Crime and the university: The story of Sort’d, a community-(higher) education project
| Author | Mike Neary |
| Published date | 01 June 2006 |
| Date | 01 June 2006 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0264550506063563 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Probation Journal
Article
The Journal of Community and Criminal Justice
Copyright © 2006 NAPO Vol 53(2): 124–136
DOI: 10.1177/0264550506063563
www.napo.org.uk
http://prb.sagepub.com
Crime and the university: The story of Sort’d,
a community–(higher) education project
Mike Neary, Warwick University
Abstract This article is about undergraduate students and young offenders
working together on an education project in an Institute of Higher Education. The
author argues that the ways in which the students and offenders learn together
provide lessons for academics and practitioners working to develop progressive
probation practices. This link between the academic and practice is pushed in new
directions by the theoretical framework within which Neary situates his work.
Neary presents a challenging reinterpretation of the notion that all crime is
property crime, including crimes of sex and violence. Neary argues that while not
all crime is motivated by money, money is the most significant form of social
property; and, therefore, an understanding of the social power of money and the
society it dominates is the key to any social theory that seeks to develop the most
progressive forms of critical practice. In the Sort’d project money is very much the
central issue, not only in terms of Neary’s critical social theory, but through the
provision of £500 grants that are awarded to young offenders who complete their
educational projects.
Keywords education, money, social theory, What Works, young offenders
‘The point is,’ this Minister of Inferior was saying real gromky, ‘that it works.’
‘Oh,’ the prison Charlie said, like sighing. ‘It works all right, God help the
lot of us’. (Burgess, 1961: 101)
This article tells the story of the Sort’d project, a unique community education
programme, established in 2000 between the Sociology Department at the
University of Warwick and the National Probation Service in the Midlands.
The Sort’d project has been designed to work in a number of different dimen-
sions. At one level the project involves undergraduate students working with young
offenders (‘probation students’) to create educational projects that the probation
students themselves have been encouraged to develop during the scheme. These
124
Neary ● Crime and the university 125
educational projects allow probation students the opportunity to work on very
specific projects that will enhance a range of different social, vocational and intel-
lectual skills, as well as present them with an understanding of the possibilities
that universities can provide. Each educational project lasts for one 10 week term
and is eligible for a grant of £500. Other additional support is available in the
form of access to appropriate university resources, e.g. computers, engineering
workshops, sports equipment and the use of student union facilities.
As well as the provision of educational opportunities for the young offenders,
the project provides learning experiences for undergraduate students combined
with the chance for personal, educational and professional development. All of
the university students engaged in the project are enrolled on the module ‘the
Sociology of Crime and Deviance’. The Sort’d project is an extra-curricular activity,
not directly linked to the taught module, which provides a form of experiential
learning for those students who volunteer to work with the young offenders. From
a teaching point of view the programme develops the work done in the more
formal context of university teaching environments (seminars and lectures), and
provides a rich learning environment within which the undergraduate students can
contextualize academic approaches to the issue of youth crime.
But, more than that, the programme has been designed specifically as an
antidote to the assumptions that underpin much probation rehabilitation practice,
with a particular focus on the What Works programme. The basis of the assump-
tions of the Sort’d programme is that property crime is not the outcome of indi-
vidual pathologies, nor the result of social factors that can be overcome through
progressive social policy; but that crime is the outcome of a fundamentally
dysfunctional society based on a specific form of work organization in which the
outcome of ‘money success’ is not only valued above all else, but is the basic prin-
ciple of human sociability (Merton, 1938).
Sort’d is based on the understanding that all crime is property crime, includ-
ing violent crime. The essential characteristic of a criminal act is that it violates
rights of ownership, including the ownership of one’s own body. Although crime
is condemned as immoral and evil these theocratic forms of censure have no real
basis within the modern criminal law. The criminal law is basically a property law,
in which all human relations are governed by the law of property. Under this law
crimes of violence and sex crimes are interferences with the right of private owner-
ship to our own selves. What this means is that the criminal law is directly protect-
ing the law on which it is based, i.e. the law of property, and only indirectly
protecting the victim of crime. This indirect protection is evident from the fact that
there is no role for the victim in a criminal law trial, other than as witness, and
that the criminal law provides no meaningful form of personal recompense.1
Of course, while arguing all crimes are property crimes, not all crimes are moti-
vated by money, but money is the most symbolically powerful form of all private
property. It is, therefore, the issue of money on which the practical and theoreti-
cal aspects of the Sort’d programme concentrates. This interest in the centrality of
money is made concrete by the £500 grant to the probation students.
Based on these conceptual understandings the Sort’d project invokes a negative
rather than a positive approach to money. Modern society is based on a positive
126 Probation Journal 53(2)
appreciation of money, which suggests that money can realize our social dreams
and solve all of our social problems: a shortage of money, in either case, can be
rectified by fairer systems of income distribution. A negative critique of money
recognizes that without money human life is impossible. This dependency on
money as the unique characteristic of the modern world, is what marks the modern
world out from previous forms of human society and makes the eradication of
poverty unattainable in the current money-world. Poverty then is not a shortage
of money, but the peculiar way in which the social life of money dominates our
social world (Neary and Taylor, 1998).
This negative critique of money requires that the students consider the ways in
which this dependency on money, i.e. poverty, is imposed on populations, the ways
in which money can be acquired, i.e. work and crime, and the effects of those
acquisitive processes on all aspects of human sociability (Neary and Taylor, 1998;
Dinerstein and Neary, 2002; Neary, 2002).
In this article I set out the historical and conceptual development of this joint
community–(higher) education initiative, as a way of situating my work within the
growing critical response to the What Works project. The article demonstrates that
at the level of participant involvement, as a teaching and learning event between
the university and probation students, the project has had a significant impact on
both sets of students. However, in order for the project to work towards its overall
ambition, it is necessary that it engages workers in the probation service in a
critical debate about the real nature of probation work and its consequences. The
purpose of this debate is to enable probation practitioners and academics to work
together on progressive programmes that can challenge the fundamental assump-
tions of What Works as well as the version of the social world on which these
assumptions are based. The article argues that any engagement between...
Article
The Journal of Community and Criminal Justice
Copyright © 2006 NAPO Vol 53(2): 124–136
DOI: 10.1177/0264550506063563
www.napo.org.uk
http://prb.sagepub.com
Crime and the university: The story of Sort’d,
a community–(higher) education project
Mike Neary, Warwick University
Abstract This article is about undergraduate students and young offenders
working together on an education project in an Institute of Higher Education. The
author argues that the ways in which the students and offenders learn together
provide lessons for academics and practitioners working to develop progressive
probation practices. This link between the academic and practice is pushed in new
directions by the theoretical framework within which Neary situates his work.
Neary presents a challenging reinterpretation of the notion that all crime is
property crime, including crimes of sex and violence. Neary argues that while not
all crime is motivated by money, money is the most significant form of social
property; and, therefore, an understanding of the social power of money and the
society it dominates is the key to any social theory that seeks to develop the most
progressive forms of critical practice. In the Sort’d project money is very much the
central issue, not only in terms of Neary’s critical social theory, but through the
provision of £500 grants that are awarded to young offenders who complete their
educational projects.
Keywords education, money, social theory, What Works, young offenders
‘The point is,’ this Minister of Inferior was saying real gromky, ‘that it works.’
‘Oh,’ the prison Charlie said, like sighing. ‘It works all right, God help the
lot of us’. (Burgess, 1961: 101)
This article tells the story of the Sort’d project, a unique community education
programme, established in 2000 between the Sociology Department at the
University of Warwick and the National Probation Service in the Midlands.
The Sort’d project has been designed to work in a number of different dimen-
sions. At one level the project involves undergraduate students working with young
offenders (‘probation students’) to create educational projects that the probation
students themselves have been encouraged to develop during the scheme. These
124
Neary ● Crime and the university 125
educational projects allow probation students the opportunity to work on very
specific projects that will enhance a range of different social, vocational and intel-
lectual skills, as well as present them with an understanding of the possibilities
that universities can provide. Each educational project lasts for one 10 week term
and is eligible for a grant of £500. Other additional support is available in the
form of access to appropriate university resources, e.g. computers, engineering
workshops, sports equipment and the use of student union facilities.
As well as the provision of educational opportunities for the young offenders,
the project provides learning experiences for undergraduate students combined
with the chance for personal, educational and professional development. All of
the university students engaged in the project are enrolled on the module ‘the
Sociology of Crime and Deviance’. The Sort’d project is an extra-curricular activity,
not directly linked to the taught module, which provides a form of experiential
learning for those students who volunteer to work with the young offenders. From
a teaching point of view the programme develops the work done in the more
formal context of university teaching environments (seminars and lectures), and
provides a rich learning environment within which the undergraduate students can
contextualize academic approaches to the issue of youth crime.
But, more than that, the programme has been designed specifically as an
antidote to the assumptions that underpin much probation rehabilitation practice,
with a particular focus on the What Works programme. The basis of the assump-
tions of the Sort’d programme is that property crime is not the outcome of indi-
vidual pathologies, nor the result of social factors that can be overcome through
progressive social policy; but that crime is the outcome of a fundamentally
dysfunctional society based on a specific form of work organization in which the
outcome of ‘money success’ is not only valued above all else, but is the basic prin-
ciple of human sociability (Merton, 1938).
Sort’d is based on the understanding that all crime is property crime, includ-
ing violent crime. The essential characteristic of a criminal act is that it violates
rights of ownership, including the ownership of one’s own body. Although crime
is condemned as immoral and evil these theocratic forms of censure have no real
basis within the modern criminal law. The criminal law is basically a property law,
in which all human relations are governed by the law of property. Under this law
crimes of violence and sex crimes are interferences with the right of private owner-
ship to our own selves. What this means is that the criminal law is directly protect-
ing the law on which it is based, i.e. the law of property, and only indirectly
protecting the victim of crime. This indirect protection is evident from the fact that
there is no role for the victim in a criminal law trial, other than as witness, and
that the criminal law provides no meaningful form of personal recompense.1
Of course, while arguing all crimes are property crimes, not all crimes are moti-
vated by money, but money is the most symbolically powerful form of all private
property. It is, therefore, the issue of money on which the practical and theoreti-
cal aspects of the Sort’d programme concentrates. This interest in the centrality of
money is made concrete by the £500 grant to the probation students.
Based on these conceptual understandings the Sort’d project invokes a negative
rather than a positive approach to money. Modern society is based on a positive
126 Probation Journal 53(2)
appreciation of money, which suggests that money can realize our social dreams
and solve all of our social problems: a shortage of money, in either case, can be
rectified by fairer systems of income distribution. A negative critique of money
recognizes that without money human life is impossible. This dependency on
money as the unique characteristic of the modern world, is what marks the modern
world out from previous forms of human society and makes the eradication of
poverty unattainable in the current money-world. Poverty then is not a shortage
of money, but the peculiar way in which the social life of money dominates our
social world (Neary and Taylor, 1998).
This negative critique of money requires that the students consider the ways in
which this dependency on money, i.e. poverty, is imposed on populations, the ways
in which money can be acquired, i.e. work and crime, and the effects of those
acquisitive processes on all aspects of human sociability (Neary and Taylor, 1998;
Dinerstein and Neary, 2002; Neary, 2002).
In this article I set out the historical and conceptual development of this joint
community–(higher) education initiative, as a way of situating my work within the
growing critical response to the What Works project. The article demonstrates that
at the level of participant involvement, as a teaching and learning event between
the university and probation students, the project has had a significant impact on
both sets of students. However, in order for the project to work towards its overall
ambition, it is necessary that it engages workers in the probation service in a
critical debate about the real nature of probation work and its consequences. The
purpose of this debate is to enable probation practitioners and academics to work
together on progressive programmes that can challenge the fundamental assump-
tions of What Works as well as the version of the social world on which these
assumptions are based. The article argues that any engagement between...
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