Thursday 21 March 2024

 Cheating in spogomi


I have written about Sport and Crime in Sports Criminology and about litter as a criminological subject so was fascinated to hear about the new sport of spogomi - competitive litter picking. I had already heard of plogging its more recreational cousin that allows for running but not official competition.


In my book I point out the many connections that might be made between the rules, regulation and judicial regimes of sport and those of the societies - increasingly global - in which they are located and of criminology’s failure to address sport as a topic. I have a long history of addressing ecological issues in criminology (drugs and corporate crime 1991!).


In my book I mention a few ecological and green issues for sport, for instance the polluting effects of cars yet motor sport is lionised but its bad brother ‘joyriding’ (the subject of my PhD) is damned.

I touch on how a green criminology and a rural criminology may not agree on the ethics of blood/field sports but fox-hunting, badger-baiting and hare-coursing all have ecological consequences. And we should not forget the water usage of golf courses and the amount of concrete poured and air miles entailed by international competition.


So what of spogomi? As a criminologist I immediately thought how might people cheat? The few rules of spogomi suggest they thought some might:


The distance between the first and last member should not be more than 10 meters apart.

The goal is reached when the last member crosses the finish line and reports to the judge standing at the finish line.


Do not run (fast walking is allowed)


    • Walking: Method of movement with either foot on the ground at all times
    • Running: a method of movement in which there is a moment when both feet leave the ground, float, or jump at the same time.


What not to pick up


    • Trash already in the trash bin
    • Trash left at garbage collection points
    • Trash that appears to be owned by others - judging from the surroundings (arranged and placed, signs of having been used recently, etc.)


Bulky waste


Large trash that does not fit into the garbage bags to be distributed (700 mm x 500 mm = 30 liters)


Examples: batteries / fans / futons / cushions / fire extinguishers / concrete / blocks / safes / metal bars / tires / wheels / stoves / computers / strollers / rice cookers

  • Hazardous waste (syringes, broken glass, torn metal)
  • Trash picked up by lifting road gutters and dovetails
  • Do not leave the competition area
  • Areas you are not allowed to enter
    • Rivers and oceans
    • Private property


About the parking lot


Coin-operated parking lots, although privately owned, shall be accessible due to their public nature that anyone can use them (parking lots exclusively for companies, organizations, etc. shall not be allowed).

    • Observe separation rules.
    • Observe traffic rules.


World Champion litter-picker, Sarah Parry, experienced another team trying to pick litter from their bag during the Championships in Tokyo. The story inThe Guardian is pitched as quirky but clearly matters might get out of hand in a Squid or Hunger Games fashion with violence breaking out. But to draw back from my criminal catastrophising, what about the ecological issues?


Japan is famously tidy and litter free but without the authoritarianism of Singapore. I went to Japan to see the Rugby World Cup in 2019 (yes, my carbon foot print blown for a while) and saw little litter. On early morning jogs I did find groups - of mostly elderly people - litter picking voluntarily without threat of punishment or sporting inducement. I often pick litter myself and don’t like the idea of it being used as punishment. So I worry. Where did they find highly littered places in Japan (OK, Tokyo was slightly worse)? And did they they have to keep them littered until the day of competition? If this takes off will volunteers give up? And travelling half way round the world to pick litter? I look forward though to hearing of the first sporting scandal on spogomi.



So spogomi is quirkily presented as a good thing for the environment but I prefer the more spontaneous and playful voluntarism of just picking it up and slam dunking it in the bin!


In a moment of synchronicity I have discovered that Madeleine Orr was coming to the Hay Festival to discuss her book Warming Up: How Climate Change is Changing Sport. I live nearby and now have tickets so we’ll see if we have common ground.

Tuesday 4 October 2022

Review of Chapter 8 Sport and Crime

 Chapter 8 Conclusion (Even) further towards a critical criminology of sport


Clearly I agree with their contention that their book, like mine, offers a critical criminological take on sport and second that criminology gains from such an engagement.


They suggest some emerging lines of enquiry (my numbering and apologies if I have missed one):


first the overlap with green criminologies (see Wilson and Millington, 2020);

second the growing penetration of the ‘Global South’ by mega-sports events;

third the ongoing and growing surveillance involved in sex-testing and ‘gender verification’;

fourth surveillance of fans and athletes in various ways which the Covid pandemic has exacerbated with its own legacy.


They conclude that there is an ‘intriguing and potentially rewarding challenge for scholars of criminology and sport alike’.


In their book they have advanced a critical criminology of sport with some intensive case studies. Mine was more focussed on arguing there was a pitch on which us criminologists might play (or frolic).


I agree with their hopes but would want to specifically add a critical engagement with trafficking and slavery to studies of mega-events and of the ‘Global South’.


If evaluations of sport as cure or cause of crime/violence are made these are broad-based and take account of wider structural issues as well as individuals.


All in all I’m very happy to have handed the baton to Millward et al so - like the clapped out old ‘father’ Avi Brisman has identified me as - I might shower off and retire to the stands to cheer on the next runners.

Monday 3 October 2022

Review chapter 7 Sport and Social Harms - Qatar and World Cup 2022 in Focus

 Chapter 7 Sport and Social Harms - Qatar and World Cup 2022 in Focus Crimes of the Powerful (2)


6,500 migrant workers die yet no national or international law is broken! (Pattinson and McIntyre, 2021)


Millward et al turn to zemiology and the social harm perspective to examine this. I agree their arguments for this and history of these concepts but feel that issues around sports washing might have been brought in too (Søyland, 2020).


The history includes the foundation of a critical criminology, its examination, by some, of white-collar crime and the work of Hillyard et al. They also add in ‘relational sociology’ with a nod to Simmel. A prime example is the Hillsborough disaster but other examples come from ice-skating ‘accidents’ to Russian state-sponsored homophobia in that sport are touched on.


The meat of the chapter is Qatar and its multiple engagements with sport from its ownership of soccer club, Paris St Germain, to the hosting of 85 different major sports events (Reiche, 2015) since 1988.


There are questions - as there often are - about how the votes were secured. Moreover, how does sharia law square with the ‘party’ atmosphere normally surrounding such mega events including some shirt and stadium sponsors like Budweiser. Homophobia may be normal in football but it is inscribed in law in Qatar.


Amongst the human rights issues is the kafala system of labour relations which ties the migrant worker to the employer. This has not provided adequate safeguards for such workers. The chapter comments critically on these issues and makes much use of Amnesty International’s reports.

Friday 30 September 2022

Review of Chapter 6 of Sport and Crime

 Chapter 6 Cultural Criminology, Sport and Transgression


The chapter opens with Ferrell et al’s (2008) discussion in cultural criminology of informal fighting which opens that invitation to cultural criminology. But Millward et al note that the connection directly to sport is not made. This chapter rides the contradictory ambiguous line between sport and violence. This is fully in line with my work.


Millward et al examine the history of cultural criminology. My own journey involves studying sociology and popular culture as an Open University student on courses imbued with the work of Stuart Hall and feel all of my criminology has taken account of cultures.


This culminated in my PhD on joyriding set in the context of the wider ‘car culture’. I did not use the term ‘edgework’ but did cite Lyng and Mitchell (1995). Millward et al focus on work on BASE jumpers and I make something of parkour and its move from outlaw status to ‘sport’ considered for the Olympics.


Millward et al go onto consider Mixed Martial Arts and even Bare-Knuckle Boxing. Clearly these tread that ambiguous line between legitimate and illegitimate violence (see also Dale Spencer and Karen Corteen’s chapters in Power Played on MMA and wrestling respectively.

Thursday 29 September 2022

Review of Chapter 5 Sport and Crime

 Chapter 5 Modes of Surveillance, Governance and Surveillance in Sport


This chapter looks at the ‘security legacy’ that follows from hosting mega sorts events that involves a general surveillance of populations and the more individual surveillance, governance and policing of athletes bodies. I am glad to see attention to the mundane as well as the exceptional.

The work of Roche (2000) on the Berlin (1936) and Barcelona (1996) is highlighted and borrowing from Critical Security Studies safety and security at mega events is considered before examining three aspects of sports surveillance: 1) for ‘safety’ and ‘security’; 2) ‘lateral surveillance’ and 3) of athletic bodies and performance.



So we need to be very careful in asking for whom security and safety are promised and on what terms. So we see how ‘hooliganism and ‘terrorism’ are utilised. Intriguingly by Baudrillard to call out Mrs Thatcher’s terrorism against the miners but most often by states to impose security apparatus that lingers on in legacy form. And, it might be said, to blame hooliganism for all problems in sport and specifically Liverpool fans. They note also the confluence of discourses around hooliganism and terrorism.


The promised legacy of mega events rarely occurs but the that of surveillance lingers on. Even one-off events like a Champions League final or Super Bowl often leads to greater surveillance. Though I would suggest some cities are now so densely surveilled that the presence or effect of additional surveillance might be difficult to assess. And, anecdote again, my attendance at the Rugby World Cup suggested to me that Tokyo city was so large that the the event was barely noticed beyond the stadium and fan zone. But note Millward et al quote South Wales Police on the use of a Champions League Cup in Cardiff to ‘test and prove concepts’. However, this did not go well (BBC, 2018) and was critically contested by fans and commentators.


Much is made of the use of CCTV and it would have been nice if some of material on this were quoted. For instance Crime control or crime culture TV? and As Easy as AB and CCTV one of the first pieces of work on such matters (1994!).


The encouragement for players or fans to inform on each other is pictured as ‘peer monitoring’ or 'lateral surveillance'.


As my talk to UEFA shows (see above) I am particularly concerned for the rights of athletes in their own right but also down the line of all of us. It is interesting to see that the ‘whereabouts’ procedures are described as ‘draconian’ by Andy Murray. We keep less tight tabs on convicted dangerous and sexual offenders.


I think Millward et al are right to note the greater impact of many of these things in the global south. But within the global north they note disparities with the National Basketball Association’s dress code squarely aimed at the many young black athletes on their rosters (see Kennedy and Silva, 2020 on similar in the National Hockey League).

Tuesday 27 September 2022

Review of chapters 1-4 of Sport and Crime Millward, Ludvigsen and Sly

 Sport and Crime: Towards a critical criminology of sport


It might be unusual to start with mentioning the acknowledgements in a book review but here we go.


Laura Kelly and Emma Poulton are mentioned as originators of the idea for this book and I can attest that ten years ago I advised Routledge to publish it. The book in hand is the successor text to that sadly unpublished one.


And to look even earlier in the book we might ask why the book is in sport and leisure series not a criminology one?


But as the Oxford Handbook of Sports History (Edelman and Wilson, 2017) contains only 4 mentions of ‘crime’ and one of the grand texts aimed at criminology students (Newburn, 2013) barely mentions sport we should not be surprised.


I am extremely grateful to Andy Millie for pushing me and Bristol University/Policy Press for bearing with me in getting my book accepted as a criminology one.


And whilst we are still looking at such ephemera I must take issue with the claim ‘that this is the first book to fully explore the connections between sports studies and criminology’ (website and back-of-book blurb!).


Introduction


I am cited on page 1 in the Introduction as noticing the ‘sheer potential for a distinctive criminology of sport’. I am mentioned amongst a number of others who I also acknowledge - such as Meek (2013) and Nichols (2010). I give a chapter to considering whether sport can prevent crime or rehabilitate the convicted as those two argue. I’m more equivocal.  Millward et al engage in this debate in Chapter 4.


They note Avi Brisman’s review of my book in which he suggests my work was an ‘opening bell or starting pistol’ and likening me to a ‘father wanting acknowledgement of paternity without the responsibilities of child-rearing’. They are kinder but I’m going to admit Avi - who I know and respect - has me sussed, nearly. I am staking a claim - hence my eye-brow raising at the claim that this book is the first. But unlike a stern father I don’t seek to lay down the law and terrorise my children but keep a kindly, perhaps avuncular or god-parental, eye on what is going on in the playground. I’ve always had a ludic intent to my work. 


So whether as parent, uncle or god-father I am engaging strongly in this review and have also provided the afterword for Power Played edited by Derek Silva and Liam Kennedy.


Millward et al are hopeful of the future of connections to be made between studies of sport and criminology. They kindly note my emphasis on mundane acts as well as spectacular or scandalous ones involving elites; for instance, they give an example of the banning of skateboards in Norway between 1978 and 1989. I agree their conclusion that ‘the relationship between ‘crime’ and ‘sport’ is so diffuse, contested and broad’ (p5). I would add that our relationship as people and criminologists is similarly diffuse, contested and broad.


My book took a critical criminological stance, even critiquing sports and theories I favoured but also attempted to set out how a variety of criminologies might be applied to sport. Millward et al dive right in so spend some of the introduction setting out some critical points.


Those critical points are:


1) there is a starting point in my work and that of others and

2) citing Francis (2012) they note ‘sport is and always will be harmful’ and

3) those harms include dead workers on Qatar’s World Cup stadia (which they take up in Chapter 7) and increased control and surveillance at sports mega-events (taken up in Chapter 5)

and 4) critical criminology has become diffuse and disputed. Sport makes a ‘novel entry point’ (p6).


Chapter 2 then provides further history of critical criminology and its scant engagement with sport.


Chapter 3 looks at white collar crime and crimes of the powerful in sport. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Fédération internationale de Football Association (FIFA).


Using a Foucauldian lens, sports based interventions (SBIs) are examined in Chapter 4. They are found to mask social inequalities and control whilst providing isolated cases of ‘success’ (p9).


Critical Security Studies inform Chapter 5’s examination of sport mega-events but also of athlete’s bodies.


Drawing on ‘edgework’ Chapter 6 looks at mixed martial arts, bare-knuckle boxing and other extreme sports.


Chapter 7 focusses on the upcoming football Word Cup in Qatar and the social harms caused by it.


Chapter 8 sums up and offers a research agenda. I’ll check it against mine in (Hall and Scalia, 2019).


I’ll review a chapter at a time over the next few weeks.


Chapter 2 - Sport and the Criminological Imagination


For criminology theory nerds chapter 2 offers a friendly history of some of the rifts (schisms?) in critical criminology from the work of Taylor, Walton and Young onward. I did my Masters and PhD at Middlesex University when Jock Young, John Lea and Roger Matthews were setting out a ‘left realist’ criminology opposed to right and administrative ones. I recall that at European events friendly but competitive relations were maintained with ‘left idealists’. Vincenzo Ruggiero provided a consistent sociological critique. (He was also my internal examiner. Tony Jefferson the external.) 


I feel my criminology to be balanced (?) between ‘realist’ and ‘idealist’ but broadened to include green and sexuality perspectives and possibly tempered by spending 20 years as a Home Office administrative and policy civil servant. I was lucky to know, but never work with, Tim Newburn, Ben Bowling, George Mair and Marian Fitzgerald and did work for Mike Hough when he was moonlighting as a pen-pusher.


The roots of my green and queered perspectives on criminology derive from my PhD on joyriding. I focussed on how similar joyriding was to the advertised pleasures of legal driving and how ungreen that was. Also the mainly young male joyriders seemed to have some anxieties around their masculinity. The fieldwork took place in ‘motor projects’ and some of this eventually found its way into my book years later. This will feed into my discussion of Millward et al’s chapter 4.


Whilst I hope that sports criminology is more than the extant studies of football hooligans I have to recognise with, Millward et al, that Taylor’s work on this topic is important. His first thoughts might be seen to be neo-marxist or left idealist in casting football hooligans as resistant ‘class warriors’ whereas his later accounts - moving in a realist direction - misread the Hillsborough disaster.


Taylor applied a critical criminology to a sport he loved. Few others did. We don’t get to find out how Millward et al relate to sport as participants or spectators. I have sometimes wondered if the lack of criminological engagement with topics close to our hearts like driving and car use has been an ambivalence which I think also applies to sport. They mention feminist critiques of left realism and other criminologies and suspect some feminists may not wish to engage with sport unless to note the masculinity of its adherents or the violence towards women of some sportsmen. 


I would have been happy if this chapter had just told us that few attempts had been made to look critically at sport, cited my work and a few others on this before discussing Taylor’s trajectory from an idealist critical criminology to a more realist one. That could have been folded into the first chapter leaving space for another chapter of critical criminological engagement with more sports.


Chapter 3 Sport, Corruption and White-Collar Criminality’


The chapter is sub-titled Crimes of the Powerful (1) and we get part 2 of that in Chapter 7.


The focus of this chapter is the proven and suggested corruption within the IOC and FIFA related to a far too close connection with various commercial interests. Most of this work has been done by investigative journalists.


They use Sutherland to add a critical criminological edge to the work of the late Andrew Jennings and co-writers. They open their chapter with a very lengthy, and thoroughly justified, quote from Jennings (2011) in which he opens by admitting he is a criminal. That is that those he seeks to investigate and have prosecuted are so powerful that they can define his activities as criminal but not theirs.


I only briefly referred to Jennings in my work but I can now offer some personal thoughts on corruption.  A quote from Andy Brown of the Sports Integrity Initiative sets the scene.


Nic Groombridge, […] argued that current anti-doping rules are ineffective as a deterrent to doping, in parallel to the argument that laws on drugs are ineffective in deterring users from taking them.


He argued that as in society, the focus should be on harm reduction rather than outright prohibition as the war on drugs has been lost. He explained that a needle exchange programme had found that 30% of needles tested showed use of performance and image enhancing drugs (PIEDs), illustrating that the public – and not just elite athletes – are widely using such substances.

 

Groombridge pointed out that athletes are an easier target to prosecute for PIEDS than the general public, as they too easily surrender their rights. Delegates argued that as athletes are involved in competition and the public are not, permitting them to take PIEDs risked forcing other athletes to do the same in order to stay competitive. 


This was at the 2018 UEFA Anti-doping Symposium.  It was held at the Royal Institution and some of my reflections on this event are here. So where was the corruption?


We were all put up in a five star hotel and catered well. Since I had warned the organisers I was not proposing to say comforting things I was not expecting to be offered any work or contracts but the cosy international milieu suggested to me that had I cut my cloth to fit I might have secured preferment. They all largely agreed with each other and resented my suggestion that corruption was the worse problem. And that doping/anti-doping served - even if not deliberately - as a distraction from that. And the recent news about ongoing corruption in UEFA backs this up.


My association with penal charities and as an occasional lecturer with Kings College London has given me access to some high end law firms for wine and canapé type events and I always sense the power that flows through such places and the interconnections of powerful interests.


Being well fed and entertained is very nice as is being thought to have some significance if only for an hour or two is nicer. But it does not match up to ‘free shotguns, skis, clothing, video games, hunting trips, shopping sprees’ etc noted by Boycoff (2016) that some IOC members received in Utah prior to Salt Lake City getting the Winter Games.


 Chapter 4 Governing Young People and Communities Through Sport



Millward et al point us towards the work of Lauss and Szigetvari (2010) who deploy a foucauldian concept of ‘Governing by Fun’ and other critical  approaches are used to look at sport as a hook and general good thing (my coining). This is also picked up by Kelly (2013) who evaluates projects aimed at preventing crime or rehabilitating offenders in terms of: ‘sports for all’; ‘social cohesion’; ‘pathway to work’ and ‘giving a voice’ to young people.


This illustrates the difficulty of determining what counts as ‘working’. And Chamberlain (2013) is rightly cited as noting that many evaluations are not robust and rely too often on anecdote.


As a Home Office civil servant in the Probation Service Division I funded a number of projects under the Supervision Grant Scheme (SuGS, named by me for Madness frontman). Amongst the schemes funded were some sports ones and several motor projects which took convicted offenders and young people seen to be ‘at risk’.


I left to take my PhD on car crime and my two fieldwork sites were at motor projects that I had visited often before. As a side project I undertook an ‘evaluation’ of one. Clearly it was impossible to indisputably impute any reduction in offending to attendance at the Motor Project. Especially since this might just be one evening a week with no added educational or rehabilitative modules or packages. Though anecdotally know some of those attending seriously reduced their taking of cars but continued to offend (ordering 'weed' by phone whilst be interviewed by me in their home).


My cultural criminological take didn’t seek to say whether the projects worked in strict crime reduction/prevention or even foucauldian fun terms but interrogate why the ‘homeopathic/naturopathic’ solution to car crime was seen to be limited access to cars. I concluded that the problem of car crime could only be seen in addressing the wider ‘car culture’. This lead in the direction of ‘green criminology’ and through an interest in masculinities (tip of the hat to Tim Newburn and Betsy Stanko) onto ‘queering criminology’.


If working with cars and occasionally racing them (only some motor projects allowed this) did work it seemed to me it did so by (re)integrating the young men into a ‘car culture’ which was still problematic. I met only ever one young woman at a project, and she may have been ‘at risk’ but car-obsessed rather than a joyrider. I accept that a foucauldian fun/governance framework could be applied to such projects but that the ‘norm’ they are to internalise need challenging. To be clear that norm is the use of cars as transport and (as advertised) the means to fulfil our dreams. See my  Ambivalent Criminology – ‘Have you stopped driving your car?’ Paper given to BSC Conference LSE 2007'


The sports-based interventions that Millward et al review should stand a better chance of ‘working’ as more ‘work’ is done for those attending beyond the ‘hook’ of sport and yet beyond anecdote few can.


The fun/governance nexus is further explored in respect of fan zones and here I can offer another anecdote.


In 2019 I went to Japan for the Rugby World Cup. I saw Wales beat Georgia and Australia in early rounds. I attended fan zones prior to and post match for those events. I also saw more matches from later rounds at a fan zone in Tokyo, particularly enjoying watching Japan progress. I more my Japan rugby shirt and enjoyed drinks and chats with English, Welsh, Scottish and American fans.


Since I was not likely to start any fighting I’m not sure I needed governing through fun (Japanese boy bands anyone?) but certainly prefer that to be governed in ‘unfun’ ways. We do need to remember that the ‘fun’ of projects or zones is often condemned by those with more straight forwardly punitive views. On fan zones think we need work on researching differences between the different audiences for live and zoned sports and between different sports.


Obviously discussion of fan zones and the Rugby World Cup lead us into their fifth chapter.


Sunday 25 September 2022

Review of 'Sport and Crime: Towards a critical criminology of sport'

 Sport and Crime: Towards a critical criminology of sport


It might be unusual to start with mentioning the acknowledgements in a book review but here we go.


Laura Kelly and Emma Poulton are mentioned as originators of the idea for this book and I can attest that ten years ago I advised Routledge to publish it. The book in hand is the successor text to that sadly unpublished one.


And to look even earlier in the book we might ask why the book is in sport and leisure series not a criminology one?


But as the Oxford Handbook of Sports History (Edelman and Wilson, 2017) contains only 4 mentions of ‘crime’ and one of the grand texts aimed at criminology students (Newburn, 2013) barely mentions sport we should not be surprised.


I am extremely grateful to Andy Millie for pushing me and Bristol University/Policy Press for bearing with me in getting my book accepted as a criminology one.


And whilst we are still looking at such ephemera I must take issue with the claim ‘that this is the first book to fully explore the connections between sports studies and criminology’ (website and back-of-book blurb!).


Introduction


I am cited on page 1 in the Introduction as noticing the ‘sheer potential for a distinctive criminology of sport’. I am mentioned amongst a number of others who I also acknowledge - such as Meek (2013) and Nichols (2010). I give a chapter to considering whether sport can prevent crime or rehabilitate the convicted as those two argue. I’m more equivocal.  Millward et al engage in this debate in Chapter 4.


They note Avi Brisman’s review of my book in which he suggests my work was an ‘opening bell or starting pistol’ and likening me to a ‘father wanting acknowledgement of paternity without the responsibilities of child-rearing’. They are kinder but I’m going to admit Avi - who I know and respect - has me sussed, nearly. I am staking a claim - hence my eye-brow raising at the claim that this book is the first. But unlike a stern father I don’t seek to lay down the law and terrorise my children but keep a kindly, perhaps avuncular or god-parental, eye on what is going on in the playground. I’ve always had a ludic intent to my work. 


So whether as parent, uncle or god-father I am engaging strongly in this review and have also provided the afterword for Power Played edited by Derek Silva and Liam Kennedy.


Millward et al are hopeful of the future of connections to be made between studies of sport and criminology. They kindly note my emphasis on mundane acts as well as spectacular or scandalous ones involving elites; for instance, they give an example of the banning of skateboards in Norway between 1978 and 1989. I agree their conclusion that ‘the relationship between ‘crime’ and ‘sport’ is so diffuse, contested and broad’ (p5). I would add that our relationship as people and criminologists is similarly diffuse, contested and broad.


My book took a critical criminological stance, even critiquing sports and theories I favoured but also attempted to set out how a variety of criminologies might be applied to sport. Millward et al dive right in so spend some of the introduction setting out some critical points.


Those critical points are:


1) there is a starting point in my work and that of others and

2) citing Francis (2012) they note ‘sport is and always will be harmful’ and

3) those harms include dead workers on Qatar’s World Cup stadia (which they take up in Chapter 7) and increased control and surveillance at sports mega-events (taken up in Chapter 5)

and 4) critical criminology has become diffuse and disputed. Sport makes a ‘novel entry point’ (p6).


Chapter 2 then provides further history of critical criminology and its scant engagement with sport.


Chapter 3 looks at white collar crime and crimes of the powerful in sport. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Fédération internationale de Football Association (FIFA).


Using a Foucauldian lens, sports based interventions (SBIs) are examined in Chapter 4. They are found to mask social inequalities and control whilst providing isolated cases of ‘success’ (p9).


Critical Security Studies inform Chapter 5’s examination of sport mega-events but also of athlete’s bodies.


Drawing on ‘edgework’ Chapter 6 looks at mixed martial arts, bare-knuckle boxing and other extreme sports.


Chapter 7 focusses on the upcoming football Word Cup in Qatar and the social harms caused by it.


Chapter 8 sums up and offers a research agenda. I’ll check it against mine in (Hall and Scalia, 2019).


I’ll review a chapter at a time over the next few weeks.


Chapter 2 - Sport and the Criminological Imagination


For criminology theory nerds chapter 2 offers a friendly history of some of the rifts (schisms?) in critical criminology from the work of Taylor, Walton and Young onward. I did my Masters and PhD at Middlesex University when Jock Young, John Lea and Roger Matthews were setting out a ‘left realist’ criminology opposed to right and administrative ones. I recall that at European events friendly but competitive relations were maintained with ‘left idealists’. Vincenzo Ruggiero provided a consistent sociological critique. (He was also my internal examiner. Tony Jefferson the external.) 


I feel my criminology to be balanced (?) between ‘realist’ and ‘idealist’ but broadened to include green and sexuality perspectives and possibly tempered by spending 20 years as a Home Office administrative and policy civil servant. I was lucky to know, but never work with, Tim Newburn, Ben Bowling, George Mair and Marian Fitzgerald and did work for Mike Hough when he was moonlighting as a pen-pusher.


The roots of my green and queered perspectives on criminology derive from my PhD on joyriding. I focussed on how similar joyriding was to the advertised pleasures of legal driving and how ungreen that was. Also the mainly young male joyriders seemed to have some anxieties around their masculinity. The fieldwork took place in ‘motor projects’ and some of this eventually found its way into my book years later. This will feed into my discussion of Millward et al’s chapter 4.


Whilst I hope that sports criminology is more than the extant studies of football hooligans I have to recognise with, Millward et al, that Taylor’s work on this topic is important. His first thoughts might be seen to be neo-marxist or left idealist in casting football hooligans as resistant ‘class warriors’ whereas his later accounts - moving in a realist direction - misread the Hillsborough disaster.


Taylor applied a critical criminology to a sport he loved. Few others did. We don’t get to find out how Millward et al relate to sport as participants or spectators. I have sometimes wondered if the lack of criminological engagement with topics close to our hearts like driving and car use has been an ambivalence which I think also applies to sport. They mention feminist critiques of left realism and other criminologies and suspect some feminists may not wish to engage with sport unless to note the masculinity of its adherents or the violence towards women of some sportsmen. 


I would have been happy if this chapter had just told us that few attempts had been made to look critically at sport, cited my work and a few others on this before discussing Taylor’s trajectory from an idealist critical criminology to a more realist one. That could have been folded into the first chapter leaving space for another chapter of critical criminological engagement with more sports.


Chapter 3 Sport, Corruption and White-Collar Criminality’


The chapter is sub-titled Crimes of the Powerful (1) and we get part 2 of that in Chapter 7.


The focus of this chapter is the proven and suggested corruption within the IOC and FIFA related to a far too close connection with various commercial interests. Most of this work has been done by investigative journalists.


They use Sutherland to add a critical criminological edge to the work of the late Andrew Jennings and co-writers. They open their chapter with a very lengthy, and thoroughly justified, quote from Jennings (2011) in which he opens by admitting he is a criminal. That is that those he seeks to investigate and have prosecuted are so powerful that they can define his activities as criminal but not theirs.


I only briefly referred to Jennings in my work but I can now offer some personal thoughts on corruption.  A quote from Andy Brown of the Sports Integrity Initiative sets the scene.


Nic Groombridge, […] argued that current anti-doping rules are ineffective as a deterrent to doping, in parallel to the argument that laws on drugs are ineffective in deterring users from taking them.


He argued that as in society, the focus should be on harm reduction rather than outright prohibition as the war on drugs has been lost. He explained that a needle exchange programme had found that 30% of needles tested showed use of performance and image enhancing drugs (PIEDs), illustrating that the public – and not just elite athletes – are widely using such substances.

 

Groombridge pointed out that athletes are an easier target to prosecute for PIEDS than the general public, as they too easily surrender their rights. Delegates argued that as athletes are involved in competition and the public are not, permitting them to take PIEDs risked forcing other athletes to do the same in order to stay competitive. 


This was at the 2018 UEFA Anti-doping Symposium.  It was held at the Royal Institution and some of my reflections on this event are here. So where was the corruption?


We were all put up in a five star hotel and catered well. Since I had warned the organisers I was not proposing to say comforting things I was not expecting to be offered any work or contracts but the cosy international milieu suggested to me that had I cut my cloth to fit I might have secured preferment. They all largely agreed with each other and resented my suggestion that corruption was the worse problem. And that doping/anti-doping served - even if not deliberately - as a distraction from that. And the recent news about ongoing corruption in UEFA backs this up.


My association with penal charities and as an occasional lecturer with Kings College London has given me access to some high end law firms for wine and canapé type events and I always sense the power that flows through such places and the interconnections of powerful interests.


Being well fed and entertained is very nice as is being thought to have some significance if only for an hour or two is nicer. But it does not match up to ‘free shotguns, skis, clothing, video games, hunting trips, shopping sprees’ etc noted by Boycoff (2016) that some IOC members received in Utah prior to Salt Lake City getting the Winter Games.