Developing Convict Criminology Beyond North America

Abstract

Despite its original vision of a community of ex-convict criminological and criminal justice experts, Convict Criminology has had difficulty with international expansion and has remained largely a North American movement. There are many reasons why this has occurred. This paper reviews the efforts that have been made to internationalize Convict Criminology in Europe and discusses some of the barriers it has faced. It also suggests prospects for moving the field forward in a truly international manner and the problems that this entails.2

Practicing Convict Criminology: Lessons Learned from British Academic Activism

“…Belknap's criticisms appeared to be exclusive to the US CC network, with little consideration of the contributions made by other convict criminologists outside of the US. Arguably, this is because as recently highlighted by Ross et al (2014) CC has remained largely a North American movement. And whilst CC's profile is developing internationally, it is still in its infancy and therefore any discussion or criticisms of CC or their work appear to be primarily, if not exclusively US focused.…”

“…Given this and the significant strides BCC has made since its inception, in terms of developing the CC perspective, evident in our growing membership, our consistent representation and 'voice' at major conferences in the UK and Europe, our growing publication list and engagement in various forms of activist work (see Aresti et al 2016;Darke and Aresti 2016;Ross et al 2014 for an overview) we feel we are well placed to respond to some of the issues raised by Belknap. In fact we believe it is critical that we do so for two reasons: first because there was little acknowledgment of the important contributions BBC has made to criminology here in the UK, other than a brief mention of Earle's (2014) work in a footnote; and second, although we are part of the wider CC network, and share the same underlying philosophy and critical orientation there are some significant differences between the US and UK in terms of criminal justice and academic criminology (Ross et al 2014: 124).…”

“…Since its inception it has steadily grown in numbers, currently peaking at around 100 'members'. We use the term 'members' loosely here as, importantly, like its North American counterpart, BCC has no formal constitution or membership, but has developed a constituency of interest and support among prisoners, prison workers, former prisoner academics (excons) and conventional academic criminologists (Ross et al 2014). All we ask of those that consider themselves to be members of BCC is that they self-identify as falling into one of four categories: prisoners or ex-cons studying in higher education (in criminology or cognate disciplines such as sociology, psychology, politics or law); academics involved in BCCs academic mentoring scheme for prisoner members or in a higher education program the authors are running at HMP Pentonville prison (in which we take a group of University of Westminster criminology students to study with prisoners); ex-con academics researching on prisons, and other academic prison researchers that take a convict criminology perspective, that is, research in collaboration with educated prisoners or former prisoners.…”

“…Moreover, we have forged strong links with non-governmental organizations-NGO's (voluntary sector/third sector organizations and activist groups) here in the UK, and are beginning to do so in other countries e.g. Norway and Italy (see Ross et al 2014). …”

“…The UK prison population currently stands at around 86,000 (MOJ 2015), which is only a fraction of the 2.2 million boasted by the US (ICPS 2015). Consequently, fewer people will have made the transition from prison to university, and of course this has obvious implications for the BCC network in terms of membership (Ross et al 2014). Amplifying this problem are current budget cuts within the CJS, and more specifically steep increases in higher education fees in 2012, alongside a barring of prisoners applying for student loans until they are within 6 years of their first potential date of release.…”