Seriously appreciating Avi Brisman's extended review of my book

Seriously appreciating Avi Brisman's extended review of my book Sports Criminology

Avi’s review for Critical Criminology can be found here.  I largely agree with it and have thanked Avi profusely for taking my work so seriously. His is more than a review but a critical engagement with my work which finds fault but also finds something to commend.  I’ll go through much of that but two main themes of criticism emerge:

my failure to mention certain issues and not others

and lack of critical criminology.

To both I must plead lack of space but also take issue occasionally as we shall see. I had to cut about 10,000 words from the book so felt now might be the time to mention some of those issues too.

Avi very quickly spots that I don’t really define my terms in various places including specifically what I mean by sport or, particularly ‘sports criminology’. He notes my slipperiness around this but perhaps not my negative definitions ie what it is not. He does note, in my concluding chapter, my fear it will just become about football hooliganism. Luckily the Sage Dictionary of Criminology (forthcoming) required me to provide a definition:

A criminology of sport, games (including videogames, e-sports and fantasy sport), recreation and leisure. It draws upon but also critiques the sociology of sport and sports law. It studies harm to persons, environment and society whether criminalised by law outside of sport or within the rules of that sport. It also studies the national and international ‘justice’ systems of sport and their interplay with criminal justice.

But this is probably still too lose. My reluctance to be pinned to the mat or sacked is due to several issues:

a) my lazy/‘liberal’ reluctance to legislate, to lay down the law, etc (though I am available for refereeing)

b) my experience of what happens to my pat interventions within criminology (largely ignored or subverted).

c) for utterly instrumental purposes I sometimes combine the formally codified (by sports authorities and media) alongside informal ones (from jogging with friends to street brawling) and antique - but sadly ever present blood - sports to make further connections from sport to crime within society. You could call this cheating.

Turning now to lack of critical edge I’m going to largely accept and suggest I am very critical of sport despite being a fan (Spurs, Saracens, Seahawks) and one-time participant. I’m more critical of my own sports criminology:

this book has doubts about its own title. There has been much discussion of sport and of criminology. Whether the book has successfully argued for a sports criminology is moot. (p157)

I immediately went on to say, ‘The intention has always been to avoid crimes merely associated with sport’ which is my reason for not picking up on the story of Reeva Steenkamp’s murder by Oscar Pistorius though I do explore other instances of athlete’s violence.

In addition to these issues Avi picks up some specifics such as concussion etc in a whole section on ‘Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), Violence and Biological Explanations of Criminality’ with lots of useful references. I do mention concussion briefly and cite Corteen and Corteen on the victimology of professional wrestlers. I return to the issue in my contribution to A Companion to Crime, Harm and Victimisation but while I am sympathetic to the turn to a (social) harm perspective it seems to me this is an issue that is now being taken seriously and medicine and civil law might take the lead for the moment. But again criminology needs to be an active spectator. My mention of biological theories is scant in the book.

He also mentions protests by sportspeople and I fully agree they are potential subject for critical pushback against racist accusations and presumptions.  Sports people are usually more docile, their submission to extreme surveillance and very rough justice systems is examined in the book and I expand on it in a blog here.

Given our joint interests I very happy to see Avi’s extensive pitch for syntheses of green and sports criminology.

One of my starting points for Sports Criminology was the consideration of videogames and I was sorry to cut so many mentions of that in the book. I can only refer you to Playing Around with Crime and Criminology in Videogames   Exploring common themes in games studies and criminology.

I have also written on the overlaps between sport, crime and popular culture here. Some very interesting prison movies that are sports movies examined.

Avi might have given me more praise for the sheer diversity of my sporting and academic sources that I hope others will pick up on.

My concluding chapter also contains much on the issue of consent and how thinking about sport (and gay sex) can help us think through some of these issues.

To answer Avi’s question yes I can be serious and he has taken me seriously. I do suggest in my book that the area has not been taken seriously because it is ‘just sport’ or even games. I sometimes think that criminology is sometimes ambivalent about things that are too close: car driving was my original thought (Ambivalent Criminology – ‘Have you stopped driving your car?’) but peoples’ love of sport may prevent some seeing it as a potential subject for criminology.

[I may return to his chapter summaries in a further blog]

Farting in Church: Doping in Sport

I don't attend church or chapel but a couple of weeks ago it felt like I'd joined a sect or at least witnessed one: the Church of Anti-Doping. I farted there and, indeed, to see the way that some congregants reacted you’d think I’d crapped in the nave. UEFA called it, “FA anti-doping summit issues call to 'catch the cheats’”. I’d been told it was a Symposium.

When first approached I thought it was a scam or a wind up and also could not imagine they’d want my critical input. But no they definitely wanted my input as a criminologist and eventually was asked that my 25 minute presentation touch on these issues:

• Introduction to deterrence: Overview of key notions and concepts in studying deterrent effects of laws/rules
• Are anti-doping regulations/practices as currently implemented likely to be effective at deterring doping-related conduct?
• Comments on the deterrent effect of the increase in the basic sanction for certain substances from two to four years
• Comments on the deterrent effect of re-testing athletes’ samples from many years earlier
• Conclusions/recommendations to enhance the deterrent effect of anti-doping regulations/practices

I was concerned that my opinions were being potentially constrained but come the day I had my say. Some of this comes through in this report from Sports Integrity Initiative of the Symposium. But, as my opening paragraph suggests it it did not go down well. I got into quite an argument with Jean-Pierre Morand. He is very well connected as were many of those who attended. So well connected as to be deeply stitched into the sports law establishment. His patent disregard for any of my points - interrupting my presentation and hogging questions at the end - meant I was not at my coolest and eloquent in answering him and others.

I posted on Facebook that day that I’d had quite a mauling but a few congregants did come up and talk to me during the drinks reception and show some support for some of my ideas or, at least, my temerity. Since then I’ve also tried to explain my position on doping/anti-doping (AD) to non-lawyer or criminology friends who saw the post and subsequent pictures of me being fierce. Trying to do this and taking into account the few friendly engagements plus some parts of presentations made by Paul Dimeo and Andreas Zagklis has lead me to blog this in the form of questions I’ve faced or have since asked myself.  Perhaps I’d have been more persuasive if I’d done this earlier.

Deterrence?

I pointed out that there were many and varied opinions on deterrence but I argued that criminology might be seen as the study of the undeterred. Classicist and administrative criminology favours forms of rational sentencing and situational deterrence. These would seem to sit well with the rules-based nature of much sport - many of my questioners - clung to more authoritarian (irrational?) views of putting the fear of god into criminals/dopers.

From my green criminology I pointed out that doubling fines for litter didn’t seem that effective in deterring let alone doubling the deterrent threat. From football specifically I mentioned the extent of ‘diving’ (simulation of being fouled) having not been deterred by masses of witnesses (the crowd), the capable guardians of Routine Activity Theory (the officials) or CCTV (the many broadcast cameras).

Level Playing Field?

One justification for AD is that if one athlete dopes then the playing field for others is uneven. I turn that around and argue for an even playing field between athletes and non-athletes. AD causes a massive inequality between different classes of citizen. Even the low level at which I played my sport or even the most casual of observation would be that sport (like much of life) is not fair and often cements rather than ameliorates that unfairness.

Cheating? 

I don’t believe anybody has ever managed to arrange for a 100 metre race to be only 90 metres for them alone but that would be cheating. But 200/400 track runners and sometimes others are judged to have stepped off line and therefore run shorter than other competitors. I’ve no reason to believe any of these have been with an intent to cheat. At school we were occasionally forced to do cross country and word was that some people cheated and cut corners. I didn’t, but understood this cheating was not to win or to prevent losing but simply and painlessly fulfilling the requirement to do it. However, as runners in the recent Shenzhen Half Marathon showed some people do find ways to shorten their own course. Not to win but simply to be able to say that they completed it. It was cameras that detected (note not deterred) the cheating. I know I’d feel cheated if I discovered any of my marathon courses turned out to be measured as short.

Health?

Criminologists know the extent to which ‘crime’ is highly relative. Crimes in one era or country may differ and sometimes your status may allow you to carry out actions that are crimes for others (age of drink, sex, voting etc). Studying the list of banned substances shows that doping/cheating can change over night - as Maria Sharapova knows to her cost. Many athletes take vitamins/supplements but these can be seen as gateways in the way that cannabis is sometimes alleged to be for hard drugs. What if vitamins were banned? If they truly work perhaps they should be.

The tablets that WADA brings down from the mountain need to be swallowed with caution.

Team sports?

Much of the second day was about the differences for team sports which encourage me to believe that my suggestion that football should go for Socexit from WADA-imposed individual sports templates. I suggested that England football team up against the ‘hand of god’ could have taken a truck load of drugs and still not won. Whereas individual drug use can be effective as the next section examines.

The athlete’s view?

A particular test for me of my views was hearing Christine Girard speak. I know athletes are unlikely to appreciate my defence of their rights as many have bought into the obviousness of clean sport and the necessity of AD. Perhaps too they see no future for them or for sport if they become apostates. Christine spoke movingly about the justice she found in finally receiving medals and recognition when promoted to the podium many years because of the drug failures of others.

Clearly I don’t want to hurt her or suggest she is wrong but now I would suggest that despite being in a sport in which doping was known to be rife she did well and did not, in her terms, ‘cheat’. But participating in an unregarded sport in Canada she’d not have faced the same pressures as athletes under extreme State or Corporate pressure. It was not the AD system that deterred her.

  Full time

In conclusion in addition to Dimeo’s fault finding with the anti-doping system I would add two additional reasons not to be cheerful which we’ll come to. He and Verner Møller set out these ‘inadvertent consequences of anti-doping’ whilst noting apropos deterrence that numbers of failed tests suggests little deterrence:

A super efficient testing system might be used to take out rivals by spiking their food/drink/ supplements etc. They give proved and alleged cases. But note that the strict liability approach is so central to anti-doping that such miscarriages of justice will continue. A team wishing to get out of an expensive contract might allow an athlete in their care to fail a test or the whereabouts requirements. A State-sponsored athlete who had displeased their sporting or political masters might be thrown under the bus to placate the demands of the anti-doping gods.

The growth of testing is matched by a growth in creating the undetectable by ‘doping doctors’ and again they give examples. Read the book!

All of this leads to miscarriages of justice when innocent dopers are sacrificed on the altar of anti-doping. For instance, the widespread use of hormones in cattle-raising in many parts of the world have lead to failed tests. Such news lead to one participant in the seminar to opine that athletes would perforce have to become vegetarian. As a vegetarian that’s low on my list of human rights abuses but as argued above must concede that it is an abuse.

Close to this are issues of athletes privacy. The whereabouts rules are highly restrictive and convicted paedophiles in the community are subject to less scrutiny. There have been errors and unreasonable demands that would lead to an outcry if ‘the rest of us’ were subject to them. Christine Gerard did express here concern as a young woman being obliged to urinate in front of a stranger.

Which brings us to my additional thoughts. Dimeo and Møller couch their arguments in terms of inadvertence but I’d go further and suggest the occasional conspiracy but mostly the ideological issues.

One of my concerns is the grim determination/desperation of athletes in clinging to the current system and embracing their own slavery to the dictates of AD. The levels of surveillance they endure and the abandonment of their own human rights makes me fear for my own. I do not believe that sports people are a deliberately sharpened thin end of an overweening totalitarian wedge but part of a societal trend which should be challenged. To coin an aphorism, an elite athlete is someone you’ll do anything to win from taking drugs to giving up their own and others human rights.

Again, there is no suggestion that this is a deliberate policy but the heat generated by AD policies and ritual denouncing of ‘drug cheats’ provides plenty of inadvertent cover for other activities and failures.  Thus corruption, match-fixing and on-field cheating are downplayed. AD appears to offer an objective, scientific solution to a problem.

In criminology there are arguments about whether prison works and if so how but a critical take is that prison is not meant to work as rehabilitation of, or deterrent to, the criminal but ideologically to justify punishment and oppression. AD is not so much meant to catch a few ‘evil’ or ‘dopey’ cheats but to discipline all athletes and, perhaps, all of us.

After match analysis

You ask what does this all mean? One one hand the end of all professional sport or the recognition that we are talking about a branch of the entertainment industry and it the narrative that is important not the cleanliness of the actors. My appreciation of the Tour de France has not diminished in the least because of past drug scandals. Lance Armstrong won through a combination of things and his boorishness and consistency both spoiled the story.

And let’s be clear, I’m not advocating doping. It is bad for you. Elite sport is bad for you.

But perhaps as grown ups we might say we don’t need fairy tales and that we don’t believe the gods of WADA can save us.