In 2014, as part of my teaching at UWE Bristol, I produced a podcast/online lecture on the National Deviancy Conference and its role in the emergence of British critical criminology. I posted it on this blog some time ago. Searching for something else I came across my script and rereading I thought it was worth sharing as a written piece. So here it is:

Criminology before the NDC

Before we look at the NDC I want to place them in some context by briefing outlining the prior history of criminology and in particular to give you an idea of the state of criminology in the late 1960s.

Criminology, as a distinct discipline, emerged in the late nineteenth-century. The word Criminology was first used by the Italian Raffaele Garofalo in 1885. Although in first decades of the twentieth century the word criminology became more widely used criminology as an academic discipline had no presence in the British academy. In the 1930s, Leon Radzinowicz came to Britain, of independent means he had previously been a student of Ferri in Italy having previously studying in France and Switzerland. Radzinowicz developed links with Cambridge’s Law Faculty and there in 1949 established a Department of Criminal Science.  Criminology had arrived in British academia. In 1959 he became a Professor and his department was upgraded to an Institute (Hood 2004).  Radzinowicz (1961) was clear about the Institutes agenda; It was to pursue detailed empirical research on the workings of the criminal justice system and on the phenomenon of crime rather than concern itself with theoretical work or the search for the “causes” of crime. 

Elsewhere in the academy Criminology was establishing itself.  Two refugees from Germany; Hermann Mannheim & Max Grunhut established Criminology in the LSE and Oxford University. Graduates from these institutions in the 1960s had begun to spread the discipline to other universities and Polytechnics. However, despite the Continental origins of the three founding fathers, a very English pragmatism dominated Criminology in Britain. Neither the Sociological theorising on crime and deviancy that dominated American scholarship nor the Positivism of European criminology was allowed to compromise this pragmatic approach.  The possible exception was the LSE. Whereas criminology in both Cambridge and Oxford were located within the Law faculty at the LSE it was located within the Sociology department. Mannheim, although a lawyer, was the most sociological of the foundering trio and it was from the LSE that in 1966 emerged the first substantial attempt to introduce the concept of the American sociology of deviancy into a British context with the publication of David Downes’ Delinquent Solution.

It was into this context that the National Deviancy Conference was born.  The NDC was from its inception a direct response to what its members perceived to be the limitations of British Criminology.  

The members of the NDC differentiated themselves from ‘Mainstream British Criminology’ (Cohen 1974:8) in four key areas:

Pragmatism –v– Theoretical

Mainstream criminology saw itself as playing a practical role in dealing with crime. Crime was a taken for granted phenomenon that needed managing rather than understanding. As Radzinowicz (1961:168) argued criminology’s focus should be on ‘the vitally important problems of combating crime’; removing this focus was ‘to divorce criminology from reality and render it sterile.’

For the NDC such an approach was intellectually impoverished and they argued for a more theoretically informed criminology which sought to understand the phenomenon of crime in its own terms rather than as problems which needed practical solutions. (Cohen 1974 & Cohen & Taylor 1975)

Interdisciplinarian –v- Sociological

Criminology has always been parasitic on other disciplines, there has never been a criminological method that is not borrowed from other disciplines. Many of the arguments between different criminological schools have been about which methods to use or more specifically which disciplines methods should be privileged. 

Mainstream criminology both acknowledged and celebrated this multi disciplinary aspect of criminology.  Radzinowicz (1961:177) was clear about this, for his criminology needed ‘a psychiatrist, a social psychologist, a penologist, a lawyer, a statistician joining together on a combined research operation’.  There was no master discipline in the pursuit of criminological knowledge which instead emerged from the joint workings of scholars across a number of disciplines.

The members of the NDC saw themselves primarily as Sociologists rather than Criminologists. Radzinowicz’s list of the disciplines necessary for criminology set out above was as notable for the absence of sociology as for its promiscuity. However for the NDC Sociology in general, and the Sociology of deviance in particular was seen as the master discipline. Cohen (1974:3) approving quotes Becker’s claim that: 

The study of crime lost its connections with the mainstream of sociological development and became a very bizarre deformation of sociology

The NDC saw the absence of a strong body of sociological work as the main contributor to the poverty of contemporary British criminology. (Cohen & Taylor 1975) In response they established, as one of their main objectives, the incorporation of the work of a number of American sociologists into British criminology. (Cohen 1974, Cohen & Taylor 1975) Concepts like sub-cultures, drift, strain, and secondary deviations were central to their work. (Downes 1966, Cohen 1971, Young 1971)

Whose side they were on?

Social sciences often claim to be impartial, but as Howard Becker (1967) has pointed out it is important we recognise as scholars that we often take sides, if only in that our sympathies rest with one part or another.  Cohen (1974:15) points out that British criminology was 

tied to two interests: the first, the administrative interest of making the correctional system more efficient and the second the humanitarian interest in reforming the system.

Most criminological research was seeking to assist either the state to be more effective in its application of penal law or penal reformers to modified the system to enable it to work more effective.  Such functions implied quite clearly whose side those criminologists were on and it certainly was not the criminal.

Inspired by American deviancy studies (Becker 1964; Polsky 1967; Gouldner 1965) the NDC sociologists were aware that there was another side to these problems and that gaining a more comprehensive understanding of the issues it was necessary, at least on occasions, to appreciate the experience of the deviant and to view events through their eyes. (Cohen & Taylor 1975) 

The NDC Sociologists were particularly influenced by the insights of interactionists and began to argue that relationship between social control and deviance was more complex than mainstream criminology claimed seeking to incorporate Lemert’s (1967:v) perspective that rather than consider social control as a response to deviance sociologists should consider that deviancy might be a response to social control.  Such an approach is obviously impossible from a correctionalist or reformist perspective and requires an approach that is both sympathetic to the person labelled deviant and views events from their standpoint.  As David Matza (1969:10) observed 

The growth of the sociological view of deviant phenomena involved, as major phases, the replacement of a correctional stance by an appreciation of the deviant subject, the tacit purging of a conception of pathology by a new stress on human diversity, and the erosion of a simple distinction between deviant and conventional phenomena,

One significant implication of this difference was on scholars relationship with key research funders. The correctional and reformist perspectives fit snugly with the ideological preferences of the Home Office and Research Council funders whereas the sociologists of deviancy raised questions and introduce methods that challenged the principals and assumptions of these same funders. Inevitably funds flowed towards the scholars whose ideas and methods were more in tune with grant-makers thinkings.

Positivism –v- Antipositivism

The NDC founders saw mainstream criminology trapped by positivism (Cohen & Taylor 1975). The main grounds for this assessment were twofold.  Firstly the influence of “clinical interests”, particularly psychological created a determinist direction to much criminological work. Secondly the methods adopted, particularly large scale surveys of poor boys, which claimed to be objective and scientific were in fact riddled with cultural assumptions and values.

For the NDC members values and cultural context were central to their scholarship. Much of their work focused on groups at the margins of society, those Liazos (1972:103) called “Nuts, Sluts and Perverts”; groups with whom the researchers sympathy often lay. Doing such work required adopting antipositivist methodologies and developing value systems hostile to the assumptions of mainstream criminology.

In response to these differences the NDC was established in 1968. Its formation was described by Cambridge Univerity’s Sir Leon Radzinowicz (1999:229-230):

Right in the middle of the Third National Conference, taking place in Cambridge in July 1968, a group of seven young social scientists and criminologists, participants of the Conference, met secretly and decided to establish an independent ‘National Deviancy Conference’ and soon afterwards they duly met in York. At the time, it reminded me a little of naughty schoolboys, playing a nasty game on their stern headmaster. It was not necessary to go ‘underground’ because we were not in any way opposed to discussing new approaches to the sociology of deviance …

The NDC’s first symposium was in York and was attended by 20 people and its membership grew rapidly with its three conferences a year regularly attracting over 200 participants (Cohen & Taylor 1975:17). The edited collection of papers presented at a 1970 symposia Images of Deviancy (Cohen 1971) was not only given a print run of 20,000 copies but sold out and had to be reprinted ensuring the ideas generated within the group were disseminated to a wider audience (Cohen & Taylor 1975:17). Although subsequent publications were not as commercially successful an important body of work emerged from the group in a relatively short period.  As well as the edited collections of papers, single authored works by Stan Cohen, Ian Taylor, David Downes, Steven Box, Jock Young, Paul Rock and Stuart Hall had a significant impact on our understandings of crime, deviancy and crime control. 

Whereas mainstream criminology was characterised by its close links to the establishment the NDC sought to establish close links with a range of anti-establishment organisations including the Claimants’ Union, Case Con, Radical Alternatives to Prison and PROP the prisoners union (Cohen & Taylor 1975) As such the NDC was making it clear on whose side they were on and there is no doubt that many of their members were active in counter cultures that characterised the last 1960s and early 1970s. These were in turn reflected in the high prevalence of sub-cultural studies in the group’s research interests. 

Whilst the work produced by group members was undoubtedly eclectic a number of common themes emerge:

• A desire to apply the theories of the American sociologists of deviancy to the British context
• A commitment to theory
• The adoption of ethnographic research methodology
• A recognition of the authenticity of the deviant act 
• An attempt to locate the deviant and deviant acts within a general social theory.
• The stressing of the central importance of social control
• The explaining of some forms of deviant behaviour (e.g. industrial sabotage, football hooliganism, vandalism) as the relatively powerless seeking to assert control and therefore as ‘political acts’.
• The importance influence of anarchist ideas 
• Highlighting the importance of the media and its relationship with the forces of social control (Cohen & Taylor 1975)

To summarise, the NDC placed sociological theory, particularly that of deviancy, at the centre of their criminology. They sought to problamatise social control, impart sympathy to deviants and their acts as well move criminology to a methodology which endorsed antipositivism and privileged ethnography over large scale social surveys. 

Critique

The obvious critique of the new sociology of deviancy promoted by the NDC and its scholars was that of the established criminologists.  By retaining their belief that criminology’s function was to provide solutions to the very real problem of crime the theorising of the NDC was only at best going to be of marginal interest.  It was an intellectual indulgence which had little if any relevance to the real world.

The sheer range of work and the rapid theoretical leaps contained within the NDC must have been difficult to keep up with and left all but the most dedicated follower confused and unable to determine any intellectual coherence across the range of work generated through the NDC.  One participant David Downes (1978:498) articulated this view when he confessed that ‘experiencing too great a succession of so-called paradigmatic revolutions’ left him with ‘a sense of toppling into a metaphysical swamp.’ 

A further criticism of much of the NDC’s body of work is that for all its sympathy for counter-cultures and hostility to the establishment it failed to adequately theorise the state (Hall et al 1978). For example labelling theory was utilised, highlighting how state institutions reactions generated “secondary deviation”, but nothing substantial was said about the state, both in its current form and in other potential forms (see for example Taylor et al 1973). This failure to engage at a theoretical level with the state left much of the work generated out of the NDC appearing to adopt an uncompromisingly oppositional stance (Sparks 1980). Such critiques came not only from mainstream criminology but also from Marxist critiques such as Hirst (1975: 240) who argued:

The operation of law or custom, however much it may be associated in some societies with injustice and oppression, is a necessary condition of existence of any social formation … One cannot imagine the absence of the control of traffic or the absence of the suppression of theft and murder, nor can one consider these controls as purely oppressive.

Liazos’ (1972) critique of American sociologies of deviance applies, at least in part, to the newly emerging NDC scholarship. The main points of his critique were

• That despite a stated desire to humanise the deviant by continually refereeing to the subjects of their research as “deviants” there is an obvious danger that the label with stick. Liazos (1972:119) argues that instead ‘we should banish the concept of “deviance” and speak of oppression, conflict, persecution, and suffering.’
• By focusing on ‘nuts, sluts and perverts’ rather than the deviancy of the powerful, which is, after all, both more serious and more harmful, sociologists of deviancy have reinforced stereotypes rather than challenged them.
• That they have failed to theoretical appreciate the importance of power.

In the same year that the NDC launched Dennis Chapman published Sociology and the Stereotype of the Criminal.  Chapman, at the very time the Sociology of Deviancy was about to invade British criminology, provided a warning concerning Sociology’s handling of deviancy. Central to Chapman’s critique was the whole status of a sociology of deviancy, parodying Durkheim he observed ‘deviant groups are a functionally necessary part of the system, as is the sociology of deviance.’ (Ibid 24) He questioned why a “special” sociology was necessary suggesting that applying theory from other branches of sociology would prove a more profitable enterprise (ibid 9). Whilst some of the NDC selectively quote from this book (e.g. Young), others largely ignored it (Cohen). One, Paul Rock, was dismissive claiming that ‘his sterotype of criminology is largely anachronistic” and that Chapman was ignorant of the American sociology of deviancy which is rescuing criminology and sociology from the stereotype of the criminal. Over 40 years later the arrogance of this dismissal seems ironic given the warning Chapman issued to criminology is as relevant today as it was then.

The NDC’s formal life ended in around 1980 when differences between various factions become unsustainable. In 1974 however the NDC had been instrumental is the establishment for the European Group for the study of Deviancy and Social Control, a group that continues to meet annual drawing together radical criminologists from across Europe. Indeed last month I attended its latest conference in Liverpool.  

Whilst the mainstream Criminologists had restricted their activities to a handful of elite institutions the new sociologists of deviancy dispersed across the Higher Education sector and initially as modules within Sociology degrees but soon as full degree subjects Criminology spread across the Academy. By 1974 Cohen was able to claim that

There are about twelve university or polytechnic courses in criminology or deviance run by persons closely associated with the group and perhaps an equal number by those with some ties.

And criminology has continued to grow now attracting far more students than Sociology.

The criminology that is taught in all these courses bears the heavy imprint of the Sociologists of Deviancy.  American sociologists like Albert Cohen, Lemert, Becker, Merton and Matza dominate theory courses alongside British criminologists like Stan Cohen, Box, Rock, Downes, Ian and Laurie Taylor and Jock Young, all members of the NDC.  A recent book claiming to have identified the 50 most influential thinkers in Criminology was dominated by these two groups and found no room for the three founding fathers of British Criminology.  The naughty schoolboys had not only taken over the institution but they had erased any mention of the old stern headmaster from its history.

The scholars who made up the NDC headed off in four very different directions:

• Marxist
• Foucault & Social Control
• Left Realism
• Out of criminology

Conclusion

In concluding our review of the NDC it is impossible not to recognise their central importance to British criminology.  But how far did they change it.  Looking back Stan Cohen (1988:8) observed:

it is impossible to construct a model that so fundamentally undermines all previous assumptions as to create a completely new discipline. With the exception perhaps of abolitionism, nothing produced by anti-criminology, neither the discovery of any new facts nor the creation of a new mode of understanding the old facts, came remotely near this type of paradigmatic or disciplinary revolution.

It is an admission that despite its lofty aspirations the sociologists of deviancy in the NDC had largely failed to deliver. The lesson they had learnt Cohen (1988:8) admitted was that:

‘To be against criminology, it seems one has to be part of it.’

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References

Bailey, R & Young J. (eds.) (1973) Contemporary Social Problems in Britain,Farnborough, Saxon House.

Becker, Howard S. (Ed.) (1964), The Other Side: Perspectives on Deviance, London, Collier MacMillan.

Becker, Howard S. (1967), ‘Whose side are we on, Social Problems, 14,239-47.

David Cohen (2005) ‘Theories of Punishment’ in Gagarin & Cohen (Eds.) The Cambridge Companion to Ancient Greek Law Cambridge

Cohen, S (ed.) (1971) Images of Deviance, Harmondsworth, Penguin.

Cohen, S. (1972) Folk Devils and Moral Panics, London, MacGibbon & Kee (Chapter One can be read here)

Cohen, S. (1974) “Criminology and the sociology of deviancy in Britain”

Cohen, S & Taylor, L. (1975) “From Psychopaths to Outsiders: British Criminology and the National Deviancy Conference” in Bianchi, H. Deviance and Control in Europe, London, John Wiley & Sons pp. 3-33

Cohen, S. (1988) Against Criminology, New Brunswick, Transaction Books

Downes, D. (1966) The Delinquent Solution, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul

Downes, D. (1978). “Promise and performance in British Criminology”, British Journal of Sociology, pp. 483-502.

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Gouldner, A.V. (1965) Wildcat Strikes, Harper & Row

Hall, S., et at. (1978). Policing the Crisis. London, Macmillan

Hood, R. (2004) ‘Radzinowicz , Sir Leon (1906–1999)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

Lemert , E. M. (1967) Human Deviance, Social Problems and Social Control, Englewood Cliffs, N.J. Prentice Hill 

Liazos, A. (1972) “The Poverty of the Sociology of Deviance: Nuts, Sluts, and Perverts” Social Problems Vol. 20, No. 1. pp. 103-120

Matza, D (1969) becoming deviant, Englewood Cliffs; Prentice-Hall

National Deviancy Conference (eds.) (1980) Permissiveness and Control, London, Macmillan.

Paley, W (1836) The works of William Paley, D.D. Archdeacon of Carlisle containing his life, Moral and political philosophy, Evidences of Christianity, Natural Theology, Tracts, Horae Paulinae, Clergyman’s Companion, and Sermons, Philadelphia

Polsky, N. (1967) Hustlers, Beats and Others, Chicago, Aldine.

Radzinowicz, L. (1961), In Search of Criminology, London, Heinemann

Radzinowicz, L. (1966), Ideology and Crime: A Study o fCrime in its Social and Historical Context, London, Heinemann

Scraton, P. (2006) ‘The European Group: Marginal to What?‘ Socio-Legal Newsletter No. 49.

Sparks,  R. (1980). “A critique of Marxist criminology,” in Morris, N. and Tonry, M. (eds.) Crime and Justice 2. Chicago, Chicago University Press, pp. 159-210

Taylor, L & Taylor I (eds.) (1973) Politics and Deviance, London, Penguin.

Taylor, I., Walton, P & Young, J. (1973) The New Criminology London, Routledge and Kegan Paul

Taylor, I., Walton, P & Young, J. (1975) Critical Criminology, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul

Young, J. (1971) The Drugtakers: the Social Meaning of Drug Use, London: McGibbon and Kee