1 / 11

Mrs Thatcher’s Criminological Legacy: An ESRC-funded Scoping Project

This project explores the impact of Mrs. Thatcher and Major's neo-conservative policies on crime rates, people's experiences of crime, attitudes towards crime/offenders, and the long-term consequences on the UK's criminal justice system.

dcarlson
Download Presentation

Mrs Thatcher’s Criminological Legacy: An ESRC-funded Scoping Project

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript


  1. Mrs Thatcher’s Criminological Legacy: An ESRC-funded Scoping Project Stephen Farrall ‘Thinking Aloud’ 9th April 2008

  2. My point of departure … “I tried to stand up and fly straight, but it wasn't easy with that son-of-a-bitch Reagan in the White House ... I dunno, they say he's a decent man, so ... maybe his advisers are confused”. H.I. McDunnough, Raising Arizona, Coen Brothers, 1988.

  3. What I’ll do today • Outline project • Raise some problems with it • Provide some solutions to these • Outline future work

  4. Mrs Thatcher’s Impact • Not only Mrs T – Major too (1979-1997 + ?). • Change in style of Govt. • Neo-conservative (neo-liberal) policies. • Huge change in citizen-state relationship. • Change in social policies (“biggest break since 1945”, Glennester). • Change in economic policies. • Enduring social/economic changes.

  5. Research Questions • What did these changes do to crime? • What did these changes do to people’s experiences of crime? • What did these changes do to people’s attitudes towards crime/offenders (anxiety, punitiveness, confidence in CJS)? • What have been the long term consequences of almost two decades of neo-conservative social and economic policies for the UK’s CJS?

  6. ESRC-funded project • Summer will be spent accessing the UK’s existing data sets (LFS, GHS, BEPS etc) for a possible longitudinal study of the impacts of neo-con policies on crime. • No research as such, but a scoping exercise. • Will also develop ideas about how to analyse these data sets.

  7. Problems? • Focuses too much on Mrs T./Major, of course. Can one/Govt individual create that much change? • Ignores wider causes of changes in crime rates.

  8. What are the aggregate level causes of ordinary crime/anxiety about? • Social change and Govt social policies. • Demographic change/factors. • Economic forces and Govt econ. policies. • CJS policies. • Cultural factors. • Ideological definitions of crime. • Critical events/situations. • Technological change.

  9. Solution • De-focus slightly from neo-con policies and look at the fore-mentioned causes. • Allows for more context to be brought into the study. • Also allows for comparative studies of other countries which went through neo-conservative policies in the 1980s too.

  10. Future Work (Summer 08) • ESRC Grant to explore the possibility of using repeated cross-section surveys from 1970s onwards to assess impact of Neo-liberal policies on crime. • Develop methodology of exploration as well as to assess data sets.

  11. Surveys to be Explored British Crime Survey 1982 - 2000 Scottish Crime Survey 1982 - 2000 British Election Panel Study 1964 - 2001 British Social Attitudes Survey 1983 - 2000 Eurobarometer surveys 1970 - 2002 Family Expenditure Survey 1970 - 1998/99 Family Resources Survey 1993 - 2001/02 General Household Survey 1971 - 2000 Labour Force Survey 1975 - 2001 National Child Development Study 1958 - 2005 Scottish Young Peoples Survey 1984 - 1990 Survey of English Housing 1993 - 2001-02 World Values Survey 1981 - 2001 European Values Survey 1981 - 1999/2000 British Cohort Study 1970 1970 - 2005 United Nations World Crime Surveys 1970 - 1994 NOP Political Polls Surveys 1963 - 1971 Youth Cohort Study 1985 - 2000 International Social Survey Programme 1985 - 2002 MORI Omnibus Polls 1993 - 1996 ONS Longitudinal Study 1971 - 2001

More Related