Positive response to Kennedy and Silva's sports criminology

In “Knuckle-Dragging Thugs”: Civilizing processes and the biosocial revolution in the National Hockey League

Kennedy and Silva argue passionately to develop a critical criminology of hockey, and of sport more generally:

They offer three ways forward in their conclusion:

The first avenue is empirical; we must develop rigorous empirically driven analyses of how both discourses of crime and criminal justice and, perhaps more importantly, practices related to crime control operate within the field of sport. (…) Critical criminologists must therefore work tirelessly to develop a grassroots understanding of how these discourses and practices are developed, take shape, and circulate among increasingly large audiences.

More specifically to our case study, a second agenda could focus on tracing out emergent and important overlaps, similarities, and juxtapositions in the ways we talk about crime and “justice” in hockey (and sport more generally, perhaps in other historically violent sports such as amateur and professional football and the increasingly popular sport of mixed martial arts) and the criminal justice system. For example, scholars may be interested in sketching out the ways in which governing authorities, like the NHL or other supplemental discipline apparatuses, and media adopt discourses traditionally the province of the criminal justice system to legitimize (or delegitimize) strategies, rationales, and practices of crime control (see Atkinson and Young, 2008, for an example).

Finally, we argue that we must work closely with the theories and concepts we generate in relation to—but also generated by—the world of sport. Reimagining sport as an important criminological field requires us to attempt to build on existing theories, or develop new ones, capable of understanding the unique role that sporting culture (particularly mass commercialized professional athletics) plays in (re)producing and reinforcing social inequality. Few cultural contexts reach as many focused consumers as sport does, and as such, we must welcome the challenge

of understanding discourses and practices of crime and criminal justice that operate in the arena, on the field or court, or in the stadium.

As the author of Sports Criminology I have to agree and they kindly cite me. My book attempts to set out the potential field and sets many hares running. Kennedy and Silva have clearly come to their own formulation through their study of ice hockey rather than follow one of my fugitive trains of thought. They study how ice hockey ‘offenders’ are covered in the media. Common-sensical, neo-Lombrosan, bio-social tropes are to be found in much of the coverage. As critical criminologists they are keen to contest those.

In an expansion of their work I would want to examine issues of gender, race, class and sexuality. The world of the NHL is overwhelming white but differences of coverage of native Canadians and Eastern European players might be useful but English Soccer and NFL offer more scope. I struggled to find much coverage of women’s sports offending but the case of Hope Solo suggests she may have enjoyed some gender benefits not available to Caster Semenya’s very different circumstances. I hope others will take up sports criminology and am glad to see the work of Atkinson and Young used so extensively as I hail them as sports criminologists avant la lettre.

You should check out Ice Guardians for examples of the hits they are talking about but also a slightly different take and videos like these on fights in ice hockey.