Editorial notes: reflections on the silly season

In many places, summer is considered to be the “silly season”, the time of the year without relevant stories or news because most people are enjoying a prolonged break. While it cannot be stated that there has been no relevant news (the elections in France,  the presidential race in the USA, the UN Secretary-General calling for action to curve extreme heat, or the International Court of Justice stating to have found multiple and serious international law violations by Israel towards Palestinians, just to name a few.), it is true that in Europe most people are enjoying their summer leaves. This includes politicians, judges and lawyers, police officers, lawmakers, and many others. Scholars are usually also included and while some argue that you can never really take time off from science, it is not uncommon, during this time of the year, to receive plenty of automatic “out-of-the-office” emails from colleagues.

As editor of the ESC newsletter, there are numerous challenges in putting together the summer issue. However, this has traditionally been a very important issue of the newsletter, particularly because readers get to learn about Criminology in the country that will be hosting the next annual conference (Romania, in this case) and also because they get to know more about the profiles of the candidates for the next elections for the ESC board. The sheer quality and merit of this year’s candidates is amazing and their profiles highlight how diverse and rich European Criminology is.  Likewise, readers can accept the invitation to head into the European Criminology Oral History Project (ECOH) YouTube channel and understand better the story of the gradual consolidation of European criminology.

September will bring EUROCRIM2024 to lovely Bucharest, as well as the recomposition of the board. Eventually, it will also bring academics together to react to Josep Tamarit’s appeal to join forces to create a European victimisation survey, potentially taking that opportunity to re-think what or who is a victim, supporting them in narrating their experiences with the crime, the justice system, the offender and with their own identities and stories, following on the suggestions of Narrative Victimology (e.g. Pemberton, Mulder & Aarten, 2019). And, getting inspiration from Andra-Roxana Trandafirand George-Cristian Ioan, children and the vulnerable (including non-human victims) need criminologists, policy-makers and social actors to demand on their behalf for better protection from crime and more chances to benefit from fair and effective institutions.

References

Pemberton, A., Mulder, E. & Aarten, P.G.M. (2019). Stories of injustice: towards a narrative victimology. European Journal of Criminology, 16(4), 391-412.