The ‘Datasoraus’ But are we as a public just ignorant? Are we really simply at the whims of the shock jocks, populist

The ‘Datasoraus’ But are we as a public just ignorant? Are we really simply at the whims of the shock jocks, populist

politicians and tabloid media 4 ? Or are we as researchers asking questions that elicit responses that are simply not very helpful?

Perhaps we need to ask ourselves as scholars in this field, is what we are asking and the data we are producing meaningful? Just because we develop a body of time-series data should not be grounds to simply keep churning it out. Stephen Farrall (2004: 163) made this argument in relation to the British Crime Survey’s approach to fear of crime. He noted:

…do we, as a community of scholars, believe the data we have been producing for the last 20 or so years? Are we really prepared to unquestioningly accept that almost a third to two-thirds of the westernized, civilized society are ‘fearful’ (or ‘angry’, or ‘worried’) of crime ‘some’ or ‘a lot’ of the time? Is this merely [an] …absurd delusion.

Likewise, Ferrell, Hayward and Young (2008) have recently restated a strong case to the effect that much contemporary quantitative criminology that relies on survey methodology simply reduces human subjects to rationalised categories of counting and cross tabulation. This ‘methodological sanitation’ expunges to footnotes any form of experiential or sensual component of criminal offending and victimisation. If we accept their argument, surveys on an expressive topic like confidence or trust ironically become reduced to the ‘intellectual gibberish’ of the ‘technologist or moral engineer’ (Ferrell et al 2008:165-166). Mainstream criminology, they suggest, is like a Datasoraus, ‘a creature with a very small theoretical brain, a huge methodological body, a Byzantine and intricate statistical gut, and a tiny, inconclusive tail wagging mindlessly from database to database’ (Ferrell et al 2008:165-166).

While this may well be the case data such as this have truth effects (Rose 1991). For better or worse this information is being deployed in a range of ways. For example surveys of satisfaction are used by the productivity commission as an “indicator of governments’ objective for police to perform their duties in a professional manner” (SCRGSP 2009:6.17). Likewise, reducing fear of crime (and presumably by extension increasing confidence) is a key performance indicator for the NSW police commissioner and the force more generally.

4 Jones et al (2008) make a range of positive correlations between forms of media consumption and confidence finding, for example, that broadsheet readers have higher levels of confidence in the courts to deliver fair sentences.

The question for a critical criminology here is whether to ignore this particular Datasaurous and hope it goes away, or to further legitimate the quantification of such data by trying to tame it. Given the political salience of statistical representations the first option appears futile – at least for the time being. The second option could involve going into the field and producing meaningful qualitative and reflexive data on confidence and trust – looking at the ‘experiential’, the ‘sensual’, the ‘appreciative’ (see for example Girling et al 2000). It might also mean, for example, speaking to people with more personal experiences of the criminal justice system as ‘clients’ – their confidence in the system is likely to be somewhat different from our ‘representative’ population data sample. It might also mean developing more reliable measures of confidence and engaging with the processes of quantification.

What is clear about public opinion data currently being produced is that, in a climate where the political and popular perceptions of crime control are largely based on models of deterrence (tough laws and policing) and incapacitation (offenders in prison can’t offend), lack of confidence is generally seen as an excuse to trumpet the hard line approach being taken; the increasing numbers of offenders being incarcerated; the number of successful prosecutions; he length of sentences and the like. There is a need to move beyond such models and the negative feedback loops they sustain (Lee 2007).

Deterrence and Compliance The deterrence model is based on the imagined free willed self-interested rational actor and the Benthamite ideal of pleasure versus pain. It is all but an article of faith in popular criminal justice discourse that ‘deterrence’ – through certainty of punishment, through certainty of apprehension, through clarity of laws, will reduce crime and increase public confidence (see Becarria 1979 original 1764; Bentham 1979 original 1781).

But do most of us comply with the law as a result of technologies and strategies of deterrence or is there something more complex going on? And what if we could tap into this ‘something more complex’ and play the truth games of the public opinion survey format to produce an alternative or counter discourse – an alternative popular and political language and model of criminal justice that actually emphasises the

‘justice’? Of course such thinking is not new, but in the post-welfarist climate of late/second/advanced/post-modernity advancing a different model seems positively revolutionary.

Jon Jackson and a team of EU researchers (Jackson & Sunshine 2007; Jackson & Bradford 2009; Jackson et al 2009) have recently developed a model of measuring ‘trust and legitimacy’ in criminal justice that links the public’s ‘trust’ in criminal justice agencies to the granting of ‘legitimacy’ to the agencies – then links this with compliance with the law (Jackson & Sunshine 2007; Jackson & Bradford 2009; Jackson et al 2009). This model, drawing heavily on the work of Tom Tyler (1990, 2006, 2008), suggests producing a ‘just’, ‘efficient’ and procedurally fair criminal justice system will increase confidence, legitimacy and finally compliance with the law. Linking quantifiable variables associated with legitimacy and compliance potentially opens up space for an alternative to ‘deterrence’. Deterrence then becomes only the model of ‘last resort’ – it is about assuming for the vast majority of us most crime can be rendered largely unthinkable in the Braithwaitian sense (shared ideas about justice and fairness driving and being driven by an open and just criminal justice system). ‘Coercing compliance’ through deterrence with the law is seen through this lens as a less efficient route to reproducing social order than securing normative compliance.

For Jackson et al (2009), to trust in justice is to expect the various elements of the criminal justice system – the police, the courts, and so forth – to achieve their goals (reducing crime and promoting justice) and to perform their roles appropriately. To view the criminal justice as legitimate is to give the system consent (the obligation to obey), to align oneself with the moral authority of the system (normative justifiability), and view the system as conforming with established rules (legality of police and court actions). A neo-Durkheimien model of sorts (Jackson & Sunshine 2007). Crucially, a wide discrepancy between the views of the public and the practice of the justice system may undermine the legitimacy that institutions of criminal justice rely upon. On the other hand if the public grants legitimacy to criminal justice systems (or parts thereof), it may also foster public cooperation and compliance with the law.

The model acknowledges at the outset that for most people, most of the time, issues of trust, legitimacy and compliance with regard to criminal justice agencies are of little actual importance as they go about their everyday lives. Opinions of the police are not under a continual process of questioning and review.

People do not spend a great deal of time thinking about the sentencing practises of courts or the rehabilitation practices of prisons. Yet, we routinely, even unthinkingly, uphold most of the vast range of laws which govern life in our increasingly complex societies. Under such conditions, orientations toward the police for example may be largely ‘pre-conscious’ and generally unremarkable. Such a model calls on subjective (a sense of trust and a willingness to confer the powers of crime control) and objective measures of legitimacy (do these institutions actually operate in line with their obligations – perhaps in terms of human rights obligations and the like, so a normative measure). To ignore this normative element we might have, for example, totalitarian states where the population confers legitimacy through fear of reprisal.

Conclusion This model is still being refined and trialled with the final survey questions still under development. Yet a

survey instrument based on a model such as this would, potentially at least, open up a democratic process where public opinion is snatched from the jaws of political ambivalence (at best) and popular punitivity (at worst), and recast in a framework that values open and just criminal justice institutions. This is the attraction. The approach takes seriously public consent. But it also adds a normative aspect, in that experts might agree that the police in a given system are not granted legitimacy simply as a product of public opinion. Instead legitimacy is a function of both public opinion and agreed standards of legality, normative justifiability, and consent.

Perhaps this is the sort of data that then might be used to ‘educate’ the public. Not the punitive story but

a justice story based largely around shared beliefs and values. It’s a different narrative, a different language, and perhaps politicians might, on some level, welcome this as much as us? It might be a way of moving from a situation where we simply keep the fearful, angry, untrusting public (at least when they are surveyed) happy via popular punitivity, to one in which trust is linked to justice, and this is in turn linked to the conference of legitimacy and indeed consent and compliance.

Finally, such a model should also include a qualitative element. Drawing from the rich data available since the so called ‘qualitative turn’ in academic research on public attitudes since the 1990s it is clearly Finally, such a model should also include a qualitative element. Drawing from the rich data available since the so called ‘qualitative turn’ in academic research on public attitudes since the 1990s it is clearly

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Vigilantes Unmasked: an Exploration of Informal Criminal Justice in Contemporary South Africa

James Martin, Monash University 1