Public Criminology

The session on ‘Public Criminology’ attracted a large and diverse audience. Three papers were delivered. The particular topics were diverse and varied, but the link between them related to the ways in which policy can be influenced and shaped, whether by criminological research, criminologists or the activities and beliefs of policy-makers themselves.

Eoin Healey and Jessica Breen presented on behalf of a wider group including Nicola Carr and Caroline O’Nolan, all PhD students at Trinity College Dublin. As well as the make-up of the group, the topic of the paper reflected the growth of the discipline of criminology in Ireland. Eoin and Jessica presented research into the prevalence of the term ‘criminology’ or ‘criminologist’ in the Irish Times – with a view to expanding the research in the future.

This was an interesting and unusual piece of self-reflection by Irish criminologists on their public portrayal and one which has the potential to become a classic study in the trajectory of the discipline in Ireland.

Reflections of a more sobering kind were the result of Professor Ian O’Donnell’s intriguingly entitled paper ‘Is Criminology bad for you’. Professor O’Donnell noted the chaotic nature of criminal justice policy-making in Ireland and the tendency to short  bursts of frenetic activity, followed by long  periods of inertia and neglect.

Professor O’Donnell ascribed this, in part, to the nature of politics in Ireland, which is very much focused on the short-term and the local. As such, ideologies of any description are difficult to come by across the Irish political spectrum. Professor O’Donnell referred to a lack of bureaucratic or administrative structures to drive forward any long-term agenda and suggested, provocatively, that a lack of a criminological base here may have contributed to insulating the country from some of the worst penal excesses occuring elsewhere.

This was a somewhat unsettling paper from the point of view of the academic who believes that rational, evidence-based policies should inevitably flow from the creation of new and improved understanding. It put me in mind, however, of Professor Ian Loader’s view that criminologists do not yet understand the ways in which policy are made. Until we develop a sociology of ‘politics’ or the way in which criminal justice policy is made, we will fail to understand the priorities of politicians, which may not be those of the researcher or lecturer. There was much food for thought in Professor O’Donnell’s paper and much more, no doubt, will be provided in future publications.

Mary Rogan (maryrogan.wordpress.com) delivered a paper on the relationship between Secretary and Minister in the Department of Justice and its impact on the creation of penal policy. This paper looked specifically at Charles Haughey and Peter Berry and their role in the creation of an arguably more progressive, and certainly more energetic, form of penal policy in the 1960s. The argument ran that Ministers and civil servants may have a disproportionate influence on the nature of penal policy in Ireland for many of the reasons noted by Professor O’Donnell. The paper concluded, however, with a more general call for analyses of the policy-making process in order to understand its operation more fully.