Prison is lonely. Not without a sense of irony, I remember sitting in my cell with hundreds of people within a few dozen yards of me – and yet I had seldom felt more alone. Instead of a name, I had been given a number to use when required to interact with the institution for anything of any tangible significance. I had essentially been stripped of individuality. My peers and I were a mass of criminals and no sense of what might lie beyond the walls could be found by staring at the many nameless reflections I co-inhabited with. But I wasn’t, and am never going to be, a totality of my offences. Nor would my neighbour – or his! This conflict of knowing you should be more is painful when you struggle to see how.

So, how do we find humanity in a place like this? To know that you are not alone, to know that someone else feels like you, is a basis on which you can begin to imagine yourself somewhere else. For me, this came in the form of the Rock Show on National Prison Radio (NPR). Through so many different stages of my life, the one constant has been my passion for metal. It was a ‘normal’, pro-social point of connection with people – the sort of thing most people would talk about with their friends. But discussing the latest band seemed to mean more to me at times when I could find very few reasons to keep trying. Writing in to the Rock Show, knowing there were other people going through the relative ups and downs that I was, and having a platform in which to explore those things was – sometimes – the only thing I could look forward to.

The weekly show runs for two hours a time and was repeated on a Saturday evening. The other 164 hours felt like an eternity. I was stuck in my cell and my head for most of that. A conversation began between a guy on the other side of the country and myself. It took months to finish. We were suggesting our favourite drummer. Obviously, this didn't matter. Obviously, we had long sentences to serve, people we had hurt and families we had left behind … and obviously I was right.

In Part I, I outlined some of the key theories useful for informing the understanding of prison radio. Here, these ideas are used to examine the information gathered through interviews with PRA participants on their experiences of the earliest stages of prison radio development. The findings are presented in a broadly chronological order, beginning with the events immediately prior to the formation of the PRA. Rather than a purely historical analysis, the following chapters are structured around prominent discursive themes identified through the accounts: namely, the partnerships and institutional arrangements involved; and the management of perceptions and assumptions about prison radio which have influenced the process. Two case studies are used to illustrate each theme, starting with the partnership arrangements which contributed to the early growth of prison radio and shaped the development of the PRA.

This chapter focuses on a partnership project in the West Midlands region which developed prison radio beyond Radio Feltham. In particular, I examine the role of the BBC in the process and the impact of the activity on establishing and formalising the PRA. Developed through the combined influence of national broadcaster and independent prison radio activity, I argue that the PRA is representative of new forms of Public Service Broadcasting (PSB) within changing media and institutional environments, achieved in partnership, and demonstrating the enduring importance of PSB values.

The role, function and legitimacy of PSB is under threat, shown through well-documented changes in BBC culture and operations (Born 2003, 2004) within an increasingly fragmented, commercialised and digitised media landscape. Examined against a backdrop of institutional changes throughout the 1990s and 2000s, BBC involvement with prison radio is linked to renewed corporate objectives of accountability, diversity and social responsibility in the face of an ongoing need to justify public funding. However, as an independent enterprise working in partnership with state agencies, the PRA represents the innovative and accountable community engagement to which the BBC aspired. Evolving as a small, independent social enterprise, the PRA epitomises the innovation, creativity and public service values which the BBC was arguably struggling to achieve (Born 2004).

The ways in which PRA founders tell their stories informs the understanding of prison radio growth.

In 2011, Victim Support commissioned the PRA to produce a radio documentary that gave three victims of violent crime the opportunity to explain the impact of these crimes to a group of prisoners. Face to Face was first broadcast on National Prison Radio on 23 March 2012, and such was the impact that BBC Radio 4 made the rare move of re-broadcasting the programme. For producing a ground-breaking example of restorative justice in action, the PRA and Victim Support were named ‘Charity Partnership of the Year’ at the Third Sector Excellence Awards, and the hour-long documentary won the prestigious ‘Gold Sony Radio Academy Award’, with the judges describing it as “True ‘stop what you’re doing’ radio. It was a programme that had made a difference to all who had participated in it … and the judges felt privileged to have heard it” (PRA 2017a).

For those involved, the event marked a significant turning point for the PRA, representing the wider acceptance and legitimacy of prison radio outside the criminal justice field. As both Maguire and Hooper indicate, the key factor is the restorative justice focus. Through bringing the victim's voice into the equation, prison radio no longer risks being perceived as focused solely on the rights of ‘undeserving’ prisoners but also becomes a platform for victims’ expression.

In this chapter, I focus on the context, content and effects of the Face to Face programme in furthering the development of the PRA and argue that the case demonstrates the potential of prison radio to promote, facilitate and inform restorative justice practice. First, I examine the restorative justice theme within the contemporary political context before turning to the programme itself, the wider reception and its impact and significance for the PRA. Through discussion of the increasingly victim-centred reporting of crime within mainstream media, I show that prison radio not only provides a voice for prisoners, but is able to empower victims of crime. Both mainstream media and criminal justice policy continue to marginalise those affected by crime, providing limited opportunities for expression of a range of views and largely reducing victims to a homogenous, vulnerable group. In contrast, prison radio facilitates a constructive and respectful discourse which promotes greater understanding between perpetrators and victims of crime, thereby contributing to a process of reconciliation and rehabilitation.

Radio produced and broadcast behind prison walls is a unique response to the increasing global incarceration crisis, able to support people through their sentences, improve prison communications, and address the causes of recidivism through access to information. In the first study to explore the growth of radio stations in prisons, this book examines the early history of the Prison Radio Association (PRA) in the United Kingdom, the first organisation of its kind in the world. Established in 2006 to network and support individual prison radio projects, the PRA created the world's first National Prison Radio service within two years. A decade later and the organisation continues to manage and develop National Prison Radio; has established an award-winning production company; is creating media services for people on release from prison; and advises emerging prison radio stations internationally.

Focusing on the initial development of the PRA and National Prison Radio (NPR), this work examines the process through which relatively small-scale media activism, based on prisoners’ rights, came to be an intrinsic part of prison culture in the UK, playing a central role in institutional operations. It considers prison radio growth within the context of political and economic change, and argues that the successful development of an independent, prisoner-led service represents resistance against the forces of corporatisation and managerialism that have redefined the organisation and function of broadcasting, punishment and social welfare. Against a backdrop of public service privatisation and media commercialisation, the growth of the PRA illustrates the complex processes of working in partnership with institutions and agencies to give a voice to people in prison. It is a story which highlights the enduring importance of social values in broadcasting, represents new opportunities for social activism, and presents radio as a powerful force for social change.

Prison radio has emerged from a contradictory media landscape characterised by the concentration of global commercial media power on the one hand, and the democratisation and expansion of non-mainstream media on the other. As Mitzi Waltz argues, where mainstream media is shaped by corporate power, it has ‘never been less trusted by its readers and viewers’ (2005, p.1). The situation has led to an increase in non-mainstream, alternative and activist media in which radio plays a prominent role, building on a strong history of independent activism.

Throughout participant accounts of establishing the PRA and NPR, managing external misconceptions and misrepresentations emerges as a significant discursive theme, one which warrants further investigation in relation to the challenges faced by those trying to enact change within a beleaguered prison system. PRA founders described an acute awareness that negative mainstream media attention could lead to the withdrawal of institutional and political support at a critical time in the process of establishing NPR. Mistrust of mainstream media outlets is mirrored across the criminal justice sector, with scholars and practitioners recognising the simplified and negative portrayal of prison issues as a barrier to innovation and change (Sparks 2001; Di Ronco 2016). As a team of experienced media professionals, PRA founders chose to keep a low profile throughout early development, focusing instead on developing quality radio for a unique target audience and only producing outside media campaigns on their own terms, based on major achievements.

The role of mainstream media in creating and sustaining moral panics around crime and punishment is well documented (Hall et al 2013 [1978]; Howitt 1998, pp.25–27; Jewkes 2015), leading to a mistrust among criminal justice practitioners, scholars and activists (Barak 1988; Di Ronco 2016). This position is addressed in Barak's ‘Newsmaking Criminology’ theory which calls for criminologists to directly engage with mass media, highlighting the role they can play in creating more realistic representations of the social, political and economic conditions of crime and crime control (Barak 1988, p.566). However, today's dispersed and democratised media landscape provides increased opportunities to both disrupt and create newsmaking processes. This chapter uses the PRA experience to illustrate the ways in which criminal justice practitioners, scholars and activists can bypass simplistic, dramatic mass media representations of prison issues and contribute to the production of alternative discourses, shifting the prison narrative from failure to positive change.

The PRA experience illustrates the problematic relationship between mainstream media and prison practice. Its subsequent response demonstrates the potential to reclaim media power through producing more realistic and nuanced representations of prisons and prisoners. First, the PRA position is used to examine the interplay between media and public opinion, and the resulting impact on criminal justice policy and practice.

Introduction

Global warming continues to radically transform the world as we presently know it. These changes encompass multiple social and ecological dimensions; among these are species extinctions, major shifts in wind and water currents, reductions in the pool of fresh water reserves worldwide, and the migration of human and non-human populations around the globe (IPCC, 2014). Specific ecosystems are being fundamentally altered and the Earth as a whole is entering a new period of unbalance and rebalance. In this process, there are many casualties.

This chapter defines and describes the concept ‘ecocide’ (which refers to destruction of ecological systems and habitats). This includes the everyday activities that contribute to climate change and thus to ecocide on a larger and small scale. As part of this discussion it introduces the notion of state–corporate nexus by examining how industries (such as the energy, food and tourism industries), supported and abetted by governments, contribute to global warming.

The chapter also discusses denial and the use of techniques of neutralisation in regard of public debates over climate change, and the specific nature of ‘contrarianism’ as a conscious self-interested resistance to needed mitigation and adaptation strategies. It concludes by exploring the concept of ‘paradoxical harm’ – those harms that emerge because of the adoption of measures that from the very beginning, were never designed to address the essential causes of global warming.

Ecocide as a crime

Anthropocentrically driven changes in climate that negatively affect humans, eco-systems and non-human species (plants and animals) can be conceptualised criminologically as a specific sort of crime. Justice in this case is defined not so much by how we respond to harm, but by how we broadly define it to begin with. In this instance, the harm manifests in ways that differentially, unequally and universally affect the non-living but sustaining systems of Planet Earth and its inhabitants.

The term ecocide is used to conceptualise this harm-defining process. Ecocide has been defined as ‘the extensive damage, destruction to or loss of ecosystems of a given territory, whether by human agency or by other causes, to such an extent that peaceful enjoyment by the inhabitants of that territory has been severely diminished’ (Higgins, 2012: 3). Where this occurs as a result of human agency, then it is purported that a crime of ecocide has occurred.

Introduction

Global warming is rapidly changing the ecological and social landscape of the planet. These changes are profound and far-reaching. From the point of view of Climate Change Criminology several questions warrant close consideration. Answers to these questions also have implications for how to interpret the role and actions of different elements of the criminal justice system.

With regard to mitigation, for example, the issue is what can be done to reduce the contributing causes of climate change. The obvious and science-based answer is to diminish greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). This could and arguably should involve the criminalisation of carbon emissions and the forced shutdown of dirty industries.

With regard to adaptation, the issue is what can be done to enable communities and species to adapt and survive climate change? One answer is, at the very least, to ensure that harm is explicitly acknowledged in public policy. This could and should involve recognition of victimisation and some type of compensation and reparation.

This chapter provides an overview of how criminal justice institutions are responding to climate change. This entails description of court cases intended to bolster the reduction of carbon emissions and the overall role of climate change litigation in the pursuit of climate justice. The greening of the institutions of criminal justice (police, courts, prisons, community corrections) also is examined. So too is the role of the police in dealing with environmental protest and direct action, as is the place of climate change victims in the wider criminal justice narrative. The chapter concludes by raising issues pertaining to the holding to account of those who do most to cause and perpetuate global warming.

Litigation in support of climate justice

Climate change litigation involves cases being brought before administrative and judicial bodies that raise issues of law or fact regarding the science of climate change and climate change mitigation and adaption efforts (UNEP, 2017). Over the past few years several key trends have been identified in climate change litigation (see Table 7.1). While most of these cases are civil and rarely criminal, they nonetheless are directed at addressing the ecocidal tendencies associated with climate change. To that end, they deal with matters of fundamental ecological and social harm – key considerations of Climate Change Criminology.

Climate Change Criminology is the fifth title in the New Horizons in Criminology book series. The series is home for concise authoritative texts that are international in scope and reflect cutting-edge thought and theoretical developments in criminology. They are short, accessible books written so that the nonspecialist can understand them, by explaining principles and developments clearly before going deeper into the subject. The books are written by leading authors in their fields and I was delighted when Rob White agreed to contribute on the subject climate change criminology. Climate change is possibly the most important issue we face and warrants far greater prominence across the full breadth of criminology. It is certainly a topic that is not going to go away in a hurry. Rob is a prolific author and a leading authority on green criminology. For instance, his many publications include books on Crimes Against Nature (2008), Transnational Environmental Crime (2011), Environmental Harm (2014) and Green Criminology (2014, with Diane Heckenberg).

This book is significant as it is the first to suggest a distinct ‘climate change criminology’, yet it draws on a rich history of green and critical scholarship. Rob suggests this new book is not polemical, but hopes it provides ‘an interesting, considered, thought-provoking and passionate account of Climate Change Criminology’ and a call for criminology to ‘join us in the fight for climate justice’ by addressing some of the most pressing concerns facing the planet.

The book considers a wide range of topics, including global warming, ecocide, heat and criminality and environmental catastrophe. It looks at the victims of climate change in the global north and south, and both human and non-human. And in asking who is responsible for climate change, it examines the ‘criminals’ – with a special focus on carbon criminals. Here there is much to interest scholars of state and corporate harms and crimes. The book also explores both criminal justice and criminological responses to climate change.

For some, issues of climate change may seem a distant threat; yet crises of energy production, pollution, food production and distribution mean it is an issue of social justice and inequality for today. As Rob highlights, for those living on the islands of Tuvalu, the Maldives and Kiribati, rises in sea levels mean concerns are focused on survival.

Introduction

Studies of the nexus between climate change and crime tend to focus on either the consequences of climate change for crime (that is, climate change leads to certain sorts of crime), or the causes of global warming (that is, certain sorts of behaviour lead to climate change).

Across a range of studies, different levels of analysis are apparent. Those focusing on individual-level explanations (such as psychobiological responses to temperature change) appear to have most relevance for adaptation strategies (that is, how to respond to climate change). Approaches that focus on structural level causes tend to be more concerned with issues of mitigation (that is, how to prevent climate change) and are more critical of entrenched policies and power structures. This chapter discusses studies that deal with the consequences of climate change, including but not exclusively from criminological perspectives.

The chapter begins by providing several initial typologies of climate change offences. It then examines mainstream criminological accounts that focus attention on the relationship between temperature changes and human behaviour. It describes literature that argues that crime rates change as temperatures increase. It also looks at the impact of climate change on human (and non-human) migrations, and more generally the social strains likely to accompany climate change – and how these translate into particular kinds of crimes and violations of human rights. The final section examines crimes linked to responses to climate change, in particular crimes stemming from and associated with the market in carbon emission credits.

Heat matters

The realities of climate change are acknowledged, to some degree, by the fact that the countries of the world are united in their stated attempts to prevent temperatures rising beyond certain limits. The sole exception to this (as of November 2017) is the United States of America. Member states of the United Nations have, in the Paris Agreement (United Nations, 2015), agreed to strengthen the global response to climate change by among other means holding the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels (United Nations, 2015: Article 2.1 (a)). It is recognised that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change.

Introduction

Social division features greatly in any discussion of climate change justice and victimisation. It is the disadvantaged (those living in poverty), the vulnerable (the very young and the very old) and the dispossessed (Indigenous peoples subjected to colonisation) who are most likely to suffer the worst effects of global warming. These divisions are overlaid by entrenched disparities based upon class division, gender differences and inequalities based upon ‘race’ (a social rather than biological construction) and ethnicity.

The overarching structural basis for unequal power relations worldwide is global capitalism, a system that is intrinsically based upon exploitation of humans (as workers and consumers) and non-human animals and environmental entities (rivers, trees and mountains). Plundering the planet is ingrained in the political economy of late capitalism. Along with the human victims, there is also destruction of ecosystems, places, and flora and fauna. The core elements of life itself are under attack.

This chapter considers the notion of victimhood as this pertains to climate change. Consideration is given to both human and non-human environmental victims. Special attention is paid to the vulnerability of children and how this fits with notions of intergenerational equity. The particular circumstances and plight of Indigenous peoples globally are also critically examined.

Not all victims or forms of victimisation are considered. Rather, the intent is to broach important areas for investigation by Climate Change Criminology, without implying that specific and additional analysis of phenomena such as gender and victimisation, victimisation related to disability, and other forms of victimisation do not likewise deserve concentrated attention.

Human and non-human environmental victims

Green or environmental victimology refers to the study of the social processes and institutional responses pertaining to victims of environment crime (White, 2015a). Typically, it is humans who are the primary focus of such study (Hall, 2013). Recent criminological commentary, however, has placed attention on non-human animals as ‘victims’ (Flynn and Hall, 2017) as well as other non-human environmental entities (White, 2018).

For Climate Change Criminology, environmental victimisation is not a solely human or non-human animal experience but incorporates these other considerations as well. Rivers, mountains, animals and plants, and specific ecosystems, for instance, can all be considered ‘victims’ in particular circumstances (Preston, 2011; Cullinan, 2003).

Introduction

What distinguishes critical criminology from mainstream criminology is its concern with structures of power. These are seen to be institutionalised in particular ways, and to reflect social interests that oppress specific categories of people. In other words, critical criminology is premised on the idea that the present operation of the criminal justice system is unfair and biased, and operates in ways that advantage certain groups or classes above others (McLaughlin, 2010). Given policy and practice developments in regard to climate change, it is unsurprising that Climate Change Criminology shares several essential concerns with critical criminology more generally.

The focus of analysis for critical criminology is both the crimes of the powerful and the crimes of the less powerful. In examining the crimes of the powerful, attention is directed at issues relating to ideology (especially, the nature of ‘law-and-order’ politics, which focuses primarily on street crimes), political economy (the social impacts of privatisation and market forces), and the state (dictatorial and top-down rather than democratic modes of rule, and criminal actions by the state itself). The structural context of crime in relation to capitalist development and institutional pressures is viewed as central to any explanation of crimes of the powerful (Russell, 2002). For the powerful, there are pressures associated with the securing and maintenance of state power and specific sectional interests in the global context of international trade and transnational corporate monopolisation (Coleman et al, 2009).

This chapter asks the question, ‘Who is responsible for climate change?’ In answering this, it frames the issues in terms of crimes of the powerful (especially corporate and state crime). Systemic destruction of the environment is discussed in terms of global capitalism. The agents of this destruction are particular transnational corporations. The chapter raises the issue of responsibility and accountability, arguing that specific perpetrators can be identified and should be considered ‘criminal’ in the light of their acts and omissions.

Capitalism and the growth imperative

The systemic pressures associated with the global capitalist mode of production inevitably lead to the exploitation of humans, eco-systems and species, and the degradation of the environment via pollution and waste, as well as global warming and climate change. The problem is the dominant political economic system.

Introduction

The predictions of catastrophe have been realised in many places around the earth – already. These take the form of sporadic events such as cyclones and droughts. They also feature as longer-term or even permanent changes in living conditions stemming from, for example, rising sea levels. The problem is not ‘natural disasters’ as such, since these are an inevitable part of habitation on a living planet. Rather, it is the scale, frequency and intensity that matters, as well as the capacity of individuals and communities to predict, adapt to and respond after such events.

This chapter examines the consequences of climate change from the point of view of disasters and their consequences for specific interest and population groups. It does this in several ways. A key focus is the social intersections that become apparent in such events. For example, the climatic and weather events that form the backdrop to present conflicts in places such as Syria are discussed, as are the gendered vulnerabilities evident in disaster situations such as cyclones and tsunami. Social conflicts stemming from climate change are then elaborated as a more general and increasingly likely scenario. In response to real and perceived threats and risk linked to climate change, issues of security are already generating angst among policy-makers and military planners. The securitisation of natural resources, to the detriment of others, is emerging as an important climate-related issue, especially in regard to food, water, land and air quality.

Disasters and criminality

Those who are most vulnerable to the effects of climate change are those who are most likely to be vulnerable to events such as droughts, floods and cyclones. The conventional approach to disasters is to see them as ‘natural’ (and includes such things as earthquakes, volcanoes and floods) or human-caused (relating to fires, explosions and oil spills) (see Picou et al, 2009). In the context of major global changes in climate change, biodiversity and pollution, this presumption may no longer be warranted.