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.

TV refs/ the very definition of justice?

In his back page essay in today’s Observer (web version here) Andrew Anthony uses his visit to the NFL’s Gameday Central Studio in New York to argue for the greater use of technology in football.  I’ll be looking at, and agreeing with much of, what he says but also seeing what lessons this might have for wider society and vice versa.

Tennis players have an unlimited right to challenge decisions that can be reviewed by the technology but once they get three wrong in a set they can make no more challenges - imagine losing the right to appeal in Cricket or real life!

In the NFL, Anthony tells us, coaches have the right to make two challenges a game (three if they get both right) about refereeing calls (as long as it’s not a scoring play or a turnover), which are then sent to review and the replay official subjects every scoring play and turnover to review.

He mentions that on his arrival the most played video was of an NFL star, the CCTV footage of Ray Rice beating his fiancee.  He contrasts ‘the forensic analysis’ of NFL games with ‘almost criminally lenient’ punishment of Rice.  Here I only note the deployment of criminological/criminal justice metaphors and the part played by CCTV/video ‘surveillance’ in all such cases to concentrate on the justice and technology issues.

He notes we are used to analysis of soccer by TV pundits of FIFA’s foot-dragging on the issue of the use of technology and sets out the four arguments that have traditionally been employed against using technology in soccer are:

a) it would slow the game down; b) it would undermine the position of the referee; c) it would drive a wedge between the professional and amateur game; d) it would remove the element of human fallibility that is a key talking point.

He seeks to rebut all in quick order but let’s unpick them.  First the charge of slowing the game down.  He notes players feigning injury to which we might add really being injured (and note proposals in Rugby Union for TMOs to judge the offenders punishment from the victim’s reaction make some fear this will lead to soccer-style ‘simulation).  Secondly he sees this as adding suspense.  He doesn’t use the term ‘gamification’ or cite games theory but clearly these will be issues (see here for analysis of strategies for the use of challenges in tennis).  Athletes have in the past been accused of using the old false start rules to unsettle their opponents; though it too might add suspense.  It is said that the dictates of TV had something to do with the change from each runner being allowed one false start to each race being allowed one, and the NFL’s intimate embrace with broadcasters and advertisers indicates the utility of slowing the game down.  Elsewhere in the article he acknowledges the very different tempos of association and american football which means that the technology cannot be imported wholesale - or indeed human based judgement and punishment systems.

He rightly argues that TV - those pundits and everyone in the pub - is now used to show that the referee is wrong so why not use it to show when they are right.  This chimes some of the arguments about CCTV and surveillance more generally - and what of all those dressing room and bench cams now?  Might we relate some of the arguments about the trend towards body-mounted cameras for the police with their use by rugby and ice-hockey referees.  Here’s former Rugby Union star and solicitor Brian Moore on the subject, though he reviews it more as a viewer .

He is again right about the void that exists between levels in the game and might have mentioned that this existed long before the introduction of technology.  Thus ‘amateur’ tennis players still have to rely on the honesty of their opponents but the professionals had an army of linespeople, referees and Umpire long before the arrival of Hawkeye.  Indeed, given the ubiquity and growing cheapness of technology might an App be developed that set all the players phones to police the game?

Finally the issue of the ‘talking point’.  Whilst sport might once have been undertaken for social or cultural reasons much sport now occurs in front of and specifically for the media.  What Anthony does not mention in his article is that Dean Blandino the NFL’s ‘vice-president of officiating’ ‘talks’ through controversial points of ‘law’ each week in a video.  Clearly something for soccer and justice more generally to consider?

Anthony’s article is headlined: ‘Decisions made from on high and far away’ to note that the next NFL match at Wembley will ultimately be ‘meta-refereed’ from New York (how far is it to San Francisco?).  He is discussing technology and sport but my argument is that there are crossovers not only between sports as he argues but also into and from ‘real’ life.  Might we see the substantive, if not yet formal, downgrading of refs in all sports as bringing sport more in line with life.  In this argument referees become more police officers than the Judge Dredd position they once held of being judge and jury.  This removes, in part, ‘justice’ from the hurly-burly of the field to a sufficient height and distance.  Whether that is to the cool of the court or the heat of the studio is another matter.