews with Irish prison officers who have experienced a prisoner death in custody will be reported. Officers’ emotional responses to prisoner fatalities will be explored through the lens of influential concepts developed by Hochschild (1983), Bolton (2005) and Korczynski (2003). The existence of ‘feeling rules’ in Irish prisons will be examined, analysing officers’ perspectives on and engagement with institutional and professional expectations governing the performance of emotion in the aftermath of a prisoner’s death. The significance of humour, empathy and detachment in officers’ emotional responses to prisoner fatalities will be presented. Emotion management following a death in custody will be examined in both an individual and collective context, with discussion focusing on issues of resilience, image, identity and place. Finally, implications of the research findings and suggestions for future research will be discussed.
Anne Bitsch PhD Research Fellow Centre for Gender Research Norway:- ”She could have been my daughter”: defence Lawyers’ Emotional and Narrative labour in Norwegian Rape Trials
Inspired by Erving Goffman’s (1959) work on performativity and Arlie Hochschild’s (2003) concept of emotional labour, this paper explores the role of defence lawyers in rape trials. In court, lawyers perform a dual role of sympathy broker (Schmitt & Clark, 2006) and storyteller, mobilizing narratives about gender, power and sexuality in front of an audience consisting of judges and a jury. In addition to looking after their client’s procedural rights and interests, lawyers often seek to convince the audience about the credibility of their client’s “story”. However, the narrative and emotional labour through which a defence is constructed is not performed in any uniform way across cases. Rather, defence lawyers are taking on different institutional selves (Holstein & Gubrium, 2001), which are case and context specific, and allow certain questions to be posed and others not. The paper seeks to develop a typology for ways of “doing defence lawyering”, and addresses the following research question: How is the defence lawyer role narratively and emotionally "performed" in various cases of rape, and what questions are regarded as legitimate to pose a rape victim in constructing a defence?
Allan Booth .University of Nottingham; Exploring the emotional responses between YJS case workers and young men offenders.
My research is an exploration of how Youth Offending Team case workers overcome the barriers to engagement enacted by young males who offend. This research is valuable because there is a lack of academic and practice literature that explains how to form and maintain working relationships with young offenders.
Methods: The aim of my research was to capture the lived experiences of the interactions between case workers and young males. To achieve this, a phenomenological strategy (Husserl) was used to explore what actually happens on the front-line of practice and how it happens. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews using Holstein & Gubrium’s Active Interviewing. Finally the transcribed interviews were analysed using Descriptive Phenomenological Analysis (Colazzi, Giorgi, etc.).
Results (preliminary and pending results also accepted): The analysis identified that barriers to engagement are prominent on both sides. However, more interestingly, there is interplay between both parties driven by actions and reactions. The result of this interplay is the creation a space that is important to both parties. In essence, they have mutually come together and created a new world formed on the basis of their own separate worlds. It is within this new world that all productive work is carried out between both parties.
Conclusion & Impact: The impact of this finding is pervasive in all forms of interaction between practitioners and service users. This is a novel way of describing the forming and maintaining relationships in terms of creating a “new world” through the fusion of the practitioner’s and the service user’s individual world.
Steve Christopher, Senior Lecturer in Policing and Criminology: TRANSITING FROM PRACTITIONER TO RESEARCHER – DOFFING THE HELMET
Having spent decades in practice, many professionals find the move into the world of academia challenging and problematic. Besides entering an unfamiliar milieu, the pedagogic demands of teaching and the pastoral care of students, there is the explicit academic expectation to engage with research. Prominent in the scholarly rite of passage (van Gennep, 1960) for the neophyte academic is embarking upon doctorate research and this paper considers the emotional and nuanced issues the passage from practitioner to researcher has held for one retired detective. Whilst criminal investigation and academic research may have many functional similarities, a career embedded in a deep occupational culture and practice cannot be shed overnight; the enduring emotional and cognitive imprint sub-consciously influences the debate around the research process. Transition to the academic milieu should witness certain re-alignment of attitudes, understandings and points of view; deep-rooted frames of reference should be transformed (Mezirow, 1991; Goffman, 1974). Alas, the endeavour for empirical rigour and objectivity may conflict with profound subjective perspectives, motives and desire for personal catharsis, causing internal discords and tensions. This turmoil of reflexivity (Hammersley and Atkinson, 2010) sees the student in a state of apprehensive liminality (Jewkes, 2005). These anxieties are the unintended reflexive and emotional consequences (Merton, 1936) that must be resolved to bring a balanced and independent perspective to the new role. Proactive critical reflection (Schon, 1983; Fook, 2006), is seen as one mechanism to ameliorate and facilitate emotional transformation. However, experience suggests it is difficult to completely eradicate ingrained culture and personal history cultivated over a lifetime of practice and experience - the helmet may be doffed but always held.
Professor Robert Canton .DE Montfort University : Punishment, Emotion and Metaphor
In trying to understand (and perhaps change) attitudes towards criminal punishment, the importance of emotion is increasingly being recognised. The more politicians insist that their policies are evidence-led, the more apparent it is that there are other – and perhaps more powerful - influences at work than a ‘rational’ analysis of the evidence. Arguably, insufficient attention to emotion has frustrated the ambitions of liberal penal reformers and is part of the explanation why penal policy often has perverse outcomes.
Yet while there is emerging scholarly agreement about the need to study this more rigorously, much discussion proceeds with an over-generalised conception of emotions. In this paper, an attempt will be made to identify some of the specific emotional reactions to wrong-doing that colour attitudes towards punishment. The argument will go on to explore the origins of these sentiments, how they have their effect and how liberal criminology might take this into account.
There will be particular attention to the use of metaphor in political and every day debate about punishment. Metaphor, which operates at both a cognitive and emotional level, is potent and all the more compelling because we are often unaware of the ways in which it engages and directs us. Some common and influential metaphors will be identified and examined. It will be concluded that the ways in which we speak about punishment are quite as important as the substance of our arguments and that we need new and fresher metaphors to help us.
Henrique Carvalho, University of Warwick. Anastasia Chamberlen, Birkbeck, University of London :Why Punishment Pleases: Towards an Affective Social Theory of Criminal Justice
The aim of this paper is to explore the emotional motives for punishment and, in doing so, to challenge its rationales and philosophical justifications. Drawing on a critical examination of Hume’s work, the paper proposes an alternative perspective through which to explore the social ‘urge’ to punish (Garland; Durkheim) along with the need to rationalise and justify punishment practices. It suggests that, by possessing a fundamental emotional dimension, punishment is intrinsically linked to issues of individual and political identity, arising from the way in which modern societies are imagined and experienced in everyday life. Within this framework, the paper goes on to consider how the ‘emotions of punishment’ can be deconstructed to challenge existing normative accounts of punishment and pave the way for a more ‘emotionally-grounded’ and phenomenological perspective on the study of contemporary criminal justice systems. Specifically, it explores the potential for a more ‘affective’ sociology of punishment, drawing on the epistemological, ontological and methodological implications of punishment being emotionally sought. The ultimate objective is to seek a trans-disciplinary means through which to investigate the psychosocial conditions that not only make punishment appear useful and necessary but also, in the process, invoke a problematic dialectic of pleasure and pain.
Anne L Eason .University of Worcester: A heart felt decision? Exploring emotional intelligence in police officer decision-making at domestic violence incidents
The very nature of domestic violence (DV) is encumbered with emotional implications, not least for the victim(s) and the perpetrator but also the police officer attending to deal with the situation. Thinking on their feet and drawing on their professional discretion, the officer is required to make ‘on-the-spot’ decisions to ensure the safety of the victim(s) and in dealing with the offender.
In July 2015 a pilot study was undertaken with Northants Police exploring how professional discretion is used when deciding the best approach to completing the DASH (Domestic Abuse Stalking and Honour-based Violence) risk assessment tool when attending a DV incident. Interestingly, it emerged that one of the strategies officers were using was the concept of emotional intelligence (EI) as a means to support decision-making. In particular, it highlighted how at times of crisis the use of EI impacted on their response and actions in relation to risk management and the continued support for the victim(s) and others.
This paper explores the concept of EI in relation to frontline policing of DV. It will present the findings of the pilot study and a further focus group discussion where police officers describe its use in adapting to the uniqueness of each situation in a ‘reflection-in-action’ (Schon, 1985) process. It will then evaluate the merit of its use as a means of contributing to effective frontline risk management and longer-term DV victim safety.
Joe Garrihy. PHD Candidate - University College Dublin;On a wing and a prayer: emotion work for first time prison researcher who’s researching emotion work for prison officers.
Emotional labour and emotion work are central features of prison research. However, those who pursue prison research often embark on their first research projects with little or no experience of being in the prison environment. Despite the welcome addition of recent publications, the emotional labour and emotion work necessary for prison research remains somewhat opaque for first time prison researchers. This is true for all areas of prison research but is more keenly felt when the focus of the research is occupational culture and identity for prison officers. In some respects, the first time prison researcher may envy the training received by prison officers or the strength of the occupational cultures in prescribing implicit or explicit techniques for employing emotional labour and emotion work. It is a crucial feature in prison work that receives direct attention in training and enculturation processes yet it remains neglected in preparing people for prison research. In contrast the first time prison researcher has little or usually no training in how to negotiate their emotional experience. Thus, how does the first time researcher develop their own techniques of emotion work while simultaneously analysing those of prison officers in the emotionally charged prison environment? This paper will draw on my ongoing research experiences in Irish prisons to offer insights into the dialectical relationship of researching occupational culture and identity, in which emotions are central, and the emotional labour and emotion work demanded of the first time researcher.
Dr Kate Gooch and Dr James Treadwell ; Birmingham City University .“Every Lad in Prison has got Scars” - Emotionality, Trauma and Prison Violence
Recently theoretical ultra-realist criminology has commenced a re-engagement and reconsideration of what might be the motivating factors that create and sustain violent male subjectivity (see, Winlow; 2014 Ellis, 2015). Much of this work, based on empirical and qualitative data has argued for a return to an individualistic ‘psychosocial criminology’ and called for a paradigmatic shift within the masculinities and crime literature from narrow consideration of facilitating ‘structures’ towards understanding individual psyches (Gadd and Jefferson, 2006).
This paper, based upon extensive empirical ethnographic research in one prison in England considers the everyday management of emotion in prison. It contends that while on one hand, emotional distress and trauma underpin many of the manifestations of male prison violence and victimisation, careful consideration ought to be given to how men’s projected demonstrations of stoicism and indefatigability in the context of prison serve to hide this. Its suggests that instead, a particular performative form of male corporality serves as both a proxy and a conduit for displacing emotional issues such as trauma, victimisation and loss. It therefore argues that the dominant projected transactional hyper-masculinity of the prison at a surface level is in actuality, often quite starkly in contrast with the real deep seated insecurities that often exist for many male prisoners at an emotional level. Moreover, rather than this being subconscious, many prisoners actually recognise this as part of the process and experience of imprisonment.
Dr. Faith Gordon Visiting Research Fellow School of Law, Queen’s University Belfast
Title: Representations of, and Responses to Youth: ‘Emotions’, ‘Discourses of evil’ and Criminal Justice Policy in a Transitioning Society
According to Cohen (1972) ‘the media have long operated as agents of moral indignation’, with their ‘reporting of certain “facts” … sufficient to generate concern, anxiety … or panic’. The media are central in transmitting to wider society, the ‘urgency’ and ‘moral concern’ presented by ‘moral entrepreneurs’, who gain support by framing their concerns via ‘a strong sense of righteousness’ and in whipping up ‘heightened emotion, fear, dread, anxiety, hostility’ (Goode and Ben-Yehuda, 2009). A recurring feature of ‘moral panics’ is the amplification of issues to such a level that only punitive, swift and tough policies appear to be the best response. Critical criminological studies have demonstrated through case material how the ‘emotions’ of ‘fear’ and the discourse of ‘evil’, play out in decisions to police, to prosecute, to monitor, to establish guilt and to sentence (for example: Young, 1971; Cohen, 1972; Hall et al., 1978; Scraton, 2007). This paper will closely engage with Walby and Spencer’s (2011) argument the while the literature on ‘moral panics’ is ‘filled with references to emotion (e.g. anxiety, outrage, fear, anger, hostility)… emotion is rarely granted analytical attention’. In doing so, this paper draws on a case study of what was framed in media and political discourse as youth ‘orchestration’ of, and involvement in, ‘sectarian rioting’ in Northern Ireland. Within a contextual media analysis it explores how ‘fear’ was mobilised to represent children and young people as ‘dragging’ communities ‘back through the horrors of the past’. Within this climate of hostility, it considers the PSNI's decision within ‘Operation Exposure’, to publish photographs of children wanted for questioning as an egregious breach of the UN Convention on the Right of the Child. It proposes that this decision ignored the UN Committee’s previous criticisms of the UK State Party’s approach to ‘naming and shaming’ children while compromising the safety of children within their communities.
Dr Victoria Knight and Christopher Stamper - An Evaluation of The Letter Writing Method in Prison Research: Accessing Emotive Dimensions to Prison Life
Letter writing, is something most of our serving prisoners do. There is a great deal of pride and emphasis placed on the value of letters within the prisoner community. Reasons for this are extensive. Principally prisons are communication poor environments and reasonable and relatively modern mediums of communication (telephone and email) are highly restricted and controlled (Knight 2012). The letter, however, remains relatively free from intervention by the prison and thus prisoners use the letter as an escape from these kinds of control. Moreover, prisoners, unlike many people in open society, have lots of unstructured time on their hands and thus the time to write. The psychosocial benefits are extensive, but these remain unreported and anecdotal. Coupled with the value that prisoners place on letters, accessing and doing research in prison is challenging. Costs and resources to support researcher access to the prison space are extensive and so to conduct research in prisons can be disruptive and costly. At the same time social research in prisons is shrinking and is being eclipsed (Wacquant 2002) by ‘big data’ and ‘what works’ projects. As a result smaller in-depth and richer studies about aspects of the prisoner experience are disappearing from view. This paper reports on a small evaluation of this method drawing on over two hundred letters from serving prisoners. It consider the methodological value of this technique in accessing the emotive dimensions of prison life.
Ben Laws .PhD Student at the University of Cambridge.Title: Emotion Regulation in Prison
Regulating emotion is a fundamental part of everyday functioning. Previous accounts of prison life have acknowledged the importance of emotion control, but have not considered insights from psychological literature that allow us to get more specific about how emotion is actually expressed and regulated in prison. I introduce Gross and Thompson's (2007) model of emotion regulation and data from my research in a medium security men's prison to show how we can develop our understanding of prisoner emotion. This can help us to go beyond dramaturgical metaphors of prison life and may have something to say about increasing the 'emotional survivability' of prisons.
Sinead O'Malley, Doctoral Researcher: UNESCO Child and Family Research Centre, National University of Ireland: The Mothers Project: A Prison Based Participatory Prison Research Project with Mothers in Prison in Ireland.
To date we have little to no data on women in prison in Ireland, and less on incarcerated mothers (O'Malley, 2015). Accordingly, women and mothers in prison remain a muted, stigmatised and vulnerable group immersed in systems and interventions predominantly delivered with men in mind which have little regard or focus for gendered informed responses or the children of incarcerated mothers (Baldwin, 2015; IPS/PS, 2014). The Mothers Research Project aims to address some if these issues and is built on a philosophy of meaningful participation with mothers in prison from the initial stages and for as long as it is considered important to them. It aims to uncover the profile of mothers in prison, and the care and visiting arrangements of their children. The second phase is a one to one interview using a single narrative inducing question in order to provide these mothers with the opportunity to tell their story about their experience of motherhood and their sense of separation from their children. However, in participatory research the initial phases start in the field long before any interview ever takes place (FIne, 2013; Martin, 2012).
This presentation will give an overview of the preparation phase and process of this participatory research project, peppered throughout with testimonies from incarcerated mothers about their involvement thus far. Being the first participatory policy research project to be embraced by the Irish Prison Service, it has experienced many joys but its complexities are continuous, particularly with managing expectations and self-care of all involved (the women, the prison service and the researcher). The continued involvement of the women has meant they believe in the project and have invested their hearts and minds within its process. Considering the extremely emotive topic of motherhood and that many of these women have limited contact with their children if any at all, inevitably rivers have been cried. But fun, laughter and a sense of pride and achievement has played a huge and important role too. This presentation will attempt to provide examples of such emotional contributions from all involved.
Dr Jake Phillips, Dr Chalen Westaby and Andrew Fowler. Department of Law and Criminology, Sheffield Hallam University. Emotional Labour In Criminal Justice.
In this paper we will present emerging findings from two pieces of research which use the concept of emotional labour in two separate but related areas of criminal justice and criminology.
The first considers probation practice in England and Wales through the lens of emotional labour. Emotional labour has been operationalised in a range of criminal justice institutions as a way of shedding light on the way in which practitioners manage their emotions in potentially difficult working conditions yet it has not been used in the context of probation. We argue that this is a significant gap in the application of this concept because the inherently relational nature of much probation work means that emotions play a considerable role in this arena. In presenting an analysis of data generated through semi-structured interviews with staff in the National Probation Service and Community Rehabilitation Companies we will address issues such as burnout, stress and low morale and, through the comparative element of the research, consider the implications of the Transforming Rehabilitation agenda on probation practice.
The second part of our presentation will present data generated through interviews with final year undergraduate criminology students who are undertaking placements in criminal justice institutions. The aim of the research is to consider the impact of a workshop focussing on the concept of emotional labour on Criminology students’ understanding of emotion management and the potential consequences of its performance within the criminal justice sector. The workshop aims to develop the student's knowledge of emotion labour and raise their awareness of the emotion management work required and the potential consequences and we will present data on whether this is the case or not. The research will highlight the ways in which academic teaching can support future practitioners, at an early stage in their careers, to work in professions which require extensive emotion management.
Joan Richardson: MMU Department of Sociology: Emotions and Judicial Decision Making: Innovations in Justice (early stage research)
Take two cases same Crown Court, same day. The first where a burglar commits sexual assault on a teacher whilst in bed, released with a community order. The second, a University student who hacks into computers to raise his grades, sent to prison. Described as ‘mockery of the justice system’ (Fricker, 2013) but what fuelled such a difference in approach? Did emotion contribute?
The point is we do not really know as empirical research on how judges’ make sentencing decisions and the role that emotions play is almost non-existent and under researched (Grossi, 2015) as if judges are immune to human experiences associated with exposure to emotionally charged stimuli (Fielding, 2013).
Yet it is judicial decision making which ultimately determines the route the offender will take in restitution for their crimes. Judges are expected to maintain neutrality disregarding their own emotions whilst at the same time utilising emotions [e.g. shame, remorse, compassion] to fulfil their sentencing obligations (Maroney & Gross, 2014).
Although regarded with high suspicion knowledge of emotion may provide new insights which challenge the conventional wisdom of penal incarceration, refresh community based interventions and suggest ways to modernise or ambitiously to improve aspects of judicial practice.
This research involves observation of over 100 judges and a proposal to interview judges who wish to contribute to theory creation. Using Grounded theory principles (Bowen, 2006) an embodied (Brown et al, 2011) and ‘meaning making’ approach (Godbold, 2013, Prosser, 2014) will encourage subjects and researcher to collabourate culminating in practical suggestions for future criminal justice policy and practice.
Kim Sadique. Senior Lecturer .De Montfort University. Fear Leads to Anger, Anger Leads to Hate: The Role of Emotion in Anti-Muslim Hate Crime
Whilst the incidents of hate crime in general are on the decrease, the numbers of anti-muslim hate crimes have risen significantly. Muslims are now more likely than any other minority group to be victims of religiously or racially motivated hate.This paper will explore the emotions of fear, anger and hatred as motivating factors and consequences of anti-muslim hate crime, through the voices of those who perpetrate such crimes and those who experience such victimisation.
Dr Hannah Thurston Lecturer in Criminology: University of Brighton. Fear, Vengeance and Closure; The Emotional Scripts of Punishment Stories
For some time now qualitative researchers have sought to understand the role emotionality plays in the cultural stories told about punishment. Indeed these stories are significant, because whilst capital punishment lives in the execution chamber and prisons exist within urban landscapes both the death penalty and incarceration also thrive in films, books, documentaries and news articles. It is here – in the cultural life of punishment – that we find complex narratives, images, symbols and performances, all of which come together to give punishment its meaning.
These stories can be dominated by a desire for vengeance, their scripts punctuated with hatred and anger. These stories can be narratives of pain, loss and despair, aligning us with the victim and their demands for closure. These stories can incite fear, terror even, focussing attention instead on future dangerousness and risk. In short, emotionality has long been a feature within penal and political discourse, but it also manifests within cultural representations of punishment. Emotions play a significant role in the cultural stories being told about the death penalty and about the prison.
This paper will thus begin by examining the narratives of closure, vengeance and fear in detail, illustrating how the triad of cultural sentencing rationales has developed within the stories told about punishment in America. Moreover, drawing on research undertaken in Texan punishment museums, the paper will then discuss the extent to which these emotion-narratives resonate in the Lone Star State, arguably the most punitive place in the westernised world.
Dr Jenna Ward, Dr Victoria Knight & Chris Stamper De Montfort University. TELEVISION: a fissure in the emotional architecture of prison life.
In-cell television is routinely constructed as evidence of the penal system going ‘soft’ on criminals. This paper explores the lived micro experiences of having access to and watching television as a prisoner in the UK. Using McQuail et al’s (1972) typology of media-person interactions as a guide we undertook a thematic micro-analysis of the reflective prose sent as letters to one of the research team. Following Jewkes (2002; 2005; 2007) we argue television plays a complex role in the emotional lives of prisoners by demonstrating that it can be both a source of both pleasure and pain. Television, we argue is a fissure in the emotional architecture of prison life, allowing prisoners to transcend the socio-cultural, spatial and temporal confines of the physical prison setting. In this way, television facilitates the experience of a broad spectrum of emotion, both positive and negative, that might otherwise be prohibited in the strictly regulated prison environment.
Aoife Watters Doctoral Candidate Institute of Criminology University College Dublin
Title: Does experience prepare you for research in prisons? From Professional Researcher to PhD Researcher
Prior to starting my PhD I had worked as a Researcher with the Inspector of Prisons in Ireland. I had significant research experience in prisons, had encountered numerous disturbing incidents and I had managed to cope with these in my capacity as a professional researcher.
Fast forward to a few years later when I started the empirical research for my PhD in four prisons in Ireland, 2 male and 2 female. Prior to entering the prisons I did not have the feelings of apprehension, of entering the unknown, not knowing what to expect or how I should react if something went wrong due to my previous experience in prison research. Such feelings are regularly acknowledged by novice prison researchers.
So why did I find that the research and research participants made emotional demands of me that I hadn’t anticipated? What changed from my time as a professional researcher? I propose to consider how, in some ways, my previous experience hindered me as a PhD researcher and left me somewhat ill-equipped to deal with the specific difficulties and emotional demands faced by a PhD prison researcher. I will then reflect on how this transition shaped my research in a positive way, I hope, and in the words of Ben Crewe ‘enabled a superior form of data collection’ (emotions as a resource) (Crewe, 2014).