Prison(er) Auto/biography, 'True Crime', and Teaching, Learning, and Research in Criminology

Abstract

The main aim of this essay is to explore prisoner life writing within the specific, richly and multiply dependent context of teaching and learning undergraduate criminology at an English university, from the authorial viewpoint of a teacher and her students as budding criminologists and coauthors. This article seeks to redress a continuing resistance to life history approaches in criminology, despite the discipline being formally devoted to the understanding of the meaning and experience of imprisonment in all its forms and consequences. What follows is a reflection on what students had to say on the fascinating subject of prisoner auto/biography and its place in popular and expert discourses on crime, criminality, and punishment, contextualised within the academic discipline of criminology. Imprisonment has emerged as a crucial theme in contemporary globalised society, whether considered in its practical manifestations as a punitive system for locking up increasing numbers of people, as a potent metaphor for what is widely regarded as the carceral society, or as a noumenal trope for exploring philosophical, political, moral, and/or cultural possibilities of freedom, creativity, self-expression, and transformation through the notion of confinement. 1 Across these diverse, shifting, and interweaving narrative constellations -and more -there is a vast and growing corpus of research literatures on imprisonment and (life) writing and their implications for individuals and societies from a range of historical, philosophical, sociological, cultural, legal-judicial, and/or other perspectives. A comprehensive review of the literature on prisoner life writing, an important

A pedagogy of ‘public criminology’ as a counter to marginality? Lessons for community sanctions and measures from the Pedagogy of the Oppressed

“…Neoliberal universities, particularly those with a research focus, privilege this ‘original’ research over other forms of engagement (Currie, 2007). A ‘hierarchy of credibility’ (Morgan, 1999: 330) affords greater epistemic value to ‘academic criminology’ at the expense of the ‘ordinary’ knowledge possessed by those with lived experience of the criminal justice system (Dearey et al, 2011). In Freire’s (1970/2017: 109) terms, the university has hardened ‘into a dominating “bureaucracy”‘, within which there is little room to widen audiences and deepen their understandings.…”

“…In Freire’s (1970/2017: 109) terms, the university has hardened ‘into a dominating “bureaucracy”‘, within which there is little room to widen audiences and deepen their understandings. Externally, where mainstream criminology largely attributes criminality to societal and environmental factors and advocates for rehabilitative approaches, it is typically presented within political and media spheres as the product of individual failings (Garland and Sparks, 2000). Such ‘popular’ discourses on crime have a greater impact on the public consciousness than academic criminology (Groombridge, 2007).…”

“…Here, a dialogic approach that brings together students and prisoners acts as a bridge between the academic knowledge of students and those with lived experience of the criminal justice system (Baumgartner, 2020). Dearey et al (2011: 87) demonstrate how narratives can be incorporated into teaching and learning practises through prison(er) life-writing, for they ‘challenge… extant academic culture and pedagogical/research praxes of criminology that typically ignore… “ordinary” knowledge’. An example of a pedagogy created with , rather than for , the oppressed (Freire, 1970/2017), prison life-writing provided students in the second year of their degree with cheap, accessible ‘datasets’ that broadened understandings of criminal motivations and gave them an opportunity to reflect on what was learned in their first year.…”

“…An example of a pedagogy created with , rather than for , the oppressed (Freire, 1970/2017), prison life-writing provided students in the second year of their degree with cheap, accessible ‘datasets’ that broadened understandings of criminal motivations and gave them an opportunity to reflect on what was learned in their first year. In this way, as a medium that is rich, descriptive, and evocative, they can be ‘a key pedagogical tool for enhancing teaching and learning’ (Dearey et al, 2011: 98). As Freire (1970/2017) observed, a more critical understanding of the oppressed is an important step in political transformation.…”

“…As an arena in which much contemporary debate on crime takes place, social media offers an avenue through which to actualise the ‘criminologist-as-journalist’ – for example, by asking students to communicate research or concepts in the 280 characters available to a Twitter user or 60 s explainer TikToks. Further, Channel 4 recently announced plans for a television channel dedicated entirely to the phenomenon of ‘True Crime’ (Bakare, 2021), a ‘genre foundational to popular or “everyday” explanations of crime in the… public imagination’ (Dearey et al, 2011: 90–91). True Crime, it can be argued, sensationalises crime, but has also driven the demand for criminology (Crepault, 2017).…”