he headlines scream their outrage and the Twittersphere is awash with keyboard warriors: criminals must pay; lock ’em up; how did we ever get to this state?; what’s to be done? But when it comes to the ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’ mantra, maybe we’re asking the wrong questions. There’s no shortage of debate about the risk factors that can lead people to commit crime and trap them in a cycle of offending. But what forces and influences can actually steer people away from criminal behaviour? This is one of the key missions of positive criminology, an emerging discipline that is being pioneered at BCU. “As criminologists, we’ve always been interested in the negative elements of crime – looking at why people offend, the harmful impact of crime and the punitive measures taken against offenders,” says Professor Elizabeth Yardley, director of the Centre for Applied Criminology. “Positive criminology takes a slightly different angle. When people have offended, they need to be held accountable, of course. But under this approach, part of that involves looking at what they’re good at – focusing on their strengths in order to stop their offending, rather than concentrating on the risks.”
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A change of focus Positive criminology is one of five research clusters at the Centre, providing a hub for academic staff and doctoral students working in the field. From a fringe interest just a few years ago, it has blossomed into an approach that is taken seriously by practitioners and policy-makers in the criminal justice system – though it remains controversial. Professor Yardley says: “I’ve always been very victim-focused in my research, so I struggled a bit with shifting the focus onto offenders. But what has become apparent to me is that the line between victim and offender isn’t as stark as I once thought. “When you spend time with offenders, particularly those convicted of homicide or violent crime, you find many of them were victims before they committed those crimes. They were exposed to chaotic, disturbing experiences as children and that has played a significant role in their decision to offend.” She explains that the greatest single influence on positive criminology is the "Good Lives Model of Offender Rehabilitation", developed by New Zealand clinical psychologist Tony Ward. It suggests that initiatives that help offenders achieve more positive and fulfilling lives are an effective way to reduce crime. “It basically says that offenders and non-offenders have the same drives and desires, and are essentially looking for the same
Professor Elizabeth Yardley is Reader in Criminology and Director of the Centre for Applied Criminology in the School of Social Sciences.
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things in life,” says Professor Yardley. “It’s just the way that they’ve gone about getting these things that means some people end up breaking the law and some people don’t.” Her own recent research has examined the effects of employing an artist-in-residence at HM Prison Grendon in Buckinghamshire. She says: “We’re looking at the impact that his residency has had, not only on the staff and inmates within the prison, but on the outside as well, in terms of what people think of prisoners, crime and punishment. “The trouble is that programmes concentrating on people’s strengths are not seen as an essential part of rehabilitation. Interventions that use music or art have lost public funding and are heavily reliant on the voluntary sector. So we have to develop the evidence base for these approaches. One of the challenges of positive criminology is getting across to policymakers the changes that we’ve seen in the offenders we work with, so they will fund these programmes.” The research students working within the positive criminology cluster are shining a light on many under-researched topics in the criminal justice system. Cristiana Viana Cardoso, a 2015 graduate of the MA in Criminology, is now working towards a PhD on the experiences of women who have perpetrated child sexual abuse. She says: “We have this sexist view that women are fragile, and that they stay at home and protect the children. This type of crime goes totally against all that. So if a child comes to someone and says that their mother is abusing them, it gets dismissed. The perpetrators are never caught because the crime isn’t investigated. “It’s the same with the research community: if something doesn’t exist, we can’t research it. It’s only now that people are realising that this does happen, and women do commit these crimes because women can do anything – good or bad.” The research is in its early stages, with Cristina currently surveying the existing academic literature and determining which theories from other fields of criminology may be of relevance. But, in keeping with the Centre for Applied Criminology’s practical ethos, she plans to undertake extensive first-hand fieldwork. She says: “I’ll be talking with the women who have become offenders, some in prison and some already back in the community. I’ll also be speaking to the charities that deal with this on a daily basis. We always work closely with practitioners. They’re the ones who are in closest contact with offenders, and they can guide us.” Unlike traditional approaches that concentrate on the negative risk factors that make individuals more likely to commit crimes, Cristiana’s research seeks to uncover the positive ‘protective