Cesare Lombroso 2.0 and the search for Shatner’s Bassoon

By Andrew Henley, Graduate Teaching Assistant in Criminology

This week the Mail Online brought us news of a German ‘neurologist’ who claims to have discovered a ‘dark patch’ at the front of the brain which is present in people with records for criminal violence. Dr Gerhard Roth apparently claims that “the 'evil patch' lies in the brain's central lobe and shows up as a dark mass on X-rays.” The story comes complete with pictures of Hannibal Lecter (everyone’s favourite fictional psychopath), Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin. This story immediately aroused the part of my brain associated with the detection of ‘woo’ on a number of levels.

As all students of criminology will know, the notion of criminal behaviour as being somehow biologically determined is nothing new. Indeed, at the very roots of the criminological project we encounter Cesare Lombroso - the founder of the so called Italian School of Positivist Criminology. Lombroso was convinced that ‘born criminals’ could be distinguished from ‘non-criminals’ through the identification of physical defects which marked out the former group as atavistic throwbacks or “savages”. The criticisms of Lombrosian criminal anthropometrics are too numerous to list here, but suffice to say a wide range of alternative explanations for crime have emerged in the century or so which have followed the Italian School. These have included a greater appreciation of the social, economic and cultural factors associated with those harmful acts which are given meaning by our labelling them as ‘crimes’.

However, the re-emergence of biological determinism as in this story does play into a deeply held belief on the part of many people that somehow ‘they’ (criminals) are not like ‘us’ (law-abiding citizens). As I’ve already stated in an earlier blog post, there are approximately 9.2 million people on the UK Police National Computer with a recorded conviction for a criminal offence – and these are just the people who get caught and convicted. This somewhat undermines the comforting but false notion that criminality is solely the preserve of a select number of ‘hardened criminals’ and that all that remains is to somehow identify them and keep them away from everyone else.

Yet, the content of this story is also pretty suspect on a scientific level too (although I’m sure my colleagues in the Schools of Medicine and Psychology will correct me if I’ve got this all wrong). The Mail describes Roth as a ‘neurologist’ which I had always understood as a medical doctor who specialises in the diagnosis and treatment of those disorders associated with the brain and central nervous system. It seems that Roth is, in fact, a ‘neurobiologist’ which is something altogether different. The story also refers to “the brain’s central lobe”, but a quick trawl of most human biology textbooks seems to reveal that the brain is actually divided into the ‘occipital’, ‘parietal’, ‘frontal’ and ‘temporal’ lobes with no mention of a ‘central lobe’. Fans of Brass Eye will remember that the creator of the programme Chris Morris once managed to convince that esteemed medical expert Noel Edmonds to warn young people about the dangers of ‘Cake’ – a ‘made up drug’ which affected a part of the brain known as ‘Shatner’s  Bassoon’. One wonders if through all this talk of ‘evil patches’ readers of the Mail are being led up a similar garden path to that of Mr Edmonds.

The Right to Write the City: Lefebvre and Graffiti

Andy Zieleniec attended the Media Communication and Cultural Studies Association Conference (MeCCSA) hosted by Ulster University at the McGee Campus in Derry from 9-11 January.

He presented a paper entitled “The Right to Write the City: Lefebvre and Graffiti” based on his research on Graffiti in Valencia, Madrid and Barcelona funded by a Keele-Santander Research Scholarship research grant.

The paper attempted to operationalise Lefebvre’s theoretical work on the Production of Space and his varied urban analysis in the analysis of graffiti as an example of attempts to reframe, recontextualise, appropriate and colonise urban space from the dominant discourses of the market and the increasing privatisation and homogenisation of public and social spaces and places.  

Anyone interested in discussing the paper can contact Andy at a.zieleniec@keele.ac.uk

Re-imagining the use of criminal records in Europe

By Andrew Henley, Graduate Teaching Assistant in Criminology

In the context of the recent, but limited, reforms to the 1974 Rehabilitation of Offenders Act in England and Wales it is worthwhile considering different approaches to criminal record data which have been taken across continental Europe. To this end, I recently attended the 6th Annual Lecture of the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research at the University of Edinburgh, delivered this year by Professor Elena Larrauri from the Universitat Pompeu de Barcelona. I would like to express my thanks to the Keele University Research Institute for Social Sciences for agreeing to fund my attendance at this lecture as part of my PhD research.

Professor Larrauri notes that the use of pre-employment criminal record screening has increased due largely to a culture of risk aversion and a desire by the public for increased security and protection from what formerly convicted people ‘might do’ in the future. Yet despite this expansion in screening, criminal records have received relatively little attention from academics, with the notable exception of the United States where the availability of conviction data is comparatively widespread.

The expansion of pre-employment screening produces an impact in three areas related to the regulation of criminal record data. Firstly, how much disclosure is acceptable? Do we, for instance, believe that all employers have the right to ask about criminal records or do we take the view that such information should be subject to some sort of privacy controls? Clearly the more risk averse a society becomes, the more likely it is to tend towards the former rather than the latter point of view. Secondly, is the issue of expungement time, or how long it takes for criminal records to become ‘spent’ or ‘sealed’. Again, it is easy to imagine how the length of this period will tend to be dependent upon the level of risk aversion in a society. The third issue relates to which jobs should be subject to pre-employment criminal record screening and formed the main basis of the lecture.

In continental Europe (as opposed to the UK), conviction-based employment screening has often been limited to the public sector and, in particular, roles in the administration of justice such as judges, police and prison officers. Until now little attention has been paid to blanket bans on the employment of people with previous convictions in public administration. But Professor Larrauri posed the question as to whether we should simply accept it as a given that people with a criminal record are automatically excluded from public sector roles. She notes, for instance, that an ‘automatic exclusion’ approach can expand to other roles in public administration including office clerks and ultimately even the gardener who works in the grounds of a public building. Additionally, she highlights the fact that a range of employment has increasingly become subject to forms of occupational licencing meaning that taxi drivers, nightclub door staff and even bingo hall callers have required ‘clean’ records in some jurisdictions.

In relation to private-sector employers, comparatively little information about the extent of criminal records checks is available in continental Europe. However, Professor Larrauri notes that EU directive 2011/92/EU on combating the sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of children may mark a shift in this position given that it will enable some private employers to ask about previous convictions. She noted, however, that the legislation does not give criminal records a ‘conclusive force’ (telling employers who they may not employ) but rather empowers them to ask about criminal records in some situations. Caution was also expressed that forms of screening brought in to combat sexual abuse can often open the door to screening for violent offences or for any employment which relates to the somewhat ill-defined and broad category of ‘vulnerable adults’.

In order to combat unnecessary discrimination against people with convictions who have served their sentences, two models currently exist. In the ‘spent model’ employers are legally prohibited from considering criminal records after a period of time has elapsed. The problems associated with this however, are in determining what are appropriate ‘expungement times’ and the fate of the ex-offender during this interim period whilst they wait for their conviction to become ‘spent’. In the ‘anti-discrimination model’ employers are advised that they can only exclude people where there is a ‘close nexus’ between the nature of the conviction and the type of employment being applied for – for instance, between fraud and work in the financial sector or between speeding convictions and driving jobs. The issue with this model is that it can often represent a delegation of the power to punish from the state to employers, since the exclusion from employment which results can be seen as a form of punishment in its own right.

Professor Larrauri suggests that, as an alternative to these models, the judicial and legal system should take ownership of criminal records and incorporate them into the process of delivering punishment at the point of sentencing. Given that the purpose in using criminal record data is supposed to be an attempt to reduce risk to the broader public (although it is not firmly established to what extent this data remains predictive of future offending in the long-term), this could mean the imposition of certain occupational disqualifications for an extended period following the end of a sentence. This would mean that certain people would be disqualified from specific occupations rather than all forms of employment. Additionally, such disqualifications would be based on individual assessment rather than blanket bans and would necessarily be time limited rather than indefinite. This is because bringing criminal records into the field of punishment, rather than seeing them as a ‘collateral consequence’ of a conviction, would mean that the usual legal and human rights safeguards associated with punishment (for example, Article 7 of the European Convention – ‘no punishment without law’) would then begin to apply, which currently they do not.

Sociology society supporting the local food bank

Posted by Emma Head

In this post one of our second year students, Nicola Edwards, reflects on the decision the Keele Sociology society made to support the Stoke-on-Trent food bank.

It has become impossible to ignore how the Government’s recent austerity measures have impacted upon local people. The previously comfortable are now facing hardship, the vulnerable are facing desperation. This is the reason the Trussel Trust Food Bank opened in Stoke-on-Trent this May; demand has been so high that an additional food bank opened early November in Newcastle-under-Lyme. In 2010 there were over 16,000 children living in poverty, this was just under 30% of the 0-19year old population. Stoke-on-Trent food bank testify that this has risen dramatically since the Indices of Deprivation report was released in 2011, ranking Stoke-on-Trent 16th in the list of 50 most deprived areas.


Despite such worrying statistics it was the personal stories of those who have experienced poverty that touched the newly formed Keele Sociology Society. After discussing how I had experienced needing to skip meals as a new mum ten years ago, due to rent and childcare costs higher than my wages, and hearing the stories told by Amy who volunteered with her local food bank and had seen first-hand why so many had to turn to their food bank for support, we knew as a group we had to do something.

Spurred in to action we visited the food bank and the society set to work arranging a two day collection on campus at Keele. All of the committee members rallied around to raise awareness of the food bank and the society’s food drive while society members showed their commitment to such a worthy cause by enthusiastically collecting in the freezing cold, volunteering their time and donating food. Together we collected 421 items of food and £53 in spare change (given to the food bank for when supplies of a particular item are low). Each food parcel supplies 3days food and would cost in the region of £28. Our donation will go towards feeding around 30-40 people for 3 days this winter. A small dent when you consider the food bank has already given out over 2000 food parcels, feeding approximately 6000 people since May. However, the food bank relies upon donations and volunteers only. Our collection, plus others like it in schools, churches, and supermarkets, is what makes the service possible and simply enables those most vulnerable to eat.