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Crime, Culture and Control Research Group (CCCRG)

Members of the Group have extensive expertise in both theoretical and empirical inquiry in criminology, cultural studies, sociology and anthropology, and collectively seek to produce work aimed at making constructive and ethical interventions in public debates on the normative representation of such popular themes as drugs, gangs, imprisonment, violence, borders, surveillance, transgression and censorship. Its research, its seminar series and its publications seek to analyse and challenge the use of images, discourses and policies on crime in the cultural, ideological and everyday reproduction of social injustice, deprivation and suffering.

Current research undertaken within the CCCRG reflects the fact that Kent is the home of Europe's leading centre for cultural criminology as well as deeply committed to doing work which is premised on collaboration with a wide range of governmental and non-governmental public agencies. Through its activities, the Group aims to challenge conventional and often populist understandings of criminality and the social processes of criminalisation and to influence public policy making on the basis of intelligent and sensitive analyses of crime in contemporary society.

The CCCRG is active at both Canterbury and Medway campuses of the University of Kent.

For the period 2010-2015 the Group has identified the following three major research themes

• Transnational Security and Control (Convenor: Keith Hayward)

More information.

Transnational Security and Control group has been designed to take advantage of and contribute to the growing interface between criminology and the field of politics and international relations. The group has two main aim. First, to continue the burgeoning research already underway within the discipline of criminology in areas such as green criminology, zemiology, state and political crime, and the cultural criminology of the state. Second, to open up criminology to ongoing research in fields like border studies, security studies, terrorism and critical terrorism studies, cultural geography and anthropology as related to areas of conflict and resolution, and war and genocide studies. The School has already produced PhDs on subjects such as illegal wildlife trafficking and the normative relationship between war, its public memory and the ethical environment of late modernity. Ongoing doctoral work includes research into the nature of the conflict in post-invasion Iraq, and the drug wars on the Juarez-El Paso border. The growing interface between criminology and international relations scholarship is further cemented by Dr Hayward's recent appointment as editor of the leading international journal Global Society.

• Criminal Justice and Social Exclusion (Convenor: Alex Stevens)

More information.

The Group has several members who work specifically on the link between criminal justice and social exclusion. And activities on this theme have included:

- A new series of Youth Justice Symposia, in collaboration with Kent Youth Offending Service.
- Cooperation on issues of young people, crime and social justice, including research projects on gangs and on adolescent risk reduction. And example of this is The Voices Project with St Giles Trust's SOS Gangs.
- The Kent Crime and Justice Centre seminar series.
- A conference on the centenary of the Childrens Act 1908 - select papers from this conference can be accessed here.
- a symposium on therapeutic communities in prison is currently being planned.
- a project on the perceptions of users of 'skunk' cannabis is shortly going to be launched.

• Media Culture and Control (Convenor: Dave Boothroyd & Phil Carney)

More information.

Media representation of crime and criminality is an essential feature of public perception and imagination of transgression and excess. Research undertaken within this sub-group engages with the function of image and narrative in this process as integral to popular and consumer culture. Beyond questions of representation, however, we also consider it vital to engage with the philosophical issues of technical mediation, including the technologies of modern surveillance and the ubiquity of data collection integrated with a wide range of cultural forms and social processes. Members are currently engaged, for instance, in research on new forms of censorship which emerge in relation to the technologies of selfhood and agency these give birth to, and on the interrelatedness of spectacle, power and desire, as well as other critical issues in visual culture.