Excavating the archive: Reflections on a historical criminology of government, penal policy and criminal justice change
| DOI | 10.1177/1748895818810333 |
| Date | 01 February 2020 |
| Published date | 01 February 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1748895818810333
Criminology & Criminal Justice
2020, Vol. 20(1) 76 –92
© The Author(s) 2018
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/1748895818810333
journals.sagepub.com/home/crj
Excavating the archive:
Reflections on a historical
criminology of government,
penal policy and criminal
justice change
Thomas Guiney
London School of Economics and Political Science, UK
Abstract
This article makes the case for greater use of systematic archival research as a methodological
tool of criminology. Drawing upon insights from the author’s 2018 historical study of ‘early
release’ in England and Wales, it reviews the legal framework underpinning the current ‘right
of access’ to official records and demonstrates how greater engagement with this underused
public resource can reveal a richer understanding of penal policy making and the continuities
and dislocations within contemporary criminal justice. It goes on to consider the methodological
challenges of gaining access to historical sources in criminological settings and concludes with
a number of reflections upon the evolution of the discipline at a time of digital abundance and
significant changes in government record keeping.
Keywords
Archival research, freedom of information, historical criminology, parole, penal policy, social
research methods
Introduction
In 2017/2018, the Parole Board organized a series of events to mark the 50th anniversary
of the parole system in England and Wales. This milestone provided a rare opportunity for
academics, and the wider policy-making community, to step back from everyday con-
cerns and compare contemporary policy and practice against the methods of a previous
generation of criminal justice actors. Reflecting upon this moment of institutional
Corresponding author:
Thomas Guiney, Mannheim Centre for Criminology, London School of Economics and Political Science,
London, WC2A 2AE, UK.
Email: t.c.guiney@lse.ac.uk
810333CRJ0010.1177/1748895818810333Criminology & Criminal JusticeGuiney
research-article2018
Article
Guiney 77
reflexivity the then Chairman of the Parole Board, Professor Nick Hardwick, alluded to
the complex picture of continuity and change that characterizes our perception of time and
cultural construction of ‘the past’:
Fifty years is a long time in the life time of any organisation – but perhaps less so for the Parole
Board than other organisations. We deal with the legacies of the past. We have a parole review
coming up for a man who has been in prison since he was first sentenced in January 1967 –
before the Parole Board was first established. Were he to be released, imagine how the world
has changed since he was last free. (Parole Board, 2017)
This insight captures something of the value of a historical criminology. Even the events
of a single lifetime can underline the contingency of seemingly stable social structures
and prompt us to re-examine taken for granted ideas and assumptions about the world we
inhabit. For this reason, ‘distilling the frenzy’ (Hennessy, 2012) of contemporary events
can help to focus our attention on the changing aims and techniques of government as
well as the ideas, tensions and struggles that re-shaped penal policy in the latter half of
the 20th century. Greater sensitivity to history and our embeddedness within these com-
plex developmental trajectories encourages a more productive dialogue between crimi-
nology and historical sources of evidence (Godfrey et al., 2008; Sewell, 2006). But, what
should this look like in practice? How do we acquire knowledge of the contemporary
history of criminal justice?
Drawing upon insights from the author’s recent historical study of ‘early release’ in
England and Wales (Guiney, 2018) this article makes the case for greater use of system-
atic archival research as a tool of criminology and reviews the practical challenges of
applying these methodological tools in ‘real world’ research settings (Gunn and Faire,
2012). It will proceed as follows: First, it considers the continuing relevance of contem-
porary historical analysis by way of a short case study of the Parole Board of England
and Wales. Second, it explores the potential of systematic archival research as a natural
methodological counterpart to a grounded historical criminology. Third, it reflects upon
the methodological challenges of archival research in contemporary historical settings,
with particular reference to the current legislative framework underpinning the public
right of access. Fourth, it examines the evolution of the discipline at a time of digital
abundance and significant changes in record-keeping practices within central govern-
ment departments from the early 1990s onwards. The article concludes with a call for
greater exchange between archivists, civil servants and academic researchers to unlock
the full potential of this underused public resource.
An Uncertain Inheritance: The Parole Board of England
and Wales
Harold Wilson once observed that a ‘week is a long time in politics’ and the events that
came to define the 50th anniversary of the Parole Board for England and Wales in
2017/2018 offer a timely case study of why detailed excavation of archival sources still
matters. In 2009, John Worboys was found guilty of 19 sexual offences against 12 vic-
tims. He received an indeterminate sentence for public protection (IPP) and was ordered
To continue reading
Request your trial