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.

How do we get men to talk about rape? Might the issue of consent in sport be a way in?

For very good campaigning reasons many feminists argue that ‘rape is rape’.  Despite being a supporter of feminism, I cannot, as a criminologist, accept that any crime is exactly the same as any other crime.  Moreover, I understand, and am uncomfortable with, arguments like MacKinnon’s (Feminism Unmodified ) that under the patriarchy all heterosex is non-consensual.  Here I want to illustrate differences in crimes and attitudes to them through a discussion of assault by men on other men; mostly in sport.

The link is the tricky one of consent, where sports law texts find themselves quoting the Spanner case (R v Brown) which involved sado-maschistic practices. That case necessarily has much discussion of boxing and fights in the street in seeking to discuss consent before finding against the men.  Reflecting on the case Carol Smart compared consent in rape and homosexual acts noting that women’s ‘no’ is taken for ‘yes’ and homosexual men’s ‘yes’ for ‘no’.

But to sporting consent.  This post is inspired by the recent case of Ben Flowers and a reminder from Christopher Matthews of the violence in Ice Hockey which reminded me of the violence of professional wrestling which Corteen and Corteen cover.  I rely on Matt Rogers for the facts and some of the law and can recommend his extensive analysis of ‘implied sporting consent’. 

Flowers received a six month ban from Rugby League Football (RFL) at the hands of the its match-review panel.  It represents potentially missing 13 games and is the most severe option open to the panel.  Interestingly the Sky sport website offers a feedback poll on the question. 

This is how matters stood on 3 November 2014. 

More interestingly the question might have been should his actions have been subject to police action - perhaps, there and then.  It would seem that Greater Manchester Police propose not to disturb the RFL’s jurisdiction but are investigating threats of summary informal justice on social media against Flowers.

As a one-time Rugby Union player, and more occasional informal soccer player, and largely TV viewer I’m aware of the cultures of such sports.  I believe I’ve received more violence than given in my sporting career but make no claims to sainthood.  The odd kick in the face is the price of entry for an open water swim triathlon.  I’ve received some and must have unintentionally given some.

We might construct a continuum of consensual violence for different sports with Ice Hockey and Professional Wrestling at one end where illegal moves - often punches - are expected and tennis or golf at the other end.  Indeed the crowd would be disappointed if violence did not occur at Ice Hockey or Pro Wrestling.  In boxing structured violence is de rigur but hitting below the belt, mauling or fighting at the weigh in (think Haye v Chisora in what the BBC call a ‘brawl’) is penalised as is ‘not trying’ British Board of Boxing Control rule 3.38 (g).

The audience for boxing goes for the formal violence of the sport but may be happy to see some additional informal violence, may even participate in some (on behalf of their man).  Rugby and football crowds often enjoy a little ‘handbags’ (the feminised disavowal of the violence is interesting). Ed Smith suggests that wider society has fallen out of love with boxing as we have become less tolerant of violence (an Elisian thought?).  He muses on whether American football might decline in popularity because of on- and off- pitch violence.  Perhaps we might ask the same of Ice Hockey and Pro Wrestling and has a distaste for cheats - the simulation of fouls etc - reduced the popularity of soccer?

The shadow of simulation (and an implicit censure of soccer?) fell over Rugby Union recently in the suggestion that recent interpretations by officials of violent incidents would lead to diving.  As the Mail Online Headline has it:

RFU laws offer open invitation to game's divers as rugby is in danger of introducing football-style 'simulation' to con officials

Blair Gowan of London Irish is said to have punched Leicester Tiger’s Jamie Gibson in the face but received no yellow card.  Leicester’s complaint to the RFU was met with the answer that the player had not gone to the floor or needed treatment and that the penalty awarded was sufficient punishment.  The concern is that, knowing this rugby players will go to ground and pretend to be hurt (and here is a Samoan player attempting to do just that).  Note that for Rugby Union and in the  Ben Flowers’ case a punch is not a punch but in soccer it would be irrespective of effect.  And on the street it would be too.

Glenn Hoddle made exactly such a point in discussing Luis Suarez’s dental incontinence.  He suggested prison.  Clearly biting is beyond any implied consent and is seen to be unmanly, even childish.  This reminds us that in addition to the law of the land, the code of the game there are gender codes at work too.

The London Irish captain’s take on the punch was:

It’s rugby. If you pull up every incident like that and make a thing about it the game is going to go soft.

Soccer seems to have survived the ‘softness’ of banning hacking in 1863.

But to turn to Sport and Rape we might find MacKinnon in Ched Evans’s corner when she notes:  

Since rape is difficult to talk about, but men need to talk about it perhaps discussion of consent in sport might be a way in.  Just as a rapist may feel he was doing what any man would do so the on-pitch punch thrower may feel he too is only doing what any man might do.  Indeed he may have been the victim of punches in the past, including the immediately preceding past.

I am not so naive to imagine that by changing the way we talk about things will change matters but perhaps the sports authorities and media might use terms like victim and offender in these circumstances.  Should sport point out to players explicitly the issue of consent before each match?

Stepping on to the pitch does not mean you consent to being punched.  Stepping out does not mean you consent to rape and harassment - see Shoshana Roberts.

Lovely Cricket

As I’m trying to write a book on Sports Criminology I’m sometimes asked - and not just by publisher’s reviewers - what I mean by the term.  Worse I don’t always use the term consistently myself, sometimes speaking of Sport Criminology.  Perhaps, I should speak of Sports Criminologies as both are very diverse.  I’ve played Criminology and studied Sport so should know.

A couple of stories have recently reminded me I’ve not posted here recently and they also illustrate the issue.  Those stories are the ongoing and wide-spread discussion of corruption of sport occasioned by sports betting (latest being fears about potential match fixing in the Scotland v Nigeria football friendly) and the more recent controversy over the run out of Jos Buttler.

But first some ‘gripes’.  As one of the first criminologists to write about ‘green criminology’ - though I called it eco-criminology then - I have seen my call to bring green perspectives to criminology ignored in favour of a criminology of green topics, principally pollution and crimes against animals.  My chapter, 'Matter All Over the Place: Litter, Criminology and Criminal Justice' in Routledge International Handbook of Criminology, talks about litter but also what constitutes 'green criminology’.  I’ll be revisiting this in a paper in Special Edition of Radical Criminology next year.  

Second gripe: I am now positioned by some as a pioneer of Queer Criminology.  I’ve come out and moaned about that here.  In essence my perverse criminology sought to drag discussion of sexualities - gay/straight, cis/trans, polymorphous etc - into criminology and, to an extent versa vice; but this queered criminology appears to have become concerned largely with the wrongs done to LGBTQ peoples at the hands of individuals and the State.

I support the intentions of those green/GBTQ academics and activists but wish some wider work had arisen. What connects these and Sport Criminology is that I already foresee - indeed, have already experienced - a similar fate for it.

When I try to explain Sport Criminology to people they either don’t get it or get it right away.  That is get it wrong, right away.  I’m not surprised that people don’t get it.  A google search on the term ‘Sport Criminology’ finds only this blog and some joint honours courses in Sport and Criminology, that is in studying sport half the time and criminology the other half without any connection.

Those who get it wrong immediately make connections to things like match fixing, crowd violence or off-field crimes of violence by sports stars.  All important but these seem to be well covered already within criminology and journalism.  Hillyard and Tombs (2004: 11) argue ‘Crime has no ontological reality’, I would argue equally that sport too is equally social constructed and therefore sport criminology is doubly impossible.  Those who get it wrong latch on to common-sensical ideas of what crime is and what sport is (they don’t suffer my ontological doubts) and land on obvious crimes obviously associated with obvious sport.  Hence the match-fixing and violence.

So I fully recognise that my purist vision of a criminology(ies) or even a zemiology of what occurs within sport will, for most, become about the corruption and violence that harms the pure notion of sport without examining the harms of sport (though see Brohm’s marxist-inspired Sport, a prison of measured time and Perelman’s coruscating condemnation Barbaric Sport: a global plague).  I hope to encompass all - for and against. 

But turning from my gripes about what has become of green and queer criminology and fears for sports criminology let’s look at something I see as squarely within my purview - recent events in cricket.  Famously cricket is difficult to explain to foreigners and Pippa Middelton’s efforts in Vanity Fair seem to owe much to this tea towel.

These ‘attempts’ to explain cricket can’t come close to explaining the expression, ‘It’s just not cricket!’, which the Urban Dictionary claims is Australian (!) slang for:

Having something that is unjust or just plain wrong done to someone or something.This come from the game of cricket which is regarded as a gentleman’s game were fairplay was paramount.

Its most recent outing relates to the dismissal of Buttler.

Stephen Brenkley says - on the Independent website - Do not say 'it's not cricket' - moral grey areas define the game.  He positions the run out of Buttler as an ethical issue.  Since it involves the Laws it is a legal and, therefore for me, a criminological one.  But the MCC mixes these matters up in its declaration that it, ‘has been the owner of the Laws of Cricket since the 18th century and continues to be a robust law-maker and guardian of the Spirit of Cricket today’.  It is interesting that the section of the website devoted to ‘The Laws in the News’ makes no mention of this ‘news’ as of 5 June 2013.  This may be because the legal position is clear and therefore officially no story.

What do the Laws say?  Rule 38 says: 1. Out Run out

1. Either batsman is out Run out, except as in 2 below, if, at any time while the ball is in play, (i) he is out of his ground and (ii) his wicket is fairly put down by the action of a fielder.
2. (a) above shall apply even though No ball has been called, except in the circumstances of 2(b)(ii) below, and whether or not a run is being attempted.

Buttler was out of his ground and the bowler, Sachithra Senanayake, (a fielder) fairly within the law  - but not, many allege, within the spirit - ‘put down’ the wicket.  Brenkley makes no firm conclusion but teases us with discussion of sledging (verbal abuse, that may be illegal on the street) and failing to walk (knowing one was out but in the absence of the umpire’s decision or the growing technology of sports surveillance standing ones ground).  There are clearly ethical, legal and criminological arguments about the comparabilities of these ‘crimes’, ‘breaches’.

The fall out is likely to be more arguments this summer between the parties.  Time will tell if any corrupt practices are behind them.

Best ever excuse for losing a football match? And other thoughts about problems in football.

Cardiff's 3-0 defeat by Crystal Palace in early April should not be allowed to stand, the Welsh club have said in a five-page letter seen by the BBC. The document, sent by club lawyers to the Premier League, alleges Palace boss Tony Pulis knew sporting director Iain Moody was trying to obtain Cardiff's starting line-up before the game. (David Bond on BBC Sport website)

As a criminologist I incline to the view that one of the causes of crime is the tendency to make more and more things criminal and that what is and isn’t criminal can change over time.

Crimes may be committed within sport but much of what this blog is about is those things that are breaches of the Laws/Rules of the Game or those of the organising Association.  Matters are further confused in English football by the existence of the Premier League with its rules.  Some breaches of the rules might be seen to be akin to crime, for instance a foul may be criminal in the eyes of English Law - though arrest, prosecution or conviction are rare - but summarily dealt with under Law 12 by the Referee.  Interestingly the Laws speak of ‘offences’, for instance listing the ten that can lead (sentence, if you like) to a direct free kick (the punishment) and the FA has its own judicial panel!

Former players now employed as commentators might complain that ‘in their day’ or, even, ‘in this country’ a more robust style was permitted but guess that none are calling for the return of ‘hacking’ as allowed by the earliest complete formulation of the laws of Association Football and common practice in the many versions of the game before:

X.  If any player shall run with the ball towards his adversaries' goal, any player on the opposite side shall be at liberty to charge, hold, trip, or hack him, or to wrest the ball from him, but no player shall be held and hacked at the same time.

So the problem of fouling could be ended legally - if not medically - by legalising it.  I’m still trying to work out how to deal with diving (see Sam Allardyce on the topic) but a technological solution involving GPS, gyroscopes and chipped players may be necessary crime prevention devices in which honesty will be redundant.  Clearly the close surveillance of super slow mo HD cameras, match officials, crowd and ‘the man in the pub’ is insufficient to deter the practice.  And yet we place great trust in CCTV to do on the streets what it fails to do on pitch.

Off field issues however are covered by the meta rules or written Constitutions of sporting organisations.  

The Premier League’s rules make it clear (L21) that ‘at least one hour before the time fixed for the kick-off of a League Match’ the Referee, opposition and media will be provided with a team sheet on a specified form (Form 9).  There is no commentary on why this stipulation and time limit but the need to check that players are properly registered and not under suspension suggests itself.

What Cardiff’s lawyers are said to be claiming is that knowledge in advance of the team and formation materially influenced the match, which they lost 3-0.  This is quite a counter-factual.  It is not clear how much they think they would have won by.

Quoting the BBC’s story again:

Specifically, Cardiff say Palace have broken three Premier League rules: B15, B16 and B17. Of these, B17 is potentially the most serious as it states that no club shall disclose or divulge confidential information.

Rather than ‘crimes’ these appear to be contractual matters - as are most of the Premier League’s rules (relations between clubs, between clubs and player, and provision for media etc).  These matters may go to civil law courts or to arbitration but first we await the Premier’s League response - to date (18 April 2014) its website has been silent on the matter.

Clearly if such rules did not exist then it could not have been breached.  But whilst criminologists may recommend decriminalisation for the benefit of society the money in football means that commercial interests will be paramount not good sense.

And it interesting that much mid week media speculation is on who will be selected and what formation will be used.  Some of those predictions will be right - some lucky guesses, some horses-mouth tip-offs? - many will be wrong.  Next thing you know there’ll be a betting scandal!  You seem to be able to bet on anything from results to in game incidents to numbers of players leaving during transfer window.  Why not team selection?

Racism in Football - an ongoing series

When, and I paraphrase and apologise to the faint-hearted, Roy Keane told his Irish Manager, Barnsley-accented Mick McCarthy:

You're a fucking wanker and you can stick your World Cup up your arse ... you English cunt! You can stick it up your bollocks.

it was generally agreed that the offensive term in this was 'English'.

Now John Terry is said to have called Anton Ferdinand a 'fucking black cunt'

Does 'black' carry a more than descriptive import or is it racist, a form of 'hate speech'.  Obviously this will be a matter for the Court but according to the BBC Anton Ferdinand said he was initially reluctant to talk to the police because it was a sporting issue, 'This is a footballing issue that happened on the football pitch where we work'.

So racism is bad but football is another country.

not expecting World Peace soon nor giving up my Olympic tickets

The malignancy of sport

In Criminal Justice Matters (CJM) No 88 June 2012 Ellis Cashmore argues that, for all its apparent innocuousness, sport is a harmful presence in society.

The time and energy we put into sport could be more profitable deployed.  Sport is not only futile, arbitrary and and wasteful: it is a malign presence that, it was once thought, would serve as a source of moral inspiration, but which has merely become part of an apparatus that buttresses consumer culture.

 I can't disagree with the sentiment of this sprint jeremiad.  However, obviously as I continue to play and watch sport live and mediatised (as I type a window in my computer is showing the Kitzbuhel Triathlon* and I shall be watching England v Italy in Euro 2012 later) I must have some differences.  Those differences are politico-ideological but I'll try and drag criminology too.


It feels as if Cashmore has been let down by sport and that he might have formerly believed that it could, 'deliver peace on earth, save the planet from environmental disaster, or assist the discovery of a cure for cancer'.  I have never believed that sport was anything other than a part of society (despite it's pretensions to special status and demands for immunity from politics or law) and subject to all of the problems of society.


And that problem is 'money' or 'consumer culture' as Cashmore has it.  Or, capitalism.  None of the problems he addresses are new but have become more concentrated, and particularly in soccer, which he takes largely as his example.  His approach reminds me of Brohm's classic Sport, a prison of measured time and more recently of Marc Perelman's Barbaric Sport.  


So what of the criminology?  The publisher's of CJM (and I have some sympathy with this approach) favour a broad vision of crime to incorporate harms not always or appropriately dealt with by law and criminal justice.  Cashmore's piece takes the broadest approach in denouncing sport.  Within this tradition I'd be happier pulling the focus in a touch and worrying about the matters that Fussey raises in his article in CJM 88 which I'll examine later.


And in the spirit of Richard Neville's Playpower suggest that sport, like drugs should be recreational.


*the Brownlee brothers first and second.

Like CCTV goal line technology won't work

The Sun today, in a sport page headline, urged us to forget goal line technology.  Perhaps because we had won.  But in a more considered article had this to say:

The ball looped towards goal and, while John Terry made an acrobatic clearance, replays showed the ball was OVER the line.

There were three officials watching it, the linesman, the official by the goal and ref Viktor Kassai but none of them spotted it.

What is the point of that bloke behind the goal-line? He was only five yards away and still he did not notice the ball was in.

Video technology cannot come soon enough.

At least it was some justice for England having had that Frank Lampard effort wrongly disallowed at the 2010 World Cup against Germany.

Let's start with that last point to dismiss it.  'Justice' is not the same as some hazy understanding of Hindu and Buddhist ideas of 'karma'.


The recent clamour for goal line technology reminds me of the demands for CCTV and the erroneous belief that it would 'work' (see my demolition here, based on the Home Office's own untrumpeted work).


I am not opposed to deploying technology; indeed, hugely enjoy the 'gaming' aspect of challenges in Tennis and Cricket using 'Hawkeye'.  Similarly, one of CCTV's main functions is to provide entertainment or tragic memorial on Crimewatch.


Whether we need it is another matter.  Fifth and sixth officials, like real life police officers, can do more than a technology but seem not to have in this case.  Moreover, television was quickly able to show the goal without any additional technology.  It has always shown all the fouls and diving without much sign of that being justly dealt with.


So lets fit the technology and congratulate ourselves we have resolved the issue.  And then start the argument that the player was offside earlier or should not have been on the pitch because of an earlier unpunished foul.  Or, even should not have been playing in the first place because of earlier infractions or that they were not properly qualified.

Paddy's Pants Up: Bendtner's no John Carlos

Every one is having great fun with Nicklas Bendtner's flashing his sponsored underpants including outrage at the perceived disproportion of his penalty compared to UEFA's treatment of individual and national racism.  Let's be clear UEFA's record is not good - a Guardian charge list here.  But anyone with criminological, legal or penological nous would not be surprised.


You don't need to be a radical criminologist or student of white-collar crime to see that money is always going to trump racism or hate crime more generally.  And see the fearsome requirements of the lex olympica, particularly in respect of ambush marketing like Bendtner's.  Expect more stories like this.


It is disingenuous of  Paddy Power's spokesperson to claim, 'We don't believe that Nicklas should be penalised for nothing more serious than wearing his lucky underpants which in fairness was only a bit of fun.'  But we know that.  We are all media savvy.  Their offer to pay his fine will just come from the marketing budget.  And cheap at the price.


To get into trouble advertising a bookmaker - notice how many adverts for Power's rivals appear in the ad break - is pretty poor.  Bendtner's no John Carlos.


But back to the racism and the policing/prosecuting/punishing of sport.  I've some sympathy with the difficulties of national federations in controlling the actions of 'their' fans and have some concerns that opposing fans - like players on the pitch - will try to get the opposition into trouble.  So the fines on them can be seen as 'slaps on the wrist' or 'merely symbolic'.  I'd rather more was actually done about racism and other discriminations in society more widely than upping the punishment of sides or individuals.


But in the Bendtner case I do feel that the team, team management and national federation can be held to blame as they have full control of all aspects of the player's actions in such an instance.


So Bendnter's a pretty pathetic patsy for paddy power but UEFA right to hold Denmark to account for it.  Whether the Danish nation deserves the collective punishment of his suspension for their next vital World Cup qualifying match is another matter.


And don't get me started on betting as a driver of criminality in and around sport.

Domestic Violence and Sport

Clearly violence should be an issue for criminologists but domestic violence has not had the coverage it should have had.  Were it not for feminist activists and academics, it would have had even less.

So where to draw the line between sports criminology and criminology?  Violence against women is not to be condoned but I'm still not sure that the manifold instances of sportsmen's (or even spectator) violence off field is a subject for sports criminology but criminology proper.

However, given the interest in the topic some engagement is necessary.  Linked to the Olympics The British Psychological Society have launched a sport-related portal where I found this on 'Football culture and domestic violence'.  It seeks to make distinctions between association and rugby union football refereeing (or policing/prosecuting/judging) which seem reasonable in respect of game play but don't seem to relate to the issue of domestic violence.

Better sources might be Jeff Bendict's Out of Bounds: Inside the NBA's Culture of Rape, Violence, and Crime and Public Heros Private Fellons: Athletes and Crimes Against Women or Mariah Burton Nelson's The stronger women get, the more men love football.

Having played contact team sports I can confirm violence and sexist values but have no reason to believe that they are linked to domestic violence directly in the way that some suggest.