I have never been interested in opening a Facebook account, but I finally agreed to a few months ago, for reasons related to a research project on feelings of insecurity in Castel San Pietro, a small town in Italy. I have done a lot of research on this subject over many years, using methods ranging from large quantitative surveys to ethnographic studies.
It has been traditional for ESC conference chairs to summarize criminology in their country, but given the scale of criminology in the UK, this would be too daunting, even a somewhat bizarre task. Instead, I have made a non-random selection of components of it that I consider to be illuminating.
The nitty-gritty of the criminal procedure is not necessarily a topic that gets criminologists excited. This is especially true for ones with an international element. We tend to view the criminal process as insular, and within our respective national legal and institutional framework. We probably still teach the old adage that to criminalise and to prosecute is one of the remaining bastions of state sovereignty in the post-Westphalian age.
Brexit poses significant challenges to the security of the UK, and, to some extent, of the EU. A so-called ‘hard’ Brexit may signify that the UK ceases to participate in a series of key mechanisms of judicial co-operation in criminal matters and police co-operation at EU level.
Since the Treaty of Lisbon removed the British veto in European police and judicial cooperation, UK involvement in this policy field has amounted to a block opt-out of all pre-Lisbon measures, a host of simultaneous opt-back-ins, several subsequent opt-ins to post-Lisbon measures and partial involvement in the Schengen acquis. This à la carte approach paints an indistinct portrait: a tree with many branches, carefully pruned in the national interest – and now shaken to the roots by the complexities of implementing the vote to leave the EU.
In 2016, the European Society of Criminology (ESC) had 1063 members, of which 25% were students. The 16th Annual Meeting of the Society took place in Münster, Germany, from 21 to 24 September 2016 and attracted 1064 participants, of which roughly two-thirds were ESC members.
Over the last two decades, the prevalence of cybercrime has increased rapidly and has become part of the everyday life of citizens. Digitization has consequences for various types of crime and raises all sorts of questions. For example, are we dealing with a new type of offender? How can potential victims made more resilient? And which interventions against cybercrime are effective?
The ESC Working Group on Community Sanctions and Measures was formed in 2007 by a small group of scholars to encourage networking, foster discussion, stimulate empirical research, enable theoretical development and encourage critical and comparative work on community sanctions and measures in European jurisdictions.
For more than a decade, the ESC European University Curriculum Working Group has focused on academic criminological curricula and cooperated with colleagues establishing or updating programmes in criminology and criminal justice in Europe and beyond. We have shared information on the contents of criminological programmes and their development.