Review of Deborah Jump's 'The Criminology of Boxing, Violence and Desistance - round 1 (foreword)

I welcome this book, in part for selfish reasons but very much in its own right. My selfish reasons relate to my hope that this book shows I was right to try to tie sports sociology and law to a critical criminology (and tip of the hat to Andrew Millie and Policy Press for believing it too). In my book I suggest antecedents and like to see this and the work of Kennedy and Silva as potential descendants.

As this review is not for a journal I don't have to stick to a word limit or format. It also means I can be quicker. I propose to shamelessly deploy boxing and other sporting metaphors throughout.

Too great a use of social media and my own mental capacities mean that a short form suits me: let's call them rounds. I'll make a few jabs, possibly essay a combination, cover then withdraw, have my second towel me down before getting back off my stool.

So seconds out round 1.

Stepping into the ring I find Jump has tagged James Treadwell in (see Corteen on wrestling).

'Protect yourself at all times' opens his foreword and immediately he fesses up to his own fandom of and participation in the 'Sweet Science' and lifelong familiarity with boxing gyms.

I did not. My sporting life was schoolyard soccer, rugby and judo before settling on running. Rugby carried on into my late 20s and I failed to 'protect myself' (no shin pads or gum shield then) but got more black eyes from occasional squash! My most martial activity was the judo. A small club with respect for each other and the Japanese origin of the sport. I fought young women and old men. Luckily groundwork didn't cause too much embarrassment from intimacy issues but I can now, in a Proustian moment, recall the alcohol-scented breath of one older man. The 30 seconds holding down required for ippon seemed an age.

I mention my, and James’s, sporting life because I'm not sure we find out Deborah's but we shall see.

James goes on to demonstrate the community of boxing globally and across criminal and non-criminal worlds. Like many men I can talk sport and for my PhD on joyriding and car culture, though no petrolhead, had to talk ‘car’. I kept my green reservations to myself in fieldwork and I'm sure I'd not mention Mayweather's domestic violence history or Pacquiao's tax affairs if talking to Australian gangsters.

Though I can talk sport, I’m not enthusiastic about all sport: motor racing for green reasons and boxing because I’m a pussy! Having established his hardman credentials James praises Deborah, seeing in her, ‘a once-in-a-lifetime prospect every coach seeks’. Clearly a Million Dollar Book.

Most significantly he concludes, ‘Jump never falls into the trap of seeing boxing as a panacea for all social ills’, which is reassuring but I will also be looking to see how she deals with the opposite assertion that all sport is male violence and a cause of further violence - often against women and marginalised and demonised communities.

I hope to float like a dilettante butterfly but not sting like a provoked bee.

Obviously a deficiency of my approach is that I may pick up on a point in one round only to find that the counter-punch comes in the next. But I also hope that people may engage. I may have to change my stance, become a southpaw even.

Consider this sparring.