Objectives
Societies and governments across the world are preoccupied by their experiences and understandings of crime. Individuals, communities, countries and international organizations seek to understand how crime should be defined, what are its causes, what are appropriate and effective responses and what effects these will have. Recent social change has been associated with different forms of social marginalisation and new problems including environmental damage, alienation of young people from the law, transnational illicit trade, and international terrorism.
Last year the EU’s Justice and Home Affairs External Relations working group, dealing with the external dimension of all internal justice and home affairs, was given permanent status, recognising that the global dimension of crime and its control impacts on localities and vice versa.
The nature and complexity of crime requires a committed, coherent interdisciplinary approach harnessing the most advanced international, cultural and critical insights of social sciences and law in a new doctoral training programme. The Doctorate in Cultural and Global Criminology (DCGC) develops a politically engaged, international understanding and approach to crime and its control and prepares high-level doctoral candidates to work in the widest range of employment arenas concerned with understanding, preventing and responding to crime in a way which takes account of the global and cultural context.
Addressing the urgent need for a new kind of high level expert, the doctoral programme adopts a global perspective. Doctoral candidates conduct research which is relevant, international, transnational and intercultural and which has identified impact. Their doctoral training develops the capacity for critically informed policy making and, in doing so, brings together in an integrated and structured way the insights of the social sciences and law. The programme fosters intellectual dialogue and mobility between different geographical and cultural areas, between the disciplines of social science and law, and, between the university and organisations involved in social action, criminal justice policy making, and crime control.
The programme OBJECTIVES meet six key needs in criminological doctoral research and training, as follows.
□ Understanding and responding to new crimes
The continuing globalisation of economic, political, social, and cultural processes means that crime is constantly evolving. There is a need for new interdisciplinary criminological investigations that take a global and cultural perspective. Such investigations include:
■ transnational illegal traffic;
■ environmental damage;
■ the interactions between local cultures and global media in crime and control;
■ the role of consumerism in crime;
■ new cultures and subcultures of criminal transgression and crime control;
■ international terrorism, security policy and human rights;
■ drug culture and policy - local and global;
■ the relationship between social change, social exclusion and legal exclusion;
■ the social and cultural dimensions of ‘transitional justice’.
□ Developing an international and cultural outlook on crime and social harm
The 21st century has brought an increasing awareness of the global and cultural dimensions of crime and crime control. An international and cultural perspective recognises the indeterminate borderline between ‘criminal’ and ‘non-criminal’ social harms, which means that equivalent forms of problems like environmental damage or youth transgression may or may not be formally criminalised in different parts of the world. The new problems present challenges to policing and criminal justice agencies, which are becoming aware that their operations can have unforeseen results and implications, causing policy makers to reflect, for example,
on the ways in which crime control and security policy may impact on social exclusion and human rights.
The programme develops a broad, global and cultural understanding of crime, harm and control, bringing into focus the significant variation in cultural understandings, modes of regulation, jurisidictions, national laws, differences in policing discretion and prosecuting policy, community values and political cultures, and reflecting critically on the consequences of criminal law and its enforcement.
□ Interdisciplinary criminology
So far European criminology has been based either within the social sciences or in law. The two fields are separated by departmental structures, educational and research programmes, and different modes of critical analysis, methodological approach and social engagement. If there have been conversations about these matters across a disciplinary divide, so far there has been no attempt to combine their best aspects in structured, inter-disciplinary, and international doctoral training programme. There is a need to research crime and control from a global and cultural perspective, which requires the integration of the most advanced, global, cultural and critical aspects of both social science and law-based criminology.
□ Intersectoral perspectives and expertise
There can be no doubt that crime in all its manifestations is of critical, economic, social and political importance, and it is clear that in many spheres the understanding of and response to crime have not been successful. There is an urgent need for government bodies, NGOs, policy makers and criminal justice agencies to access and use high level expertise in developing effective policy responses to crime, which are based on a more profound critical understanding of the international, cultural context and an appreciation of the potential consequences of new more coordinated responses. Equally there is a need for international criminological research to be informed by the problems and issues faced by civil society and the public sector. Thus the programme is intimately concerned with the development, execution and results of policy in response to the constantly changing, evolving range of ‘new’ crimes and associated harms. The programme recognises that criminal justice, governmental and non-governmental bodies all have a vital stake in the field of cultural and global criminology, reflected in the involvement of doctoral candidates with these key organisations.
□ Citizenship
Citizenship is a vital skill. The development of doctoral-level transferable skills in doctoral training has so far concentrated on skills related to employability but less on those required for citizenship, although the two are intimately linked. The nature of crime and its control, the focus on policy-relevant research, and the need for the outcomes to be useful for actors in civil society, the public sector and criminal justice agencies, requires a recognition that an advanced competence in citizenship is important for the role that graduates are expected to play in the wider civic, social and political arena. In order to develop active, culturally-sensitive, internationally-knowledgeable citizenship informed by self-reflective ethical and political awareness, the programme innovates in the recognition and cultivation of skills in ‘global-critical citizenship’, which is brought to the analysis of policy debate and social action.
□ The wider world
There is a need for interaction between cutting-edge European criminological approaches and the experience and practice of other countries and regions in the field of crime and crime control, particularly with Latin America, Africa, India and China. In these regions there are few criminological departments and no PhD programmes in criminology, and the discipline of criminology has little impact on policy and the functioning of the criminal justice system. Through its relationships with third countries and their doctoral candidates, the programme develops the capacity for the application of academic criminological research to crime and justice policy.
