Bent Society: The Origin of Gonzo Criminology - is feared by the bad and loved by the good!

Is the Law Being Asinine Again?

2012-01-27T08:07:00.007Z

Dr Dallas, Theodora (BSC Psycology PhD Pschology) has been enrolled over at The University of Crime: http://bentalumni.blogspot.com/

Dallas was a juror found guilty of contempt of court for disobeying a trial judge's instructions not to search the Internet. She also shared information she had found online about the defendant with other jurors.

Dallas told the other jurors that the defendant had been involved in a rape case: http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2012/jan/24/inside-jury-room-theodora-dallas?newsfeed=true

She had accessed the Internet from home where she conducted the research about the accused: http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2012/jan/23/juror-contempt-court-online-research

Breaking Gonzo News

The Bent Society team conducted a little online research and can break the news here that, ironically, the University of Bedfordshire Lecturer – who’s defence was that she did not understand English very well – was actually an expert on cyberstalking see this link before the University of Bedfordshire wise-up and remove it: http://www.beds.ac.uk/news/2010/sep/100920-cyber-stalking ).

Dallas was suspended as a result of her contempt of court. She has now resigned from her post as lecturer at the university of Bedfordshire where, we can verify through research conducted by the Vice Chancellor of the University of Crime - that she obtained her degree in psychology from the University of Bedfordshire.

We have to wonder about the honesty of her defense given that she was an expert on cyberstalking. We think it would have been better (since she had no feasibly successful legal defence) if she had made a statement to the effect that the law is an ass because it will have to be changed in the information age where we are all virtually hard-wired into the Internet.

Given the extent to which we rely on Google to find out answers to our everyday questions, we think that asking modern jurors not to look something up on the Internet is about as close as one can get to asking them not to think about something.

After all:

UCL professor Cheryl Laws claims that a ¼ of jurors have read on the Internet about the defendant on trial in the case in whch they are sitting . You can hear her talking about that here : http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b019rjnd

If you think Dallas should have her conviction quashed you may wish to sign a petition here: http://www.change.org/petitions/minister-of-justice-justice-for-theodora-dallas-2

And visit the Free Theodora Dallas Facebook site here: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Free-Theodora-Dallas-This-Womans-Offence-Doesnt-Warrant-Jail/318531034858743

Do you think this is yet another one of those cases where the law has not caught up with the reality of the modern evolving world? Let us know your thoughts.

Is it sensible, and enforceable, that the law expects jurors in the information age not to use the Internet to research the trial they are spending days, sometimes weeks or even months, compelled to attend and judge as jurors?

BLog written by thee BS team - in association with the VC of the University of Crime.

IMMUNOMYTHOLOGY and IMMUNOVICTIMIZATION

2012-01-26T14:15:00.004Z

Could being a victim of a minor scams such as an advance fee fraud or online romance scam inoculate people against falling for more serous ones?

Could belief in harmless myths and fallacies and then seeing them get busted inoculate us against credulous belief in more serious myths and fallacies?

We criminologists know that certain people tend be multiple victims , but might some others be less likely to be victimised in the future if they suffer an earlier episode of victimisation that wises them up and heps them avoid taking serous risks in the future? Obviously, if indeed this is the case (and it may well not be), this is going to be a factor that is quite likely to vary between difference offence types - and perhaps even different personality types - and maybe even by socio-economic group factors.

If this idea intrigues you, then you might like to see where I got it from. If so then please click here to read my latest blog post on the subject on Best Thinking.

Mike Sutton

The Switching Point: Government Crackdown on Pseudoscience Should be Extended to Teaching Criminology, Crime Reduction and Policing Policy

2012-01-15T21:45:00.026Z

Guest Blog by Dr Mike Sutton

I am glad to hear the good news today that the British Government is cracking down on the teaching of pseudoscientific creationist dogma.

But, in order to be fair and consistent in its policy making, it really should clean up the embarrassing teaching, publication and other official dissemination of dogma worship and official recommendation that others ignore its own blind belief in logically fallacious claims and pseudoscience in the equally important fields of crime reduction and policing.

Pseudo Scientific Claims Underpin the Crime as Opportunity Premise Upon which a Great Deal of Current Government Crime Reduction Policy Making is Based.

The eminent philosopher of science, Karl Popper, insisted that real science must make predictions that are capable of being falsified. And yet those who claim that Crime Science is a real science base their knowledge on the Routine Activity Theory (RAT) premise of crime as opportunity. This premise is merely a truism, however, because its adherents weirdly insist that their notion of crime as opportunity incorporates Routine Activity Theory's (RAT's) notion of criminal opportunity that comprises its three classic core components of the crime act, which are in turn peculiarly inseparable in the literature from RAT's notion of crime as opportunity (Felson 1986; Clarke 1984), which means the actual opportunity can only be known after the crime has been successfully carried out by (1) capable offenders – in the absence of (2) capable guardians to attain a (3) suitable target. It is a truism because any successful offender can only be known to be capable once they have succeeded, at which time guardianship can only be known to be incapable. How else could a crime have been successfully completed anyway?

I have cause to suspect, following my recent email debates with several of them, that some administrative criminologists and Crime Scientists who believe that the RAT notion of opportunity being a cause of crime may, in response to this new criticism of it being a truism, make their definition of opportunity clear for the first time and claim that the RAT trilogy is the crime itself and was never meant to define the opportunity as well. If you ever encounter such a new claim in the future literature then consider it in light of what Felson (1986) actually writes. The first and second sentence is proof that the opportunity and the successful crime act are treated as one and the same thing in RAT theory - as indeed the whole paragraph shows:

'To understand criminal opportunity, we need to know not only some of the decisions made by offenders, human targets, guardians, and handlers, but also the situations of their physical convergence as a result of these decisions, regardless of whether the decision makers know what we, as analysts, know. And we have to know the outcome. Was the offender wrong, missing a golden opportunity or committing a silly blunder? Did the getaway car stall or did the selected target trap him? Did the victim succeed by going through the day safe from crime, regardless of whether he or she thought about it? What choices on the part of a citizen produce an unplanned victimization and impair or assist guardianship of targets and handling of offenders? Indeed, a criminal situation is made possible by various decisions by those who set the stage for the convergence of the four minimal elements, however inadvertently. Any set of decisions that assembles a handled offender and a suitable target, in the absence of a capable guardian and intimate handler, will tend to be criminogenic. Conversely, any decision that prevents this convergence will impair criminal acts. Even though an offender may prefer to violate the law, his or her preference can be thwarted by the structure of decisions made by others, regardless of whether they know they are preventing a crime from occurring. In short, we cannot understand the rational structure of criminal behavior by considering the reasoning of only one actor in the system.'

Given that the criminological notion of opportunity (the coming together in time and place of suitable targets in the presence of capable and motivated offenders and the absence of capable guardianship) does not place any measurable and discoverable criteria on capability or guardianship it cannot be known in advance, which means it (as opposed to non-expert common sense intuitive guesswork) cannot be used to make falsifiable predictions.

The Crime as Opportunity - Opportunity Makes the Thief - Notion is a Logical Fallacy, Which Means it is Holding Back Knowledge Progression

According to Popper’s test of the difference between real science and pseudoscience, Routine Activities Theory (RAT), Situational Crime Prevention Theory (SCP) and Crime Science (CS) are all based on pseudoscience, because they are all based on the illogical and irrefutable premise of the weird post-hoc criminological notion of opportunity as the most important cause of crime. Taken to its logical conclusion, the 'opportunity is a cause of crime' claim is in effect that every crime is the cause of itself, because all this weird notion of opportunity actually does is describe the essential elements that can only later be known to have been present at any successful contact-crime in commission. This makes the claim palpable nonsense, of course.

The US Government’s Department of Justice promotes this RAT, SCP and CS pseudoscience. As does the British Home. Unfortunately, this appears to have escaped the attention of motivated and capable critics. I am one motivated critic who hopes to be capable of having this embarrassing situation remedied soon. A more detailed essay on this issue can be found on my Dysology website where I suggest that the rational way forward is to try to predict, and then try to falsify, what I call the crime switching point.

The switching point is a theoretical social and economic intersection where demand for something (e.g. scrap copper) interacts with current, or predictably potential, offender motivation and capabilities to the extent that previously capable guardianship becomes predictably incapable. Identifying the switching point would enable us for the first time to explain, predict and seek to prevent crime waves before they happen, rather than merely describing them after it is too late.

Last week, on the 13th of January 2012, a British ITN news journalist emailed me to ask whether I thought it was peculiarly risky that the multi-story car park being built for Nottingham's railway station in England is being clad in huge decorative copper panels given that thieves are already going to great lengths and have now started taking risks stealing live copper cables - particularly from railways. My answer was that even as a foremost expert on stolen goods markets I have no idea what the real risk is that the panels will be stolen in six months time or 16 months time. To my embarrassment, I explained, I have no idea what increased risk there might possibly be if the panels were made of solid gold. This is because current criminological knowledge only allows us to hazard no more than an intuitive common sense guess of what the qualitative extent of the risk might be. Such shameless pontificating guesswork would actually be no more expertly informed by real knowledge than a guess that anyone else might come up with. Whilst expert criminologists and crime scientists can be wise after the event and explain why copper panels were stolen, they cannot tell you what the predictive likelihood is that they will be stolen. I would like to be able to answer the journalist’s question one day with real expert knowledge that has been tested in the field. To have a chance of doing that we need to discover what the switching point is.

Conclusion

If the criminological notion of RAT opportunity as a cause of crime was true then armed with it we would have been able to predict several years ago that thieves would today be getting electrocuted by stealing live copper wire that they had previously chosen to leave well alone (even though it has always been a valuable scrap metal). But no Crime Scientist or any other administrative criminologist (myself included) is currently (no pun intended) able to do so.

As I see it, therefore, the RAT trinity crime as opportunity theory has merely shone a spotlight on a truism and dressed it up with unnecessary complexity to fool us all into thinking that it is a causal explanation, that, logically, it cannot be, as our own failure to use it to predict any kind of crime wave establishes.

Reference

Clarke, R. V. (1984) Opportunity-Based Crime Rates: The Difficulties of Further Refinement. Brtish Journal of Criminology. Vol. 24. No1. pp. 74-83

Felson, M (1986) Linking Criminal Choices, Routine Activities, Informal Control, and Criminal Outcomes (P 119-128, In Cornish, D. B. and Clarke, R.V. (eds). The Reasoning Criminal. New York: Springer-Verlag. http://www.popcenter.org/library/reading/PDFs/ReasoningCriminal/08_felson.pdf

David Cameron's Binmore's Syndrome in Remission?

2012-01-13T08:44:00.006Z

THE WEIRDNESS OF PRIME MINISTER CAMERON

Our campaign on Cameron's Brain seems to have driven it's injustice centers and his Binmore's Syndrome into remission.

He has at last agreed that his madly planned family allowance snatching policy is insanely unbalanced and unfair in that he intended to steal family allowance from the less well off while allowing those earning twice as much to keep it.

In an insanely transparent attempt to seek to distance himself from his own madness he says that ministers are now looking at it...as, he now claims, was always intended. Really Prime Minister? Are you sure? I thought that you said that your own mind was made up on the matter when you refused to discuss the unfairness of your own mind on the matter?

Click here to read the story. Click the child benefit label on our posts to read earlier blogs on Cameron's tyrannically unfair plans.

Dysology Prize: would you wager your reputation on your claims?

2012-01-07T20:52:00.013Z

This is a special guest blog by Dr Mike Sutton (Dysology.org)

The Dysology Challenge – For Cold Fusion Energy

In September 2011 The Dysology Challenge was thrown down to two professors of physics. The prize offer and conditions were and remain as follows:

“If cold fusion produces commercially viable free energy in 2 years time you win and get to present me (Mike Sutton) with a prize for Dysology (bad scholarship) that I'll fund at a cost of £1000 in the form of a bronze trophy depicting the theme of veracity versus claptrap – with my name engraved on it.

And if that happens I will thank you in public for proving me wrong.

If it does not produce such energy then I get to present you with the same trophy that I paid for. Only you fail - but you still get to keep the prize even if it happens that you are wrong. In this event, your name will be engraved on it .”

On September 15^th 2011 the Nobel Laureate and Cambridge professor of physics Brian D. Josephson refused to put his reputation where his brain is by boldly declining to accept the Dysology Challenge regarding our difference of opinion regarding whether or not George Washington University Professor Simon Berkovich was right regarding his belief in mysterious free energy existing in the universe. Birkovich, similarly failed to take up the Dysology Challenge. (click here to read the comments section on this article to see how the challenge was made, refused by Josephson and weirdly ignored by Berkovich)

Today I am extending the Dysology Prize to include proof of genuine psychic powers existing beyond coincidence, fraud, methodological bias, or measurement error.

I am in good company. Because the Dysology Prize will be added to the current total of one million three hundred and 64 thousand pounds ($2,105,000 US) offered by a total of nine organisations and individuals, including the massive $1m Randi Prize for anyone who can prove that psychic powers exist. Despite being on offer for many years, and despite the extreme simplicity and fairness of the conditions required, no one has ever succeeded in winning any of these prizes.

The Dysology Challenge – For Proof of Psychic Powers

Today (8th Jan. 2012)I hereby challenge University of Cambridge scientist Dr Rupert Sheldrake to accept the Dysology challenge for psychic powers. I argue that there is no veracious scientific evidence that proves humans have psychic powers. I publicly challenge Dr Rupert Sheldrake here on Bent Society and also on the Best Thinking website:

“If you can demonstrate in controlled conditions of the kind laid down by the James Randi Prize and can win the Randi Prize by proving that psychic powers exist then you get to present me (Mike Sutton) with the Veracity versus Claptrap trophy prize for Dysology (with my name engraved on it for bad scholarship) that I'll commission at a personal cost of over £1000. If the outcome is not obvious the British Royal Society will be invited to determine the winner.

And if you win then I will thank you in public for proving me wrong.

If, on the other hand, you fail, then I get to present you with the same prize that I paid for. Only, in this case, you also get to keep the prize – with your name engraved on it for your bad scholarship.”

I am prompted to publically challenge Dr Sheldrake following his article in the Daily Mail today (Sheldrake 2012) in which he claims that we all have psychic powers.

I strongly suspect that Dr Sheldrake wrote the article in order to sell his latest book: The Science of Delusion - which is released this week. If he is right then he will win the Dysology Challenge and there is no reason why he should not win a further whopping great pay out of £1,364,000 to add to whatever he makes flogging his book.

If Dr Sheldrake fails to apply for the Randi Prize, and all the other significant cash prizes and accept the Dysology Challenge then we must draw our own rational conclusions about his audacious claims. If he is right then surely winning the Randi prize would sell far more copies of his book than his article in the Daily Mail.

Finally, what kind of newspaper editor or journalist worth his or her salt would not ask Sheldrake why he has not applied for the Randi Prize?

Dr Mike Sutton (Dysology.org)

Reference

Sheldrake, R. (2012) Why we ALL have psychic powers. Daily Mail. pp.56-57. Jan 7^th.

Note on Sheldrake

According to his page on Wikipedia today: “In September 2005 until 2010, Sheldrake received the Perrott-Warrick Scholarship for psychical research and parapsychology, which is administered by Trinity College, Cambridge.Sheldrake then took his current position as Academic Director for the Learning and Thinking Program at The Graduate Institute in Bethany, Connecticut^.”

The Holy Tri-Trinity: Advent of the RAT God, Crime as Opportunity Theory and Crime Science

2011-12-24T23:44:00.017Z

Behold the miracle of Crime Science, all crimes and The Tri-Trinity of the RAT Advent

Today's Church of Crime Science Yuletide Midnight Mass is given by The Reverend Hammy Wheel of The Church of Crime Science in England.

On this holy night, the very Reverend Reverend Hammy explains the miracle of how every successful criminal act in commission is the cause of itself and how Routine Activity Theory, Crime as Opportunity Theory and Crime Science are themselves the single most important cause of themselves.

Heresy can be found here. But the always right, right Reverend Hammy Wheel beseeches thee not read or consider the the work of this heretic. Crime Science depends upon thou absolute faith in its hidden and ill-defined underlying assumptions (miracles, gospels and revelations).

The right reverend Hammy Wheel's Yuletide Sermon on the miracle advent of all crimes and RAT's crime as Opportunity Theory being the cause of themselves can be viewed on video filmed at the Church of Crime Science's The Wheel lecture theater, which is specially engineered and designed for tautology and the teaching closed science:

Can a seemingly insane mechanical hamster set a mad world right via YouTube?

The following text is kindly provided by Disology.com (the website for scholarly study of disrespect)

Since Routine Activity Theory's (RAT) notion of opportunity causing crime misunderstands that RAT's three components of opportunity are in fact a truism for every successful crime in commission 'opportunity' cannot be a cause of crime because it is an irrefutable and infinitely easy to vary truism. RAT opportunity is merely a precise description of the core components present at the successful crime scene in commission. This makes it the essential data of the crime. And data should not be confused with explanations for it. Religions typically confuse data with explanations. The tautological argument that the messages in the Christian Bible are all true because they are the word of God because the Bible is the word of God is a good example. Because, absurdly, the Bible is both the data and the only explanation required for the presence of the data. And so in this clip a hamster in a wheel gives us a lecture on the illogical circularity of RAT and Crime Science's unshaken belief in it. Professor, Reverend Hammy Wheel of the University of Perversity’s Department of Junk Science, Division of Tautology, gives us The Church of Crime Science's Explanation of the miracle of the Advent of Routine Activities Theory (RAT) and why, if we follow the unscientific reasoning of RAT theory every crime must be a cause of itself. The Reverend Wheel then explains how this reasoning can be applied to RAT theory itself to explain how the theory caused itself to come into being.

An example of tautological reasoning (a logical fallacy)

Healthy Sceptic: Why do you think that the written Bible contains truth that the world was made in seven days?

Believer: Because the Bible is the written truth.

Healthy Sceptic: But how do you know that?

Believer: Because the Bible is the written word of God.

Healthy Sceptic: But you are not explaining why you think you know that it is the word of God.

Believer: In the Bible it is written that it is the word of God.

Healthy Sceptic: But how can you think you know that those words are true?

Believer: Because the Bible is the written truth.

Further thoughts

Is it better to seek to understand rather than ridicule? Does the video of the Rev. Wheel giving a squeaky voiced lecture whilst going around in his wheel serve as a useful heuristic device for explaining why something is a logical fallacy? More on that debate can be had here. And a detailed academic debunking of the fallacy that opportunity makes the thief can be had here.

Criminology, Crime Science and RAT God Worship

2011-12-17T18:30:00.016Z

Church of Crime Science Worships RAT God: More Dogma Uncovered as Criminology Examines Implications of its Underlying Assumptions

I was out with a number of fellow criminologists last night. We were discussing recent claims that Opportunity Theory, Routine Activities Theory (RAT), Situational Crime Prevention SCP and Crime Science are all built on the closed dogmatic assumptions (blind belief) that:

(a) the data you are seeking to explain can explain itself and does not need to be kept separate from theoretical explanations for the data (i.e. the three components of RAT: capable and motivated offender, suitable target and relative lack of capable guardianship are claimed by 'believers' to be the most important cause of crime) and
(b) it is OK to have infinitely variable explanations such as the three components of RAT that are never wrong because they are truisms as causal explanations.

As Mike Sutton pointed out on his Dysology site this sort of nonsense is all completely unscientific and makes opportunity a very bad explanation as a cause of crime - and seriously challenges the scientific basis of so called Crime Science. According to Sutton's dysology essay, the three components of RAT's crime as opportunity explanation are simply a very precise and elegant description of the core components of any successful crime in commission, but they cannot explain themselves - just as the description of water as H2O cannot explain why its atoms are stuck together.

As the alcohol flowed, one of the BS crew raised another issue. He said that the use made of Rational Choice Theory in RAT, SCP and Crime Science is subjective, because it has no measurable values attached to it, and so it is also infinitely variable (just like RAT) - and therefore irrefutable. And all scientists know that irrefutable explanations are not explanations at all - they are either tautological nonsense or else simple truisms (e.g. the data to be explained).

“When, exactly,” he drunkenly mocked between huge glugs of beer, “are offenders actually deemed to be acting irrationally?” He used copper theft as an example. Many thieves are being electrocuted in their efforts to steal copper today that only a couple of years ago was adequately protected. “Is that rational?” he asked.

If rational choice is not as infinitely variable as capable and motivated offenders. targets and lack of guardianship are then at what point on the scale of rational thinking does Crime Science, RAT and SCP say offenders become irrational exactly? Or do they not have a measurable scale? Surely crime science is not simply relying on yet another subjective and infinitely variable always right explanation is it?

Is weighing up the risk of getting lethally electrocuted before embarking on copper theft really rational? And if it is then what is rational about rational choice theory? It seems to be saying anything you do so long as you think about it a bit makes it rational. How rational is that? Is it rational because RAT god worshipers thought about it a bit - just like those who wrote the ten commandments stated in the Christian Bible?

Is it rational for those who worship the RAT god to believe that thieves always act rationally by conveniently relying upon the invented, infinite and subjective notion of ‘bounded rationality’ – or for them to say that offenders rationally weigh risks and rewards most of the time, when they fail to reveal where the line is drawn between rationality and irrationality?

Perhaps those promoting Crime Science should stop trying to convince themselves and others that it is a natural science and apply instead for charitable status as a religion. After all, RAT adherents are dogmatically afraid to even examine never mind question the unreal and unscientific assumptions upon which their doctrine is based. They constantly vary their belief system to deal with unavoidable criticisms - looking everywhere and often having to rely upon the weakest and most unapt confirmatory evidence - while hating and paying scant regard to all dis-confirming evidence.

More blasphemy to follow in the cause of The Great Enlightenment, knowledge progression and the fight of a Real Crime Science. Will the great RAT god bite my head off in my sleep? Well there is probably less risk of that than the next "rational" deadly electrocution of a copper thief.

Merry Christmas

Dr Society

Cameron could be a Binmore's Sufferer: May God Help Us if He Is Because Things Will Get Much Worse

2011-12-10T19:08:00.009Z

Does P.M David Cameron possibly have Binmore’s Syndrome?

The following text from a paper from MIT in the USA explains Professor Binmore's work and serves well as an introduction to this rare but socially troubling condition:

“…we identified three principles (action, contact, intention), all capturing non-consequential distinctions to which people are sensitive when making moral judgments. These principles are therefore operative in guiding moral judgment, as evidenced by subjects’ patterns of judgments. Importantly, these principles were not all equivalently expressed in subjects’ justifications of their judgments. The intention principle rarely emerged, while the action and contact principles emerged in the majority of subjects’ justifications; further, when subjects noted the contact principle, they also frequently denied that it should carry any moral weight, a comment that rarely merged for the action principle. We can infer from these results that the intention principle is operative but results in intuitive judgments, whereas the action and contact principles are also operative but appear to be accessible for use in conscious reasoning as evidenced by their emergence in justifications.”

In other words, PM David Cameron may have intended to be unjust when he made his famously unjust family allowance policy but was unable to justify why. Ironically then his purposive policy making is informed by his intuition. And Cameron’s intuition is likely to be based in no small part on his upper-class upbringing and subsequent membership of the moronic hooray-Henry Bullingdon club. As his brain scan shows, the toffee nosed matters matter grey matter of his brain has developed to the detriment of his justice and fairness centers. Consequently, our poor Prime Minister - while a high functioning member of society - is the type of person who is prone to make knee-jerk decisions intentionally but – being based on mere intuition -irrationally. Some researcher's believe that Binmore's sufferers are likely to be born into wealthy families - or else taller than average - and that explains their otherwise hard-to-fathom rise to key positions. It may also explain why the economy of Europe and the USA is in such a mess and why so many people who attain top positions throughout society are well below average in the abilities to do the job but way above average in their abilities to get such jobs.

The latest research coming from the Human Genome Project reveals that Bimore's (Bin-more) is an hereditary disorder. Furthermore, all sufferers have an ancestral link with with the Camron family who were Normans who served William the Conqueror. But links go back further to those with Viking genes. Many Russians have been found to have the syndrome and speculation remains regarding William Shakespeare's immortal line about their being something rotten in the state of Denmark. This may have been a reference to high number of sufferers in Scandinavian countries several hundred years ago. Emigration patterns have since ensured that Scandinavia is no longer a hot spot for these tyrants.

As with other empathy spectrum disorders, such as Aspergers Syndrome, Binmore’s sufferers are often high functioning members of society. But their condition can cause problems for others. In particular, those diagnosed with Binmore’s are advised to steer clear of professions in the judiciary, military, police and teaching. Occupations in which Binmore’s sufferers excel are: tyrant, dictator, torturer, jailer, executioner, upper-class hooray-Henry playboy, football hooligan, mafia boss, gold-digging suitor, pornographer, politician and confidence trickster.

Famous Bin-more syndrome sufferers are likely to have included: Saddam Hussain, Adolph Hitler, Stalin, Countess Elizabeth Bathory, Tony Blair, Vlad the Impaler, Gordon Brown and Margaret Thatcher.

An Urgent Appeal on Behalf of the Conservative Party and David Cameron's Brain

2011-12-02T21:42:00.006Z

MI7 scientists have leaked the results of a secret brain scan that explains why British Prime Minister, David Cameron, cannot understand what is wrong with his planed policy making to impose a totally unjust cut to the family allowance payments of certain sections of the electorate. The scan reveals that so small is the justice center in his brain that he really is totally unbalanced.

When he was repeatedly pressed earlier this year the PM simply was mentally incapable of defending the anomaly of two working parents earning up to £88,000 a year keeping the benefit while a mother with a partner earning just over the £44,000 40 per cent tax rate threshold loses it. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1318034/TORY-CONFERENCE-Cameron-champion-doers-grafters-victory-speech.html#ixzz11hOfg9dy"

Please sign the ePetition now. http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/714

Justice and Cameron’s brain are depending on you to help out.

Peer Review

2011-11-17T16:13:00.010Z

White Coat Crime and Other Dishonesty in Academia

John Wakefield and Prof John Walker-Smith were struck-off the medical register and can no longer call themselves doctors. They were struck off for failing to adhere to research ethics. Their failings were in the area of honesty, not science.

Failure to declare a conflict of interest

Wakefield had a conflict of interest in the form of financial interests in the outcome of the research he was funded to conduct, because he had been paid to prepare evidence for solicitors who intended to instigate legal action against vaccine manufacturers by alleging that MMR caused autism in children.

For the same reason, highly respected publishing houses (such as Taylor and Francis for example who publish their peer review rules for all their journal editors in their author's charter) ardently insist in their charter and other published guidance for their editors that anyone who agrees to peer review a paper in any discipline (including criminology) must declare a conflict of interest. Further, they insist that the process must be one of unbiased and blind review (the paper must be rendered anonymous). This is because reviewers are accepting the power to recommend whether a paper is accepted or rejected and so personal bias must be minimized in the interests of objectivity and honesty.

The progression of veracious human knowledge is dependent, therefore, upon objective peer review. Whereas, bent peer reviews are far more likely to hide the truth, which in turn impedes human progress and restricts all kinds of improvement in our lives while allowing complete claptrap to influence our thinking, teaching, research and decision making.

What might such a conflict of interest amount to in the peer review process of an academic paper submitted to a scholarly journal?

1. The paper directly confirms that their own past research is correct, naming the reviewer as right and their critics wrong.
2. The paper directly establishes that the reviewer made serious errors or spurious claims in their own earlier research - perhaps even naming the reviewer.
3. The reviewer has a financial or major professional reputation/career at stake (one way or the other) in the conclusions reached by the paper - particularly if they are named in it.
4. The reviewer knows who the author of a paper is, even though the process is meant to be a blind (or even double-blind) peer review.
5. The reviewer is a member of the editorial team of the journal in question (so knows who the author is), and has doubly undermined the peer review process by sneakily recruiting a second clearly biased reviewer with a known and undeclared conflict of interest in order to orchestrate the rejection of a paper by bogus peer review.
6. Finally, the worst kind of, hardly imaginable, scenario would be the same as in 5 above, but the editorial team reviewer would also have an undeclared conflict of interest in the conclusion reached by the paper.

A recent review of the peer review process was conducted by the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee. Their review was concerned with the natural sciences only, but its findings will most certainly be of interest to criminologists concerned with the neglected area of white coat crime and the study of professional deviance committed by editorial teams and peer reviewers within their own field of study.

If you feel that you have been subject to a bent peer review of any kind (from any academic discipline or area) then we would like to hear from you – either by way of the comments section for this post (anonymously or not – it’s up to you) or else you can email us at bentsociety@hotmail.co.uk or crimescience@hotmail.com

Lox and BBB

America is a weird country (No 1 in a series of 10,000)

2011-11-12T21:39:00.002Z

The university from which Michael Jackson’s physician, Conrad Murray, graduated before killing him by manslaughter is Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee.

On its official website the university describes itself as:

‘…the largest private, comprehensive historically black institution for educating health professionals and scientists in the United States.'

We tend to forget that the USA operated a system of racial segregation long after the end of slavery, even though economic sanctions were never applied against the white regime.

http://www.tmz.com/person/conrad-murray/

http://www.mmc.edu/aboutmeharry/index.html

Cameron's Brain

2011-11-01T18:15:00.003Z

In his desire to ensure that we do not have a repeat of the wildfire copycat looting and rioting of the summer of 2011 in England, our Prime Minister Mr David Cameron is keen once again to import 'good practice' from the USA in tackling gangs. The inside story we've heard is that he wants to spend vast sums replicating the 'hit-and-miss' Operation Ceasefire in England.

But, in must-respond-quick-jerk eagerness, has Cameron's brain considered the policy making spectre of Implementor Failure? Check out problem oriented criminologist and dysologist Mike Sutton's timely warning: here

Bender's Ghost

Criminology Career Paths

2011-10-28T13:00:00.001+01:00

Where might your criminological degree and expertise take you?

Here are some interesting options: http://www.mastersincriminology.com/22-exciting-career-paths-in-criminology.html

Golliwog Watch

2011-10-27T13:17:00.001+01:00

Readers of Bent Society may remember some of our classic posts from the past on the issue of Golliwogs . Well it seems these beloved icons of overt and closet racists are rearing their heads again.

See:
http://www.thisislocallondon.co.uk/news/9277470.Councillor___s_fury_over_shop___s_golliwog_dolls/

http://www.suttonguardian.co.uk/news/9294984.Anti_golliwog_protest_takes_place_in_Sutton_High_Street/

And if they are innocent toys why are the racists at Stormfront interested?
Check this out: http://www.stormfront.org/forum/t835229/

University of Crime

2011-10-18T17:31:00.003+01:00

Another professor-killer is enrolled at the notorious University of Crime (UOC) - click to see this recent case leading to tenure in the UOC .

http://bentalumni.blogspot.com/

The NO LOADING SCAM: Bent Nottingham City Council - they're still at it!

2011-10-05T13:51:00.024+01:00

Almost every day for the past ten years I've walked down Mapperley Road in Nottingham. Each year at this time of year when the Goose Fair is on in Nottingham I see the same thing happen. Namely cars that have been legally parked on the road are suddenly deemed to be illegally parked because at this time of year Nottingham City Council want the roads kept clear in case there is a major disaster at the Goose Fair and emergency services are unable to get to it quickly. Fair enough you might say.

The problem is that every year for about five days in the entire year I see - like today - dozens of cars being ticketed and towed away. Today I counted 25 with tickets. You can see some of them in the picture above. And even the warden busy at work in his Hi Viz vest. Why? You might ask. Surely all these motorists are stupid or else deliberately law breaking selfish people. Surely, I imagine I can hear you wondering , they must have seen and chosen to ignore the newly appeared signs that spell out the parking restrictions?

The answer is that the signs are never clear. Look at the highway code above. Where does it say NO LOADING means you can't park and leave your car?

These NO LOADING signs do not say NO PARKING! Instead they say

NO LOADING! So what could very well be happening is that innocent motorists assume NO LOADING is referring to commercial vehicles and feel it is safe to park legally. Look at the highway code above - where does it say NO LOADING means NO PARKING. And anyway - what social, domestic and pleasure or commuter driving motorist thinks "Loading" has got anything to do with how he/she uses a car? Loading is surely what van and lorry drivers do in the course of their business...isn't it? Who calls parking loading for heaven' sake?

Look at the collection of NO PARKING signs below. Which two are unclear? Which is the most unclear? Could it be the NO LOADING sign? And yet clarity is the most important aspect in using signs to reduce crime - because it assists compliance with the law. Who would not want to assist compliance? Someone who profits financially from non-compliance perhaps? If you wished to profit from non-compliance which sign would you choose to use?

Assisting compliance with the law is one of the key 25 techniques of situational crime prevention that is clearly being subverted with this deliberately obscure "NO LOADING" punterization.

Today I asked one of the wardens who was busily writing out tickets in his florescent HI-VIZ vest why the signs said NO LOADING instead of no Parking.

He had a Germanic accent (maybe he was German or Polish - I don't know) Honestly I'm not making this up:

"You see ze sign above zee words? Vhat does it mean? Vhat does zit mean?"

[Me] "Look, I know the symbol is a no parking symbol. But with the words NO LOADING underneath it people must be thinking it means no parking for trucks."

"Nine, zee sign means no parking. If you have a licences you must know zee highway code. Zit is yours owns faults. I am just following orders. And zee leaflets behind zee signs says what zis zee law"

[Me] "What do you think would happen if I made some signs myself tonight and put them under your signs? What if MY signs said NO PARKING? Do you think all these cars would be parked here? If this ambiguous signage meant Nottingham City Council was loosing money due to people being confused do you think they would use obvious and clear signs to make sure that stopped happening? Don't you think your employer is using these deliberately confusing signs because it is making money through this legal highway robbery of confused but law abiding people? Do you think these people want to break the law? Doesn't any of this bother you as you fine these poor people money they probably can't afford to throw away?"

"I donts know. Good luck viz zat signs making ja. Have a goods day mine friend."

And there you have it folks. Yet another Bent Society example of authoritarian "error in their favour". So much for Nottingham City Council's punterizing "we're on your side" claptrap!

A Potentially lethal scam

But its worse than that. Because these parking restrictions are brought into being during such occasions to ensure that the roads are kept clear for the emergency services. Clearly Nottingham City Council knows that the signs are confusing because every year (for decades now) they are mass ticketing and then fining people and towing away hundreds of extra cars - at a profit. And the fact the cars are parked there in the first place means that safety is being compromised. ...and it is being compromised not by the poor innocent motorists but by Nottingham City Council's scandalous disingenuous and disgracefully bent punterization of the public with their disingenuous "NO LOADING" signs.

And to make matters worse, even the tiny bits of A4 sized printed paper in polythene hidden behind or tied below the signs don't make it clear that NO LOADING means no parking. In fact the paper notices don't once mention the words parking or park - not even once! With one exception - and I found that on just one lamppost at the very beginning of the street where that single A4 sized paper notice has some text printed on its reverse that does mention parking. And it is this single example that I saw the traffic wardens photographing - as evidence to present to the court (no doubt) that their notices did mention parking. Why don't all the lamppost notices contain that information? If a person read one A4 sized paper notice and saw no mention of parking being forbidden on it then why on Earth would they go and read all the others in case they had extra or different information hidden on their reverse? This behavior by Nottingham City Council clearly indicates that this NO LOADING is a deliberate, bent and potentially lethal scam.

The facts of the matter are clear. It is clear, to anyone who is not an authoritarian, pedantic personality disordered social misfit in a Hi VIZ vest riding a scooter and causing misery by criminalising law abiding good people, that Nottingham City Council is doing its best to make it unclear that the temporary restrictions mean that ordinary people doing ordinary things with their ordinary cars must not park on the road in an ordinary way. How extraordinary! Or not as the potentially dangerous yet money-making case may be.

Postscript - 6 October 2011.

I see today that they've added a new yellow - temporary -metal sign to Mapperley Road that has the words "NO WAITING" under the words "NO LOADING". See: they're still doing it... Parking is not waiting. So innocent people will think this means they can park. If a sign does not say NO PARKING rational normal innocent people will think you can park. NO WAITING implies to a rational brain that the sign means you can't block the road by "waiting". And how might one wait in a car? Does one wait in it by parking it and locking it and walking into their home or walking into the city centre? No! Of course not. One uses one's vehicle to "wait" by sitting in it, perhaps even with the engine running - like a commercial bus, lorry, ice cream van, taxi , van or coach. If you are a magistrate reading this blog let me ask you this telling set of questions: Do you think Nottingham City council staff are so thick they don't know they are confusing the public? Do you think they are unaware that a clear NO PARKING sign would mean less people would park next to it? IF they were losing rather than making money through this public confusion do you think they would use a clear sign to assist compliance?

Dr Society

CAMERON'S WEDGE: Bullingdonian Policymaking: Crack-Pot Cameron Still Retains Dangerous Traits that Define All Bullingdon Club Buffoon-Clowns

2011-10-04T08:15:00.011+01:00

CAMERON'S WEDGE: Democracy in action with Gonzo Criminology

As his time in leadership begins to define him we are starting to learn what kind of a man Prime Minister and former Bullingdon Buffoon David Cameron is.

Cameron clearly has an out-of-touch and infantile tendency to make off-the-cuff widely irrational and reckless decisions, which are informed by nothing more than a buffoon's irrational whim.

(1) We saw him ludicrously involve the deluded and irrational self-publicist Bill Bratton (the man who's warped reasoning effectively means he claims to have reduced crime across the western industrialised world for the past 15 years) as his panicked response to the wild-copy-cat riots and looting of 2011. So what happened with that one? Sounds like someone had a word in the Prime Minister's ear. How embarrassing!

(2) We saw him make a ludicrously unjust child benefit policy with his panicky must make cuts quick announcement that his government will push ahead with cutting child benefit for all households where one tax payer is paying higher rate tax. As anyone with half a rational brain spotted straight away this would create one of the most unfair government policies in living memory. As the Daily Mail rightly point out: "He was repeatedly pressed, but could not defend, the anomaly of two working parents earning up to £88,000 a year keeping the benefit while a mother with a partner earning just over the £44,000 40 per cent tax rate threshold loses it. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1318034/TORY-CONFERENCE-Cameron-champion-doers-grafters-victory-speech.html#ixzz11hOfg9dy"

SIGN THE E-PETITION TO OVERTURN CAMERON'S CRACK POT BULLINGDONIAN-BUFFOON POLICY MAKING

There is an e-petition (needs 100,000 signatures to get the matter discussed in the House of Commons) to overturn Cameron's draconian unjust, ludicrous, crackpot Bullingdonian policy making regarding this child benefit buffoonary. Please sign the e-petition if you are a UK citizen interested in ensuring we live in a democracy characterised by rational policy making. If you sit idly by then evil gets done by busy evil-doers. Here is the link to the rational petition. Click. So far it has only 328 signatures. Let's make a difference. Please sign it to say no to Cameron's Bullingdonain draconary. Here is one small way that we all can cut-off the thin end of Cameron's wedge before he realizes that he can get away with Bullingdonian practices in government and makes things worse for us all.

Amanda Knox Innocent Expelled from University

2011-10-03T23:40:00.006+01:00

Her conviction for the murder of British student Meredith Kercher overturned today - Amanda (Foxy) Knox is the first student to ever be expelled from the University of Crime.

We wish her luck.

References

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/amanda-knox-free-shackled-reputation-trauma/story?id=14656530

http://bentalumni.blogspot.com/2011/10/first-expulsion-from-uoc-straight.html

Criminolgy Student Criminals

2011-09-28T23:19:00.003+01:00

Another criminology student putting his deviancy expertise to the test and caught in the act.

click University of Lincoln

http://bentalumni.blogspot.com/2010/06/university-of-lincoln.html

White Coat Crime?

2011-09-23T10:44:00.008+01:00

Are some scientists promoting unfounded claptrap because they realise there is a huge market for it among the wishful thinking general public? What is going on when universities employ natural science professors to teach unfounded ideas as though they are something more than voodoo science?

In the general scheme of things how might this lead to 'white coat crime' where commercial organisations and even government departments invest millions in claptrap? And who gains financially?

What's possibly going on?

Is a huge racket passing under the radar of criminal justice systems?

To start the ball rolling on this topic - check out what happened when myth busting criminologist Mike Sutton challenged Professor Berkovich (George Washington University) and the Nobel Laureate and Cambridge University Professor of Physics Brian D. Josephson. To put their reputations where their brains are. Click the reference link on the subject of cold fusion, hot clocking and free energy - below. Then - if you don't wish to read the entire article on Hot Clocking (cold fusion by another explanation) you can if you wish go directly to the 'comments section' at the end of it.

Who will win the Best Thinking debate, the experts or the rational (non-expert in physics) criminologist? Perhaps the most telling question we (as students of deviance) should ask is: How and why is such a debate even possible? What on Earth is going on here?

Reference

http://www.bestthinking.com/articles/energy/new-physics-of-hot-clocking-energy-for-the-excess-heat-attributed-to-cold-fusion-

Criminal Criminology Students Join University of Crime

2011-09-17T22:43:00.003+01:00

The University of Crime just enrolled two more bent criminology students, Good grief!

Have a free look around the campus with these free-pass links: Roehampton University and Ohio University

http://bentalumni.blogspot.com/2011/09/roehampton-university.html

http://bentalumni.blogspot.com/2011/09/ohio-university.html

Click any of the universities on this site to see their current bent alumni enrolled at the University of Crime

Criminology Student Puts Theory into Practice

2011-09-15T07:00:00.003+01:00

Persue, Natalie, (Criminology). Guilty of money Laundering. Sentenced to 120 hours community service and £100 costs.

Persue had accepted almost £18,0000 of money stolen from the account of scientist Sir Peter Hirsch ( Emeritus Professor at Oxford's department of materials ) which – in turn - was part of a larger £800,000 fraud on 50 account holders. She was working in cahoots with a “friend” and – being two months pregnant and all alone - the court believed her story that she has been ‘used’ by him as she made eight withdrawals from Barclays Bank in December 2008.

We hope Persue will pursue an illustrious career as a criminologist in a discipline where most academics have never even so much as knowingly spoken with a convicted offender.

*Taken with kind permission from the Gonzo Criminology University of Crime blogsite. Whose motto is "Curvus tamen non infractus" - Bent but not broken!

The University of Crime

2011-09-07T08:39:00.004+01:00

We have apparently reached a state of consensus in orthodox criminology knowledge that prisons act as universities of crime. Weirdly however nobody has ever studied the phenomenon.

Prisons aside, do some universities have more criminals than others? Are some universities universities of crime?

This question began our perpetual gonzo research project over at the University of Crime blog. It may take many decades before clear patterns emerge across the world. Problems do exist in terms of our methodological built-in bias in terms of our reliance upon mass media news coverage. That said, The University of Michigan (USA) is already standing out as a very peculiar place with more than its fair share of killers. Why might that be so. Check it out by clicking here.

Forensic Science Frees The Innocent

2011-08-31T22:30:00.007+01:00

We criminologists tend to take the rhetoric of a just criminal justice system for granted. How then do we deal with our cognitive dissonance when technology reveals otherwise?

Read about 25 cases where forensic science has come to the rescue of the innocent who would otherwise have lost their liberty and - in a society that kills people for killing people - their lives. The article is by Tara Forten.

Reference

Forten, T. (2011) 25 Wrongly-Convicted Felons Exonerated By New Forensic Evidence. Forensic Science technician.

http://www.forensicsciencetechnician.net/25-wrongly-convicted-felons-exonerated-by-new-forensic-evidence/

University of Crime Looter Graduates

2011-08-14T08:50:00.006+01:00

The University of crime told us today that they are going to enroll all graduate and student looters.

Here is the first: http://bentalumni.blogspot.com/2011/08/north-middlesex-university_14.html

Natasha Reid - a Graduate in Social Work stole a £500 flat screen TV despite already owning one. She pleaded guilty after turning herself in. She will be sentenced on 1st September 2011.

What will the deluded US Police Chief Bill Bratton be able to do about our bent society - at huge cost to UK tax payers? Does he know much about anything besides how he reduced crime throughout the entire western industrialized world for 15 years by operating magically and miraculously out of New York through mysterious morphic resonance and perhaps top secret problem oriented zero tolerance transcendental meditation policing for the benefit of the world?

Sack Cameron's naive and underdeveloped Brain and call Cheri Blair and her magic crystal guru in to help at huge consultancy fees to be paid by UK Tax payers! Can Uri Geller help?

INNOCENT ABROAD DAVID CAMERON APPOINTS DELUDED SELF PUBLICIST BRATTON

2011-08-13T22:09:00.003+01:00

DAVID CAMERON'S BRAIN SHOULD BE SACKED.

What the hell is going on when the UK Prime Minister is allowed to appoint the deluded self-publicist ex New York Police Chief Bill Bratton to waste tax payer money to tackle UK gangs?

The apparently delusional Bill Bratton claims to have personally reduced crime in New York. But wait. Because at the same time, across the western industrial world (and in every other US state and city) crime fell at least as far an sometimes further than in New York.

So what did the incredible self-proclaimed superhero Bratton do exactly? Did he have accesses to information from a higher power that told him that New York crime would not have fallen as far as everywhere else without his secret powers? Perhaps David Cameron has access to that same higher authority?

Perhaps it talks to Cameron through his secret COMPSTAT wristwatch communicator?

Oh gawd what a shower we elected into power.

Did Puerile Anti-Social Graffiti Olympic Logo Also Fuel the Riots?

2011-08-12T14:32:00.012+01:00

With cringe-worthy irony the the arrogantly unworldly Lord Sebastian Coe, who commissioned the Official London Olympics Graffiti-Vandal Logo, is worried that the riots might have an impact on the reputation of England and that might impact on the 2012 Olympics. It's a shame he did not research the message that the official 2012 Olympics graffiti-vandal logo is sending out to young people.

Today, we are not at all surprised to learn that London Graffiti Logo Olympics ambassador, who met with Lord Coe, is charged with using her Blackberry to incite riots as well as burglary and vandalism by way of attacking a police car.

"Chelsea Ives has been charged with two counts of burglary, violent disorder and attacking a police car, during disturbances in Enfield, north London, on Sunday.

It is understood Ives was one of Waltham Forest Council's youth ambassadors who ensure young people's voices are heard and "have an input into developments for London 2012 and Paralympic Games", according to the council's website.

She took the role in 2008 and met London mayor Boris Johnson and Olympics chief Lord Coe.

She has been remanded in custody."

Well don’t say we didn't warn you that you were very likely to be sending out a puerile anti-social message with that self-sucking Logo Sebastian. Next time make sure your use of media imagery is properly researched please. See our earlier blog on this asking Lord Coe - who are the real criminals?

We much prefer the respectable looking logo on the left. Let's have it replace the anti-social one please.

See story here: http://www.itn.co.uk/home/26441/Riots+Youth+Olympic+ambassador+in+court

Blackberries fed wild copycat rioting, vandalism and looting.

The Canadian owned company Blackberry's smart phones appear to have played a significant part in incitement activities which caused looting and rioting to spread like wildfire across England in the past few days.

Here is how smart phone technology (particularly those using the Blackberry service) facilitated the wild copycat looting and rioting in England in August 2011:

Links to those suspects who have already been caught:

An 18 year old and a 27 year old: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/blackberry/8697651/UK-riots-teenager-charged-with-BlackBerry-incitement.html

18 year old incited 140 people to meet him in park with bats and weapons: http://www.northamptonchron.co.uk/news/crime/teenager_appears_in_court_charged_with_attempting_to_incite_northampton_riot_using_blackberry_phone_1_2956854

20 year old from Nottingham sent text to all 161 people on his Blackberry message service to turn up and throw missiles: http://www.thisisnottingham.co.uk/Blackberry-leads-court/story-13120447-detail/story.html

27 year old used Blackberry to incite riot: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-14489819

Hacker’s threaten Canadian Company that owns Blackberry if it co-operates with UK Police to investigate those who used their text service to incite rioting and looting http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Critic+takes+warrantless+wiretapping+bill/5236774/story.html:

Instant messenger woman charged: http://www.northants-news.co.uk/2011/08/12/teenager-appears-in-court-charged-with-attempting-to-incite-northampton-riot-using-blackberry-phone/

25 and 27 year old used twitter and arrested: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-14489819

Meanwhile, TWITTER refused to help the Police close down the Twitter accounts of those suspected of inciting and commanding and controlling riots and looting: http://www.bobtuskin.com/2011/08/11/uk-riots-gov%E2%80%99t-mulls-kill-switch-for-twitter-facebook-army-on-streets/

BS Crew

Maskers 2009-2011

2011-08-11T23:43:00.002+01:00

In the wake of the riots the Government is now going to empower the police to tell maskers to reveal their faces.

Why did it take the recent riots and looting for this to finally get sorted?

We blogged - calling for this in Jan 2009. About time.

The Riots: Black Swan's, Grey Swan's and the internet

2011-08-10T22:44:00.008+01:00

A guest blog by Mike Sutton (published today at BestThinking,com)

Three men murdered by a car being driven at them in Birmingham. Nationwide, riots and looting in England for the past 4 days.

Five police stations fire bombed in my own city of Nottingham alone over the past two nights. I have never heard of a police station being fire bombed in England before, its something I associated in the past with Rio, Derry or the movie Assault on Precinct 13. This is a dramatically different kind of disorder to anything in living memory for mainland British citizens.

We heard the emergency sirens deep into the night. Just as criminologists had cottoned on to the fact that they never saw the 15 year crime drop coming and were subsequently dealing with their resulting cognitive dissonance by settling down to happily explaining it, after the event, with their own pet theories. We now have an unpredicted nationwide outbreak of wild copy-cat rioting and looting in England.

With regard to that crime drop, we currently have “the security hypothesis” as the favourite Tamagotchi theory of Crime Science, Situational Crime Prevention and Routine Activities adherents.So what now for the security hypothesis? Does lack of security explain the mass nationwide looting and riots and an increase in security explain the crime drop of the past 15 years?

Meanwhile, Critical Criminologists, suffering from their own cognitive dissonance and unique strain of demon in the window pareidolia (Sutton 2011), see only cultural patterns that totally explain for them what is happening amongst the seemingly random crime figures, and are focusing in on it to keep their own blinkered post-Tamagotchi post-modern and post-Marxist current concerns with consumerism alive.

Just like children obsessively playing with those little Japanese Tamagotchi electronic pets, opposing international academic criminological camps have to keep feeding their personal, irrationally inductive, Tamagotchis simply to keep them alive on the carrion of past crime trends.

Critical Criminologist, Jock Young, in his latest book “The Criminological Imagination” comes up with a multitude of his own post-hoc explanations for the crime drop – ranging from a staple critical diet of wise after the event rhetorical stories about “big brother effects” - where invisible little brothers are imagined to have seen the problem of crime that visited itself upon their decade and a half older siblings and want none of it - to the civilising effect of the decline of manufacturing as more young males are being better socialised by working in the service sector.

Professor Young failed to imagine the impact of 15 years of social networking on the Internet as a facilitator of wild copycat rioting and looting as well as something that may also have been keeping potential victims and offenders off the streets for several hours a day.

Internet networking has played a large part in how these riots and associated mass looting has been organised and copied nationwide – as explained yesterday by anonymous criminologists manning the Bent Society Blog (Bent Society 2011).

No one, me included, seems to have considered the mobile criminal cell disorder facilitating capabilities of smart cell phones linked to the internet. This technology allows offenders to fragment, organise and re group in ways never before imagined.

Many years ago I was one of the first criminologists to study how young people exploited the internet to network together in order to commit crimes (Mann and Sutton (1998). In that article we wrote:

“The Internet is a particularly effective medium for criminal recruitment and the dissemination of criminal techniques. Whilst it is possible that it will bring an increase in crime and create new problems for those concerned with crime control and criminality prevention, it is too early to tell whether the Internet or high technology crime will cause major problems for law and order in the future. However, with the expansion of the Net, various Net Crimes may become high volume crimes. If this happens, existing approaches for dealing with and seeking to understand the reasons for high volume crime will have to be widened and new ones developed to meet the challenge of crimes facilitated by, or taking place in, a radically different environment.”

When we conducted that research many people had no idea what the internet was. David Mann and I worked for the Home Office at the time and within those so called corridors of power we were told by our civil service policy oriented research superiors that our research was a waste of time because the Internet was most likely going to be a passing fad like CB radio. That inductive argument did not convince us and we went ahead and did the research in our own time. Our subsequent article won the 1998/99 British Journal of criminology Prize for making the most significant contribution to academic knowledge. And today everyone knows that the internet is a significant site for criminological research into the huge problem of online crime.

Back on the streets, the riots and looting currently sweeping England began in London but soon spread like wildfire as copycat offenders from age 9 to their late 30’s (perhaps some older) grabbed a piece of the action and anything else they could lay their hands on.

I think that we need to explore further this Popperian Black Swan event of the effect of the Communications Revolution on street level crime. We need to try to establish with sceptically informed research whether we can really safely say, and if so to what degree and with what degree of confidence, the internet and other communications and entertainment media is or is not responsible for the overall 15 year crime drop in the western industrialised world. As I wrote in a blog post earlier this year (Sutton, 2011a), so many young people are spending many hours online and gaming that it might well have led to significantly less potential offenders on the street and less potential victims in any 24 hour period.

We also need to examine the current wild copycat crime riot and looting situation to try to predict whether or not this is a new phenomenon that we might expect to see re-occurring each summer. I think that there is a possibility that while the communications revolution may have just possibly played some significant role in reducing street crime overall, we might now expect to see a new pattern whereby crimes come in wild copycat strikes that are most likely to be committed by young people - perhaps during their summer vacations from school and college, when their numbers will be swelled by disaffected 20 year old offenders. If so, then forewarned is forearmed – at least until the next Popperian black swan event (Sutton 2011b)

To put my head over the prediction parapet here, as I did with my Home Office colleague David Mann some 13 years ago, I think that if my Game Substitution hypothesis (Sutton 2011a) is right (and it might well not be) then we might expect to see a continuing decline and eventual levelling off of crime across the board that will be regularly interrupted by ‘wild copycat crimes’ of various types (not just riots). The summer holidays are likely to be a particularly risky period for such crime outbreaks as older offenders blend in with children to smash those windows they usually have their noses pressed up against to steal the stuff they want but can’t much afford.

Since the communications technology that is facilitating this social network crime facilitation can be used to pinpoint where offenders live (through police access to service provider account information) in the same way it can be used to catch paedophiles, I predict that next year we will experience a similar rash of looting and rioting – this time facilitated via anonymous cyber café’s. The Police and potential offenders will then engage in a communications arms race as new ways of thwarting and detecting crime facilitation compete, adapt and evolve. This is one Popperian black swan that, unlike the economic crash, we did at least partly see coming. We just chose to bury our heads in the sand like apocryphal ostriches. That’s what Taleb (2007) calls a grey swan because it’s a known unknown, rather than an unimagined unknown. We would be wise not to keep our eyes off those grey swan’s in the future.

What’s the answer for now?

As a short-term solution, one drastic but possibly effective measure would be to declare a curfew on smart phones and use current technology to home in on those turned on after dark and zap their electronics. That’s surely more palatable than baton rounds fired at schoolchildren? And it works because it’s what they currently do to stolen phones. In the long term? We ignore addressing the disjunction between goals and means of our discontented and marginalized citizens, with their noses pressed up against the shop windows, at our peril and theirs. And by that I mean our bent citizens and our currently unbroken windows.

References

Impact Magazine (2011). August 10:http://www.impactnottingham.com/2011/08/hooded-youths-spread-across-nottingham-in-second-night-of-riots/ se also earlier BBC News

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14479285

Bent Society (2011) August 9^th. http://bentsocietyblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/are-riots-virus-of-mind.html

Sutton, M. (2011) Demon in the Window. Dysology Video. 2011.YouTubehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nwxturbHA0

Sutton, M. (2011a) Routine Activities Theory, The Internet and the 15 Year Crime Drop.Criminology: The Blog of Mike Sutton. Best Thinking.http://www.bestthinking.com/thinkers/science/social_sciences/sociology/mike-sutton?tab=blog&blogpostid=9634%2c9634

Mann, D. and Sutton, M. (1998) >>NetCrime: More Change in the Organisation of Thieving. British Journal of Criminology. Vol. 38. Issue 2. pp.201-229.http://bjc.oxfordjournals.org/content/38/2/201.abstract

Taleb, N. N. (2007) The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. London. Allen Lane: Penguin Books.

Young, J. (2011). The Criminological Imagination. Cambridge. Polity Press.

If Riots Are a Virus of the Mind Can We Read It?

2011-08-09T11:33:00.010+01:00

Are the riots and looting taking place across England this week a manifestation of the ultimate selfish meme?

Could criminology develop a new theory to predict crime and be wise before the event rather than merely making stuff up to explain it to be wise after the event? Sutton thinks it might be possible with enough investment in a real crime science rather than in all the current disingenuous career building claptrap and other counter knowledge that dominates criminology and policy making . Click here to read The Selfish Meme

NEXT Here is the BS short-range crime forecast for the riots in

England

in August 2011

A Short-Range Crime Forecast on Bent Society

Unlike the near certainties regarding cause and effect that we have from laws discovered in the natural sciences, predicting the affairs of man is fraught with difficulties. So much so that when you get it right then you merely predicted the obvious, but when you get it wrong you are a naïve fool.

Having said that, what is different today from the English riots of the 1980’s and can that difference be used to predict what will happen in the next few days and weeks?

Here goes for a primary – off the cuff list:

(1) An even more alienated youth, with fewer job prospects, coming from families with decades of long term unemployment.

(2) An end of unskilled manual labour paying a respectable living wage

(3) A cultural understanding that Britain will never be as great as it once was

(4) Global recession

(5) A more consumer driven society, with a proliferation of retail outlets unlike anything imagined in the 1980’s

(6) A major decline in two parent families

(7) A huge rise in the number of young people who feel that have nothing much to lose from joining the mob and don’t want to miss being in on the action.

(8) A withdrawal of police from the streets

(9) The growth of virtual societies where many hours are spent networking and gaming online

(10) Mobile phones, including unidentifiable pay-and-throw models

What might these changes predict regarding what will happen in the following days and weeks?

I think many young people will irrationally but very seriously believe that they have a real opportunity to overthrow society and take control of their destiny through confronting the law and law abiding citizens with violence and looting. If they possess weapons then they will be unable to think of a better time to use them than this ever presenting itself again.

The internet – Facebook, blog sites, web boards, instant messaging and Twitter will be used to command and control the criminal action, neutralise guilt, make martyrs of the arrested, incite crime and share modus operandi information at a national level.

We should, therefore, expect:

(a) a level of anarchy and brazen lack of fear of and respect for the police and emergency services that is unlike anything in living memory

(b) a much greater incidence of copycat rioting and looting than ever experienced in Britain’s history

(c) a huge number of serious woundings, arrests, and long prison spells as unfit youths with more bravado and size than physical ability find themselves relying upon weapons to back up their intentions with little chance of running far on their internet atrophied legs.

The abilities of the criminal justice system to pinpoint ringleaders and participants from their online and mobile telephony activities remains to be seen. And it is this unknown that will determine how long the trouble lasts.

BS Crew

Am I an Elf? Crime Science, Elves and Laycock's Mistake

2011-07-31T10:32:00.005+01:00

Am I an Elf? Is Being an Elf the Most Significant Cause of Being an Elf? A Critique of Crime Science and Laycock’s Mistake

Transcript of a mini-lecture lecture by Professor JoeKing

To provide an example of what makes good and bad explanations for observed phenomena, let’s consider my own pointy ears.

It is not a good explanation for my having pointy ears for me to say: “It is because I am a non-human creature called an elf; and that I’m an elf because elves have pointy ears, I have pointy ears. And that you can’t prove, therefore, that it’s not true that I’m an elf.”

If I want to make a convincing case that I am an elf, rather than a human, then it is for me as the person (or elf) making such a claim who has the obligation to establish, on the basis of testable evidence, that having pointy ears makes me distinguishable from humans.

If I can argue successfully that some kind of otherwise explainable and significant difference between myself and humans makes me non-human then I’ve established a sound hypothesis that I am of a different species from humans. Next, I could set about fitting myself into some kind of existing or new classification framework – based on observation to claim what it is then that I am.

For example, I might refer to some prior posited elf theory that states that elves have magic powers, are only 6 inches tall and live under toadstools. If this is as good as any other description for my own species then it would not be irrational to try to fit myself into it. The alternative is to invent a new one or move on and choose another from what we already know from past observations of non human humanoids – perhaps I’m a Neanderthal or some other extinct humanoid found, previously, only in the fossil record?

Let’s stick with the elf question for now. The observable fact I am not 6 inches tall and don’t have magic powers, and that I actually live in a house and not under a toadstool means that my claim to be an elf, under the Blighton fairy story framework would be refuted and I’d probably be referred to a psychiatrist. In which case, to avoid being deemed delusional, I would next need to find some other refutable explanation if I wanted to continue to seek to establish that I am an elf and not human. If that was also refuted, then I’d need another one….and so on.

Bearing in mind that Laycock’s Mistake teaches us that evidence for what is and is not so does not end with observations and measurement. Let’s pause for a moment and consider how we might explain me and my pointed ears if things were different and I was in fact only 6 inches tall, had these pointy ears and actually had demonstrable magical powers.

Well, to avoid Laycock’s Mistake we’d need a theory that explained why I existed. This is because my weird existence cannot explain itself anymore than fossils can explain themselves or the existence of an opportunity for a crime explains why crime happens, or why an opportunity for an elf to occur explains what makes an elf exist. For example, we need Darwin’s theory of evolution to explain fossils and we use the fossil record and other observations to seek to disprove the theory of evolution. An eohippus cannot explain either itself or a horse or a fox. But evolution can explain it and where it fits within the origin of other species. Furthermore, evolution would be disproved if we found an eohippus in the Jurassic strata.

To date, you (we?) humans have been unsuccessful in disproving evolution, since the fossil record supports the theory. All of which suggests it’s a very good explanation for the origin of species. Fossils exist as a truism throughout the fossil record just as opportunity exists as a truism in all crimes. After all without an opportunity how could any crime have taken place. Unless we want to invoke magic of the supernatural as a plausible explanation then fossils are pretty much irrefutable, as is opportunity in crime. Hence, they are excellent observations of what exists but do nothing to explain why they exist. In short, neither are causes.

To explain the reason (cause) for my being 6 inches tall, having pointy ears and magical powers scientists might construct elf theories. One elf theory might incorporate Darwinism. And an alternative rival theory might hypothesize that elves are in fact aliens from another planet. Either way, to be potentially good explanations both theories would have to compete with one another and any other rivals by being (1) supported by evidence and (2) capable of being completely refuted; for example, by any future discovery of elves in the fossil record, or that elves have DNA significantly unlike anything else found on Earth or perhaps no DNA at all.

This is the sort of explanation that is required and is used to separate science from religious belief and other superstitions - such as unfounded beliefs in elves and fairies at the bottom of your garden – or that opportunity is a cause of crime.

So much for good explanations then. Lets’s briefly recap.

1. Good explanations are hard to vary, which means that you cannot conveniently alter them after experiments or observations simply to make them fit your data.

2. Good explanations are capable of being refuted.

3. The Crime Science explanation that opportunity is the most significant cause of crime is easy to vary and impossible to refute. Contrary to what Crime Scientists weirdly believe this makes it a bad explanation for crime - and a bad explanation for my being an elf.

4. The data cannot explain itself as a cause of itself in the form of a truism.

5. I’m pretty sure that I’m probably not an elf, whatever you or I choose to believe, or what Crime Science would claim about my ears as a cause of me being one.

My next lecture will be on Cultural Criminology and fairies at the bottom of my garden.

Thanking you all for reading the transcript of my lecture.

Professor JoeKing

References

The Original Launching Crime Science – the weirdly deleted article – can be obtained free by emailing: crimescience@hotmail.com

Crime Science Launched on Laycock's Mistake

2011-07-28T16:40:00.003+01:00

The key explanatory principle upon which Crime Science was launched is that opportunity is the most significant cause of crime. This is a bad scientific explanation for crime because:

(1) Good explanations in science are hard to vary
(2) Good explanations in science are refutable (either they are right or wrong and are capable of being refuted)
(3) Science keeps its explanations separate fro the data it seeks to explain.

The crime as opportunity explanation miserably fails each of these three fundamental scientific tests of a good explanation.

To read a brief peer-to-peer article that describes Laycock's Mistake please click here

The Criminological Imagination Imagined

2011-07-21T08:34:00.002+01:00

The Problem of Procrastination Perverts and Lawyers in Criminology Today.

I am reading Jock Young’s new book “The Criminological Imagination” – and thoroughly enjoying his rhetorical take on the subject. That is, apart from his usual obsession with accepting as real the obscure and, anyway, contested notion of post modernism and despite his occasional recidivist's tendency towards pompous verstehen nomenclature seeding – tempered thankfully by a transparent attempt to detoxify his usual translucent sociological style in this book so as not to fall fowl of his own criticisms against quantitative criminology relying upon obscure language to obscure its weaknesses.

The point of this blog post is to pick up on what Young laments on pages 22 and 23 of his – so far highly enjoyable – book. Amongst other things, here Young is pointing out that ethics committees, combined with the Codes of Ethics of the American Sociological Association - have all but destroyed the most edgy and useful ethnographic work in criminology. He is right.

In my own experience, at my current university, we now have a policy that undergraduate students simply are not allowed out into the field to study active offenders. The reasons for this, however, are not just due to ethical concerns regarding their subjects – and the fear of being sued by legal aid, or no win no fee lawyers, they are largely driven with health and safety concerns for students and fear of their bogey-man lawyers. These same concerns are now stultifying post-graduate and staff research. Many have been thwarted at the first hurdle. Many now don’t bother trying. Academics all over the western industrialised world, that I've spoken with, are saying the same thing.

In my own experience – due to the time my ethics committee took to approve my ethnography with a career criminal (six months!) my previously very willing subject got cold feet because (I learned from one of their relatives) they thought things were taking so long because the university must have informed the police and that I must be part of a carefully planned undercover investigative team. Successful offenders are rationally paranoid.

The bean counters have taken over academia

These ethics committees, which thrive in the current university meetings culture, are characteristically staffed with administration loving unimaginative procrastination perverts who are sitting around jaw, jawing about other people’s research ideas and intentions because they have none of their own.

Here is my answer to ethics committees. Screw them. Just go around them. Go Gonzo. Do and publish your research anonymously. Then cite it in your own published work! Let’s see how they will deal with that. If enough of us do it then we’ll all know whose research it is but we’ll be protected from the lawyers and procrastination perverts.

Screw Ethics: Go Gonzo and Do Your Research Anonymously

I’d like to hear your own stories about how ethics committees have wrecked your own research. That’s what the comments section here is for.

Anonymous George

Public Disorder Filmed

2011-07-16T23:22:00.003+01:00

Thousands of witnesses. Film evidence. But weirdly, no prosecutions. Bent Society?

It happened on February 9th 2001. The Sheffield Steelers versus the Nottingham Panthers. It has come to known as: The infamous bench clearance brawl.

Why did the police not prosecute? The violence took place in front of hundreds of families.

See the Voodoo Criminology blog for latest footage of ice hockey riots in Canada

BEAT POLICING MYTH AND THE DANGERS OF RECEPTIVE PUNTERS

2011-06-24T06:00:00.019+01:00

How were Professor's Ron Clarke and Mike Hough able to convince the entire criminological, political and policing community with their spurious model that sought - successfully - to convince us all that only once every eight years would a beat police officer come within 100 yards of a burglary in progress and even then may be unaware?

The answer is probably that the fallacy of their model - which assumes beat police officers walk around 100 per cent randomly like blind and deaf zombies - had a very receptive audience:

The Home Office was looking for new and cheaper alternatives to crime control and crime reduction.

Many police officers wanted, desperately, to be professionals.

The advent of mobile radio systems did away with the old "Dr Who" police boxes that had been used by beat officers in the past to check in with the station to show that they were doing their job and all was well - or to call for back-up.

Those first two-way mobile radios were far too big and heavy to be carried by police personnel on foot so had to be in patrol cars, which meant a lot of beat bobbies became motorised patrol and fast response police officers.

Who would not prefer to be in a warm modern car when the alternative is pounding the beat with rain dripping down the back of your neck?

Crime was rising from the 1960's with the post war baby boom, rehousing, and the explosion in consumerism, motor car ownership and empty homes as more women went to work - it must have seemed as if something modern was needed for this modern phenomenon.

Zombie outbreaks are infectious in real life as well as in the movies, it seems. Because the Zombie Cop model aped similar claptrap produced in the US for the President's Commission on Law enforcement regarding street robberies and beat police officers.

Astonishingly, the Zombie Cop model was published by two erudite Home Office crack-researchers, who ooze a perfectly well deserved aura of uncontainable integrity and respectability - in the most respected of first-rate research publications - a peer reviewed Home Office Research Study.

Given such a fortunate combination of forces to facilitate easy punterization it is perhaps not so amazing after all that the Clarke and Hough zombie cop myth was swallowed hook line and sinker and purported to be accurate in scholarly publications written by some of the most influential British Criminologists in the world. A trusted source told me only yesterday that his research is ongoing into the full reach of the myth and that it is even greater than has been reported to date. Those who are currently known to have believed the myth and helped spread it in print include Professor Tim Newburn, Professor Robert Reiner, Professor Adam Crawford, Professor David Dixon and Professor Trever Bennett to name but a few. More exist outside the field of criminology including Harvard professors of business Di Tella and Schargrodsky.

How, we might wonder will these people and professors Hough and Clarke and these other zombie cop believers deal with their cognitive dissonance? Will they publish their mistake in their future publications? Will they keep quiet and hope no one will notice? Or will they go defensive and offensive? Will they claim that "mistakes were made but not by me? Will they try to claim that the impact of the fallacious model was in fact small (despite the fact that it has for decades been promoted as orthodox knowledge and used to justify policing policy by the Home Office). Will they claim that beat policing is in fact ineffective anyway- despite the fact that much of the earlier evidence suggests it can be effective? Will they become aggressive in their own defense, club together and threaten to sue with a nuisance law suit? If all of these ways to resolve cognitive dissonance seem far fetched then you have not yet read about what "respectable" recovered-memory "experts" got up once their pseudo scholarship was bust wide open.

Those who are able to look within themselves and search for honest answers might wish to turn their scholarly attention to ask why is it that some myths are so of their time that they take hold so that they are braced by academics like themselves who credulously, and with the most exquisitely painful toe curling irony, use them as examples of the need to be skeptical.

Crime in the Future: Part 1

2011-06-13T05:49:00.007+01:00

According to some anti-aging experts a man or woman aged 50 today, provided they are in good health could live forever.

Aubrey de Grey really does think that so long as we can add 30 years to our current lifespan then we can live forever because that 30 years buys enough time until the next "fix" which will prolong the average lifespan by 60 years etc etc. Aubrey de Grey is trying to get a mouse to live past 5 years. After that it’s over to us.

If he is right and he can get his mice to live past 5 years what would it mean for crime if we could all live forever. Here are a few telling questions I have:

1. Would a large proportion of the population become serious and prolific criminals with no fear of God now that death is no longer inevitable?

2. It would only be a matter of time until we mastered brain back-ups (we can already back-up our computers). What would that mean for the offence of murder if a body could simply be replaced and the mind restored? Would homicide become like criminal damage? And what about ID theft if your brain back-up was copied?

3. What about pensions? When would they stop paying out? Would we have to work forever - what would that mean for those in mundane jobs? Would they become deranged?

4. What would it mean for mankind if children were banned to keep population levels sustainable? Would people be sterilised?

5. What would we do with people in prison currently serving a life sentence? In the USA there are serial killers with sentences of 100+ years. Would we give them the longevity treatment and eventually have to let them out?

6. Would people engage in more risky behaviours knowing that should they smash themselves and others to bits that their brains could simply be uploaded into a new body. What consequences would that have for terrorism, serial killing and even war?

Are Sleeping Policemen Serial Killers?

2011-05-30T18:34:00.008+01:00

They used to call speed humps sleeping policemen - back in the day.

It seems I can't drive around my city anymore - its stop start and crawling over hundreds of speed humps at less than 1mph to avoid smashing my car's suspension to pieces.

The only people I tend see not doing this are

(1) BMW company car drivers who care not for the company car,
(2) white van men driving company vans
(3) Big 4x4 drivers
(4) Police officers driving police company cars
(5) Those with no understanding of the damage caused to steering and suspension components from bashing cars up humps
(6) Youths driving clapped out super-minis with no life left in them anyway

I wonder how much damage these sleeping policemen are doing to the ball joints, track road ends and shock-absorbers (indeed all all steering and suspension components) of cars?

While appreciating that these loathsome devices are necessarily making us all (apart from those listed above) slow down and so saving lives in residential areas, I wonder if safety is being compromised by increased suspension damage to both careful drivers and those listed above?

Thinking about cars braking hard in an emergency at 70mph on the motorway for example - I wonder if sleeping policeman damage has played a causal role in fatal crashes, and if so to what extent?

Could the widespread use of this crime reduction measure have created the ironic unintended consequence of more high speed collisions resulting in more deaths than they have prevented? Or not?

And here's another thought - given that those six deviant sub-types of speeding speed hump rushers hit speed humps way to fast but care not for the consequences, I expect they may suffer more sleeping policeman damage and wear and tear to their suspension components than the average driver. Compound that with the hypothesis that they may be likely to drive too fast and too close to other traffic at the best of times - you have to wonder if we have yet another one of those criminological ironic unintended consequences at work.

Bender's Ghost

Real Crime Science

2011-05-25T15:15:00.010+01:00

The main aim of real science - as opposed to pseudoscience or craft work - is to enhance knowledge progression.

According to Gloria Laycock (Head of the UCL Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science ) the aim of so called 'Crime Science' is to reduce crime. You can see the video here.

Presumably then, understanding crime play's second fiddle in 'crime science' to getting out in the field and trying to make a difference?

But there is a big problem with this if we are to take Professor Laycock literally. Because a real scientific theory must contain a hard to vary yet verifiable and refutable (refutable by reason, experiment or observation) explanatory principle for phenomena (data) that it seeks to understand.

So then what exactly is this thing that they are calling science at the University College London that arguably appears to have as its main aim the need to change the very data that it should be seeking to understand in order to enhance knowledge?

Where are the real scientific theories that underpin crime science?

Simply engaging scientists to work on crime problems is not sufficient to transmute that enterprise into a science.

Real Science follows scientific principles. Real Science keeps explanatory principles separate from data. For an idea of what Real Crime Science might involve, and what's wrong with the current notion of 'crime science' visit the Forecasting Crime section on the Dysology website

What in heaven's name is going on down at the University College London? Whatever it is that Professor Laycock is describing it not like science as real scientists would understand it. Perhaps it's, arguably, really more like a craft course? Perhaps the Jill Dando Institute will at some time in the future be awarding its staff chairs in the Furniture Department?

Oh by the way, UCL has very weirdly (at the time of writing) deleted Professor Gloria Laycock's seminal Launching Crime Science paper from the Internet. Surely not as a result of scholarly criticism? Because that would be an unscientific thing to do to scholars of scientific theory progression. We have to assume that deleting that historical paper (cited by 6 academics) was an administrative mistake.

Whatever the reason, no need to worry, as every good criminologist knows these days, delete NEVER means delete where the Internet is concerned. You can still read it and therefore reference it in your work. Because Google has very kindly backed it up for us. Click here

Robin

Reference

Laycock, G. (2003). Launching Crime Science. Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science. University College London. ISBN 0-9545607-1-X http://www.ucl.ac.uk/jdi/downloads/publications/crime_science_short_reports/launching_crime_science.pdf [UCL Pdf file currently deleted from the Internet]

Dynamic Victimisation Theory: Criminology Gets Really Data Hungry to Get More Reach

2011-05-16T18:39:00.011+01:00

A new criminological theory entitled Dynamic Victimization has been proposed as a better explanation for crime and as a way to scientifically forecast it.

Click here to read the article on Forecasting Crime on the Dysology website.

The outline of the theory, described by its author Dr Mike Sutton as "data hungry" looks like it would require huge data collection - in the UK alone - on a scale to be envied by MI5, GCHQ, the CIA, the National Census, British Crime Survey and physics research.

But if that is what it takes to forecast crime should criminologists not reach for the sky in the same way that scientists get huge funding to reach for the moon, stars and explanations for the universe?

Crime, like the weather, presents mankind with both trivial and deadly serious problems. Should we not take our knowledge forward so that we can forecast crime with the same accuracy we can forecast the weather?

Out of The Failure of Criminology Emerges a Proposed Theory of how to Better Explain and how to Forecast Crime

2011-04-24T09:14:00.043+01:00

Postscript 16th May 2011.

What we need is a scientific theory (incorporating cultural criminological data) to better explain and forecast crime: http://dysology.org/page7.html

The Failure of Criminology to Explain the Crime Drop and the Irrationality of Criminologists who are Attempting Now to Predict the Past in order to try to know the future can be read here:

http://www.bestthinking.com/articles/science/social_sciences/sociology/the-failure-of-criminology-to-predict-and-explain-the-crime-drop-allows-myths-to-be-created-and-spread

Mike Sutton's paper - published on the peer-to-peer BestThinking.com website was inspired by The Labour Party in Nottingham (England) irrationally and ludicrously claiming credit for the International 15 year crime drop.

Ferret Rustling Terrorism Threat to USA

2011-04-22T21:10:00.002+01:00

The United States of America is under threat from ferret rustlers under the bed.

If you suspect anyone of having ferret rustling sympathies it is your patriotic duty to inform the FBI.

See the latest alumnus at the University of Crime

Increasing Student Fees and, Therefore, Student Debt is Irrational. And because it is Clearly Irrational it is Also Immoral.

2011-04-10T23:34:00.007+01:00

Thatcher's Student Fees Scam Rears its Irrational and Immoral Head

In his classic book entitled Irrationality Professor Stuart Sutherland wrote: “The Thatcher Government, anxious to reduce subsidies to students, repeatedly claimed that going to university increases earning power. It cannot be denied that graduates do on average earn more than others, but there is also no good reason for regarding this as a cause and effect. After all, university students have higher than average IQs, and they may be more determined than others; moreover, their parents tend to have good positions and be middle or upper class so that they can often help their children to obtain good jobs. These factors are surely enough to account for higher earnings. The causal connection between a university education and higher pay later in life is therefore not proven and the repeated assertions of this connection by British Ministers of Education demonstrate only that the British educational system has not succeeded in teaching them to think.”

Reference: Stuart Sutherland ( p.135. 1992). Irrationality. Constable and Company.

Benders Ghost

Heroin Cuts Burglary

2011-04-09T15:46:00.005+01:00

The secret of the strangely missing UK Home Office Police Research Series Report 113 is that all copies were incinerated following revelations that the worlds most effective method for fighting burglary is for police officers to bribe police informants with heroin in order to get them to inform on heroin addicts.

Does sounds just too strange to possibly be true? Want to read the report that the British Government banned? Check out the full true and shocking story and links over at the Dysology site.

Dysology and the Crime Drop

2011-03-27T18:41:00.007+01:00

Professors Farrell, Tilley and Tseloni wrote a very useful paper with Jen Mailley (Farrell et al 2010) lamenting the fact that criminology has failed to explain why crime has been falling since the 1990's. In the same paragraph they note that criminology also cannot explain some increases in crime that have bucked the general trend - such as mobile phone theft and Internet crime.

Strangely, like all other criminologists, these four authors all seem to have had the same peculiar blind spot in their vision in not seeing the question that is right there on their own page begging to be asked. Namely, whether Felson's Routine Activities Theory (RAT) would predict that the communications and media entertainment revolution - most importantly time spent on the Internet and games consoles indoors - would perfectly explain everything they and other criminologists are fuddled about.

Dr Mike Sutton, seeking to reveal and understand such failings of criminology, is examining whether a new multi disciplinary approach that he has named dysology might be a useful way forward. Sutton has set up a website called dysology.org to reveal pseudo scholarship and explain why people engage in it and why others believe in the fallacies and myths it produces.

Sutton is particularly focusing on counter knowledge that influences policy making. And his braced myth concept is explored by way of the Spinach, Popeye, Iron, Decimal Error story and also The Great Home Office Hoax regarding beat police officers being zombies. Included in Sutton's web site is a critique of opportunity as a cause of crime. Having coined the word dysology himself (it means bad scholarship), Dr Sutton is writing book of the same title

Reference

Farrell, G. Tilley, N. Tseloni, A and Mailley, J. (2010) Explaining and sustaining the crime drop: Clarifying the role of opportunity-related theories. In Crime Prevention and Community Safety. Vol. 12. 1. 24-41.

Lox

Punterization

2011-03-12T22:36:00.003Z

Nottingham police use tax payer's money in a propaganda campaign to convince Nottingham's hard pressed tax payers that Government findings that it is the worst performing constabulary in the country are false.

Meanwhile Nottingham's own police squander its tax payer;s money on 100 per cent useless Smartwater property marking of 1/2 million Nottingham homes with a quack product produced by an ex-police officer. Why? Who is getting rich selling and buying this crapolla? They say is is helping to reduce burglaries but clearly is is not.

We ask you: Who are the criminals? Nottingham Police. We need to call in Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary to investigate the rotten to the core bad apples at the top.

FUKUSHIMA INCIDENT

2011-03-12T08:51:00.008Z

Richard Dawkins warned us that this would happen.

Following a huge earthquake in aptly named Fukushima in Japan the electricity was cut off to the cooling system of Number 1 Reactor. Then the diesel generators failed. Now, with risk of meltdown, radioactive gas has leaked into the open. A 65 kilometer exclusion zone has been established and people are being evacuated. Clean energy?

We blogged that this would happen (read all our Disease and Lucky Monkeys posts)

Richard Dawkins wrote (Dawkins 2004. p 148):

"The point about intercontinental rafting of monkeys, or rodents or anything else, is that it only has to happen once, and the time available for it to happen, in order to have momentous consequences, is way outside what we can grasp intuitively. The odds against a floating mangrove bearing a pregnant female monkey and reaching landfall in any one year may be ten thousand to one against. That sounds tantamount to impossible by the lights of human experience. But given 10 million years it becomes almost inevitable."

And the interesting bit for us humans is what Dawkins later goes on to write (p150) about this principle:

"I can't resist remarking how chilling this kind of 'it only had to happen once' logic becomes when you apply it to contingencies nearer home. The principle of nuclear deterrence, and the only remotely defensible justification for possessing nuclear weapons, is that nobody will dare risk a first strike for fear of massive retaliation. What are the odds against a mistaken missile launch: a dictator who goes mad; a computer system that malfunctions; an escalation of threats that gets out of hand? what are the odds against a terrible mistake, initiating Armageddon? A hundred to one against, within any one year? I would be more pessimistic. We came awfully close in 1963."

And then there was Chernobyl and now Fukhushima - do you still favour the odds of choosing nice clean nuclear energy over the alternatives?

Get real! Get rid!

Protect and survive!

References

Dawkins, R. (2004) The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life. London. Orion Books.

Banksy set to sell out to cancermongers. Or is his art about to be exploited?

2011-03-06T21:42:00.003Z

A major UK cigarette company has a file entitled “The Banksy File”.

According to my inside senior management informant Banksy’s art is going to be used to promote their product.

How concermongeringly bent is that?

You heard it first from Bender’s Ghost

University of Crime: Notorious Alumnus of the Week

2011-03-06T05:59:00.002Z

Have you ever taken a stroll through the University of Crime? Check out their latest alumnus:

Karim, Rajib. University of Manchester. (2:2 in electronic and microelectronic systems engineering University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST).

Guilty of four counts of engaging in preparation for terrorist attacks. Karim plotted to blow up an aircraft, Shared information of use to terrorists with terrorists, offered to help financial or disruptive attacks on BA and gained a UK job to exploit terrorist purposes. He is to be sentenced later in March 2011.

Voodoo Criminology and the Great Home Office Hoax

2011-02-20T10:51:00.017Z

The Problem of Zombie Cops in Voodoo Criminology
The above paper proves for the first time that Home Office officials perpetrated what some people might wonder was nothing more than a weird hoax, or else the engagement of uncharacteristically inept thinking, in order to make the case that beat policing does not reduce crime. This was then used for decades as sound evidence against those calling for employing and deploying more police officers onto crime ridden streets.

According to my source, something quite funny and spectacular - and never before seen in the field of criminology - is planned.

Remember friends that you read it here first.

Amicus

Policing Policy Scandal: Problem of Zombie Cops in Voodoo Criminology

2011-02-03T07:21:00.002Z

READ ALL ABOUT IT: Influential Policing Policy Myth is Busted

The influential criminological research finding that “…a patrolling policeman in London could expect to pass within 100 yards of a burglary in progress, roughly once every eight years but not necessarily catch the burglar or even realise that the crime was taking place” is a braced super myth that was busted online yesterday

Read all about it in the peer-to-peer Best Thinking website: http://www.bestthinking.com/articles/science/social_sciences/sociology/the-problem-of-zombie-cops-in-voodoo-criminology-a-27-year-old-myth-about-beat-patrol-policing-is-busted

Oh dear The Daily Mail - with its constant calls for more police on the beat will be pleased.

Lox

Nottingham City Council's Criminal Waste and Punterization of the People

2011-01-29T14:10:00.008Z

British Government takes notice of Bent Society issues in Nottingham at last.

Tory minister Grant Shapps is part of the Government's determination to force councils to publish details of all expenditure above £500 on their websites.

Nottingham city council leader Mr Jon Collins refused, saying that the measure was merely the Government playing to the tabloid gallery and reading Internet information (such as that published here). What a buffoon clown Collins is. When will he learn that saying a thing is so does not make it so. But Collins - chairman of the Police Authority (obviously a criminological expert then?) and his buffoon clown troop just don't understand even the most simple logic of that kind - hence all the "Proud Nottingham" signmongery and that daft Arrow magazine that everyone bins without reading - and all the smartwater tosh that thieves laugh at.

Shapps highlighted several examples where he said the council had misspent hundreds of thousands of pounds in recent years; including:

£600,000 on publishing and distributing free magazine Nottingham Arrow to 113,000 households
£200,000 on a "Proud of Nottingham" campaign with signs, banners and posters
A trip to Cannes, on the Cote d'Azur, taken by six council officials including the chief executive Jane Todd in 2009, costing over £30,000

Let's hope they pick up on the wasted tax payer's money on Dumbwater (so called Smartwater) property marking and all the moronic signmongery quackery that goes with it. Disgrace!

http://bentsocietyblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/clueless-nottingham-city-council-and.html

Nottingham city council is run by buffoons in a tribe of buffoons that includes the completely clueless – worst performing police force in the country - who's most senior officers all go along for the ride on their expensive big yellow brainless quacking duck.

We’ve been blogging about this punterising organised criminality by Nottingham City council for years - saying society is bent not broken. We are glad to see its now open season on the crime reduction quacks in Nottingham

Check out: http://bentsocietyblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/punterisation.html

http://bentsocietyblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/is-nottingham-crap-if-so-who-is-to.html

http://bentsocietyblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/signmongering-punterization.html

We have lots more examples under the punterization subject area.

Robin

Check it out: http://bentsocietyblog.blogspot.com/search/label/Punterization

Tony Blair is a War Criminal

2011-01-23T11:32:00.004Z

Tony Blair Branded War Criminal in Criminology Book

"Many Iraqis are victims of Tony Blair's war crimes, but it will not show up in Home Office surveys because the Home Office does not ask the question and the surveys do not extend to Iraq."

See page 39 of: Cowling, M (2008) Marxism and Criminological Theory: A Critique and a Toolkit. Basingstoke. Palgrave Macmillan.

If Tony Blair is not a war criminal why does he not sue the author and publishers for libel?

London 2012 Olympic Logo and Mascot Disgrace: Who Are The Real Criminals?

2010-12-30T16:05:00.017Z

Laughing Stock London 2012

I had a 50 pence coin in my change last night. Minted ahead of time with the 2011 date on it, my coin of the realm bears the puerile 2012 graffiti celebration that is the "Lisa Simpson Blow Job logo" above two athletes fencing with their weapons out.

To make it even worse, now I see that one of our ludicrously infantile Olympic mascots looks for all the world like a penis. And so out of hopeless manic lunacy, caused by the lunatics who have taken over the asylum that is Britain, I have created a new - more forthright - logo that incorporates the essence of the 2012 London Olympics penis mascot.

Well someone was going to do it weren't they - and so I think we might as well laugh at ourselves now that we in the UK are all the laughing stock of the world.

Come 2012 some comedy documentary maker is going to be going all over the world asking people to tell them what they see when they look at the London Olympics logo and mascot. How they will laugh at us as we stand erect with our stiff upper lips receiving our bronze medals.

And what platitudinous, punterising propaganda will the buffoon-clown dicks who were put in charge of choosing the logo and mascot have to say then?

Really, I ask you, who are the real criminals? Do you have any idea how much tax payer's hard earned money was spent on all this phallicy? Well the London Olympic Games Organising Committee - headed by Lord Sebastian Coe (no apparent training in graphic design or common sense) paid £400,000 for the blow job.

They are remaining closed lipped on the price paid for the mascots, while Lord Coe mouths the same alibi for paying somone named Iris for the penis mascot that he did for the blow job:

"Lord Coe, chairman of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic games, defended the mascots, saying they would inspire young people to engage with sport. "

With more than 17,000 websites comparing Lord Coe's mascot to a penis you have to wonder what's coming and going on in the head of his friend Iris.

Professor Bender's Ghost

Dog Nappy Petition

2010-12-22T13:28:00.006Z

Bent Society has set up an online petition as part of our Gonzo Criminology campaign for the compulsory wearing of canine nappies for all dogs in public places. Police dogs included!

Here is the link. If you agree with our sentiments then please sign at the online site of Go Petition: http://www.gopetition.com/petition/41548.html . If you don't - well then maybe you are happy to walk dog filth into the home where you live and your place of work?

If we get 500 signatures we will register our petition with 10 Downing Street.

Please help us all bring an end this shamefully infantile, crass and unsightly, expensive, ridiculous and unproven Blairite-ugly, New Labour punterising signmongering nonsense.

Professor Bent

Turdish Dog Owners

2010-12-21T14:55:00.005Z

I am fed up with foul dog owners letting their animals defecate outside my house and garage. It is bad enough that we have an infestation of morons walking lethal flesh ripping bull breed dogs around our streets among our children. Why are humans not allowed to defecate on the pavement and dogs are? How bent is that?

Why is it that moronic selfish dog owners are allowed to play canine bacterial and parasitical Russian roulette with our lives and that of our children?

The absolute fortune that is being spent on dog poo bins, sign mongering warning signs, adverts to encourage responsible behaviour and specialist fast response dog turd clean up teams is outlandish during the current economic crisis.

The solution is so simple. All dogs should be required by law to wear a nappy in public. We need to put a bill through parliament.

Problem solved and millions of pounds of public money saved.

MC Widdy

Strange Interactions: University of Crime and Game Substitution Theory

2010-12-05T13:12:00.005Z

It is a truism that crimes and their causal effects are most difficult to single out for particular causal attribution.

For example, we know from what offenders tell us that prisons serve as a university of crime (although, strangely, criminologists have never examined this properly). We know the the Internet also allows offenders to share modus operandi information

Sutton's Game Substitution Theory is to date, arguably, the most compelling explanation yet for the otherwise unfathomable 15 year long fall in crime. What criminology needs to do is to develop methods and knowledge in understanding how to gauge the benefits of certain crime facilitators for offending and weigh that against the "good" that the facilitator causes in reducing crime.

Criminology needs also to both tighten up and expand the scope of its definitions. For example, the Internet may facilitate offending offline - but cyberspace is itself a virtual environment where offline facilitators (such as printed hacker "zines") can facilitate online offending. So facilitators can also be environments as well as objects, substances and people.

I see that Nottingham's notorious Gangster Mr Colin Gunn is in the news regarding how his Facebook page has been used to intimidate people on "the outside". Tautologically, Mr Gunn's time spent checking his Facebook page will have either reduced or not reduced his offline-offending. Perhaps he took he eye of the game and that's how he got caught in the real world? Perhaps not. There is a lot of complexity here for criminology to get to grips with.

Lox.

The Crime Drop and Routine Activities in Cyberspace

2010-12-02T13:24:00.005Z

Marcus Felson's Routine Activities Theory is that crime is driven by technological changes in society. In the latest version (4th edition) of his book, published in 2010, Felson examines all the things that the Internet can do as a facilitator for crime. But Felson completely fails to examine whether the huge popularity in online activities from Facebook to virtual gaming and time spent in the cyberspace of interactive video games might be responsible for what criminologists describe as the unfathomable drop in crime over the past 15 years.

Mike Sutton's blog on the Best Thinkers website suggests that Felson's Routine Activities Approach in fact predicts that crime should fall if potential offenders and victims are spending several hours a day "routinely" active online or game playing on consoles at home. Sutton asks "Is the RAT in the NET?" He proposes that we need to investigate the possibility of this plausible reason with a "Game Substitution" hypothesis for the crime drop.

Read it here (click)

By Secret Squirrel

The Mysterious Case of the Very Mysterious Professor - Part 3

2010-11-07T10:57:00.015Z

Is the UK a bent banana republic?

Another week goes by and neither Professor Joshua Bamfield's "centre - which is really a business" for Retail Research nor the university where he was formally a lecturer - The University of Northampton has replied to my emails asking whether he has a university professorship or a chair.

One has to wonder where the truth lies. Here is a good test for truth in the face of little evidence:

'On the basis of all the evidence we have to hand is it more or less likely that the claim is true?'

How might we test this crude formula with regard to the existence of Bamfield's claimed professorship or chair?

Well, I first came across him in a TV news story about shoplifting trends. I then entered "Professor Joshua Bamfield university" into Google and could find zero evidence of him being awarded or holding a university professorship or chair. Hence the emails asking for evidence that I sent to his own "centre" and his old university.

Today I set about a very crude little test to try to work out the probability - on the basis of available evidence - that Bamfield holds a professorship chair.

(1) I typed the word "Professor" into Google
(2) I then wrote down the names of the first 10 professors (ignoring a video game title and singer's name)
(3) I then entered each named professor individually into Google followed by the word university - e.g. "Professor Stephen W. Hawking University"
(4) In every single case their affiliated university appeared on the first hit on Google. The results were as follows:

Professor Stephen W. Hawking - Cambridge University
Professor Andrew Oswald - Warwick University
Professor Brian Cox - University of Manchester
Professor Kevin Warwick - Reading University
Professor Cary Cooper - Lancaster and also Herriot Watt universities
Professor Phil Jones - University of East Anglia
Professor Richard W. Wiseman - University of Hertfordshire
Professor B. George Hewitt - University of London
Professor Alan Smithers - Buckingham University
Professor Neil Walker - University of Edinburgh

Try it yourself for any known professor. Does their university affiliation always come up?

I tried it again. Entering "Professor Joshua Bamfield University" into Google. What comes up? Three links to the Bent Society blog asking about him ....but I could still find nothing about him having a university professorship or chair.

Therefore - in the absence of further evidence (which I am still seeking) I hypothesise that on the evidence available to me following my research in the public domain that Bamfield is NOT A REAL UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR!

Now all you greedy no win no fee libel lawyers out there should note that this is only a hypothesis. It may well be disproved. It could easily be disproved if Bamfield were to let us all know where he holds a chair or professorship. It would easily be disproved if he were to ignore me as the pest that I am now to his business (all those embarrassing Google hits to this very blog post when you type his name into Google) and simply post up the information on his website or any website for that matter (if he has done so I certainly can't find it). The telling question then is "why does he not do so?"

Most importantly, let me add that if Bamfield's mysterious chair or professorship turns up to have existed all along and was merely hidden in some dusty corner, then I will write a blog post to make that crystal clear along with a postscript to make it clear on every blog post I have written about him on Bent Society. I wait with baited breath to have my hypothesis disproved.

Surely the UK law should be bought in line with that in Germany where misuse of an academic title is a criminal offence. The fact that anyone can legally call themselves "Professor" in the UK makes us look like a bent banana republic!

Become part of the solution. Start a petition and lobby Parliament to bring the UK in line with Germany (good website on the issue of phony degrees and use of phony academic titles here: http://www.eaie.org/pdf/krakow/203.pdf ). If you are a citizen of the USA - or any other nation - I encourage you to lobby for the law to be changed so that academic titles cannot legally be used by those who have no right to do so. Legitimate businesses, genuine professors and doctors and universities are all undermined by this bent practice.

Lox

The Mysterious Case of the Mysterious Professor - Part 2

2010-10-31T09:09:00.003Z

We may have to use the freedom of information act to get the University of Northampton's information service to provide us with information on Professor Joshua Bamfield.

Let me bring you up to date with the our enquiries. Professor Joshua Bamfield's "Centre" for Retail Research has declined to answer my emails asking where he got the academic title "professor" from. His old university - The University of Northampton has not replied to our email enquiries to their enquires service either - see blog posts below.

Today I sent the following email to the University of Northampton. If they fail to reply the next step will be to bring the Freedom of Information Act into play.

Email to The University of Northampton Enquiries and Press Office

Dear Mark Ferguson

I wonder if you can help with an enquiry I made to your office last week. I enclose the email I sent to one of your colleagues (please see email below), as I have received no reply from this member of the university staff.

My enquiry is to ask if you are able to answer the following (1) whether the University of Northampton has awarded either a chair or professorship to Joshua Bamfield who runs the Centre for Retail Research and (2) whether Joshua Bamfield still holds a professorship or chair at your university. According to his website (link below) he was formally head of the business school at the University of Northampton.

If you are personally unable to assist - might I ask that you please forward my my enquiry to a member the university staff who can. In either event a reply would be very much appreciated.

Kind regards

Loxley Bent
31 October 2010

The Mysterious Case of the Mysterious Professor

2010-10-25T18:41:00.012+01:00

Despite his "Centre" for Retail Research, which appears to be really a business, having an email address for members of the public to email enquires, neither Professor Bamfield nor any staff at his Nottingham based organisation in the UK has replied to the email I sent last week asking if they will tell us the actual source of his chair/professorship.

We all waited seven days but got nothing back....no reply at all. And so I sent the same email to the Centre for Retail Research again today. This will be my second and last attempt at contacting Professor Bamfield directly.

Meanwhile my next step, the last university that I am aware of who employed him as a lecturer - the University of Northampton (formally University College Northampton).

Today, I sent an email (see below) to Claire Bicknell at the press office of the University of Northampton, because Professor Bamfield writes that he was the former head of the Business School there.

Dear Claire

Regarding some research I am conducting, I am emailing to ask two questions (1) whether the University of Northampton has awarded either a chair or professorship to Joshua Bamfield who runs the Centre for Retail Research and (2) whether Joshua Bamfield still holds a professorship or chair at your university. According to his website (link below) he was formally head of the business school at the University of Northampton.

I would be very grateful if you could reply by email.

Kind regards

Loxley Bent

Reference (link to Bamfield's site):

https://event.on24.com/eventRegistration/EventLobbyServlet?target=registration.jsp&eventid=242252&sessionid=1&key=CEA699B7332337C8B72B6B0CD06C4EF2&sourcepage=register)

So who can call themselves a professor?

2010-10-19T11:41:00.021+01:00

Calling 'Professor' Bamfield.

It is a fun world where pop stars can call themselves Prince and one time Rapper film stars can call themselves Queen (e.g Queen Latifah). Then there was all that business with the celebrity nutritionist "Dr" Gillian McKeith who was outed by myth busting medic Ben Goldacre and had to drop the bogus PhD title she bought on the Internet to stay on TV.

Only the other day a young chap from the Caribbean who insisted I call him "Pastor" handed out his church business card - which introduced himself Pastor Nigel and his wife - Lady Lorraine Holt. His Church is the FAC Bible School and they claim to specialise in: "Effective Anointed Teachings, Healing, Miracles, Deliverance and Kingdom Ministry. "

Now the funny thing about young Pastor Nigel is that he speaks with an American Accent although born and raised in Jamaica and has never been in the USA. The Pastor claims he got the accent when God entered his body as a holy spirit and cured his stammer. But there's the thing - when the strapping young Pastor was asked to move some tables to clear the way for some old school dancing to some reggae beats at the party we were at, he excused himself from the action with a chronic bad back. So much for miracle cures. Perhaps Trading Standards need to look closely at his miracles and how much they cost his flock. Baaaaaa, Baaaaaa humbug!

Which neatly takes us to the issue of trading. All over the news today is a story that Britain is a world leader in shoplifting and that it is on the rise. The report behind the news - although I can't actually find a copy of it - has, we are told, been published by The Centre for Retail Research, which claims to provide authoritative and expert research and analysis of the retail and service sectors in Britain, Europe and globally. WOW! I'd love to read the report then. Where can I get it? No idea! Bamfield's "centre's" website has a few unreferenced bullet points and unsourced blurbs about retail crime - I could not find a single reference to an actual report of the kind which the newspapers and TV news programmes are telling us about today - which draws on 42,000 shops across Europe (exactly what is the non-response rate then?). Perhaps there is no report? Perhaps its all PR Flat Earth News - of the kind the Daily Mail News Factory thrives on? Still, there is a real university professor who worked on the mysterious research report.... right?

We are told on its website that the Centre for Retail Analysis, originally a university research group, has been independent since 1997. Its Director is Professor Joshua Bamfield. It is totally independent and is not connected to any outside organisation or interest group. Or university!

Now that raises alarms bells. Firstly, what university was it originally attached to and why is it no longer attached to a university? I've searched the net and finally found out - University College Northampton - which has a very peculiarly uninformative website to say the least. Secondly, to what university is the Professor attached exactly? In Germany you'll get a heavy fine for abusing an academic title.http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/3532467.stm. But not in the UK as far as I know. How bent is that?

If it turns out to be the case that Professor Bamfield is not attached to any university, is he in his rights to call himself a professor? Could he possibly have been named Professor at birth - along the same lines as Prince Micheal Jackson, and the "pastor's" wife Lady Lorraine, perhaps, or even my old Grandmother's snappy little dog, which was called Lady as well?

In the UK, as in most English-speaking nations the title professor is meant to be the title only of a senior academic who holds a departmental chair or a personal chair awarded specifically to that individual. I am sure this is idle speculation and that his title is above board. I just can't understand why I can't find any reference to his university affiliation on the Net.

As mentioned above, I found out that Professor Bamfield's Nottingham based business (which he calls a centre) was originally set up at the University College Northampton - where he was a lecturer and then referred to by a third party as a professor at the Nene Centre for Retail Research.

Just because I can't find out on the Net where Bamfield's chair is, or professorship exists, does not mean he does not have one. It is just very strange. And that's all we can safely say for now.

If Professor Bamfield would like to enlighten us as to the source of his professorship then that would be excellent. Meanwhile - I'll undertake some Gonzo criminology on our behalf and keep everyone informed as we go.

To start the ball rolling this very afternoon, I sent the following question in an email to the Centre for Retail Research :

"Dear Sir/Madam/Professor

As part of a blog project, I am writing to enquire as to the source of Professor Joshua Bamfield's professorship/chair. I would be very grateful if you could let me know by reply to this email, so as to tie up this loose end in my online research and writing regarding Professor Bamfield and the Centre for Retail Research in Nottingham.

Very kind regards

Loxley Bent"

Meanwhile, as we await the answer with baited breath, there is a nice little piece in the Ghanaian Observer on the subject and something closer to home from the Times Higher

Lox.

Cameron Punterizes Britain

2010-10-07T19:14:00.016+01:00

The Punterization of a Nation

Most conspiracy theories are counter-knowledge simply because they are more implausible than the official story. In this case the official story is more implausible than the conspiracy theory.

Watching David Cameron talking about his vacuous idea about "Big Society" he looked for all the world like another disingenuous Tony Blair. And there we saw it clearly for the first time - another public school yahoo talking rubbish and for all the world expecting others to be taken in by what he hoped would be a triumph of will and front and polish over substance. Even his own party faithful saw through him.

Cameron is clearly patronising us all - punterizing us - with his announcement that his government will push ahead with cutting child benefit for all households where one tax payer is paying higher rate tax. As anyone with half a brain spotted straight away this would create one of the most unfair government policies in living memory. As the Daily Mail rightly point out: "He was repeatedly pressed, but could not defend, the anomaly of two working parents earning up to £88,000 a year keeping the benefit while a mother with a partner earning just over the £44,000 40 per cent tax rate threshold loses it. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1318034/TORY-CONFERENCE-Cameron-champion-doers-grafters-victory-speech.html#ixzz11hOfg9dy"

That's £44,000 a year worth of unfairness. Add the untaxed lost income from child benefit for just one child into the equation and that's more than £45,000 of unfairness. That sum might be pocket money to an undeserving rich, Eton, Bullingdon Boy yahoo like Cameron but someone in in his cabinet will have told him it will will not wash for the man in the street - and that's how we know he knows it.

Clearly what will happen - what Cameron always intended to happen - is that the anomaly of his current proposal will be seen to have outraged public opinion. This will then lead to what in fact was his real plan all along. A plan that has merely been achieved through the side door. What is going to happen is this:

Any household where one higher rate tax payer is earning over £88,000 will not receive child benefit.
Any household where the joint income of two earners exceeds £88,000 will not receive child benefit.
And to make it all a lot simpler, the real figure for either of the above will be rounded up to £100,000.
Everyone else with children will be eligible for child benefit.

Remember you read it here first.

You could see it in Cameron's self-absorbed deluded face, he looked and sounded like a charlatan salesman, he looked like he thought as he lectured the Tory faithful that everyone but he is a dipstick. Blair and Bush had the very same self-absorbed deluded look.

In the meantime, why is Cameron punterizing us? Because this is the only way a Tory can get away with taking something off the rich. Its not going to be HIS decision - its going to be a popular decision - headed up by the Tory Daily Mail. Now follow this through to its natural conclusion and what will Cameron be telling us as the public spending cuts sting and burn? Nothing more than another punterizing token gesture: "Look. We're all in it now. Indeed, only the most wealthy have lost child benefit."

As Cameron follows in Blair's punterizing disingenuous footsteps we should expect more social polarization, more disenchantment with Government, more distrust, more urban myths and more Flat Earth News form the Murdoch Daily Mail news factory. So much for Big Society. More like Big Sigh..ity

In the words of The Who: Hey meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

"We'll be fighting in the streets

With our children at our feet

And the morals that they worship will be gone

And the men who spurred us on

Sit in judgment of all wrong

And I'll get on my knees and prayWe don't get fooled again

And the parting on the left

Is now the parting on the right

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

Meet the new boss

Same as the old boss http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHD0ZdhtmSQ

Dr Society

Braced Myths are Supermyths

2010-09-29T10:48:00.004+01:00

Following on from our post on the HMIC Stop the Rot report and the beat policing myth, a new blog site called Supermyths, belonging to the criminologist Mike Sutton, has identified that the renowned skeptic, award winning journalist and crime writer Nick Davies has, in his best selling book 'Flat Earth News' ironically, inadvertently, created Flat Earth News of his own about foot patrol beat policing being proven to be ineffective in reducing crime in high crime areas.

Why not plod over to Supermyths and check out what Braced Myth theory is all about.

NHS Fraud - but not as we know it?

2010-08-25T22:57:00.005+01:00

Here is something interesting for criminologists to get their heads around.

This link http://www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/3149.aspx takes you to a press release that we include below.

It is another case of NHS fraud discovered by the NHS counter fraud office. But the fraud involves people working for years - giving a service and getting paid for it. Its not like they are white collar criminals raiding pension funds or skimming thousands or millions off the books. It's working class people lying to get a job - using false passports and false NI numbers and/ or false letters from the Home Office saying they can work in the UK.

The University Of Crime is filling up with African nurses. Is this really what the NHS Counter Fraud service was set up for?

It's not like they are stealing without giving back the exact service for which they have been paid.

How, does the NHS Counter fraud office set about finding offenders? Well, the university of crime is currently enrolling quite a few African nurses. Could it be a racial profiling witch hunt - conducted by selecting everyone in the NHS with an African name? Is that a racial bias? Do they peer into senior managers awarding themselves expensive parking spots in the same way? Do they look proactively into who is awarded a top NHS job or service contract and why and whether they and the person awarding it have masonic, family or other networks of 'exclusive' links that makes the award in a competitive tender process fraudulent?

Racial/Cultural Profiling is about going for easily identifiable targets to fill up our prisons with black African people who lied to do a good job of work...and were doing it until witch hunted? Is the NHSCounter Fraud Office saving us money? Is it protecting patients? Is it structurally racist?

Tough call.

Bristol intensive care ward worker jailed for £96k NHS fraud

Immediate release – Wednesday 25 August 2010

A Bristol hospital worker who worked on an intensive therapy unit (ITU) ward has been jailed for five months for defrauding his employer of over £96,000, following an investigation by the NHS Counter Fraud Service (Bristol Crown Court, Wednesday 25 August).

Koniagi Camara, 44, of Berwick Road, Easton, Bristol, was caught after an exercise by the University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust to check for staff fraud, conducted by its Local Counter Fraud Specialist (LCFS).

The exercise revealed that Camara had used the alias of Jean Louis, supported by false identity documents, to obtain his position as a Health Support Assistant on an ITU ward. A counterfeit UK National Insurance Number card and a counterfeit French National Identity card were used. Therefore, every penny he subsequently received was fraudulently earned. The total cost to the Trust was £96,164.80.

His job included ensuring the ward was clean and replenishing supplies.

Camara was arrested at work on 13 July 2010. His home was searched and he was interviewed at Trinity Road Police Station in Bristol by NHS Counter Fraud Service officers (NHS CFS). A passport in his real name was also recovered.

He pleaded guilty to five offences: obtaining a pecuniary advantage, false accounting, possession of a false document and two forgery offences of using a false instrument.

The UK Border Agency also interviewed him, and he was remanded in custody after his appearance at Bristol Magistrates Court on 21 July 2010.

Debbie Lloyd, South West Operational Fraud Manager, NHS CFS, said today: “We will act on any suspicions of fraud against the NHS that are reported to us. Wherever appropriate we will launch an investigation, pressing for prosecution and the strongest sanctions against offenders. The Trust concerned took a proactive approach to preventing fraud and many others are doing so, which is bad news for identity fraudsters who have slipped through the recruitment net and think they are safe”.

-ENDS-

For more information contact James Robertson or Daryl Barrett at the NHS CFS press office on 020 7895 4524 /4523. Out of hours mobile 07717 851 926Further information on NHS CFS at www.nhsbsa.nhs.uk/CounterFraud.aspx
Notes to Editors
1. The charges against Koniagi in detail: Obtaining a Pecuniary Advantage, Contrary to Section 16(1) of the Theft Act 1968; False Accounting, Contrary to Section 17 of the Theft Act, 1968; Possession of a False Document, Contrary to Section 25 (5) and (7) of the Identity Card Act 2006; and two charges of Using a False Instrument, Contrary to Sections 3 and 6 of the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981.

2. The NHS Counter Fraud Service (NHS CFS) - a service of the NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) - was established to tackle fraud and corruption throughout the NHS in England and Wales and the Department of Health, whether it involves professionals, staff, patients or contractors. It aims to create a lasting anti-fraud culture.

3. Around 300 professionally-trained and accredited Local Counter Fraud Specialists are in place covering every health body in England and Wales.

4. The value of fraud and unlawful action identified in 2009/10 was £10,951,069. 5. In 2009-10 the NHS CFS successfully prosecuted 65 criminal cases.

6. To report any incident of suspected fraud in the NHS, please call the Fraud and Corruption Reporting Line on 0800 028 40 60 or report online at http://www.reportnhsfraud.nhs.uk/

NHS FRAUD NURSING BURSARY CRACKDOWNS

2010-08-20T09:50:00.004+01:00

We've spotted a trend over at The University of Crime. With three women from the African continent imprisoned for NHS bursary fraud - that we have detected (there may be many more) in the past few months - we have probably found the tip of the iceberg of a new criminological phenomenon.

What exactly is going on in the lives of these nurses that led them to lie in order to be paid to be trained to help sick people?

What is the story behind the imprisonment of these African nurses?

All that fraud initially undetected?

Nurses imprisoned for lying in order to get trained to help people.

What is the story?

Whatever Happened to Deportation in the USA?

2010-08-15T14:43:00.004+01:00

Guest Blog by Alexis Bonari

A few years ago in the US, my best friend's husband was killed by an illegal immigrant who borrowed her friend’s car, but could not drive. As my friend’s husband was driving to work, this unlicensed woman - who did not speak English - ran a Yield (Give Way in UK) sign and hit him as he drove around a corner.

My friend’s husband died in the hospital due to the extent of his injuries. Traumatic emotional aspects aside, the lack of laws concerning deportation in the USA is shocking.

American Law Does Not Apply

This woman was given a ticket and was fined one hundred dollars in court. That's it.

Because she was an illegal immigrant, American laws apparently were not seen to apply to her. She was not charged any further nor held responsible for a man’s life. Further investigation uncovered that there are thousands of cases just like this one reported every year. It appears that we were actually fortunate that she even showed up for court. In many cases, it seems, illegal immigrants in the USA who have committed a crime will move away and not show for their hearing, never to be heard from again.

Their Day in Court

According to a recent article from The New York Times, the Obama administration is set to deport 400,000 people this year but has proven that they are in no hurry to do so. Legal rights groups are arguing that "American principles of justice - fairness, due process and discretion - require that these immigrants now receive their day in court" Temple law professor and former assistant immigration commissioner, Jan Ting, calls the idea of letting deportees return for their hearing "far-fetched"

Watch Your Back

So as naive Americans go day to day, assuming that they are being protected by the very government that is allowing anyone into our country, literally allowing them to get away with just about anything, my advice to you is watch your back.

Bio: Alexis Bonari is a freelance writer and blog junkie. She is currently a resident blogger at Online Degrees online colleges. In her spare time, she enjoys square-foot gardening, swimming, and avoiding her laptop.

(((((FatCrime))))).

2010-08-07T11:01:00.004+01:00

At university, the famous fatmonger Margaret Thatcher worked on the development of the long fat chain molecule that made tooth rotting, coronary/diabetes causing whippy ice cream possible.

((((((FatCrime))))))

According to Derek Gillard: Gillard D (2003) Food for Thought: child nutrition, the school dinner and the food industry www.educationengland.org.uk/articles/22food.html http://www.educationengland.org.uk/articles/22food.html :

“Her [Thatcher’s] right-wing government was bent on an orgy of privatisation of public services. Having disposed of school milk, the Tories went on to inflict a double blow on the school meals service itself. First, the 1980 Education Act abolished the minimum nutritional standards for school meals and removed the statutory obligation on LEAs to provide a meals service, requiring them only to provide food for children of families on supplementary benefit or family income supplement who were eligible for free meals. This disastrous decision was compounded by the introduction of Commercial Competitive Tendering, which obliged local authorities to choose the most 'competitive' (for which read 'cheap') catering on offer. As a result, private companies took over many school kitchens and, in order to maximise profit and eliminate waste, they persuaded schools to go over to free-choice cafeteria systems. The result, according to the Coronary Prevention Group, was the 'easy option of providing popular fast-food items such as burgers and chips.' (Joanna Blythman The Guardian 23 July 1999) .

Thatcher hadn't finished yet. The 1986 Social Security Act (which came into force in 1988) resulted in thousands of children losing their entitlement to free school meals.

Health concerns grow
Thatcher couldn't have destroyed the nutritional basis of school meals at a worse moment. The eighties and nineties saw a number of significant changes in British society. There were social changes, with greater mobility, more working mothers and Thatcher's own emphasis on the individual rather than the group. There were technological changes, including big increases in the use of the freezer and the microwave (leading to a reduction in home cooking), and the video and the computer (leading to a more sedentary lifestyle for many children). Commercial pressures resulted in the rise of the big supermarkets and a huge increase in television advertising. There was a rapid widening of the poverty gap, caused by Tory tax cuts and by their cynical use of unemployment as a political and economic tool. In education, the selling of school fields led to a decrease in physical activity, while the National Curriculum's effective abolition of Home Economics resulted in children leaving school with little interest in or understanding of food preparation. All these factors led to a huge change in the nation's diet, with much less fresh food being cooked at home and a much greater reliance on ready-made (and higher profit) meals.”

(((((FatCrime))))) (((((FatCrime)))))) (((((FatCrime))))))

Today many health pundits are predicating that an epidemic of fat children will die before their parents. Will Thatcher have precipitated a bad health holocaust?

What about the USA? Can a similar tale of “combination of forces” be told? Can we ever know the individual contributions of individual policy, industry, market, cultural and fashion on things such as obesity and crime levels? And what of attempts, such as Gillard’s, to tell us joined-up story of causal influences. While compelling and plausible – do they really add to what we might think of as rational “knowledge” so that we may learn from various mistakes of the past and choose the best directions for the future with limited resources?

Robin

Climate Change and Environmental Criminology

2010-07-27T09:00:00.006+01:00

Lessons from the past.

Many centuries ago some parts of the British Isles that are now mainland were underwater. For example, Tenterden in Kent is a picturesque town - now many miles inland - that was once one of five essential trading ports known as the Cinque Ports. If you visit the place you will see where the farmland meets the cliffs - that are now a peculiar rock formation bang slap in the middle of the Weald of Kent.

This posh, prosperous, pretty and remarkable little town - once said to be the most honest town in the country (sorry I've been searching for the newspaper reference to that story for decades...one day I'll find it) - was once famous throughout Kent for its red light district. Why? Because it was a port of course. All those sailors - demand and supply etc.

As the sea levels rise in the UK and elsewhere on Earth will pretty inland towns such Teneterden become once again hotbeds of coastal town crime and vice? This is a strangely unexplored question in the field of environmental criminology. But that could change in the future.

Meanwhile - here is a criminological curiosity. I typed "prostitution Tenterden" into Google and got this: http://www.maleprostitute.co.uk/location/tenterden . Try doing the same for your own town. And this odd site is frankly deviant: http://www.seekingarrangement.com/United%20Kingdom/Kent/Tenterden/ . Now that book "Seeking Arrangement The Definitive Guide to Sugar Daddy and Mutually Beneficial Relationships" looks very strange. But now I'm getting off topic.

BS

WORLD WAR 3? Will Heat Drive Despots Nuclear?

2010-07-26T11:03:00.006+01:00

Foresight Needed to Gear up for the Future: Climate Change Criminology will be the Next Big Area

The proverbial hits the fan in just 20 years time says James Lovelock.

In 30 years time everything will be different as man is culled by climate on planet Earth.

Perhaps it is sound advice to buy a holiday home house in Nova Scotia Canada now?

In the UK London will become a lagoon most - property will be under water...so sell up and move North - but keep away from rivers that will flood and the rising tides of the sea.

Will British cities compete (as they do for the Olympics and World Cup) to be the next capital city of England?

All green efforts in the UK are a complete bogus scam says Lovelock, because nothing we do in the UK will make a jot of difference to what will happen!

Lovelock predicts civil war on a global scale in 30 years time.

The Chinese will move en masse to Africa (they are doing so already in preparation) and the Americans to Canada. Paris will be as hot as the Sahara desert. Britain will be full of refugee tent cities of displaced Europeans.

Australians have enough land and mineral resources to stay put…presumably relying upon air conditioning to survive.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2008/mar/01/scienceofclimatechange.climatechange

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-541748/Were-doomed-40-years-global-catastrophe--theres-NOTHING-says-climate-change-expert.html

Climatic Criminology: Gaia Theory and Crime

2010-07-19T09:16:00.009+01:00

The Ecology of Crime Revisited

Early Chicago School criminologists Park and Burgess understood high crime areas as being in a state of social disequilibrium and used this to explain their high crime rate. The theory was eventually criticised into the dunces corner by academics who showed two things: (1) Nature never exists in a state of peaceful equilibrium and (2) that the theory was tautological because the Chicagoans went looking for high crime areas using police data and then said that the high crime was caused by disequilibrium caused by immigration and flight to the suburbs. A better approach would have been to use other data to find areas in such states of social disequilibrium and those in more stable states and then analyse the crime rates of ALL such areas to see what the causes were most likely to be.

New scientific research suggests that ecological theory may once again be important in criminology

James Lovelock is the independent scientist whose radical thinking outside the box, dismissed initially by mainstream scientists, discovered the impact of fluorocarbons from aerosol sprays etc upon the ozone layer. Lovelock believes that all efforts to reduce global warming are 200 years too late. And he foretells a future just 30 years from now:

"... Gaia's self-regulation will likely prevent any extraordinary runaway effects that wipe out life itself, but that humans will survive and be "culled and, I hope, refined."

According to James Lovelock, by 2040, the world population of more than six billion will have been culled by floods, drought and famine. Indeed the people of Southern Europe, as well as South-East Asia, will be fighting their way into countries such as Canada, Australia and Britain.

"By 2040, parts of the Sahara desert will have moved into middle Europe. We are talking about Paris - as far north as Berlin. In Britain we will escape because of our oceanic position."

"If you take the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predictions, then by 2040 every summer in Europe will be as hot as it was in 2003 - between 110F and 120F. It is not the death of people that is the main problem, it is the fact that the plants can't grow — there will be almost no food grown in Europe."

"We are about to take an evolutionary step and my hope is that the species will emerge stronger. It would be hubris to think humans as they now are God's chosen race. [sic]"

If Lovelock - a man with a history of being ignored and then proven right - is right on this, then problem oriented criminology needs to gear up now to better understand the causes, implications and likely best practice in tackling climate change crime. How will Canada, Australia and Britain face a potential army of individual invaders fleeing for their lives by seeking to cram themselves into their sovereign territories? How will governments of countries that are too hot to live in respond?

Over the coming weeks and months Bent Society will be deploying - and making up as we go along - Gonzo Criminology methods to engage climate change scientists, emergency planning experts, military experts, politicians and academics from various disciplines to begin to shape the agenda of Climatic Criminology.

Wikipedia is at all times a potentially unreliable source of information (until virtual vandalism and nonsense is removed from its pages by an army of volunteers - who also as we have shown remove factual information that does not suit their own agenda). Nonetheless I would encourage anyone to read its excellent pages on the Gaia Hypothesis.

Dr Society

Bad signs kill

2010-07-17T00:07:00.005+01:00

Is this sign adequate given the following three facts?

Not just one but any one of the three rails may be carrying the electric current ( a very little known fact). The sign implies that only one rail is EVER live.

In damp weather the electricity can arc and kill you even though you might be 4 feet from the line and NEVER touch it.
Lines are always live around the clock.

Bad signs and good signs

2010-07-16T06:52:00.005+01:00

Bent Society has blogged extensively (see under the labels punterisation and quackery ) regarding the amount of money police forces are spending on unproven and ludicrously daft invisible property marking schemes that are run by ex-police officers. Now that "we are all in this [recession] together" as the new government punterise us to accept austerity in public funding let us hope that such bent crime reduction quackery is cut before front line services.

Hopefully this will mark an end to all those ludicrous Smartwater signs and posters - which research has shown offenders simply laugh at and credulous journalists and police officers believe work. If we had our way police and local authority expenditure on property marking would be outlawed because it has never been proven to work.

You don't see hospitals applying leaches to sick people anymore after all.

Tomorrow - shocking news about other bad signs.

Dr Society

Freeloading is legal

2010-07-15T17:56:00.004+01:00

Some of the BS crew were out on the town last night with a well known professor of criminology. The person in question boasted that they were so popular that at the British Society of Criminology Conference (just finished) they never had to buy a single drink.

What kind of sociopath thinking is that I asked myself as I duly noted the said professor continued to accept drinks as we bought rounds in turn - but never paid for a single drink last night.

This is not the first time I've heard a woman boast gleefully that she never had to buy a single drink.

I wonder what happened to Rebellion Beer's answer to such tightwads - their "Round Avoider" Bitter would have been my choice of tipple for the sociopath professor.

I seem to remember that in the 60's or 70's there was a proposal to outlaw the buying of rounds in pubs in order to ensure social justice was at last meted out to these freeloaders. If anyone has any details about that please drop us an email.

Dr Society

The University of Crime II

2010-06-27T07:11:00.004+01:00

Do notorious alumni from prestigious universities have much in common with those we think of as common "underclass" criminals?

A common explanation for white collar crime is that offenders are working for a morally corrupt organisation (how different is that from sub-cultural explanations of deviancy?) and are so deeply immersed in pursuing a single objective that they forget moral constraints and perspectives. A bit like heroin addicted burglars and prostitutes then?

Today's Notorious alumnus over at the University of Crime is the former Prime Minister of France Alain Juppe, who received a suspended 18-month PRISON sentence from a French court in connection with illegal political party funding.

Here is a useful link that begins to explore this phenomenon.

The University of Crime

2010-06-26T08:09:00.004+01:00

If you were to wander through the virtual University of Crime today you would see some interesting patterns beginning to emerge.

Graduates from Oxford and Cambridge stabbing their lovers in the street, branding their wives with steam irons and crashing their cars into innocent tourists, then driving off. This is the sort of behaviour we are conditioned by the government, media and crime statistics to expect from the less well off "underclass" - but not of university graduates.

Take a look a today's University of Crime Notorious Alumnus of the Day

A graduate of the University of Oxford, Layton Tamberlin, . (Mathematics), was imprisoned for eight months for hit-and-run drunk driving. Jailed for three months for drink-driving, plus two months for failing to stop to run concurrently with the eight month sentence for dangerous driving with excess alcohol. Disqualified from driving for five years.

High-flying finance expert Tamberlin left a Mayfair afternoon cocktail party and crashed his vehicle into a taxi, leaving a tourist in London with a fractured skill. Tamberlin failed to stop even though his vehicle was badly damaged and on fire. He and a friend were dragged from the vehicle shortly before it burst into flames. Tamberlin’s victim required hospital treatment for 19 days.

Crime has never before been analysed from the perspective of which university graduate criminals studied at.

What, I wonder, will we learn from this ground-breaking Gonzo criminology research?

Offender Hot Spot Data Collection

2010-06-10T09:10:00.000+01:00

The Bent Society is currently working quite a bit lately over at The University of Crime.

We'll be posting here, but a little less frequently.

Following the success of our latest Gonzo Criminology project (Bent Alumni) we are busy collecting unique and valuable criminological data on universities associated with notorious criminal graduates and failed students.

Cambridge University Old Boy Network is Ruling Wikepedia. Or: Fellating Fruit Bats Never Fly Far From The Tree

2010-06-05T20:54:00.022+01:00

As the furore over the case of the fellating fruit bat scandal dies down at University College Cork this weekend, I am moved by something Barry Taylor (former communications director at the University of Bristol) is quoted as saying in this week's Times Higher Education magazine (Cunnnane 2010) about how universities engage in public relations information warfare on the information superhighways when they feel attacked by facts and a perceived imbalance in their reporting:

"The attack can be so rapid and the attackers so numerous that it can be impossible to muster sufficient bloggers and tweeters to launch an effective counterattack."

Here then we can see what at least some universities are up to. They are mobilising an army of unpaid loyal propagandists to shape how facts are perceived in a manner that reflects them in a positive light.

Our gonzo research (see recent posts on Bent Alumni) on the main University of Cambridge Wikipedia page revealed how Cambridge alumni have all but invaded and taken control over the main University of Cambridge Wiki page and are rapidly deleting valid and pertinent facts that others try to post on that page if they in any way upset the rosy image that the Cambridge loyalists seek to convey of their Alma Mata.

Our research reveals then how those toffs from this elite, expensive, upper-class-dominated, hierarchical university are sneakily thwarting the very laudable aims of the not-for-profit Wikipedia and the horizontalisation of knowledge that is facilitated by the Internet.

Wikipedia is meant to be an encyclopedia for the people by the people. But Cambridge University alumni are rabidly subverting that principle in favour of protecting elite "establishment" interests.

The University of Leeds went one further recently when it implemented a social networking code - published on its website - warning staff and students that it was unacceptable to criticise the university. They retracted that policy in the face of enormous online criticism and ridicule (see Cunnane (2010B)

In our opinion Wikipedia needs to look very closely at the editing history pages of Cambridge University to see who has been selectively and subjectively controlling its content to give a highly elitist imbalanced picture.

I wonder if University of Leeds alumni - or perhaps undercover pro-vice chancellors - are up to any control freakery on the main Wikipedia page of the University of Leeds? If they are, then the Wiki history of edits pages won't lie.

I say, what a spiffing marvellous social research resource those Wikipedia history pages are. After all, those educated tiffins from Cambridge should have learnt by now that on the Internet delete never means delete!

References

Cunnane, S. (2010A) Yikes! Attack of the killer viral fruit bats. Times Higher Education. 27th
May. p.10.

Cunnane, S. (2010b) Facebookers force Leeds to trash gagging code. Times Higher Education. 27th May. p.17.

Offender Hot Spot Data Collection

2010-06-05T17:01:00.009+01:00

The Bent Society is currently working quite a bit lately over at The University of Crime

We'll be posting here, but less frequently.

Following the success of our latest Gonzo Criminology project (Bent Alumni) we are busy collecting unique and valuable criminological data on universities associated with notorious criminal graduates and failed students.

Bent Alumni 5

2010-06-03T21:14:00.007+01:00

Those pedantic Cambridge University's image management Wikipedians have been ensuring that fact-checkers, researchers and potential students visiting only the main Wiki page for the University of Cambridge learn nothing about the existence of notorious criminal alumni of this "respectable" university.

A click on the history of edits today on their Alumni section shows it all - they have been, within minutes, deleting both Cambridge graduate and notorious convicted corrupt police officer Ali Dizaei and notorious convicted racist and Cambridge graduate Nick Griffin (chairman of the BNP and European member of parliament:

Selection of History of Cambridge University Wikipedia page Edits 03/06/2010

(cur prev) 16:06, 3 June 2010 David Biddulph (talk contribs) (84,252 bytes) (rv edits by 212.137.70.194 - See response to earlier attempts at similar edits, WP:UNDUE here, & if a WP:RS can be found he can be listed at List of University of Cambridge members) (undo)
(cur prev) 15:58, 3 June 2010 212.137.70.194 (talk) (84,365 bytes) (→Notorious Alumni) (undo)
(cur prev) 15:57, 3 June 2010 212.137.70.194 (talk) (84,365 bytes) (→Notable alumni and academics: Dizaie is a known graduate of the Startegic Command Course at The University of Cambridge.) (undo)
(cur prev) 15:02, 3 June 2010 Codf1977 (talk contribs) (84,252 bytes) (Undid revision 365838517 by Horizontalizationofknowledge (talk) Not significantly notorious to be listed on this page) (undo)
(cur prev) 14:48, 3 June 2010 Horizontalizationofknowledge (talk contribs) (84,350 bytes) (Undid revision 365813504 by [[Special:Contributions/Codf1977- Cod1977 inaccurate edit. Griffin does have a degree from Cambridge. Add more offenders please but do not vandalise a valid entry) (undo)
(cur prev) 11:36, 3 June 2010 Codf1977 (talk contribs) (84,252 bytes) (Not significantly Notorious to be listed here - they are not the only convicted persons to attend Cambridge - Griffin is already listed on List of University of Cambridge members) (undo)
(cur prev) 11:27, 3 June 2010 152.71.159.179 (talk) (84,407 bytes) (→Notorious alumni) (undo)
(cur prev) 11:25, 3 June 2010 152.71.159.179 (talk) (84,408 bytes) (Added acceptable facts regarding alumni. Please stop deleting these acceptable facts - remember the university motto!) (undo)
(cur prev) 11:20, 3 June 2010 Codf1977 (talk contribs) (84,252 bytes) (Undid revision 365811409 by 152.71.159.179 (talk) Subjective.) (undo)

As you can see Biddulph - the St John's College Cambridge graduate coxswain - is tirelessly and subjectively policing and deleting accurate knowledge on Wikipedia once again.

So what can we say from all this Gonzo Criminology research?

Well, what we do know is this: that this deletion of facts on Wikipedia is something peculiar to Cambridge University. Because the University of Michigan Wiki page has not deleted the notorious alumni that we added to their page from last night:

"Notorious Alumni include: Dr Harvey Crippen (murderer); America's first serial killer Herman Mudgett; Ted Kaczynski(AKA The Unabomber)."

Clearly there is no need to play tit-for-tat with those self appointed guardians of Cambridge University. We have proved our point. Namely, that knowledge content on Wikepedia is being subjectively and highly irregulalry policed - and therfore shaped - and that valid and important facts are being deleted on some University (e.g. Cambridge University) web pages - while on others (e.g. City University, London and University of Michigan) they are left to stand.

There is clearly a need for an objective Internet resource that is immune from such subjective and biased tampering from those seeking to subjectively manipulate a rosy image of a university.
This is why the Bent Society has founded the University of Crime.

These other universities can run but they can't hide

Over the years as it grows from virtually nothing, The University of Crime will provide an invaluable resource for fact seekers from all disciplines and walks of life, fact-checkers, and potential students. There you will be able to see at a glance a huge cohort of criminals educated at Cambridge University and their ilk.

Bent Alumni 4

2010-06-02T23:43:00.002+01:00

So tonight I entered Ali Dizaei on the Wiki Cambridge University page. He was entered also onto the Brunel Alumni page on Wiki (Brunel cleverly have no alumni on their main Wiki page).

My favorite tonight is my entry of three bent alumni on the Wiki site of the University of Michigan: Notorious Alumni include: Dr Harvey Crippen (murderer); America's first serial killer Herman Mudgett; Ted Kaczynski(AKA The Unabomber).

Michigan has a lot of bent alumni. Incidentally, a number of Michigan alumni are the first cohort of newly enrolled students at The University of Crime: http://bentalumni.blogspot.com/

Buster

Bent Alumni 3

2010-06-02T09:16:00.007+01:00

Ali Dizaei

I met this currently imprisoned, disgraced, former police commander several years ago at an event. I have a copy of Dizaei's National Black Police Association (NBPA) business card beside me as I write this blog post. It lists his qualifications (more on that in a moment) and has him as the Legal Advisor to the NBPA. When we met, he had recently been found not guilty at the Old Baily of corruption charges. And a subsequent independent enquiry found that the police investigation of him was biased with an ethnic prejudice component. Dizaei told me that the Metropolitan Police had sent along officers to the event in order to spy on what he had to say.

If you enter Dizaei's name into Google you'll find that the first hit is a page on him on Wikepedia. It has this to say about the police operation that led to his trial in the Old Bailey:

Operation HELIOS

"From 2000, Dizaei was investigated by the force after allegations of taking bribes, using drugs and prostitutes, and spying for Iran. There were counter-allegations by his supporters that the investigation was prompted by the belief of some senior officers that he was too ambitious, too critical of the police (particularly relating to racism), too close to the Iranian community, too flamboyant, visited expensive nightclubs and had an open marriage, none of which endeared him to other officers.The investigations, codenamed Operation Helios, cost £4 million and involved over 50 officers. It was the most expensive operation against a single officer in the history of Scotland Yard."

Dizaei told me over a meal that part of HELIOS involved officers from the Met colluding with American law enforcement personnel to set up a sting where Dizaei was offered a bribe involving a case full of money (£10,000). Officers drilled a hole in the ceiling of the room where the bribe was offered and looked down - recording the whole thing. Dizaei told me that he simply informed the stooge that as a fellow Iranian he was offended that such a bribe was offered to him - a serving police officer.

One thing struck me about Dizaei was that he was rather overbearing and swaggering - I liked him nonetheless.

I told colleagues that I feared for this mans future in the police. He was, after all, working in an organization trained in character assassination. The problem for Dizaei was that he was confident enough to revel in winding up the "old guard" and sure of his abilities to manipulate the media to beat them in order to be the man he wanted to be within the police service.

I have fallen foul of police character assassination attempts myself in the past when I revealed that they were misusing Government money (but that's another story). What I learned from my own experience is that when threatened the police tend to throw petrol on the flames rather than a wet blanket. This, after all is how they prosecute criminal suspects - by character assassination. And it being their best skill (as a service) is how they deal with internal threats. After all - how many cases are successfully bought against the police for bullying and racial and sexual discrimination against their own. It costs the tax payer millions a year - let me tell you.

In 2008 Dizaei was in trouble again

His Wikipedia page has this to say on the issue:

Yas Restaurant and criminal convictions

"Dizaei was suspended again on 18 September 2008 after being investigated for various allegations including an arrest he made on 18 July 2008 outside his uncle's West London restaurant. A 24-year-old web designer, Waad al-Baghdadi, claimed that Dizaei had not paid £600 for a website he had commissioned and when al-Baghdadi confronted him about this a public quarrel ensued. Dizaei arrested al-Baghdadi, who later made a complaint which was investigated by the IPCC.

On 21 May 2009, the Crown Prosecution Service announced that Dizaei faced two charges over this incident. He was charged with perverting the course of justice and misconduct in a public office. The charges related to the incident (above) in which Dizaei, in his capacity as a police officer, had arrested a man on allegations including assault. A decision not to charge that individual was made by the CPS in August 2008. In a statement, the NBPA said:

"It is outrageous that the CPS, for the second time in four years, has commenced prosecution against the president of the National Black Police Association, Commander Ali Dizaei. This has not happened to any other senior police officer in the history of the MPS or the CPS."

The matter duly came to trial in the Crown Court at Southwark in January 2010 before the Hon Mr Justice Simon, with Dizaei facing counts of misconduct in a public office and perverting the course of justice.

On 8 February 2010, Dizaei was found guilty on both counts, and jailed for four years."

Ironically - in my opinion at least - Dizaei had done to the web designer EXACTLY what the Metropolitan Police had done to him in Operation Helios. Namely, Dizaei had misused his police training in an attempted at character assassination of someone who threatened him personally - rather than someone who threatened the law and peace of the land.

Dizaei: A Bent Alumni:

1. Graduate of City University London BA (Hons.) Law and LLM.

2. Dizaei, in 2000, was successful on the Extended Interview for the Strategic Command Course - which he completed in 2004 - and obtained a Post Graduate Diploma from Cambridge University in Applied Criminology and Police Management ((see Appendix D of this report) : http://www.ice.cam.ac.uk/institute-media/pdfs/annual/200405.pdf

3. In 1997 he was awarded his doctorate from Brunel University: Brunel University PhD: Dizaei, A. (1997) The Thin Black Line: A Study of Racial Discrimination within the Police. Unpublished PhD Thesis. Uxbridge: Brunel University.

Interestingly, at one source published by the City University, London, Dizaei is a noted alumni.
And the Wikipedia page for this university has him down as a notable alumni:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_University_London

Dizaei is not, at the time of writing a notable alumni at Cambridge or Brunel. We will be seeking to fix that this evening. Or - as always - you could visit their respective Wikipedia pages and sort that out ahead of us. I wonder if the Cambridge watch-dogs will allow their graduate Dizaei onto the notable alumni section of their Wikipedia page - after all they keep deleting the convicted racist Nick Griffin.

Professor Bent

Bent Alumni 2

2010-06-01T08:20:00.012+01:00

Notorious serial killer Harold Shipman graduated in medicine from the University of Leeds.

Leeds University and its wiki-guard-graduates are, it seems, afraid to be up-front with teaching this truth on their main Wikipedia university page - just like Cambridge university and its own watch-coxswain-graduate of St Johns College who has once again removed leader of the British National Party and European Member of Parliament for the entire North West of England, and convicted racist, the Right Honourable Nick Griffin from its alumni list.

Go figure - as our American cousins like to say.

Today I added multi millionaire media magnate and convicted fraudster Conrad Black to the end of a suitable paragraph on the notable alumni list of McGill University in Canada:

"Corporate leaders and media personalities have also studied at McGill. Leading Canadian philanthropist and entrepreneur Seymour Schulich donated $20 million, the highest donation to any music school in Canada, to the newly-named Schulich School of Music. Henry Mintzberg, a professor at McGill's Desautels Faculty of Management is an acclaimed management thinker and contributes to The New York Times and The Economist. Mintzberg is an Officer of the Order of Canada. Co-founder and president of Matrox Electronic Systems Ltd., which innovates globally in graphics, video editing, and image processing, Lorne Trottier has donated $10 million towards services in information and technology at McGill. The new engineering building is called Trottier, named after Lorne Trottier. Conrad Black is a major media magnate and convicted fraudster."

It seems taht McGill University, in Canada, saw fit to award the US president who blatantly bought the reputation of office of President of the United States to its knees (pun intended) by lying to the press and US public and everyone esle in the World about the multiple blow jobs he received, at taxpayer's expense, from intern Monica Lewinsky while at work.

So given that McGill think fit to honour a man such as Clinton - who never even studied there - you'd think they and those who guard their Wiki site on their behalf (are these guards always graduates of the university they protect?) would be honest enough - perhaps like the University of Leeds? - to include their notoriously notable alumni along with their other notable graduates? Well, lets see:

Leeds University and the Problem of their Graduate Harold Shipman - Serial Killing Medical Practitioner

The University of Leeds' Wiki website has no dedicated alumni area on their page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Leeds . By not including alumni and proving no area to add them, are they managing their image going forward as a forward facing modern university so that Shipman can be hidden away here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_University_of_Leeds_people

So what would happen if I were to add an alumni section to the University of Leeds Website and populate it with the good and the bad? Or I could get one of my colleagues to do it for me. I'll let you know what happens when I try one of those options. Or you could go ahead and beat me to it if you like.

And yet the Leeds University School of Medicine (part of Leeds University site) does include him on their Wiki page: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leeds_School_of_Medicine ) I must check the history of these pages. My hunch is that some truth telling wag set this School of Medicine page up after Shipman was caught, as a way to get the truth out there.

As a matter of fact, the history of Wikipedia’s setting up of all these university pages needs further research as well.

Now, I wonder which university convicted police Commander Ali Dizaei graduated from – if at all?

Hang on – did Dizaei not pass the strategic Command Course at Cambridge?

Right then ....back to Wiki and the press reports for more clues.

Bent Alumni 1: Criminal Alumni Project: Gonzo Criminology in Action

2010-05-31T09:23:00.016+01:00

Having discovered yesterday that Stephen Griffiths, the self-styled Crossbow Cannibal, was for three hours a notable alumni of the University of Bradford I engaged a fellow BS member to conduct a little experiment.

This morning my criminology colleague added the convicted racist and BNP chairman Nick Griffin as a notable alumni to the Wikipedia page for The University of Cambridge. She then went on to add the convicted treasonous and wartime Nazi William Joyce to the Wikipedia page for Birkbeck College, University of London.

As criminologists we wonder which university has produced the most notorious criminals? We wonder also whether the online encyclopedia Wikipedia will allow this important information to remain on these web pages?

This will become the latest non-funded gonzo criminological research project on BS.

Please email us at bentsociety@hotmail.co.uk the names of any renowned criminal graduates - letting us know which university/s they graduated from. Or else post the information as a comment to this blog post.

Gonzo Criminology Research (by-passing those ethics committees)

We'll do some more research ourselves, add the notorious graduates we discover to the notable alumni pages of their respective universities and see what happens.

Within a short time, Cambridge graduate and rowing cox David Biddulph removed the factual entry that BNP Chairman and European Parliament MP for the North West of England and convicted racist Nick Griffin is an alumni of The University of Cambridge. The entry was put up at 7.54 and removed by Cambridge graduate Biddulph at 8.05!

Biddulph's rationale for deleting this entry was that it did not fit the sentence.

Here is what my colleague wrote originally:
-
"* 15 [[Prime Minister of the United KingdomBritish Prime Ministers]], including [[Robert Walpole]] (First Prime Minister of Great Britain) and [[Nick Griffin]], Chairman of the [[British National Party]], Member of the European Parliament for North West England and convicted racist."

Next - given the objection to the sentence. We gave Griffin his own sentence on the University of Cambridge Wikipedi page:

"Cambridge also has a strong reputation in the fields of politics and governance, having educated:

15 British Prime Ministers, including Robert Walpole (First Prime Minister of Great Britain).

Cambridge also educated Nick Griffin, Chairman of the British National Party, Member of the European Parliament for North West England and convicted racist. "

What will happen now? Stay tuned - or become involved yourself. Editing Wikipedia is open to all remember.

This research project into criminal alumni and the establishment manipulation of open-resource sources such as Wikipedia continues.

Note on Alumni

An alumnus (pl. alumni), according to the American Heritage Dictionary, is "a graduate or former student of a school, college, or university".

Related BS blog posts

Bent Knights

Lox

Stephen Griffiths: Crossbow Cannibal and Notable Alumni of the University of Bradford

2010-05-30T17:13:00.015+01:00

Serial Killer was a Bradford University Notable Alumni for just three hours!

Today, Bradford University might be regretting having, like so many other universities, its own Wiki page. Because it looks like some roguish young scamp added suspected serial killer Stephen Griffiths (AKA the Crossbow Cannibal) to their noted alumni.

Google Search

I found the evidence while searching around using Google to see if Griffiths' doctoral studies were funded by the ESRC - or whether he was self funding.

Checking the Wikipedia history for their page for the University of Bradford I was able to determine that Stephen Griffiths was - incredibly - a notable alumni on 28th May at 7.56pm until 23.10 when he was stripped of the online honour.

Using Wikipedia's history function, you can see who made the entry and who took it down.

It appears that someone using the moniker Lugnuts (who's righteous catchphrase is "Precious lugnuts! - I make the Wikipedia not suck.") made Stephen Griffiths a notable alumni at the University of Bradford where he was studying for his doctorate in criminology.

One of Wikipedia's many netizens ColinFine - a railways and morris dancing enthusiast - took it down on the grounds that he is not yet sure that Griffiths' is notable under Wikipedia's detailed and rigid criteria for either organisational or criminal notability.

Bradford University Can Thank Heavens Trainspotting Morris Dancers are Policing the Superhighway.

This raises an interesting spectacle for "corporate image conscious" universities. While they control the content of their own websites they have no control over the Wikipedia versions, because they do not own them at all. And so really useful netizens on straight rails - such as Colin Fine - are all they have to watch over their Wiki websites.

Virtual Janitors: Potential E-Protection Racketeering is on the Horizon

Going forward, in a forward-facing E-Commerce economy, will cash-strapped universities now have to employ Wiki monitors at pro-vice chancellor rates to keep a 24 hour watch on their net presence? You can see the potential here for unscrupulous profit.

Although Wikipedia is a not for profit organisation I am reminded here of how credit referencing companies such as Experian encourage people to pay to see the very credit records that Experian facilitates in order to make sure that they are correct. Someone is going to make a lot of money out of protecting individuals and companies from this sort of thing in the future.

Do you feel that you should be a notable alumni of your old university?

Well why not add yourself to their Wiki page and see if you get invited along to those inaugural lectures and receive the red carpet treatment and red wine.

Do you want to let future generations of potential students know about misdeeds done at any university on the planet?

What if someone were to write the truth (backed up by references) to misdeeds within a university on their Wikipedia page? I'm thinking now, for example, about a global warming research email scandal. But, going forward, the potential for naming and shaming damage to corporate-spin image conscious forward-facing business oriented universities is a huge challenge.

At the time of writing there is a Wikipedia page for Stephen Griffiths the suspected serial killer (set up by a chap called MadMick13) . Since the Stephen Griffiths case has not yet been tried in a court of law the criminal justice system might want to keep a close eye on that one - the Wikipage I mean - not Mad Mick. There again.....

Lox

Laterally Thinking Criminals

2010-05-27T10:51:00.019+01:00

IS THIS A SERIAL KILLER'S PECULIAR READING AND DVD VIEWING WISH LIST REVEALED - Or Is It Just of "Ordinary" "Deviant" Interest For A Student Of Criminology?

A criminology student who, allegedly is studying serial killers, is being questioned by UK police today over the killings of Bradford prostitutes. They were killed in the same Yorkshire city that was terrorised by The Yorkshire Ripper - Peter Sutcliffe.

It is too early to know whether or not Stephen Griffiths is guilty or innocent.

We are told, however, that his web page has been taken down. Yet at the time of writing this post, a cached version (see image below) can still be viewed. Here: (click)

Using our net-savvy skills at Bent Society the team have found on the Amazon site the pages that are attributed to a person going by the moniker of Ven Pariah, who - we are informed by the mass media - is the net profile used by the murder suspect Stephen Griffiths. And as you can see his moniker on Amazon is Ven Pariah - but the name used to order books and DVDs is Stephen Griffiths.

We expect it might be taken down soon - bad publicity for Amazon perhaps? Perhaps not. Might sell more books. Why not buy the wish list of a real or suspected serial killer?

Good Grief: Only the Internet makes all this possible

For the purposes of criminological research here is a review written by Ven Pariah and his wish list at Amazon.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/review/R5BLMXSILJ78X/ref=cm_cr_pr_viewpnt#R5BLMXSILJ78X

Women and the Noose: A History of Female Crime and Execution
Far superior to Geoffrey Abbot, 13 Dec 2009
Reviewed by By
Ven Pariah

This review is from: Women and the Noose: A History of Female Crime and Execution (Hardcover)

"Don't know which planet the first reviewer came from. This isn't a bad book, although it could have been more academically sourced, but it's still light years ahead of Abbot. Abbot's books are grotesque, with the exception of his biography of Calcraft - they actually treat capital punishment in a light-hearted vein - hence, some of the egregious titles. Steve Fielding, on the other hand, is a superlative author, responsible for 3 must-have reference books. Although an advocate of capial punishment, Clark doesn't allow it to interfere with his portrayal of these cases. He has done a competent job, to say it is only his first book - I have deliberately given it 5 stars, to compensate for the misleading 'score' given by the other man - I'm truly sorry to say this, but he really is a complete imbecile. "

The issue of whether or not literature of all kinds can be used by the laterally thinking offender as a modus operandi guide to offending will be covered in future BS posts.

The BS Team

Property Marking Nonsense And Healthy Scepticism

2010-05-21T11:35:00.041+01:00

Is Smartwater a dumb idea?
Is Smartwater a scandalous waste of tax payers money?

Make up your own mind. Look at the FACTS! Find out more.

Check out Smartwater's own website. They brag about Nottinghamshire Constabulary supplying half a million of their property marking kits.

Nottinghamshire police and community safety partners keep shelling out more on this product like loss chasing problem gamblers. All this despite the fact that properly conducted and INDEPENDENT (not biased Smartwater funded) research has never found property marking of any kind to be effective at reducing crime. The clickable report - underlined text above - does hypothesise that property marking MIGHT be effective IF greater take-up could be achieved. But did the authors of that report - and their Home Office editors - think through the logic of that hypothesis?

For example, is half a million homes enough to say: enough is enough take-up?

When would sufficient take-up be achieved? If take-up is not deemed to be sufficient then what next?

Should our police services keep guilelessly and scandalously chasing losses with more tax payers' money?

What exactly is the optimal - hypothesised - rate of take up the police should be aiming for with Smartwater anyway; does anyone actually have a clue?

Is it sensible to carry on throwing good money after bad trying to achieve an unachievable or unknowable goal?

Is the logic behind increased Smartwater coverage a dumb idea or not?

Let's see.

This product comes in two types: (a) That which is intended to get onto the thief and his/her clothing - often trough a spray attached to an alarm - to mark him/her. Lets call this transferable Smartwater and (b) that which is intended to mark property itself and not rub-off. Let's call this stuff non-transferable Smartwater.

What if 100 per cent coverage - or say 50 per cent coverage - was actually obtained at enormous cost to the public purse. What would - logically happen then? (1) If transferable thief-marking Smartwater is everywhere then the thief has an ironically perfect defence - the stuff is all over the environment like grass pollen - "I must have got it on to my clothes and person through innocent contact with one of the numerous real villains in the community. I'm innocent." (2) Non-stolen non-transferable-Smartwater-marked property would be in every secondhand shop and sold on ebay and by friends and neighbours. Untangling what is stolen from what is not would be huge, costly and an often unproductive task. (3) It would not increase the likelihood that officers would intercept thieves in possession of hot products since research shows that not only do thieves steal marked property but they generally sell it within 30 minutes of the theft. - and fences and the public all buy it. When asked about Smartwater, thieves in Mansfield and Nottingham laughed at it.

So where on Earth is the logic - and ethics - in pursuing this path of wider coverage with the many times discredited crime reduction quackery that is property marking - of any kind?

That old regression to the mean trick

Next, we explain how quack-cure salesmen exploit a phenomenon known in science as regression to the mean. It's a simple enough concept. But you'll need a little background information first.

Burglary data for all areas in England and Wales can be found at www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/pdfs09/cdrptabsa.xls

Here is a telling table showing the 20 areas with the highest burglary rates in England and Wales in 2009

1 Greater Manchester Manchester
2 Nottinghamshire Nottingham
3 Thames Valley Reading
4 Metropolitan Police Haringey
5 West Yorkshire Leeds
6 Bedfordshire Luton
7 West Yorkshire Bradford
8 Metropolitan Police Enfield
9 Thames Valley Slough
10 Avon & Somerset City of Bristol
11 Metropolitan Police Redbridge
12 Greater Manchester Tameside
13 Metropolitan Police Brent
14 Metropolitan Police Waltham Forest
15 Leicestershire Leicester
16 Metropolitan Police Ealing
17 Thames Valley South Bucks
18 Cambridgeshire Cambridge
19 Humberside North East Lincs
20 Greater Manchester Salford

The postcode district in the UK with the highest burglary rate is NG5, which coincidentally is in Nottingham by the way: http://www.aboutproperty.co.uk/news/home-security/home-security-tips/uk-s-theft-and-burglary-hotspots-revealed-$1319369.htm

But if NG5 has reached its burglary peak - then no matter what you do there - burglary will fall (precisely because that is what happens when something has reached its peak). This is what is known as regression to the mean. So if any claims are made that any product worked in reducing burglary in NG5, be very sceptical.

To understand regression to the mean, imagine this:

I have a quack cure for the human cold. You've had a cold for three or four days and today it is so bad (worse than ever) and it seems to you that it will never get better. I see your misery and am able to sell you my bottle of quackwater-cold-cure because you are desperate. And hey presto - would you believe it - within two to three days of taking it you actually feel much better. So did my quackwater cure you? Or did you simply regress back to your average (mean) cold-free state of good health? After all, on average, human cold symptoms always peak and then get better in few days naturally - as we all know.

That is why scientists call it regression to the mean (a falling back from a peak towards the average, mean, level) - return towards the average.

A quack-cure salesman knows it is best to target sick punters when their symptoms are at their peak - at their worst.

So where would a quack-crime-reduction-kit salesman insist his product be used and evaluated? In areas with the highest level of burglary only of course.

Areas where it is easiest to claim a false positive effect are those where burglary is at its peak. More so if they are being targeted by traditional police crack-downs on burglars independently of any tangible Smartwater mechanism.

And the worst burglary areas with peak levels of burglary - like Nottingham and particularly Nottingham's NG5 would be favoured targets.

You need ask this to get to the truth

Is Smartwater being used also in areas of Nottingham where there are low and middle burglary rates? And if so, is the independent effectiveness of all this Smartwater being properly evaluated by experts with double-blind trials and inter-area comparison between areas with high, middle and low rates of burglary?

What do you think? Don't be duped by quack cures. Be healthily sceptical:
(1) Don't blindly accept what others tell you.
(2) Look for the evidence and then assess it.
(3) Remember a correlation does not prove causation.
(4) Be aware of regression to the mean.
(5) Beware of silicon snake oil salesmen and the fierce and stubborn stupidity of their duped customers - particularly when defending their right to spend public funds on unproven products.

When will the dumb-headless chickens throwing away piles of money from the public purse come home to roost? Should they be held accountable for their arrogant stupidity?

Someone is making a lot of money out of the crime and the misery situation of others in the UK besides the burglars, fences and all the other stolen goods handlers.

At Bent Society we would encourage any outraged citizens and curious academic to use the Freedom of Information Act to enquire as to:

(1) Exactly how much money your Police Constabulary and its Crime and Drugs Partnership has spent on this er...smartproduct?

(2) How many offenders have been detected and successfully prosecuted as a direct result of Smartwater?

Furthermore, you can:

(3) Contact your member of Parliament and demand that at times of such huge public deficit and cut-backs that public spending on unproven products is done in an accountable manner - and that good money is not thrown after bad on a whim of faith and in the absence of proper independent evaluation.

(4) Contact the Audit Commission stating your concerns.

(5) Write to your Chief Constable to demand what on earth they are doing using discredited property marking in an attempt to reduce crime and why they think it is likely to be effective - and why they are not properly evaluating it.

(6) Ask the UK Home Office to fund a proper evaluation of all property marking schemes currently in use.

Lox.

Tom Ellis on Hi ViZ Stupidity

2010-05-20T17:29:00.003+01:00

On the perennial Bent Society soapbox issue of the problem of Hi Viz society I read an interesting paper today. It is entitled: A Retrograde Step: The Potential Impact of High Visibility Uniforms Within Youth Justice Reparation (click).

The paper is by criminologists NICHOLAS PAMMENT and TOM ELLIS from the University of Portsmouth.

We've blogged on the stupidity of "here I come get running" Hi Viz beat police officers. And on the problem of the new defence to "impersonating a police officer" when the police officers uniform is the same as that of a road worker, refuge collector and lorry driver.

Now it seems there is a strong argument that dressing offenders up as binmen and policemen is counterproductive for efforts to reduce recidivism.

Perhaps now we have a new government in the UK, New Labour's naff-nanny Hi Viz obsession will be thrown out along with their surveillance society ID cards and CCTV cameras. We hope so.

References

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/122485360/PDFSTART?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

Nicholas Pamment is Lecturer and Tom Ellis is Principal Lecturer,
Institute of Criminal Justice Studies,

The Howard Journal Vol 49 No 1. February 2010 DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2311.2009.00578.x
ISSN 0265-5527, pp. 18–30

Mike Sutton

2010-05-15T14:50:00.009+01:00

Stolen Goods Markets and Social Injustice

The very existence of stolen goods markets, populated with willing buyers of the proceeds of theft, is at the roots of theft.

Seeking to untangle the chicken and egg dilemma as to whether thieves create markets with offers of stolen goods for sale or whether the preexistence of willing buyers - and occasional "stealing to order" - generates theft and creates thieves is something of a fools errand. Because it's all part of an intangible symbiotic, loop-feedback deviancy amplification spiral.

Imagine it this way. We live in an innocent world where no person has ever stolen anything. Then one day YOU are the first thief. You steal my expensive and desirable watch. And then you offer my watch to a stranger who buys it knowing that it is stolen but is attracted by the bargain price. Several things happen next: (1) You get rewarded for the theft and realise that people buy stolen stuff (2) The stranger is pleased with his bargain and tells his friends. (3) His friends want a bargain now as they can't afford (or will not pay for) such a watch at its retail price but are covetous, which means that they become ultra-receptive to any such hot products that may come their way. (4) You tell others that theft pays and some become thieves. (5) Markets for stolen goods expand and the number of thieves servicing them and creating new ones do likewise.

Thieves motivate people to buy stolen goods by stealing them and then offering them for sale at bargain prices. Meanwhile, knowledge of the very existence of willing buyers motivates new thieves to begin and existing ones to continue stealing.

Our prisons and young offenders institutions are full of thieves - but what of those in society who knowingly buy stolen goods? I bet they are (in the words of Johnny Cash) "drinking coffee and smoking big cigars." As well as doing everyday things of course, since research shows that 11 percent of the population of England and Wales knowingly buy stolen goods.

In the UK the new Government is preaching fairness and social justice. So are they going to crack down on the crimemongers who motivate thieves to steal as much as they focus the attention of the criminal justice system on thieves?

If they did lock up those of us who knowingly buy stolen goods, would the definition of what constitutes a "scum-bag" change?

Yesterday the U.S. Government's Department of Justice COPS Office published the most comprehensive guide to tackling stolen goods ever written.

The report: Stolen Goods Markets is written by U.K. criminologist Dr Mike Sutton. We recommend it as a useful tool to all crime reduction practitioners and police officers. Perhaps some politicians will take the time to read it as well?

Tackling stolen goods markets with an aim to reduce theft - as Sutton proposes is admirable.

At Bent Society we go a step further and argue for another criminal justice aim:

Crack down upon and successfully prosecute more fences and other knowing buyers of stolen goods so that they too can share a prison cell with the thieves supplying them with hot products.

References

Sutton, M. (2010) Stolen Goods. http://www.popcenter.org/problems/stolen_goods/

COPS Office Problem Oriented Policing Centre Biography of Sutton. http://www.popcenter.org/bios/sutton

Amphetamine Control and the Unintended Consequences of Policy Making

2010-05-13T15:52:00.007+01:00

Building upon research published in his 2007 book, Dr Andrew Wilson went on to write an interesting paper on amphetamine control in 2008 that is published in the open access Internet Journal of Criminology.

Wilson's paper Mixing the Medicine: The unintended consequence of amphetamine control on the Northern Soul Scene, tells of the unintended consequences that crime control policy making had when changes to the legal classification of amphetamines led to UK chemists shops being compelled by law to lock up amphetamine stock, in case of burglary, in cabinets alongside Diomorphine. Before long, this new proximal opportunity situation led to drug dealers selling heroin to Northern Soul amphetamine users, which in turn led many to an early grave.

Keep the faith in the criminal justice system - be sure to learn from the lessons of the past.

References

Wilson, A. (2007) Northern Soul Music, drugs and subcultural identity. Devon. Willan Publishing. http://www.willanpublishing.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=1843922088

Wilson, A. (2008) Mixing the Medicine: The unintended consequence of amphetamine control on the Northern Soul Scene. Internet Journal of Criminology http://www.internetjournalofcriminology.com/Wilson%20-%20Mixing%20the%20Medicine.pdf

Bent Europe?

2010-05-07T17:32:00.007+01:00

A key theme on the Bent Society blog is the examination of the impact of top down immorality and double-standards upon British society. We have blogged on the MPs expenses scandal, hypocrisy, bullshit and crime reduction quackery.

As Greek society faces difficulties and unrest from the bottom as the population has had it up to their eyes with the powerful elite who enrich themselves illicitly through bribes and fraud so that the whole society is bent, Germany too has had a similar belly-full of its corrupt politicians

The latest article in the Internet Journal of Criminology:

The “Grey Zone” of Political
Corruption in Germany - By Konstadinos Maras - explains the criminological significance of bent government for Germany.

As we form a new government today in the UK will our newly elected leaders really set an example to everyone and stamp out "troughing" from the public purse?

Bent Society Top Criminology Blog - why?

2010-05-07T12:38:00.006+01:00

Exactly because we are currently in the throes of a run of articles on the scientific meaning of bullshit at the time of writing, the Bent Society team are flattered to have been recorded as top of the list of blogs that focus specifically on criminology .

So while we smirk smugly and thank CriminoBlogia for this honour we have no idea of the criteria that was used to put us at the top of the list (46th among 50 blogs focusing on crime in general) and why the Anchorage Daily News Crime Scene blog was rated number one.

This brings us to another question. Namely, should academics have their work rated according to what journal they publish in?

What exactly might be the outcome of bibliometrics, impact scales and "prestige" rankings of journals? What is the danger of universities directing staff to publish in high ranking journal only? Might this not create a harmful self-fulfilling prophecy whereby new journals with fresh ideas and a dynamic outlook are avoided by the best authors and so never have the chance to become top ranked journals?

If you are a UK based academic, are you being told which journals you MUST publish in for the forthcoming Research Excellence Framework (RES) exercise and which you should avoid?

If so what impact might this have on your work, academic freedom and the evolution of knowledge in general?

To be continued....

The Impact of Bullshit, Bad Government Advice and Data Errors on Public Policy, Knowledge and Human Behaviour

2010-05-03T15:23:00.007+01:00

At the time of writing, when celebrity cook Delia Smith’s promotion of rhubarb has led to a culinary stampede and subsequent demand outstripping supply of British rhubarb stocks (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1263374/Achtung-der-Rhabarber-Waitrose-forced-import-German-rhubarb-grown-gibberellic-acid-Delia-s-British-rhubarb-ginger-brul-e.html), I am reminded of the fact that rhubarb leaves are poisonous and that people are said to have died following British Government advice to eat rhubarb Leaves as well as the stalkes at a time of severe food shortage during the First – or was it the Second World War?

Before examining the truth behind the killer rhubarb leaves story it is useful to learn a little about oxalic acid – the plant poison said to responsible for killing those who ate too many rhubarb leaves during the First World War (Blackmore 2010):

“Food shortages during World War I prompted the British to seek out other forms of nutrition. As recipes calling for rhubarb leaves became more prevalent, so did the reports of poisoning with some cases resulting in death. Little did they know that the leaves of this seemingly harmless plant contain oxalic acid, a chemical compound found in bleach, metal cleaners and anti-rust products.”

http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2010/01/rhubarb-toxic-tuesdays-a-weekly-guide-to-poison-gardens/ )

Oxalic acid – that ingredient of spinach that severely hinders human absorption of iron from iron-rich spinach can kill you in sufficient quantities. However, the informative Oxalic Acid Information site warns against the plethora of websites that warn of the dangers of oxalic acid in plants for otherwise healthy people. Those with a kidney disorder or gout should indeed avoid oxalic rich sources such as rhubarb and spinach.

If you have gout or kidney stones then the useful table below – compiled by the excellent Oxalic Acid Information site is well worth a perusal.

http://oxalicacidinfo.com/

According to the Oxalic Acid Information website:

“It is now generally believed that the normal human body can dispose of oxalic acid at even relatively high dietary quantities without trouble; though it is very poorly absorbed (having no metabolic use), it is readily enough excreted. Trouble comes only to those unfortunate enough to have one or another condition--usually genetic in origin--that impairs, to a greater or lesser degree, their bodies' ability to process oxalic acid. (Though sometimes stones and gout are not related to oxalic acid at all.) For those folk, oxalic acid is not the cause of their problems, but it is the raw material for it, and they do indeed need to regulate their intake of it, just as diabetics need to monitor their sugar intake despite sugar normally being a harmless substance.

Those with a need for caution when considering the Oxalic Acid content of food include sufferers from kidney disorders and kidney stones, gout, rheumatoid arthritis, and certain.”

Is there any evidence to support the story that the British Government advice to eat rhubarb leaves led to people dying from poisoning?

Here is a useful start from the Poison Garden website ( http://www.thepoisongarden.co.uk/atoz/rheum_x_hybridum.htm )

“In 1945, in the New England Journal of Medicine, Jeghers and Murphy, when discussing the issue of whether oxalates are wholly to blame for rhubarb's fatal poisonings note that 'There is a distinct paucity of reliable information on this subject in the modern literature'. They go on to encourage any physicians who encounter rhubarb poisoning to publish a case study to make a 'worth-while contribution to the medical literature'. Sixty-five years later, we are no better informed. There appears to have been only one case study, published in 1960, and its title, 'Death of a child from oxalic acid poisoning due to eating rhubarb leaves', suggests the authors did not find anything to add to the understanding.”

According to the sources studied online for this blog post it takes about 5kg or 11 lb of rhubarb leaves to constitute a fatal dose in otherwise healthy people.
(See: http://www.dirjournal.com/health-journal/most-dangerous-foods-we-eat/ )

Many web and blog sites carry the story that it was British Government advice in the First or Second World War that led to a number of people dying from oxalic acid poisoning e.g. The Garden of Eden blog site (Eade 2009):

“During the Second World War, when the population of Great Britain was suffering from food shortages, the government – rather naively - advised that Rhubarb leaves could be eaten in the absence of any other available fresh produce. Unfortunately there were a number of cases of acute poisoning resulting from this poor advice including several deaths.”

Is the story true or is it another misteaching like the spinach iron decimal error myth?

To be continued…

References

Blackmore, H. (2010 January 26th) Rhubarb ToxicTuesday. http://www.britannica.com/blogs/2010/01/rhubarb-toxic-tuesdays-a-weekly-guide-to-poison-gardens/

Eade, S. (2009) WHAT IS RHUBARB POISONING? Wednesday, 6 May 2009

Bent Society On Bullshit Criminology

2010-04-09T17:21:00.005+01:00

In his best selling book, On Bullshit, Princeton University moral philosopher Harry Frankfurt (2005; pp. 60-61) usefully makes an important distinction between lies and bullshit.

Frankfurt describes bullshit as being distinct from a lie in that a liar knows the truth and seeks to steer the recipient of the message away from the truth, whereas the bullshitter does not know what the truth is and is merely concerned with telling a plausible story:

“He does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it at all. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.”

Accepting Frankfurt's definition, is there much bullshit in criminology? Are many criminologists bullshitters?

The answer to both questions, in my opinion, is yes.

We’ll be letting you in on some examples of criminal criminology very soon.

Lox

References

Frankfurt, H. (2005) On Bullshit. Princeton N.J.. Princeton University Press.