Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Sociology Show podcast. My guest
Speaker 1: for this episode is Dr Jennifer Fleetwood talking about her
Speaker 1: book What we talk About When we talk about Crime.
Speaker 1: Before you listen to this, you might want to have
Speaker 1: a look at some of the case studies that Jennifer
Speaker 1: talks about. So her book covers seven famous case studies.
Speaker 1: Some of these people you will have heard of, but
Speaker 1: if you haven't, you might want to go and look
Speaker 1: them up find out a little bit about them before
Speaker 1: you listen to the episode. So, these seven different case
Speaker 1: studies that Jennifer covers in her books are about Howard Marx,
Speaker 1: Shemima begam Mo, Farrah Prince, Andrew Chanelle Miller, The Criminal Podcast,
Speaker 1: and Myra Hindley. So if you do want to do
Speaker 1: a little bit of googling, have a look at some
Speaker 1: of those case studies. If you're not sure who they
Speaker 1: are or aware of their case study at all, have
Speaker 1: a quick look at those before you have a listen
Speaker 1: to the episode. And so, without further ado, let's go
Speaker 1: over to the episode with Dr Jennifer Fleetwood. Hi, you're
Speaker 1: listening to The Sociology Show, a podcast about absolutely anything
Speaker 1: to do with the wonderful world of sociology. Whether you're
Speaker 1: a teacher, a lecturer, a student, or just taking a
Speaker 1: passing interest, This podcast will look at a range of
Speaker 1: issues from social class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, crime, education,
Speaker 1: and anything else that sociology has to offer. My name
Speaker 1: is Matthew Wilkin. In each episode, I will speak to
Speaker 1: someone working in the field of sociology and let them
Speaker 1: explain all about their own interests, their research, and their experiences.
Speaker 1: So put your ear botes in, turn the volume up,
Speaker 1: and let's be sociology geeks together. H Hello, and welcome
Speaker 1: to the Sociology Show podcast. Would you like to start
Speaker 1: by telling us a little bit about who you are
Speaker 1: and what you do?
Speaker 2: Please, Good afternoon, Matthew. I'm Jennifer Fleetwood. I'm a senior
Speaker 2: lecturer in criminology at the University of Greenwich, sociologist and
Speaker 2: a criminologist and interested in stories, especially.
Speaker 3: Where they relate to crime.
Speaker 2: And I'm also interested in things around women in drugs,
Speaker 2: so I guess a mix of different things that keep
Speaker 2: me busy.
Speaker 1: Thank you, and your previous book. We're going to talk
Speaker 1: about that nine books that your previous book was Drug
Speaker 1: Mules wasn't it Women in the international co kind trade? Fascinting? Now,
Speaker 1: do you want tell us a little bit about that
Speaker 1: before we move on to your new book.
Speaker 3: Sure.
Speaker 2: So the Drug Mules book came out from my PhD,
Speaker 2: and it took it took me a long time to write.
Speaker 2: I think there's this idea that as academics we can
Speaker 2: just bash at.
Speaker 3: A book quickly.
Speaker 2: But maybe some people can, but for me, definitely not.
Speaker 2: And that book was based on a chunk of ethnographic
Speaker 2: research in prisons and Ecuador, so I would visit people
Speaker 2: in prison. There were lots and lots of people there
Speaker 2: incarcerated for drug trafficking offenses. And my PhD was really
Speaker 2: specifically women. Kind of grew out of my interest in
Speaker 2: gender actually as a student of sociology, and I was
Speaker 2: interested in how and whether gender mattered in the drug trade.
Speaker 3: So it turned into.
Speaker 2: A book about drug trafficking and how people got involved.
Speaker 2: But one of the things that I was so struck by,
Speaker 2: actually with spending time in men's and women's prisons was
Speaker 2: how differently they were able to speak about their.
Speaker 3: Involvement in the drug trade. Right.
Speaker 2: So in the women's prison, I was told everyone here
Speaker 2: is a drug MUO, nobody knows anything, whereas in the
Speaker 2: men's prison, I was told everybody here seemed to claim
Speaker 2: to be some sort of a boss or an authority,
Speaker 2: or they had something to teach me. And I just thought,
Speaker 2: it can't be that stark that women don't know anything
Speaker 2: and men know everything. So I was kind of interested
Speaker 2: in probing how and why women found it so difficult
Speaker 2: to talk about crime and men seemed to find it
Speaker 2: so easy to claim expertise. So that book, I guess,
Speaker 2: is where my interest in stories and talk about crime
Speaker 2: first developed. But it's also a story about how people
Speaker 2: get involved in the drug trade and what they do
Speaker 2: and how that's shaped by their gender in particular.
Speaker 1: Thank you, and so you're really interesting stories. I mean,
Speaker 1: before we get into a new but what's kind of
Speaker 1: your methodology?
Speaker 2: Then?
Speaker 1: Do you do a lot of unstructured interviews?
Speaker 2: So for the Drug Trafficking book, the method was really
Speaker 2: just trying to eke out time to allow people to
Speaker 2: tell a story, which sounds like quite a straightforward thing,
Speaker 2: Like you know, you may be thinking, we just whack on,
Speaker 2: whack out the tape recorder, ask a couple of questions
Speaker 2: and bosh, off we go, but actually in the women's prison,
Speaker 2: there was a real challenge in getting women to talk
Speaker 2: about drug trafficking. So for me, there was a long
Speaker 2: time of that kind of ethnographic immersion of getting to
Speaker 2: know people, of getting their trust, and allowing them to
Speaker 2: tell different kinds of stories about themselves.
Speaker 3: So I might go in looking for.
Speaker 2: An interview about drug traffcking, but often they wanted to
Speaker 2: talk about other things too, So there was a long
Speaker 2: process of really making time and space to listen to
Speaker 2: this stories that were important to them, and also making
Speaker 2: space so that they could kind of talk without judgment
Speaker 2: about their involvement in the drug trade in ways that
Speaker 2: were a little bit messy sometimes. I mean maybe messy
Speaker 2: is the wrong word, but for women, there wasn't much
Speaker 2: kind of social space, I guess, for them to talk
Speaker 2: about their involvement in the drug business and anything other
Speaker 2: than kind of talking about regret and shame. And I
Speaker 2: wanted to collect those stories because they're true and important,
Speaker 2: but I also wanted to allow space for maybe people
Speaker 2: to tell other kinds of stories about moments of pride
Speaker 2: actually or exhilaration or joy, or nervousness or anxiety or contradiction.
Speaker 2: So I guess that project was ethnographic and it was
Speaker 2: also about unstructured interviews. So the question I would always
Speaker 2: start with was tell me how you got here, which
Speaker 2: isn't a question about crime at all. Actually, it's really
Speaker 2: a question about inviting people to talk about biography and
Speaker 2: theirselves and to kind of foreground the stories they thought
Speaker 2: were important.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's also a question that allows people to
Speaker 3: start the.
Speaker 2: Story and end it where they want to, which I
Speaker 2: think is really fun. Shall I talk about the methodology
Speaker 2: for the current book as well?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean that would be great. I mean
Speaker 1: I've just introduced the current book and what we talk
Speaker 1: about when we talk about crime, So yeah, go for it.
Speaker 1: Jennifer tell us about that one.
Speaker 2: So the current book's a bit different in that I
Speaker 2: didn't meet any of the people whose stories I'm looking at.
Speaker 2: But I think there's something important about putting stories in context.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: So, in the same way that I was interested in
Speaker 2: how the prison as institution and gender as another kind
Speaker 2: of institution shape people's stories, I wanted to try and
Speaker 2: read people's stories in context. So in the book, what
Speaker 2: we talk about when we talk about crime, we're looking
Speaker 2: at at examples of well known personal stories about crime
Speaker 2: in public. My editor was really keen that they'd be
Speaker 2: well known ones to catch people's attention.
Speaker 3: But it looks at things.
Speaker 2: Like criminal biography, Howard Marx's book Mister Nice, Shamima Beggham's
Speaker 2: Times Interview, more far and made a documentary with the
Speaker 2: BBC about his experience of human trafficking. I also looked
Speaker 2: at Prince Andrew's News and Night interview, and there's a
Speaker 2: few more after that. There's also a chapter looking at
Speaker 2: some of my Rhindley's writing. So what I would do
Speaker 2: is sit down with the story as I would much
Speaker 2: with an interview, and kind of read it really carefully
Speaker 2: and attentively. And Catherine color Reisman in her book about
Speaker 2: narrative analysis, she gives us one question, which is why
Speaker 2: was the story told that way? And it's such a
Speaker 2: lovely open way of doing analysis, of kind of interpreting,
Speaker 2: and then to kind of flesh out the stuff about context.
Speaker 2: I just read around stories as much as I could,
Speaker 2: and this is the joy I think of using well
Speaker 2: known examples is that there's so much available, especially online.
Speaker 2: So for example, for Shamima Begam's Times Interview, Andrew Lloyd.
Speaker 2: I'm now questioning whether I've got his name right, but
Speaker 2: I think I have. Andrew Lloyd did. He did interviews
Speaker 2: with GQ magazine, He took part in podcasts. He wrote
Speaker 2: his own story for The Times about quote unquote finding Shamima.
Speaker 2: So there was loads of background information as well as
Speaker 2: reports produced by non governmental organizations, but the conditions in
Speaker 2: the camps. There was subsequent interviews with Shmima Begam. So
Speaker 2: it's just taking that interview as the kind of the
Speaker 2: central point, I guess, and then fleshing out all the
Speaker 2: way around it kind of the context for the stories
Speaker 2: as much as could be known, and that took a
Speaker 2: different form I think for each of those different kinds
Speaker 2: of stories. So for the Myra Hindley chapter involved lots
Speaker 2: of digging deeply in prison regulations actually, which was unexpected.
Speaker 1: Was that difficult in terms of the validity of some
Speaker 1: of the sources, you know, what you had to wade
Speaker 1: through to get to the the accurate stuff, if you like.
Speaker 2: It's a really it's a really interesting question because I
Speaker 2: think when we think about narrative, there's a tendency to
Speaker 2: kind of bracket off reality almost because we tend to
Speaker 2: focus on how stories make meanings of that reality. And
Speaker 2: I think you just kind of need to take everything
Speaker 2: in context a little bit. I mean, when non governmental
Speaker 2: organizations like say the Children are producing a report, they're
Speaker 2: producing it with kind of particular aims in mind, which
Speaker 2: are you know, to do with campaigning and other things
Speaker 2: and fundraising perhaps as well and as also kind of
Speaker 2: justifying the work that they do as an important NGO.
Speaker 2: But it also offers these little glimpses of what life
Speaker 2: is like in the camp that just to help me
Speaker 2: kind of flesh things out a little bit more so,
Speaker 2: I think questions about validity.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I struggle with this a little bit. I know that
Speaker 2: it's a key I and sociology, But when I think
Speaker 2: when it comes to personal stories, we don't just we
Speaker 2: don't just lie or make things up most of the time,
Speaker 2: I think there's I guess I'd say there's always a
Speaker 2: kind of knob of truth there if we look for it,
Speaker 2: and as long as we're taking it in context and
Speaker 2: reading carefully and thinking about what does it really say,
Speaker 2: what's it really about?
Speaker 3: I don't know. I guess I struggle with validity.
Speaker 2: It does my head it's difficult.
Speaker 1: It's a mindfield, isn't it.
Speaker 3: Really? It really really is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I mean the sort of basic principle of
Speaker 1: what you're talking about across the seven cases that you've
Speaker 1: mentioned is that in all of these cases that the
Speaker 1: people have gone public, they're telling their story, Whereas once
Speaker 1: upon a time this wasn't necessarily the case. A lot
Speaker 1: of a criminal activity was sort of part of the
Speaker 1: underworld or was not discussed or is not mainstream. So
Speaker 1: what kind of ideas did you undercover in terms of
Speaker 1: why people are much more willing to get their story
Speaker 1: out there than they would have been the past.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think for me that's the real question behind
Speaker 2: the book. I think one I hope to explore by
Speaker 2: looking at these different case studies was a sense of
Speaker 2: how do we get here? How are the how do
Speaker 2: these stories come to be told? And I think there's
Speaker 2: not really one answer that's such as sociological kind of
Speaker 2: stereotypically sociological answer, isn't there like, well, there's not one answer.
Speaker 2: But there's loads of drivers in play, I think, and
Speaker 2: some of them are super recent and short, and some
Speaker 2: of them have these kind of super long historical roots.
Speaker 2: I think one of the most recent is probably to
Speaker 2: do with things like social media and podcasts that just
Speaker 2: do this thing of making space for personal stories to
Speaker 2: be told at length in a way that I can't
Speaker 2: imagine them being told on other media. So I think,
Speaker 2: is it Sean Atwood? He has a podcast where he
Speaker 2: interviews lots of criminals of repute, usually after they've done time,
Speaker 2: like East End gangsters and so on. But those interviews
Speaker 2: can last like three hours and they're really long, and
Speaker 2: they're really in depth, and I can't think of any
Speaker 2: other media where those kinds of stories would be told.
Speaker 2: And the other thing with social media is that it
Speaker 2: has this way of finding kind of niche audiences for things,
Speaker 2: So it produces audiences and it produces kind of space.
Speaker 2: And then I think there's also something to do with
Speaker 2: changes in criminal justice and the ways that tech personal
Speaker 2: testimony has heard, and I think that particularly applies to
Speaker 2: victim stories. And I read this beautiful book called The
Speaker 2: Era of the Witness by a French philosopher historian called
Speaker 2: Via Vorca.
Speaker 3: That it's beautiful.
Speaker 2: She describes the ways that testimony in World War Two
Speaker 2: by people in ghettos, people experiencing the Holocaust was kind
Speaker 2: of written and shared in these really limited ways because
Speaker 2: for people who survived the Holocaust, there was this huge
Speaker 2: amount of shame attached to it. Actually, so these stories
Speaker 2: that now we think of it is like, well, they're
Speaker 2: so well known, they're taught that we have, you know,
Speaker 2: world Holocaust and other things. And she draws out the
Speaker 2: ways that the Eichmann trial produced a platform for these testamenties,
Speaker 2: these personal stories that previously had this kind of shame
Speaker 2: attached them, and they've been told only amongst these small circles,
Speaker 2: and that kind of sends out ripples in criminal justice.
Speaker 2: And then in the eighties we see the introduction of
Speaker 2: victim personal statements or victim impact statements as they're sometimes known.
Speaker 2: And one of the chapters looks at our famous example
Speaker 2: of that a woman who it was published at the
Speaker 2: time on Buzzbeed actually where she was Emily Doe, I think,
Speaker 2: and she's now come out publicly her name is Janelle Miller,
Speaker 2: and she's written her own autobiography about how that story
Speaker 2: was told. So there's these things in media. There's something
Speaker 2: to do with criminal justice. I think there's something also
Speaker 2: in the air about therapy. So over the course of decades,
Speaker 2: we've kind of seen a therapy kind of going mainstream.
Speaker 2: So the idea that talk is good, or talk is
Speaker 2: a way to healing or justice has kind of become mainstream.
Speaker 2: And I think often people look to tell a story
Speaker 2: when an injustice has been done in the hope that
Speaker 2: it will kind of reveal that injustice, maybe gain public
Speaker 2: sympathy or empathy, or produce some kind of change, either
Speaker 2: in society at large or in the particulars of their case.
Speaker 3: So there's different things.
Speaker 2: In the air I think to do with sort of technology, culture,
Speaker 2: justice institutions, and all of those are in play.
Speaker 3: I think.
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Speaker 1: Of the show. So I was just looking at, you know,
Speaker 1: of just seven different case studies that you did. I
Speaker 1: can totally understand the sort of cathartic way in which
Speaker 1: sharing stories such as Chanelle Miller who just mentioned, or
Speaker 1: maybe the mo Fara story on ones such as Howard Marx,
Speaker 1: you know, on that one, is there something slightly different
Speaker 1: going on there? This is going to sound really pessimistic,
Speaker 1: but is it an opportunity for fame? It's what I'm
Speaker 1: trying to get that.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, So I love I love writing the chapter
Speaker 2: on Howard Marx because it's such a contrast to the rest.
Speaker 2: But me is such an important example in that criminal
Speaker 2: memoir genre. It kind of sticks out against the ones
Speaker 2: that had come before it, and I think for people
Speaker 2: of my age, it had this kind of cult status.
Speaker 2: Everyone was reading. It was everyone's bookshelves. Howard Marx was
Speaker 2: invited to speak at Glastonbury and so what, Yes, I
Speaker 2: think it's the short answer. It is about kind of
Speaker 2: something to do with fame and notoriety. So whereas autobiographies,
Speaker 2: criminal autobiographies and memoir before that had been about remorse,
Speaker 2: Howard Marx's autobiography is really celebrating his identity as an outlaw,
Speaker 2: and it kind of fits with the counter culture of
Speaker 2: the nineteen nineties, kind of geezer chic.
Speaker 3: Think about Guy.
Speaker 2: Ritchie's films like Lockstock, Two Smoking Barrels. There's a kind
Speaker 2: of a glamorization of counter culture and of badness that.
Speaker 3: He played on really successfully.
Speaker 2: But I think keep in mind also that he was
Speaker 2: a graduate of Oxford, so he has this kind of
Speaker 2: status that's all that kind of working class masculinity, but
Speaker 2: not of it that allows him to be this kind
Speaker 2: of gentleman outlaw.
Speaker 1: And then I've got to ask about the Prince Andrew Well,
Speaker 1: was that one about a lot of people said the
Speaker 1: time is why is he doing this? I mean that
Speaker 1: seems the strangest of the lots to make that long.
Speaker 3: Yes, it is, isn't it?
Speaker 2: And I think for me when I was researching around this,
Speaker 2: I think his has this kind of legacy almost of
Speaker 2: the nineteen nineties chat show actually with than anything. If
Speaker 2: you think about people like Parkinson and Oprah, these kinds
Speaker 2: of interviews are about that kind of revealing of one's
Speaker 2: innermost self and a search front sort of self understanding
Speaker 2: through talking. So that idea through therapy finds its home
Speaker 2: in Rickard Lake and Oprah Winfrey.
Speaker 3: And I think it's maybe.
Speaker 2: Useful to read Prince Andrew against the Princess Diana interview
Speaker 2: panorama that she did, where she was able to was
Speaker 2: kind of backed into a corner, I guess, but she
Speaker 2: was able to give this really endearing interview where she
Speaker 2: was very honest and she revealed this kind of inner difficulty,
Speaker 2: and it's not about how she's a great princess or
Speaker 2: a kind of a public speaking role. It has this
Speaker 2: kind of confessional, intimate feeling that kind of gained her
Speaker 2: this title of the Queen of Hearts. And I think
Speaker 2: maybe Prince Andrew thought that if he would talk about things,
Speaker 2: if he would be honest and open and intimate, that
Speaker 2: people would come to understand him. And it kind of
Speaker 2: spectacularly backfires on him, which you know, I think as
Speaker 2: anyone who's seen that interview will know. So I think
Speaker 2: he thought that people would come to understand him, and.
Speaker 3: It really fails.
Speaker 2: Actually, I think in part because of the way that
Speaker 2: he talks about Epstein's victims and his failure to acknowledge them.
Speaker 2: His kind of repeated denials saying well, I didn't see anything,
Speaker 2: I never met this woman, I don't know anything, and
Speaker 2: I kind of had this undermining impact.
Speaker 3: And I think he almost.
Speaker 2: Wanted us to see him as a victim of a circumstance,
Speaker 2: and I think people just didn't.
Speaker 3: They just refused to.
Speaker 2: I think they understood him properly, somebody who was quite
Speaker 2: powerful actually, and had the power to change things had
Speaker 2: they wanted to. So this is the chapter that allows
Speaker 2: me to go back and use some sociological theory, and
Speaker 2: it's Scott A. Lineman's work on accounts, and they talk
Speaker 2: about the ways that talk isn't just a kind of
Speaker 2: a decoration on the social fabric, but it's deeply part
Speaker 2: of it. And they talk about the ways that when
Speaker 2: our behavior doesn't match expectations, we can fix that by
Speaker 2: producing a good account. And I think Prince Andrew's account
Speaker 2: was a really bad one because he failed to He
Speaker 2: failed to kind of get up an apology in a
Speaker 2: language that had any cultural resonance. So he talks, he
Speaker 2: talks repeatedly about being honorable, and I think it's just
Speaker 2: an idea that didn't resonate at all.
Speaker 3: It just was so obvious that if.
Speaker 2: He was someone who was who was honorable, who had
Speaker 2: so much honor, that he might have acted differently.
Speaker 3: I would say, And.
Speaker 1: That one you know that kind of failed spectacularly in
Speaker 1: trying to get the public to see them as a victim.
Speaker 1: But that is an underlining theme about a lot of
Speaker 1: the cases, isn't it. That is that sort of the intention,
Speaker 1: even if it's subconscious, for the public to feel empathy
Speaker 1: for the individual.
Speaker 2: I think so, yes. I mean I'm thinking about Amyra
Speaker 2: Hindley's writing, for example, I mean the time that she
Speaker 2: was writing her autobiography, she's writing in prison, so she's
Speaker 2: writing this autobiography in letters, so it exists in these
Speaker 2: kind of fragments, and I was able to get access
Speaker 2: to just one of those letters. But the reason that
Speaker 2: she comes to write about herself is that for her
Speaker 2: to be released from prison, and she had served an
Speaker 2: extraordinarily long amount of time in prison, really by that
Speaker 2: point she needed to be able to influence public opinion
Speaker 2: because at that time, to be released from prison, you
Speaker 2: needed the permission of politicians, and politicians were very, very
Speaker 2: very unwilling to go anywhere near Hindley because she had
Speaker 2: such toxic associations and the public hated her so much,
Speaker 2: And so I think for her, the explicit intention really
Speaker 2: in writing was that the public would be able to
Speaker 2: understand her better would see that she had changed and
Speaker 2: would release her. And I think it's I also think, like,
Speaker 2: could you tell a story about yourself in public where
Speaker 2: you didn't want to be liked? I think who would
Speaker 2: have the power to tell that kind of story and
Speaker 2: for to not impact them? So there is something about
Speaker 2: the fact that they're told in public. They often have
Speaker 2: a kind of a campaigning aspect of them, maybe, or
Speaker 2: people are campaigning for some kind of sympathy or some change,
Speaker 2: or that we change how we see them.
Speaker 3: Perhaps.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think Howard Marx is the most interesting
Speaker 2: in that he I think didn't really have anything to
Speaker 2: gain apart from kind of the fame and notoriety that
Speaker 2: followed the book. But none of that was really a
Speaker 2: given at that time, I don't think. But I think
Speaker 2: he was. He was probably well off enough. I'd like
Speaker 2: to imagine at that point that he wasn't relying on
Speaker 2: the sales of the book.
Speaker 3: But I don't know. I don't know. I think there's there.
Speaker 3: I think you're right.
Speaker 2: I think there's something about sympathy or a call for
Speaker 2: empathy that underpins that public storytelling.
Speaker 1: And from the other end as well, is that we
Speaker 1: as the public are obsessed with consuming such things, aren't we,
Speaker 1: Whether whether it's a news story, whether it's a BBC interview,
Speaker 1: whether it's a Netflix documentary. You know, if you've got
Speaker 1: something with the word true crime in it, it is
Speaker 1: incredibly popular. So what do you think is happening at
Speaker 1: the market end? Why are we so fascinated with these
Speaker 1: case studies?
Speaker 2: Yes, I think true crime is such a home for
Speaker 2: personal stories about crime.
Speaker 3: It really is, And.
Speaker 2: I think there's something market tee going on here in
Speaker 2: that true crime often relies on producing just huge volumes
Speaker 2: of material. Right, if you're going to have a podcast
Speaker 2: where each episode is an hour, you can fill those
Speaker 2: hours quite easily with personal stories and they're quite they're
Speaker 2: quite cheap actually, And this is where this is not
Speaker 2: me saying that you know, podcasts are cheap in their spirit,
Speaker 2: but I think often people take part in podcasts for free,
Speaker 2: without any expectation of anything compared to, for example, like
Speaker 2: television studios where they might invite you there, or do
Speaker 2: make up here, wash your clothes for you, allow you
Speaker 2: to stay overnight in a hotel, where they do produce
Speaker 2: a lot of content very cheaply. But then I think,
Speaker 2: what's the public appetite for these stories, and there's something
Speaker 2: in personal personal stories that draws us in. There's a
Speaker 2: wonderful anecdote by a man called Ira Glass, who was
Speaker 2: one of the early journalists on This American Life, which
Speaker 2: I think is the model from lots of podcasts that
Speaker 2: come after that. But the in this YouTube interview, he
Speaker 2: talks about the anecdote as the story and it's pure form,
Speaker 2: and he gives this vision of you know, imagine you're
Speaker 2: standing in line in the bank and someone starts telling
Speaker 2: a story. You cannot help but tune in your ear
Speaker 2: to find out what happens next.
Speaker 3: So there's this kind of.
Speaker 2: Maybe human thing that we want to tune in, and
Speaker 2: we find these really interesting. But then I think there's
Speaker 2: something else in play, which is there's this kind of
Speaker 2: perhaps declining trust in public institutions. So there was the
Speaker 2: phone hacking scandal that undermined public confidence, I think in journalism,
Speaker 2: and then we've seen numerous scandals around criminal justice. We've
Speaker 2: seen scandals at the heart of government itself, and I
Speaker 2: think people often turn to these stories as something apparently
Speaker 2: raw and authentic and true, where we've this kind of
Speaker 2: building suspicion of official accounts.
Speaker 1: And if we're talking about you know, them being authentic
Speaker 1: and true, what do you think ultimately makes a story
Speaker 1: either sit with the public, lick in a sympathetic way,
Speaker 1: or not. So I'm just looking at your range of
Speaker 1: different seven case studies you've got here. You know you
Speaker 1: would argue I think that you know Howard Marks was lauded,
Speaker 1: there was a huge amount of sympathy for the most
Speaker 1: fairest story Shemaia ma begam very much mixed, possibly more
Speaker 1: anti than pro. And then you know Prince Andrew very
Speaker 1: much anti. So what ultimately impacts the reaction of the
Speaker 1: public watching or listening to the story?
Speaker 3: Do you think That's a really really good question.
Speaker 2: And I think if it was easy to predict, I
Speaker 2: think what some people wouldn't bother telling their story. I
Speaker 2: think Prince Andrew being one of them. But a question
Speaker 2: about what resonates, I think it's a really interesting one.
Speaker 2: And I think the general public is not a homogeneous group.
Speaker 2: And when we think in terms of sociology, I think
Speaker 2: it's always useful to think about race, class, gender, and
Speaker 2: I think those are written large in the public response
Speaker 2: to those kinds of stories, and that I think some
Speaker 2: people already had the public's yere before they start speaking, right,
Speaker 2: Whereas I think, for example, Shumima Begum, because of her
Speaker 2: being young, being a woman of color, being a Muslim woman,
Speaker 2: she was treated with suspicion I think from the very start.
Speaker 2: Whereas mo Fara, despite also being Muslim, being a man
Speaker 2: of color, he had this status of being a public.
Speaker 3: Hero.
Speaker 2: I think in the UK because of his gold medals,
Speaker 2: because of his knighthood, he had a kind of a
Speaker 2: status and credibility already. And then Prince Andrew just scupper
Speaker 2: is the theory, doesn't he because he is speaking from
Speaker 2: a position of power. But maybe it's because he's in
Speaker 2: an institution that we've increasingly come to distrust.
Speaker 3: I don't know. I think so.
Speaker 1: There's so many people that are anti Morey. I think
Speaker 1: that probably clouded their judgment on it before he'd even
Speaker 1: opened his mouth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think so. I think so.
Speaker 2: I'm thinking about even the ways that we've read sort
Speaker 2: of Prince Harry's autobiography that's been read the suspicion as well. Actually,
Speaker 2: and there is a lot of I'm trying to think about,
Speaker 2: are there any members of the royal family who automatically
Speaker 2: have the public trust. The answer to that, I think
Speaker 2: is not actually even Princess Kate. She's not Princess Kate anymore.
Speaker 3: She Wales.
Speaker 2: Remember there was that photograph or in Christmas time that
Speaker 2: pure shocked. So there's some there is something about how
Speaker 2: we relate to people through those social structures, through you know,
Speaker 2: the attachment to institutions and so on.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, I wondered if that was the case, because
Speaker 1: I think you always have to look at the person.
Speaker 1: Then you have how charismatic they are, how they come
Speaker 1: across as just thinking of the Chanelle Miller case, you know,
Speaker 1: a young, attractive female that does have an impact on
Speaker 1: how the story sits and how people react to it
Speaker 1: as well, doesn't it.
Speaker 2: It does, But I think when we think about the
Speaker 2: Chanelle Miller story, it also reminds of the ways that
Speaker 2: institutions can accord credibility to a personal story. So I
Speaker 2: think podcasts in particular do something really intriguing, which is
Speaker 2: invite people who I'm thinking about, these kind of career
Speaker 2: criminals and gangsters who might be considered dishonest or distrustful
Speaker 2: or dodgy from the start, and they make space for
Speaker 2: people to tell their personal stories. I think actually some
Speaker 2: genres of music do that too, thinking about even grime
Speaker 2: and drill and rap music give people a space and
Speaker 2: I guess a language of vocabulary to talk about themselves
Speaker 2: that can offer dignity. And what these kind of genres
Speaker 2: do is they kind of convey to the reader that
Speaker 2: these stories are worth listening to, So they do something
Speaker 2: really important.
Speaker 3: These stories might been.
Speaker 2: Told to different context, but once it's in a podcast
Speaker 2: or once it's in a newspaper, then it sets us
Speaker 2: up to say there's something really important here that we
Speaker 2: should listen to. And I think, yes, Shanelle Miller's story
Speaker 2: because it was because it had the power of the
Speaker 2: state behind it, because it was a victim personal statement.
Speaker 2: It had a kind of credibility to it because it
Speaker 2: for it to be read out in court, has to
Speaker 2: go through different processes, and it has this kind officialness
Speaker 2: that sticks to it. But also actually, she was a
Speaker 2: fantastic writer and that comes across through it, and it
Speaker 2: just means it's fantastically readable despite being about really really
Speaker 2: awful things having come to her.
Speaker 1: And I have to ask, maybe I can make this
Speaker 1: the last question, and the Myra Hindley one was there
Speaker 1: any public sympathy or feeling that you know, she now
Speaker 1: has shown remarre she's done her time. Because I just wondered,
Speaker 1: if Myra Hindley is such a well known and, as
Speaker 1: you said, hated figure, is that case gone too far
Speaker 1: for anyone to ever feel any sort of sympathy towards her.
Speaker 2: So when I was doing my research, I have to
Speaker 2: shout out a guy called Tom Clark at University of
Speaker 2: Sheffield because he was super helpful in helping me get
Speaker 2: hold of material and also kind of filling in bits
Speaker 2: of background information. And so I lived through the kind
Speaker 2: of the aftermath of the Moor's murders growing up in
Speaker 2: the sort of eighties and nineties, and was aware of Hindley.
Speaker 2: This was a time when she would have been in
Speaker 2: prison for a long time already, and her case was
Speaker 2: under review, and she would have been in the press
Speaker 2: quite a lot, but I didn't know a huge amount
Speaker 2: about the details. And actually when I started writing about
Speaker 2: Myra Hindley, it was because I wanted to write a
Speaker 2: chapter about silences and stories that weren't told in public.
Speaker 2: I thought, she's someone who's been silenced, and actually that
Speaker 2: wasn't what I found it all. So Tom Clark wrote
Speaker 2: a journal article looking at a letter that was published
Speaker 2: in The Observer and it was written by Myra Hindley
Speaker 2: and it's about five thousand words long. And she was
Speaker 2: writing to the paper because they published something that infer
Speaker 2: that she was had some psychological issues, and she said, actually,
Speaker 2: not been reviewed by multiple psycho psychologists who've said that
Speaker 2: I'm normal. And that's the worst thing about this is
Speaker 2: that nobody, nobody can tell me what's wrong with me.
Speaker 2: So how did Marahindley manage to get this five thousand
Speaker 2: word letter in the national press. And that's because she
Speaker 2: had over the years cultivated friendships with people, including Lord Longford,
Speaker 2: who was a Catholic, who visited her in prison and
Speaker 2: he was very interested in redemption. One of the reasons
Speaker 2: that Hindley's case was so important was that the death
Speaker 2: penalty was abolished right before they were sentenced. It was
Speaker 2: technically it was paused, and then it was abolished once
Speaker 2: they were in prison. But that meant that they were
Speaker 2: some of the first people to have committed crimes of
Speaker 2: the most serious order, but then there was no death penalty,
Speaker 2: so what was the state going to do with them?
Speaker 2: So they were given this initial twenty or twenty five
Speaker 2: year sentence. I forget which one. And there were lots
Speaker 2: of campaigners who were interested in this, including a man
Speaker 2: whose name escapes me at the minute, but he was
Speaker 2: editor of the Observer newspaper and he used to go
Speaker 2: and visit Hindley in prison, and he was instrumental in
Speaker 2: helping her story get told in the newspaper. So the
Speaker 2: short answer is, yes, there were people who were sympathetic,
Speaker 2: and most were people who were interested in reform and redemption,
Speaker 2: and they did give Hindley a voice, and they did
Speaker 2: allow her to tell her story in public, not that
Speaker 2: it necessarily changed the course of her case.
Speaker 3: She was never.
Speaker 2: Released from prison, and she died in custody in the
Speaker 2: early two thousands.
Speaker 3: But I think there's always.
Speaker 2: An audience for a story. I think, even if it's
Speaker 2: quite a small one.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, that one's always fascinated me because you know,
Speaker 1: most people know the name Myra Hindley, certainly view of
Speaker 1: a certain generation, most so than he and Brady. So
Speaker 1: you know the fact that she was a woman that
Speaker 1: you know that sticks in people's mind because of the
Speaker 1: crimes that I.
Speaker 2: Committed, absolutely absolutely, and she has I mean, iconic is
Speaker 2: the word that strings springs to mind, and not in
Speaker 2: a good way, I think, But she was so she
Speaker 2: was so emblematic of social anxieties at the time in
Speaker 2: the nineteen sixties, about changing role of women, about young
Speaker 2: people not seeming to want seeming to want to do
Speaker 2: the same things that their parents had done. So they
Speaker 2: kind of tapped into these social anxieties, and then they
Speaker 2: were really at the heart of changes in the criminal
Speaker 2: justice system. There was one rule about telling about prisoner
Speaker 2: communications that changed while they were in prison, and there
Speaker 2: was a time when all prisoner letters were checked on
Speaker 2: the way out, and then as the prison population grew,
Speaker 2: that became kind of a man and only category A
Speaker 2: prisoners were or people who'd committed defenses against children, and
Speaker 2: that exception was surely written with them in mind. So
Speaker 2: they've just they've just been at the heart of so
Speaker 2: much I think that was going on, and they have
Speaker 2: this continued resonance and people are still interested in them.
Speaker 3: But I don't know.
Speaker 2: It was a it was a difficult chapter to write,
Speaker 2: and I did wonder about including it, I think because
Speaker 2: I thought, what could I possibly add So much has
Speaker 2: been written about them, But I think there is something
Speaker 2: still to say, and I enjoyed writing that chapter, I
Speaker 2: think would be yeah. I think I did enjoy writing overall,
Speaker 2: but reading about Hindley and our crimes was confronting and difficult.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, I can understand that. Thank you, Thank you, Jennifer.
Speaker 1: Do you want to say a little bit more about
Speaker 1: the book if people want to find out a bit
Speaker 1: more or want to purchase the book or two?
Speaker 3: Sure?
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 2: The book is called What we Talk About When We
Speaker 2: Talk About Crime, and it's published by a small independent
Speaker 2: press called notting Hill Editions. But you can find it
Speaker 2: online in all the usual online bookshops. You can also
Speaker 2: buy it from Waterstins, and you can also buy it
Speaker 2: directly from the publisher. It's very reasonably priced at only
Speaker 2: ten ninety nine, and it's a lovely little book. It's
Speaker 2: not too long, the chapters are nice and short. I
Speaker 2: think I had a reader in mind who's hopping on
Speaker 2: the tube or the boss or in a waiting room somewhere,
Speaker 2: and I wanted to give them something short and thought
Speaker 2: provoking that they could take with them wherever they went.
Speaker 1: It's brilliant. Thank you, Thank you so much for your
Speaker 1: time today. Jennifer, I really appreciate it.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Thank you for taking the time to listen to the podcast.
Speaker 1: If you would like to contact the show or be interviewed,
Speaker 1: then please email The Sociology Show podcast at gmail dot com.