A pedagogy of ‘public criminology’ as a counter to marginality? Lessons for community sanctions and measures from the Pedagogy of the Oppressed
| Published date | 01 June 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/02645505221105394 |
| Author | Matt Tidmarsh |
| Date | 01 June 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
A pedagogy of ‘public
criminology’as a
counter to marginality?
Lessons for community
sanctions and
measures from the
Pedagogy of the
Oppressed
Matt Tidmarsh
University of Leeds, UK
Abstract
As a subject of study in higher education, criminology has never been more popular;
and yet, criminologists occupy an increasingly marginal position within political and
media spheres. This marginalisation has arguably been to the detriment of those
with lived experience of the criminal justice system, an oppressed class whose number
has grown exponentially after several decadesof a ‘tough on crime’consensus on crim-
inality. While much research focuses upon the impacts on imprisonment, an emergent
literature has highlighted how individuals experience community sanctions and mea-
sures (CSM). This articleutilises Paulo Freire’sPedagogyof the Oppressed to accentuate
the transformative potential of teaching and learning practises within criminology, and
CSM in particular. Itapplies his writings to the literature on‘public criminology’,aper-
spective that aims to render the field more transparent, applied, evidence-based,
empowering, and committed to social justice. Drawing from personal reflections as
an ‘academic criminologist’engaged in teaching and research on CSM, the article
advocates for a ‘pedagogy of public criminology’that empowers students, as future
criminal justiceprofessionals, with the skills to be public-facing, active, and criticalsub-
jects who can make a difference in the lives of individuals subject to CSM.
Corresponding Author:
Matt Tidmarsh, School of Law, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS29JT, UK.
Email: m.j.tidmarsh@leeds.ac.uk
Article The Journal of Communit
y
and Criminal Justice
Probation Journal
2023, Vol. 70(2) 179–198
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/02645505221105394
journals.sagepub.com/home/prb
Keywords
public criminology, pedagogy, marginality, probation, community sanctions and
measures, freire
Introduction
Paulo Freire’s (1970/2017) Pedagogy of the Oppressed has proved a hugely
important text for the development of teaching and learning practises in higher edu-
cation (Ludlow et al., 2019). His criticism of the ‘banking model’of learning, of the
‘fundamentally narrative character’(Freire, 1970/2017: 44; emphasis in original)
of the teacher-student relationship, has been particularly influential. This ‘humanist’
model of education assumes that knowledge is an unqualified ‘good’; a gift
bequeathed by teachers to students, who are presented as ‘containers’to be
‘filled’. To counter the banking model, Freire (1970/2017) called for a dialogic
approach in which teachers become students and students become teachers.
Trusting in the oppressed as people who also ‘know things’(Freire, 1970/2017)
and engaging in praxis,orreflection and action, could produce meaningful
transformation.
Freire’s (1970/2017) ideas were forged in the radicalism of South American
class politics in the 1960s. His observations on the ‘oppressed’(and, by extension,
the identity of the ‘oppressors’) are not necessarily transferable to contemporary
teaching and learning in higher education. For a field of study such as criminology,
however, it is possible to identify an ‘oppressed’class –that is, the individuals whose
lives are transformed by the harms perpetuated by the criminal justice system
(McNeill, 2019). Recently, scholars have highlighted how the lack of influence of
criminologists within policy-making spheres has contributed to such oppression
(Uggen and Inderbitzen, 2010). There is a chasm between the rehabilitative
approaches advocated by most criminologists and the punitive reality of many
Western criminal justice systems (Currie, 2007), including those in the UK. The
resultant rise of ‘mass imprisonment’(Garland, 2001) has occupied much crimino-
logical attention, which has meant the attendant ‘mass supervision’(McNeill, 2019)
of those subject to ‘community sanctions and measures’(CSM) has been relatively
underexplored. This is despite those subject to CSM far outweighing those impri-
soned in many jurisdictions (Aebi et al., 2015; Phelps, 2017). In England and
Wales, for example, there are approximately 78,000 imprisoned individuals, com-
pared to 224,000 on the probation caseload (MoJ, 2021). This implies a crimino-
logical hierarchy of marginalisation in which CSM have been rendered largely
invisible; they are ‘the “Cinderella”of the field’(Robinson, 2016: 96).
Such marginalisation is despite the popularity of criminology as a subject of
study: an increasing number of young people are drawn onto university courses
through media representations of criminality (Uggen and Inderbitzen, 2010).
Indeed, the demand for criminology courses has arguably been driven by a
failure to challenge distorted media portrayals of crime (Crepault, 2017). With a
focus on the sub-field of CSM, and probation in particular, this article takes
180 Probation Journal 70(2)
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