representations of crime | The Digital Panopticon

Both Rapheal Samuel (1994) and Patrick Wright (1994) have critiqued the role of museums and those charged with preserving historical buildings and artefacts in the repackaging of the past by a heritage `industry’ that panders to dominant national myths. The preservation and re-presentation of the physical remains of institutions and their interpretation by educationalists is an attempt to make complex socio-cultural changes understandable to public comprehension. The political and academic orientations of the archivists, exhibition organisers and museum bodies inevitably collude in this enterprise of turning complex and often contradictory histories into a narrative for consumption. The propensity is for museum managers to over-employ distinct and rather narrow visions of traditional values and characteristics in order to present incarceration and punishment as progressive has meant that the public is confronted with a rather simplistic rendering of crime, policing and punishment for the late-Victorian period through to World War Two. In our museums we often see out-dated restraints, convict masks, straight-jackets, and so on, usually accompanied by a commentary about how these barbaric techniques of control have been washed away by penal progress, but what about ‘pin-down’ which was used until the 1990s, or other “Home Office Approved Techniques” used today on prisoners, and asylum-seekers?

It seems incumbent on academics as well as museum specialists to join together to refine these representations and to help make sense of the competing notions, interpretations, and explanations for punishment in this historical period in a way which allows for different interpretations to be presented. Sites of dark tourism should be steered away from offering a history of crime and punishments that suggests a straight and unfaltering line of progress from the nineteenth century to the present day criminal justice system. However, despite carrying out (often publicly funded) high quality research, and opening up vigorous and engaging debate in international conferences, academics are not as engaged in public debates about crime, history, and heritage as they could be. Academic discourse, which usually applies a more complex analysis to historical data and phenomenon than is wanted by journalists or needed by museum managers, is not highly visible in the heritage sector, or in the modern media.

Modern media debates on crime and order deal with academic historical research predominantly in two disappointing ways. The first it to marginalise academic history because they fail to see its relevance to the present day. The second, and sadly much more common is to attempt to cajole historical data into forms which appear to support conservative political agendas. This has become particularly the case when it comes to discussion of the causes and impacts crime, or with policing policies and practice. Academics, in turn, decry the media’s populist and simplistic approach to complex issues, and the ‘master and servant’ attitude of some journalists. At the current time, the relationship between academics and the media is truly a distant and unhappy one. Conflicting agendas held by these two groups suggests it is unlikely that the relationship will change in the near future.

Nevertheless, despite the inability of academic discourse to penetrate the mass media to any significant extent, the study of the past is still popular at undergraduate level, oral history is a widely practised craft carried out by people and groups across the country, and important academic research still continues to inform local and family history. Crime historians still have a large role to play in shaping the understanding and presentation of crime history outside of universities. Historians are becoming more and more involved in interpreting sites of justice and punishment for the general public – be they physical, or virtual. So, academic history is still having some impact on the way we view the history of crime.

It is therefore now worth considering whether this has become the main (or only) form of impact that crime historians can have, or whether there is a role for them to play in formulating new criminological theory, or social policy? Where should, or could, the influence of academic crime histories extend?

There are approximately nine million family history researchers in the UK. The New Digital Media which I’ve described in Crime in England 1880-1945 (Routledge 2014) feeds their enthusiasm and makes it easy for new adherents to start researching their family histories. The ease of finding online data means that it does not take people very long to trace their family history back to the mid nineteenth-century (about as far back as their great-great-grandparents). Almost inevitably this popular pastime has developed a commercial element, with its own websites (for example www.blacksheepancestors.com; www.societyofgenealogists.com/was-your-ancestor-a-criminal/; www.geni.com/…/do-you-have-a-criminal-in-your-family-tree-354741.html), popular magazines (there are lots of them on the shelves of high street newsagents), and Radio/TV shows (for example, “Tracing Your Roots” on Radio 4; “Who Do You Think You Are?” on BBC1).

Approximately six million viewers watched actress Patsy Kensit unravel both her father and grandfather’s involvement with the courts. Ancestors who have had brushes with the law feature quite heavily on these shows. Having a criminal ancestor is a little like hitting the jackpot for family historians. In addition to the increased chance of an official record being available, there is usually an interesting story behind the facts of the criminal case. Crime seems to be inherently fascinating, and having a forefather convicted of, say, poaching, or horse-stealing, means that one’s ancestor stands out from the crowd. Of course, the excitement might wane if the family member concerned was a convicted bigamist or a sex-offender. Family historians may be unprepared for the emotional consequences of that kind of unwanted knowledge.

On finding a `criminal past’, in order to make sense of the discovery, some will turn to academic histories, or other primary resources such as Old Bailey Online in order to find out more about particular crimes, or the specific punishments (this might explain the nearly one million annual visitors to the website). They might also, like so many other people, want to watch either factual or fictional representations of Victorian or Edwardian crime and policing to help them get a ‘feel’ for the space and place which their ancestor inhabited. Some have suggested that the fictional Constable George Dixon epitomises the “Golden Age” of policing in the 1940s and 50s in the way that the fictional North Yorkshire police officers do in the BBC series “Heartbeat”. These gentle homage to community policing have been swamped latterly by depictions of the pre-World War One period – the landscape in television’s “Ripper Street” or Guy Richie’s “Sherlock Holmes” films seems more appropriate for depictions of violent crime and disorder (something that seems more suited to the fears we have for modern society in the new Age of Austerity perhaps?).

Unfortunately, however, the considerable interest in televisual representations of crime in this period has not readily translated into an upsurge in academic interest amongst the viewing public. More often it encourages, not a trip to the university to sign up for a degree course in criminology, but a visit to the (admittedly more sensational) sites, both physical and digital of “Dark Tourism”.

There is a strong argument to be made that public histories of crime have never been more popular. Public access to, and interest in, the crimes, punishments, and offenders of the past have rarely been greater. As those at the forefront of uncovering new histories, and pioneering innovative research, how can academic crime historians, and the rich and informative histories they create, take a more central role in the development and dissemination of popular programming?

More widely, is there a greater opportunity for academics to become more forceful in shaping other general histories of crime, or in interpreting gaol and court sites? In the world of instant internet information, and the, at times anti-intellectual, mass media what role is there for academic crime historians – and should we be fighting harder to expand it?

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Tag Archives: representations of crime

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