October 9, 2024 • 35 mins
In this episode, Matthew talks to Dr Jennifer Fleetwood about her book 'What we talk about when we talk about crime'. The book examines seven infamous crime stories to make sense of this modern confessional impulse, including Howard Marks’s outlandish autobiography Mr Nice, Shamima Begum’s controversial Times interview, Prince Andrew’s disastrous Newsnight appearance and Myra Hindley’s unpublished prison letters.
Jennifer explores the multitude of factors (such as gender, class, race) that shape how stories are told and heard and expplains how difficult it can be for the 'truth' to come out as she invites us to think differently about the abundance of personal stories about crime that circulate in public life.
You can purchase the book at Waterstones: https://www.waterstones.com/book/what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-crime/jennifer-fleetwood/9781912559534
Or, if you join the publisher's mailing list you can get 20% off here: https://www.nottinghilleditions.com/product/what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-crime/
You can book online Sociology tuition here here -https://calendly.com/sociologyshowtutoring
Jennifer explores the multitude of factors (such as gender, class, race) that shape how stories are told and heard and expplains how difficult it can be for the 'truth' to come out as she invites us to think differently about the abundance of personal stories about crime that circulate in public life.
You can purchase the book at Waterstones: https://www.waterstones.com/book/what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-crime/jennifer-fleetwood/9781912559534
Or, if you join the publisher's mailing list you can get 20% off here: https://www.nottinghilleditions.com/product/what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-crime/
You can book online Sociology tuition here here -https://calendly.com/sociologyshowtutoring
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello, and welcome to the Sociology Show podcast. My guest
for this episode is Dr Jennifer Fleetwood talking about her
book What we talk About When we talk about Crime.
Before you listen to this, you might want to have
a look at some of the case studies that Jennifer
talks about. So her book covers seven famous case studies.
Some of these people you will have heard of, but
if you haven't, you might want to go and look
(00:20):
them up find out a little bit about them before
you listen to the episode. So, these seven different case
studies that Jennifer covers in her books are about Howard Marx,
Shemima begam Mo, Farrah Prince, Andrew Chanelle Miller, The Criminal Podcast,
and Myra Hindley. So if you do want to do
(00:41):
a little bit of googling, have a look at some
of those case studies. If you're not sure who they
are or aware of their case study at all, have
a quick look at those before you have a listen
to the episode. And so, without further ado, let's go
over to the episode with Dr Jennifer Fleetwood. Hi, you're
listening to The Sociology Show, a podcast about absolutely anything
(01:04):
to do with the wonderful world of sociology. Whether you're
a teacher, a lecturer, a student, or just taking a
passing interest, This podcast will look at a range of
issues from social class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, crime, education,
and anything else that sociology has to offer. My name
(01:25):
is Matthew Wilkin. In each episode, I will speak to
someone working in the field of sociology and let them
explain all about their own interests, their research, and their experiences.
So put your ear botes in, turn the volume up,
and let's be sociology geeks together. H Hello, and welcome
(01:45):
to the Sociology Show podcast. Would you like to start
by telling us a little bit about who you are
and what you do?
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Please, Good afternoon, Matthew. I'm Jennifer Fleetwood. I'm a senior
lecturer in criminology at the University of Greenwich, sociologist and
a criminologist and interested in stories, especially.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Where they relate to crime.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
And I'm also interested in things around women in drugs,
so I guess a mix of different things that keep
me busy.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Thank you, and your previous book. We're going to talk
about that nine books that your previous book was Drug
Mules wasn't it Women in the international co kind trade? Fascinting? Now,
do you want tell us a little bit about that
before we move on to your new book.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
So the Drug Mules book came out from my PhD,
and it took it took me a long time to write.
I think there's this idea that as academics we can
just bash at.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
A book quickly.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
But maybe some people can, but for me, definitely not.
And that book was based on a chunk of ethnographic
research in prisons and Ecuador, so I would visit people
in prison. There were lots and lots of people there
incarcerated for drug trafficking offenses. And my PhD was really
specifically women. Kind of grew out of my interest in
(03:02):
gender actually as a student of sociology, and I was
interested in how and whether gender mattered in the drug trade.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
So it turned into.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
A book about drug trafficking and how people got involved.
But one of the things that I was so struck by,
actually with spending time in men's and women's prisons was
how differently they were able to speak about their.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Involvement in the drug trade. Right.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
So in the women's prison, I was told everyone here
is a drug MUO, nobody knows anything, whereas in the
men's prison, I was told everybody here seemed to claim
to be some sort of a boss or an authority,
or they had something to teach me. And I just thought,
it can't be that stark that women don't know anything
and men know everything. So I was kind of interested
(03:46):
in probing how and why women found it so difficult
to talk about crime and men seemed to find it
so easy to claim expertise. So that book, I guess,
is where my interest in stories and talk about crime
first developed. But it's also a story about how people
get involved in the drug trade and what they do
and how that's shaped by their gender in particular.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Thank you, and so you're really interesting stories. I mean,
before we get into a new but what's kind of
your methodology?
Speaker 2 (04:13):
Then?
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Do you do a lot of unstructured interviews?
Speaker 2 (04:16):
So for the Drug Trafficking book, the method was really
just trying to eke out time to allow people to
tell a story, which sounds like quite a straightforward thing,
Like you know, you may be thinking, we just whack on,
whack out the tape recorder, ask a couple of questions
and bosh, off we go, but actually in the women's prison,
there was a real challenge in getting women to talk
(04:36):
about drug trafficking. So for me, there was a long
time of that kind of ethnographic immersion of getting to
know people, of getting their trust, and allowing them to
tell different kinds of stories about themselves.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
So I might go in looking for.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
An interview about drug traffcking, but often they wanted to
talk about other things too, So there was a long
process of really making time and space to listen to
this stories that were important to them, and also making
space so that they could kind of talk without judgment
about their involvement in the drug trade in ways that
were a little bit messy sometimes. I mean maybe messy
(05:13):
is the wrong word, but for women, there wasn't much
kind of social space, I guess, for them to talk
about their involvement in the drug business and anything other
than kind of talking about regret and shame. And I
wanted to collect those stories because they're true and important,
but I also wanted to allow space for maybe people
to tell other kinds of stories about moments of pride
(05:35):
actually or exhilaration or joy, or nervousness or anxiety or contradiction.
So I guess that project was ethnographic and it was
also about unstructured interviews. So the question I would always
start with was tell me how you got here, which
isn't a question about crime at all. Actually, it's really
(05:56):
a question about inviting people to talk about biography and
theirselves and to kind of foreground the stories they thought
were important.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
I mean, it's also a question that allows people to
start the.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Story and end it where they want to, which I
think is really fun. Shall I talk about the methodology
for the current book as well?
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Yeah, yeah, I mean that would be great. I mean
I've just introduced the current book and what we talk
about when we talk about crime, So yeah, go for it.
Jennifer tell us about that one.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
So the current book's a bit different in that I
didn't meet any of the people whose stories I'm looking at.
But I think there's something important about putting stories in context.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Right.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
So, in the same way that I was interested in
how the prison as institution and gender as another kind
of institution shape people's stories, I wanted to try and
read people's stories in context. So in the book, what
we talk about when we talk about crime, we're looking
at at examples of well known personal stories about crime
(06:55):
in public. My editor was really keen that they'd be
well known ones to catch people's attention.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
But it looks at things.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Like criminal biography, Howard Marx's book Mister Nice, Shamima Beggham's
Times Interview, more far and made a documentary with the
BBC about his experience of human trafficking. I also looked
at Prince Andrew's News and Night interview, and there's a
few more after that. There's also a chapter looking at
some of my Rhindley's writing. So what I would do
(07:23):
is sit down with the story as I would much
with an interview, and kind of read it really carefully
and attentively. And Catherine color Reisman in her book about
narrative analysis, she gives us one question, which is why
was the story told that way? And it's such a
lovely open way of doing analysis, of kind of interpreting,
(07:45):
and then to kind of flesh out the stuff about context.
I just read around stories as much as I could,
and this is the joy I think of using well
known examples is that there's so much available, especially online.
So for example, for Shamima Begam's Times Interview, Andrew Lloyd.
I'm now questioning whether I've got his name right, but
(08:06):
I think I have. Andrew Lloyd did. He did interviews
with GQ magazine, He took part in podcasts. He wrote
his own story for The Times about quote unquote finding Shamima.
So there was loads of background information as well as
reports produced by non governmental organizations, but the conditions in
the camps. There was subsequent interviews with Shmima Begam. So
it's just taking that interview as the kind of the
(08:28):
central point, I guess, and then fleshing out all the
way around it kind of the context for the stories
as much as could be known, and that took a
different form I think for each of those different kinds
of stories. So for the Myra Hindley chapter involved lots
of digging deeply in prison regulations actually, which was unexpected.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Was that difficult in terms of the validity of some
of the sources, you know, what you had to wade
through to get to the the accurate stuff, if you like.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
It's a really it's a really interesting question because I
think when we think about narrative, there's a tendency to
kind of bracket off reality almost because we tend to
focus on how stories make meanings of that reality. And
I think you just kind of need to take everything
(09:22):
in context a little bit. I mean, when non governmental
organizations like say the Children are producing a report, they're
producing it with kind of particular aims in mind, which
are you know, to do with campaigning and other things
and fundraising perhaps as well and as also kind of
justifying the work that they do as an important NGO.
(09:43):
But it also offers these little glimpses of what life
is like in the camp that just to help me
kind of flesh things out a little bit more so,
I think questions about validity.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
I struggle with this a little bit. I know that
it's a key I and sociology, But when I think
when it comes to personal stories, we don't just we
don't just lie or make things up most of the time,
I think there's I guess I'd say there's always a
kind of knob of truth there if we look for it,
and as long as we're taking it in context and
reading carefully and thinking about what does it really say,
(10:20):
what's it really about?
Speaker 3 (10:22):
I don't know. I guess I struggle with validity.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
It does my head it's difficult.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
It's a mindfield, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
Really? It really really is.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
Yeah, And I mean the sort of basic principle of
what you're talking about across the seven cases that you've
mentioned is that in all of these cases that the
people have gone public, they're telling their story, Whereas once
upon a time this wasn't necessarily the case. A lot
of a criminal activity was sort of part of the
underworld or was not discussed or is not mainstream. So
(10:52):
what kind of ideas did you undercover in terms of
why people are much more willing to get their story
out there than they would have been the past.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Yeah, I think for me that's the real question behind
the book. I think one I hope to explore by
looking at these different case studies was a sense of
how do we get here? How are the how do
these stories come to be told? And I think there's
not really one answer that's such as sociological kind of
stereotypically sociological answer, isn't there like, well, there's not one answer.
(11:24):
But there's loads of drivers in play, I think, and
some of them are super recent and short, and some
of them have these kind of super long historical roots.
I think one of the most recent is probably to
do with things like social media and podcasts that just
do this thing of making space for personal stories to
be told at length in a way that I can't
(11:46):
imagine them being told on other media. So I think,
is it Sean Atwood? He has a podcast where he
interviews lots of criminals of repute, usually after they've done time,
like East End gangsters and so on. But those interviews
can last like three hours and they're really long, and
they're really in depth, and I can't think of any
(12:06):
other media where those kinds of stories would be told.
And the other thing with social media is that it
has this way of finding kind of niche audiences for things,
So it produces audiences and it produces kind of space.
And then I think there's also something to do with
changes in criminal justice and the ways that tech personal
testimony has heard, and I think that particularly applies to
(12:29):
victim stories. And I read this beautiful book called The
Era of the Witness by a French philosopher historian called
Via Vorca.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
That it's beautiful.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
She describes the ways that testimony in World War Two
by people in ghettos, people experiencing the Holocaust was kind
of written and shared in these really limited ways because
for people who survived the Holocaust, there was this huge
amount of shame attached to it. Actually, so these stories
that now we think of it is like, well, they're
so well known, they're taught that we have, you know,
(13:06):
world Holocaust and other things. And she draws out the
ways that the Eichmann trial produced a platform for these testamenties,
these personal stories that previously had this kind of shame
attached them, and they've been told only amongst these small circles,
and that kind of sends out ripples in criminal justice.
(13:27):
And then in the eighties we see the introduction of
victim personal statements or victim impact statements as they're sometimes known.
And one of the chapters looks at our famous example
of that a woman who it was published at the
time on Buzzbeed actually where she was Emily Doe, I think,
and she's now come out publicly her name is Janelle Miller,
(13:48):
and she's written her own autobiography about how that story
was told. So there's these things in media. There's something
to do with criminal justice. I think there's something also
in the air about therapy. So over the course of decades,
we've kind of seen a therapy kind of going mainstream.
So the idea that talk is good, or talk is
(14:09):
a way to healing or justice has kind of become mainstream.
And I think often people look to tell a story
when an injustice has been done in the hope that
it will kind of reveal that injustice, maybe gain public
sympathy or empathy, or produce some kind of change, either
in society at large or in the particulars of their case.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
So there's different things.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
In the air I think to do with sort of technology, culture,
justice institutions, and all of those are in play.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
I think.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
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Speaker 1 (15:07):
Of the show. So I was just looking at, you know,
of just seven different case studies that you did. I
can totally understand the sort of cathartic way in which
sharing stories such as Chanelle Miller who just mentioned, or
maybe the mo Fara story on ones such as Howard Marx,
you know, on that one, is there something slightly different
(15:29):
going on there? This is going to sound really pessimistic,
but is it an opportunity for fame? It's what I'm
trying to get that.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
Oh yes, So I love I love writing the chapter
on Howard Marx because it's such a contrast to the rest.
But me is such an important example in that criminal
memoir genre. It kind of sticks out against the ones
that had come before it, and I think for people
of my age, it had this kind of cult status.
(15:57):
Everyone was reading. It was everyone's bookshelves. Howard Marx was
invited to speak at Glastonbury and so what, Yes, I
think it's the short answer. It is about kind of
something to do with fame and notoriety. So whereas autobiographies,
criminal autobiographies and memoir before that had been about remorse,
Howard Marx's autobiography is really celebrating his identity as an outlaw,
(16:22):
and it kind of fits with the counter culture of
the nineteen nineties, kind of geezer chic.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
Think about Guy.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Ritchie's films like Lockstock, Two Smoking Barrels. There's a kind
of a glamorization of counter culture and of badness that.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
He played on really successfully.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
But I think keep in mind also that he was
a graduate of Oxford, so he has this kind of
status that's all that kind of working class masculinity, but
not of it that allows him to be this kind
of gentleman outlaw.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
And then I've got to ask about the Prince Andrew Well,
was that one about a lot of people said the
time is why is he doing this? I mean that
seems the strangest of the lots to make that long.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
Yes, it is, isn't it?
Speaker 2 (17:07):
And I think for me when I was researching around this,
I think his has this kind of legacy almost of
the nineteen nineties chat show actually with than anything. If
you think about people like Parkinson and Oprah, these kinds
of interviews are about that kind of revealing of one's
innermost self and a search front sort of self understanding
(17:29):
through talking. So that idea through therapy finds its home
in Rickard Lake and Oprah Winfrey.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
And I think it's maybe.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
Useful to read Prince Andrew against the Princess Diana interview
panorama that she did, where she was able to was
kind of backed into a corner, I guess, but she
was able to give this really endearing interview where she
was very honest and she revealed this kind of inner difficulty,
and it's not about how she's a great princess or
(17:58):
a kind of a public speaking role. It has this
kind of confessional, intimate feeling that kind of gained her
this title of the Queen of Hearts. And I think
maybe Prince Andrew thought that if he would talk about things,
if he would be honest and open and intimate, that
people would come to understand him. And it kind of
(18:20):
spectacularly backfires on him, which you know, I think as
anyone who's seen that interview will know. So I think
he thought that people would come to understand him, and.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
It really fails.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Actually, I think in part because of the way that
he talks about Epstein's victims and his failure to acknowledge them.
His kind of repeated denials saying well, I didn't see anything,
I never met this woman, I don't know anything, and
I kind of had this undermining impact.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
And I think he almost.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
Wanted us to see him as a victim of a circumstance,
and I think people just didn't.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
They just refused to.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
I think they understood him properly, somebody who was quite
powerful actually, and had the power to change things had
they wanted to. So this is the chapter that allows
me to go back and use some sociological theory, and
it's Scott A. Lineman's work on accounts, and they talk
about the ways that talk isn't just a kind of
a decoration on the social fabric, but it's deeply part
(19:19):
of it. And they talk about the ways that when
our behavior doesn't match expectations, we can fix that by
producing a good account. And I think Prince Andrew's account
was a really bad one because he failed to He
failed to kind of get up an apology in a
language that had any cultural resonance. So he talks, he
(19:40):
talks repeatedly about being honorable, and I think it's just
an idea that didn't resonate at all.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
It just was so obvious that if.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
He was someone who was who was honorable, who had
so much honor, that he might have acted differently.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
I would say, And.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
That one you know that kind of failed spectacularly in
trying to get the public to see them as a victim.
But that is an underlining theme about a lot of
the cases, isn't it. That is that sort of the intention,
even if it's subconscious, for the public to feel empathy
for the individual.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
I think so, yes. I mean I'm thinking about Amyra
Hindley's writing, for example, I mean the time that she
was writing her autobiography, she's writing in prison, so she's
writing this autobiography in letters, so it exists in these
kind of fragments, and I was able to get access
to just one of those letters. But the reason that
(20:37):
she comes to write about herself is that for her
to be released from prison, and she had served an
extraordinarily long amount of time in prison, really by that
point she needed to be able to influence public opinion
because at that time, to be released from prison, you
needed the permission of politicians, and politicians were very, very
(20:57):
very unwilling to go anywhere near Hindley because she had
such toxic associations and the public hated her so much,
And so I think for her, the explicit intention really
in writing was that the public would be able to
understand her better would see that she had changed and
would release her. And I think it's I also think, like,
could you tell a story about yourself in public where
(21:19):
you didn't want to be liked? I think who would
have the power to tell that kind of story and
for to not impact them? So there is something about
the fact that they're told in public. They often have
a kind of a campaigning aspect of them, maybe, or
people are campaigning for some kind of sympathy or some change,
(21:43):
or that we change how we see them.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Perhaps.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
I mean, I think Howard Marx is the most interesting
in that he I think didn't really have anything to
gain apart from kind of the fame and notoriety that
followed the book. But none of that was really a
given at that time, I don't think. But I think
he was. He was probably well off enough. I'd like
to imagine at that point that he wasn't relying on
(22:08):
the sales of the book.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
But I don't know. I don't know. I think there's there.
I think you're right.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
I think there's something about sympathy or a call for
empathy that underpins that public storytelling.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
And from the other end as well, is that we
as the public are obsessed with consuming such things, aren't we,
Whether whether it's a news story, whether it's a BBC interview,
whether it's a Netflix documentary. You know, if you've got
something with the word true crime in it, it is
incredibly popular. So what do you think is happening at
the market end? Why are we so fascinated with these
(22:40):
case studies?
Speaker 2 (22:41):
Yes, I think true crime is such a home for
personal stories about crime.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
It really is, And.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
I think there's something market tee going on here in
that true crime often relies on producing just huge volumes
of material. Right, if you're going to have a podcast
where each episode is an hour, you can fill those
hours quite easily with personal stories and they're quite they're
quite cheap actually, And this is where this is not
(23:08):
me saying that you know, podcasts are cheap in their spirit,
but I think often people take part in podcasts for free,
without any expectation of anything compared to, for example, like
television studios where they might invite you there, or do
make up here, wash your clothes for you, allow you
to stay overnight in a hotel, where they do produce
(23:28):
a lot of content very cheaply. But then I think,
what's the public appetite for these stories, and there's something
in personal personal stories that draws us in. There's a
wonderful anecdote by a man called Ira Glass, who was
one of the early journalists on This American Life, which
(23:51):
I think is the model from lots of podcasts that
come after that. But the in this YouTube interview, he
talks about the anecdote as the story and it's pure form,
and he gives this vision of you know, imagine you're
standing in line in the bank and someone starts telling
a story. You cannot help but tune in your ear
to find out what happens next.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
So there's this kind of.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Maybe human thing that we want to tune in, and
we find these really interesting. But then I think there's
something else in play, which is there's this kind of
perhaps declining trust in public institutions. So there was the
phone hacking scandal that undermined public confidence, I think in journalism,
(24:31):
and then we've seen numerous scandals around criminal justice. We've
seen scandals at the heart of government itself, and I
think people often turn to these stories as something apparently
raw and authentic and true, where we've this kind of
building suspicion of official accounts.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
And if we're talking about you know, them being authentic
and true, what do you think ultimately makes a story
either sit with the public, lick in a sympathetic way,
or not. So I'm just looking at your range of
different seven case studies you've got here. You know you
would argue I think that you know Howard Marks was lauded,
(25:11):
there was a huge amount of sympathy for the most
fairest story Shemaia ma begam very much mixed, possibly more
anti than pro. And then you know Prince Andrew very
much anti. So what ultimately impacts the reaction of the
public watching or listening to the story?
Speaker 3 (25:28):
Do you think That's a really really good question.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
And I think if it was easy to predict, I
think what some people wouldn't bother telling their story. I
think Prince Andrew being one of them. But a question
about what resonates, I think it's a really interesting one.
And I think the general public is not a homogeneous group.
(25:53):
And when we think in terms of sociology, I think
it's always useful to think about race, class, gender, and
I think those are written large in the public response
to those kinds of stories, and that I think some
people already had the public's yere before they start speaking, right,
(26:14):
Whereas I think, for example, Shumima Begum, because of her
being young, being a woman of color, being a Muslim woman,
she was treated with suspicion I think from the very start.
Whereas mo Fara, despite also being Muslim, being a man
of color, he had this status of being a public.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
Hero.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
I think in the UK because of his gold medals,
because of his knighthood, he had a kind of a
status and credibility already. And then Prince Andrew just scupper
is the theory, doesn't he because he is speaking from
a position of power. But maybe it's because he's in
an institution that we've increasingly come to distrust.
Speaker 3 (26:56):
I don't know. I think so.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
There's so many people that are anti Morey. I think
that probably clouded their judgment on it before he'd even
opened his mouth.
Speaker 3 (27:04):
Yeah, I think so. I think so.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
I'm thinking about even the ways that we've read sort
of Prince Harry's autobiography that's been read the suspicion as well. Actually,
and there is a lot of I'm trying to think about,
are there any members of the royal family who automatically
have the public trust. The answer to that, I think
is not actually even Princess Kate. She's not Princess Kate anymore.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
She Wales.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Remember there was that photograph or in Christmas time that
pure shocked. So there's some there is something about how
we relate to people through those social structures, through you know,
the attachment to institutions and so on.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
Yes, yeah, I wondered if that was the case, because
I think you always have to look at the person.
Then you have how charismatic they are, how they come
across as just thinking of the Chanelle Miller case, you know,
a young, attractive female that does have an impact on
how the story sits and how people react to it
as well, doesn't it.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
It does, But I think when we think about the
Chanelle Miller story, it also reminds of the ways that
institutions can accord credibility to a personal story. So I
think podcasts in particular do something really intriguing, which is
invite people who I'm thinking about, these kind of career
criminals and gangsters who might be considered dishonest or distrustful
(28:28):
or dodgy from the start, and they make space for
people to tell their personal stories. I think actually some
genres of music do that too, thinking about even grime
and drill and rap music give people a space and
I guess a language of vocabulary to talk about themselves
that can offer dignity. And what these kind of genres
(28:53):
do is they kind of convey to the reader that
these stories are worth listening to, So they do something
really important.
Speaker 3 (28:59):
These stories might been.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
Told to different context, but once it's in a podcast
or once it's in a newspaper, then it sets us
up to say there's something really important here that we
should listen to. And I think, yes, Shanelle Miller's story
because it was because it had the power of the
state behind it, because it was a victim personal statement.
It had a kind of credibility to it because it
(29:20):
for it to be read out in court, has to
go through different processes, and it has this kind officialness
that sticks to it. But also actually, she was a
fantastic writer and that comes across through it, and it
just means it's fantastically readable despite being about really really
awful things having come to her.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
And I have to ask, maybe I can make this
the last question, and the Myra Hindley one was there
any public sympathy or feeling that you know, she now
has shown remarre she's done her time. Because I just wondered,
if Myra Hindley is such a well known and, as
you said, hated figure, is that case gone too far
(30:03):
for anyone to ever feel any sort of sympathy towards her.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
So when I was doing my research, I have to
shout out a guy called Tom Clark at University of
Sheffield because he was super helpful in helping me get
hold of material and also kind of filling in bits
of background information. And so I lived through the kind
of the aftermath of the Moor's murders growing up in
the sort of eighties and nineties, and was aware of Hindley.
(30:32):
This was a time when she would have been in
prison for a long time already, and her case was
under review, and she would have been in the press
quite a lot, but I didn't know a huge amount
about the details. And actually when I started writing about
Myra Hindley, it was because I wanted to write a
chapter about silences and stories that weren't told in public.
I thought, she's someone who's been silenced, and actually that
(30:54):
wasn't what I found it all. So Tom Clark wrote
a journal article looking at a letter that was published
in The Observer and it was written by Myra Hindley
and it's about five thousand words long. And she was
writing to the paper because they published something that infer
that she was had some psychological issues, and she said, actually,
(31:15):
not been reviewed by multiple psycho psychologists who've said that
I'm normal. And that's the worst thing about this is
that nobody, nobody can tell me what's wrong with me.
So how did Marahindley manage to get this five thousand
word letter in the national press. And that's because she
had over the years cultivated friendships with people, including Lord Longford,
(31:36):
who was a Catholic, who visited her in prison and
he was very interested in redemption. One of the reasons
that Hindley's case was so important was that the death
penalty was abolished right before they were sentenced. It was
technically it was paused, and then it was abolished once
they were in prison. But that meant that they were
some of the first people to have committed crimes of
(32:00):
the most serious order, but then there was no death penalty,
so what was the state going to do with them?
So they were given this initial twenty or twenty five
year sentence. I forget which one. And there were lots
of campaigners who were interested in this, including a man
whose name escapes me at the minute, but he was
editor of the Observer newspaper and he used to go
and visit Hindley in prison, and he was instrumental in
(32:23):
helping her story get told in the newspaper. So the
short answer is, yes, there were people who were sympathetic,
and most were people who were interested in reform and redemption,
and they did give Hindley a voice, and they did
allow her to tell her story in public, not that
it necessarily changed the course of her case.
Speaker 3 (32:41):
She was never.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
Released from prison, and she died in custody in the
early two thousands.
Speaker 3 (32:46):
But I think there's always.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
An audience for a story. I think, even if it's
quite a small one.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
I think, yeah, that one's always fascinated me because you know,
most people know the name Myra Hindley, certainly view of
a certain generation, most so than he and Brady. So
you know the fact that she was a woman that
you know that sticks in people's mind because of the
crimes that I.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
Committed, absolutely absolutely, and she has I mean, iconic is
the word that strings springs to mind, and not in
a good way, I think, But she was so she
was so emblematic of social anxieties at the time in
the nineteen sixties, about changing role of women, about young
(33:31):
people not seeming to want seeming to want to do
the same things that their parents had done. So they
kind of tapped into these social anxieties, and then they
were really at the heart of changes in the criminal
justice system. There was one rule about telling about prisoner
communications that changed while they were in prison, and there
(33:52):
was a time when all prisoner letters were checked on
the way out, and then as the prison population grew,
that became kind of a man and only category A
prisoners were or people who'd committed defenses against children, and
that exception was surely written with them in mind. So
they've just they've just been at the heart of so
(34:12):
much I think that was going on, and they have
this continued resonance and people are still interested in them.
Speaker 3 (34:19):
But I don't know.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
It was a it was a difficult chapter to write,
and I did wonder about including it, I think because
I thought, what could I possibly add So much has
been written about them, But I think there is something
still to say, and I enjoyed writing that chapter, I
think would be yeah. I think I did enjoy writing overall,
(34:41):
but reading about Hindley and our crimes was confronting and difficult.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
I think, yeah, I can understand that. Thank you, Thank you, Jennifer.
Do you want to say a little bit more about
the book if people want to find out a bit
more or want to purchase the book or two?
Speaker 3 (34:55):
Sure?
Speaker 1 (34:55):
So.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
The book is called What we Talk About When We
Talk About Crime, and it's published by a small independent
press called notting Hill Editions. But you can find it
online in all the usual online bookshops. You can also
buy it from Waterstins, and you can also buy it
directly from the publisher. It's very reasonably priced at only
ten ninety nine, and it's a lovely little book. It's
(35:17):
not too long, the chapters are nice and short. I
think I had a reader in mind who's hopping on
the tube or the boss or in a waiting room somewhere,
and I wanted to give them something short and thought
provoking that they could take with them wherever they went.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
It's brilliant. Thank you, Thank you so much for your
time today. Jennifer, I really appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
Thank you for taking the time to listen to the podcast.
If you would like to contact the show or be interviewed,
then please email The Sociology Show podcast at gmail dot com.
Hello, and welcome to the Sociology Show podcast. My guest
for this episode is Dr Jennifer Fleetwood talking about her
book What we talk About When we talk about Crime.
Before you listen to this, you might want to have
a look at some of the case studies that Jennifer
talks about. So her book covers seven famous case studies.
Some of these people you will have heard of, but
if you haven't, you might want to go and look
(00:20):
them up find out a little bit about them before
you listen to the episode. So, these seven different case
studies that Jennifer covers in her books are about Howard Marx,
Shemima begam Mo, Farrah Prince, Andrew Chanelle Miller, The Criminal Podcast,
and Myra Hindley. So if you do want to do
(00:41):
a little bit of googling, have a look at some
of those case studies. If you're not sure who they
are or aware of their case study at all, have
a quick look at those before you have a listen
to the episode. And so, without further ado, let's go
over to the episode with Dr Jennifer Fleetwood. Hi, you're
listening to The Sociology Show, a podcast about absolutely anything
(01:04):
to do with the wonderful world of sociology. Whether you're
a teacher, a lecturer, a student, or just taking a
passing interest, This podcast will look at a range of
issues from social class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, crime, education,
and anything else that sociology has to offer. My name
(01:25):
is Matthew Wilkin. In each episode, I will speak to
someone working in the field of sociology and let them
explain all about their own interests, their research, and their experiences.
So put your ear botes in, turn the volume up,
and let's be sociology geeks together. H Hello, and welcome
(01:45):
to the Sociology Show podcast. Would you like to start
by telling us a little bit about who you are
and what you do?
Speaker 2 (01:50):
Please, Good afternoon, Matthew. I'm Jennifer Fleetwood. I'm a senior
lecturer in criminology at the University of Greenwich, sociologist and
a criminologist and interested in stories, especially.
Speaker 3 (02:05):
Where they relate to crime.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
And I'm also interested in things around women in drugs,
so I guess a mix of different things that keep
me busy.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Thank you, and your previous book. We're going to talk
about that nine books that your previous book was Drug
Mules wasn't it Women in the international co kind trade? Fascinting? Now,
do you want tell us a little bit about that
before we move on to your new book.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
Sure.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
So the Drug Mules book came out from my PhD,
and it took it took me a long time to write.
I think there's this idea that as academics we can
just bash at.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
A book quickly.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
But maybe some people can, but for me, definitely not.
And that book was based on a chunk of ethnographic
research in prisons and Ecuador, so I would visit people
in prison. There were lots and lots of people there
incarcerated for drug trafficking offenses. And my PhD was really
specifically women. Kind of grew out of my interest in
(03:02):
gender actually as a student of sociology, and I was
interested in how and whether gender mattered in the drug trade.
Speaker 3 (03:11):
So it turned into.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
A book about drug trafficking and how people got involved.
But one of the things that I was so struck by,
actually with spending time in men's and women's prisons was
how differently they were able to speak about their.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Involvement in the drug trade. Right.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
So in the women's prison, I was told everyone here
is a drug MUO, nobody knows anything, whereas in the
men's prison, I was told everybody here seemed to claim
to be some sort of a boss or an authority,
or they had something to teach me. And I just thought,
it can't be that stark that women don't know anything
and men know everything. So I was kind of interested
(03:46):
in probing how and why women found it so difficult
to talk about crime and men seemed to find it
so easy to claim expertise. So that book, I guess,
is where my interest in stories and talk about crime
first developed. But it's also a story about how people
get involved in the drug trade and what they do
and how that's shaped by their gender in particular.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Thank you, and so you're really interesting stories. I mean,
before we get into a new but what's kind of
your methodology?
Speaker 2 (04:13):
Then?
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Do you do a lot of unstructured interviews?
Speaker 2 (04:16):
So for the Drug Trafficking book, the method was really
just trying to eke out time to allow people to
tell a story, which sounds like quite a straightforward thing,
Like you know, you may be thinking, we just whack on,
whack out the tape recorder, ask a couple of questions
and bosh, off we go, but actually in the women's prison,
there was a real challenge in getting women to talk
(04:36):
about drug trafficking. So for me, there was a long
time of that kind of ethnographic immersion of getting to
know people, of getting their trust, and allowing them to
tell different kinds of stories about themselves.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
So I might go in looking for.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
An interview about drug traffcking, but often they wanted to
talk about other things too, So there was a long
process of really making time and space to listen to
this stories that were important to them, and also making
space so that they could kind of talk without judgment
about their involvement in the drug trade in ways that
were a little bit messy sometimes. I mean maybe messy
(05:13):
is the wrong word, but for women, there wasn't much
kind of social space, I guess, for them to talk
about their involvement in the drug business and anything other
than kind of talking about regret and shame. And I
wanted to collect those stories because they're true and important,
but I also wanted to allow space for maybe people
to tell other kinds of stories about moments of pride
(05:35):
actually or exhilaration or joy, or nervousness or anxiety or contradiction.
So I guess that project was ethnographic and it was
also about unstructured interviews. So the question I would always
start with was tell me how you got here, which
isn't a question about crime at all. Actually, it's really
(05:56):
a question about inviting people to talk about biography and
theirselves and to kind of foreground the stories they thought
were important.
Speaker 3 (06:05):
I mean, it's also a question that allows people to
start the.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Story and end it where they want to, which I
think is really fun. Shall I talk about the methodology
for the current book as well?
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Yeah, yeah, I mean that would be great. I mean
I've just introduced the current book and what we talk
about when we talk about crime, So yeah, go for it.
Jennifer tell us about that one.
Speaker 2 (06:25):
So the current book's a bit different in that I
didn't meet any of the people whose stories I'm looking at.
But I think there's something important about putting stories in context.
Speaker 3 (06:34):
Right.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
So, in the same way that I was interested in
how the prison as institution and gender as another kind
of institution shape people's stories, I wanted to try and
read people's stories in context. So in the book, what
we talk about when we talk about crime, we're looking
at at examples of well known personal stories about crime
(06:55):
in public. My editor was really keen that they'd be
well known ones to catch people's attention.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
But it looks at things.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Like criminal biography, Howard Marx's book Mister Nice, Shamima Beggham's
Times Interview, more far and made a documentary with the
BBC about his experience of human trafficking. I also looked
at Prince Andrew's News and Night interview, and there's a
few more after that. There's also a chapter looking at
some of my Rhindley's writing. So what I would do
(07:23):
is sit down with the story as I would much
with an interview, and kind of read it really carefully
and attentively. And Catherine color Reisman in her book about
narrative analysis, she gives us one question, which is why
was the story told that way? And it's such a
lovely open way of doing analysis, of kind of interpreting,
(07:45):
and then to kind of flesh out the stuff about context.
I just read around stories as much as I could,
and this is the joy I think of using well
known examples is that there's so much available, especially online.
So for example, for Shamima Begam's Times Interview, Andrew Lloyd.
I'm now questioning whether I've got his name right, but
(08:06):
I think I have. Andrew Lloyd did. He did interviews
with GQ magazine, He took part in podcasts. He wrote
his own story for The Times about quote unquote finding Shamima.
So there was loads of background information as well as
reports produced by non governmental organizations, but the conditions in
the camps. There was subsequent interviews with Shmima Begam. So
it's just taking that interview as the kind of the
(08:28):
central point, I guess, and then fleshing out all the
way around it kind of the context for the stories
as much as could be known, and that took a
different form I think for each of those different kinds
of stories. So for the Myra Hindley chapter involved lots
of digging deeply in prison regulations actually, which was unexpected.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
Was that difficult in terms of the validity of some
of the sources, you know, what you had to wade
through to get to the the accurate stuff, if you like.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
It's a really it's a really interesting question because I
think when we think about narrative, there's a tendency to
kind of bracket off reality almost because we tend to
focus on how stories make meanings of that reality. And
I think you just kind of need to take everything
(09:22):
in context a little bit. I mean, when non governmental
organizations like say the Children are producing a report, they're
producing it with kind of particular aims in mind, which
are you know, to do with campaigning and other things
and fundraising perhaps as well and as also kind of
justifying the work that they do as an important NGO.
(09:43):
But it also offers these little glimpses of what life
is like in the camp that just to help me
kind of flesh things out a little bit more so,
I think questions about validity.
Speaker 3 (09:56):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
I struggle with this a little bit. I know that
it's a key I and sociology, But when I think
when it comes to personal stories, we don't just we
don't just lie or make things up most of the time,
I think there's I guess I'd say there's always a
kind of knob of truth there if we look for it,
and as long as we're taking it in context and
reading carefully and thinking about what does it really say,
(10:20):
what's it really about?
Speaker 3 (10:22):
I don't know. I guess I struggle with validity.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
It does my head it's difficult.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
It's a mindfield, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
Really? It really really is.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
Yeah, And I mean the sort of basic principle of
what you're talking about across the seven cases that you've
mentioned is that in all of these cases that the
people have gone public, they're telling their story, Whereas once
upon a time this wasn't necessarily the case. A lot
of a criminal activity was sort of part of the
underworld or was not discussed or is not mainstream. So
(10:52):
what kind of ideas did you undercover in terms of
why people are much more willing to get their story
out there than they would have been the past.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
Yeah, I think for me that's the real question behind
the book. I think one I hope to explore by
looking at these different case studies was a sense of
how do we get here? How are the how do
these stories come to be told? And I think there's
not really one answer that's such as sociological kind of
stereotypically sociological answer, isn't there like, well, there's not one answer.
(11:24):
But there's loads of drivers in play, I think, and
some of them are super recent and short, and some
of them have these kind of super long historical roots.
I think one of the most recent is probably to
do with things like social media and podcasts that just
do this thing of making space for personal stories to
be told at length in a way that I can't
(11:46):
imagine them being told on other media. So I think,
is it Sean Atwood? He has a podcast where he
interviews lots of criminals of repute, usually after they've done time,
like East End gangsters and so on. But those interviews
can last like three hours and they're really long, and
they're really in depth, and I can't think of any
(12:06):
other media where those kinds of stories would be told.
And the other thing with social media is that it
has this way of finding kind of niche audiences for things,
So it produces audiences and it produces kind of space.
And then I think there's also something to do with
changes in criminal justice and the ways that tech personal
testimony has heard, and I think that particularly applies to
(12:29):
victim stories. And I read this beautiful book called The
Era of the Witness by a French philosopher historian called
Via Vorca.
Speaker 3 (12:43):
That it's beautiful.
Speaker 2 (12:43):
She describes the ways that testimony in World War Two
by people in ghettos, people experiencing the Holocaust was kind
of written and shared in these really limited ways because
for people who survived the Holocaust, there was this huge
amount of shame attached to it. Actually, so these stories
that now we think of it is like, well, they're
so well known, they're taught that we have, you know,
(13:06):
world Holocaust and other things. And she draws out the
ways that the Eichmann trial produced a platform for these testamenties,
these personal stories that previously had this kind of shame
attached them, and they've been told only amongst these small circles,
and that kind of sends out ripples in criminal justice.
(13:27):
And then in the eighties we see the introduction of
victim personal statements or victim impact statements as they're sometimes known.
And one of the chapters looks at our famous example
of that a woman who it was published at the
time on Buzzbeed actually where she was Emily Doe, I think,
and she's now come out publicly her name is Janelle Miller,
(13:48):
and she's written her own autobiography about how that story
was told. So there's these things in media. There's something
to do with criminal justice. I think there's something also
in the air about therapy. So over the course of decades,
we've kind of seen a therapy kind of going mainstream.
So the idea that talk is good, or talk is
(14:09):
a way to healing or justice has kind of become mainstream.
And I think often people look to tell a story
when an injustice has been done in the hope that
it will kind of reveal that injustice, maybe gain public
sympathy or empathy, or produce some kind of change, either
in society at large or in the particulars of their case.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
So there's different things.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
In the air I think to do with sort of technology, culture,
justice institutions, and all of those are in play.
Speaker 3 (14:41):
I think.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
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(15:03):
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Speaker 1 (15:07):
Of the show. So I was just looking at, you know,
of just seven different case studies that you did. I
can totally understand the sort of cathartic way in which
sharing stories such as Chanelle Miller who just mentioned, or
maybe the mo Fara story on ones such as Howard Marx,
you know, on that one, is there something slightly different
(15:29):
going on there? This is going to sound really pessimistic,
but is it an opportunity for fame? It's what I'm
trying to get that.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
Oh yes, So I love I love writing the chapter
on Howard Marx because it's such a contrast to the rest.
But me is such an important example in that criminal
memoir genre. It kind of sticks out against the ones
that had come before it, and I think for people
of my age, it had this kind of cult status.
(15:57):
Everyone was reading. It was everyone's bookshelves. Howard Marx was
invited to speak at Glastonbury and so what, Yes, I
think it's the short answer. It is about kind of
something to do with fame and notoriety. So whereas autobiographies,
criminal autobiographies and memoir before that had been about remorse,
Howard Marx's autobiography is really celebrating his identity as an outlaw,
(16:22):
and it kind of fits with the counter culture of
the nineteen nineties, kind of geezer chic.
Speaker 3 (16:29):
Think about Guy.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Ritchie's films like Lockstock, Two Smoking Barrels. There's a kind
of a glamorization of counter culture and of badness that.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
He played on really successfully.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
But I think keep in mind also that he was
a graduate of Oxford, so he has this kind of
status that's all that kind of working class masculinity, but
not of it that allows him to be this kind
of gentleman outlaw.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
And then I've got to ask about the Prince Andrew Well,
was that one about a lot of people said the
time is why is he doing this? I mean that
seems the strangest of the lots to make that long.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
Yes, it is, isn't it?
Speaker 2 (17:07):
And I think for me when I was researching around this,
I think his has this kind of legacy almost of
the nineteen nineties chat show actually with than anything. If
you think about people like Parkinson and Oprah, these kinds
of interviews are about that kind of revealing of one's
innermost self and a search front sort of self understanding
(17:29):
through talking. So that idea through therapy finds its home
in Rickard Lake and Oprah Winfrey.
Speaker 3 (17:36):
And I think it's maybe.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
Useful to read Prince Andrew against the Princess Diana interview
panorama that she did, where she was able to was
kind of backed into a corner, I guess, but she
was able to give this really endearing interview where she
was very honest and she revealed this kind of inner difficulty,
and it's not about how she's a great princess or
(17:58):
a kind of a public speaking role. It has this
kind of confessional, intimate feeling that kind of gained her
this title of the Queen of Hearts. And I think
maybe Prince Andrew thought that if he would talk about things,
if he would be honest and open and intimate, that
people would come to understand him. And it kind of
(18:20):
spectacularly backfires on him, which you know, I think as
anyone who's seen that interview will know. So I think
he thought that people would come to understand him, and.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
It really fails.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Actually, I think in part because of the way that
he talks about Epstein's victims and his failure to acknowledge them.
His kind of repeated denials saying well, I didn't see anything,
I never met this woman, I don't know anything, and
I kind of had this undermining impact.
Speaker 3 (18:51):
And I think he almost.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
Wanted us to see him as a victim of a circumstance,
and I think people just didn't.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
They just refused to.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
I think they understood him properly, somebody who was quite
powerful actually, and had the power to change things had
they wanted to. So this is the chapter that allows
me to go back and use some sociological theory, and
it's Scott A. Lineman's work on accounts, and they talk
about the ways that talk isn't just a kind of
a decoration on the social fabric, but it's deeply part
(19:19):
of it. And they talk about the ways that when
our behavior doesn't match expectations, we can fix that by
producing a good account. And I think Prince Andrew's account
was a really bad one because he failed to He
failed to kind of get up an apology in a
language that had any cultural resonance. So he talks, he
(19:40):
talks repeatedly about being honorable, and I think it's just
an idea that didn't resonate at all.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
It just was so obvious that if.
Speaker 2 (19:48):
He was someone who was who was honorable, who had
so much honor, that he might have acted differently.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
I would say, And.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
That one you know that kind of failed spectacularly in
trying to get the public to see them as a victim.
But that is an underlining theme about a lot of
the cases, isn't it. That is that sort of the intention,
even if it's subconscious, for the public to feel empathy
for the individual.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
I think so, yes. I mean I'm thinking about Amyra
Hindley's writing, for example, I mean the time that she
was writing her autobiography, she's writing in prison, so she's
writing this autobiography in letters, so it exists in these
kind of fragments, and I was able to get access
to just one of those letters. But the reason that
(20:37):
she comes to write about herself is that for her
to be released from prison, and she had served an
extraordinarily long amount of time in prison, really by that
point she needed to be able to influence public opinion
because at that time, to be released from prison, you
needed the permission of politicians, and politicians were very, very
(20:57):
very unwilling to go anywhere near Hindley because she had
such toxic associations and the public hated her so much,
And so I think for her, the explicit intention really
in writing was that the public would be able to
understand her better would see that she had changed and
would release her. And I think it's I also think, like,
could you tell a story about yourself in public where
(21:19):
you didn't want to be liked? I think who would
have the power to tell that kind of story and
for to not impact them? So there is something about
the fact that they're told in public. They often have
a kind of a campaigning aspect of them, maybe, or
people are campaigning for some kind of sympathy or some change,
(21:43):
or that we change how we see them.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Perhaps.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
I mean, I think Howard Marx is the most interesting
in that he I think didn't really have anything to
gain apart from kind of the fame and notoriety that
followed the book. But none of that was really a
given at that time, I don't think. But I think
he was. He was probably well off enough. I'd like
to imagine at that point that he wasn't relying on
(22:08):
the sales of the book.
Speaker 3 (22:08):
But I don't know. I don't know. I think there's there.
I think you're right.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
I think there's something about sympathy or a call for
empathy that underpins that public storytelling.
Speaker 1 (22:18):
And from the other end as well, is that we
as the public are obsessed with consuming such things, aren't we,
Whether whether it's a news story, whether it's a BBC interview,
whether it's a Netflix documentary. You know, if you've got
something with the word true crime in it, it is
incredibly popular. So what do you think is happening at
the market end? Why are we so fascinated with these
(22:40):
case studies?
Speaker 2 (22:41):
Yes, I think true crime is such a home for
personal stories about crime.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
It really is, And.
Speaker 2 (22:47):
I think there's something market tee going on here in
that true crime often relies on producing just huge volumes
of material. Right, if you're going to have a podcast
where each episode is an hour, you can fill those
hours quite easily with personal stories and they're quite they're
quite cheap actually, And this is where this is not
(23:08):
me saying that you know, podcasts are cheap in their spirit,
but I think often people take part in podcasts for free,
without any expectation of anything compared to, for example, like
television studios where they might invite you there, or do
make up here, wash your clothes for you, allow you
to stay overnight in a hotel, where they do produce
(23:28):
a lot of content very cheaply. But then I think,
what's the public appetite for these stories, and there's something
in personal personal stories that draws us in. There's a
wonderful anecdote by a man called Ira Glass, who was
one of the early journalists on This American Life, which
(23:51):
I think is the model from lots of podcasts that
come after that. But the in this YouTube interview, he
talks about the anecdote as the story and it's pure form,
and he gives this vision of you know, imagine you're
standing in line in the bank and someone starts telling
a story. You cannot help but tune in your ear
to find out what happens next.
Speaker 3 (24:10):
So there's this kind of.
Speaker 2 (24:11):
Maybe human thing that we want to tune in, and
we find these really interesting. But then I think there's
something else in play, which is there's this kind of
perhaps declining trust in public institutions. So there was the
phone hacking scandal that undermined public confidence, I think in journalism,
(24:31):
and then we've seen numerous scandals around criminal justice. We've
seen scandals at the heart of government itself, and I
think people often turn to these stories as something apparently
raw and authentic and true, where we've this kind of
building suspicion of official accounts.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
And if we're talking about you know, them being authentic
and true, what do you think ultimately makes a story
either sit with the public, lick in a sympathetic way,
or not. So I'm just looking at your range of
different seven case studies you've got here. You know you
would argue I think that you know Howard Marks was lauded,
(25:11):
there was a huge amount of sympathy for the most
fairest story Shemaia ma begam very much mixed, possibly more
anti than pro. And then you know Prince Andrew very
much anti. So what ultimately impacts the reaction of the
public watching or listening to the story?
Speaker 3 (25:28):
Do you think That's a really really good question.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
And I think if it was easy to predict, I
think what some people wouldn't bother telling their story. I
think Prince Andrew being one of them. But a question
about what resonates, I think it's a really interesting one.
And I think the general public is not a homogeneous group.
(25:53):
And when we think in terms of sociology, I think
it's always useful to think about race, class, gender, and
I think those are written large in the public response
to those kinds of stories, and that I think some
people already had the public's yere before they start speaking, right,
(26:14):
Whereas I think, for example, Shumima Begum, because of her
being young, being a woman of color, being a Muslim woman,
she was treated with suspicion I think from the very start.
Whereas mo Fara, despite also being Muslim, being a man
of color, he had this status of being a public.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
Hero.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
I think in the UK because of his gold medals,
because of his knighthood, he had a kind of a
status and credibility already. And then Prince Andrew just scupper
is the theory, doesn't he because he is speaking from
a position of power. But maybe it's because he's in
an institution that we've increasingly come to distrust.
Speaker 3 (26:56):
I don't know. I think so.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
There's so many people that are anti Morey. I think
that probably clouded their judgment on it before he'd even
opened his mouth.
Speaker 3 (27:04):
Yeah, I think so. I think so.
Speaker 2 (27:06):
I'm thinking about even the ways that we've read sort
of Prince Harry's autobiography that's been read the suspicion as well. Actually,
and there is a lot of I'm trying to think about,
are there any members of the royal family who automatically
have the public trust. The answer to that, I think
is not actually even Princess Kate. She's not Princess Kate anymore.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
She Wales.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
Remember there was that photograph or in Christmas time that
pure shocked. So there's some there is something about how
we relate to people through those social structures, through you know,
the attachment to institutions and so on.
Speaker 1 (27:46):
Yes, yeah, I wondered if that was the case, because
I think you always have to look at the person.
Then you have how charismatic they are, how they come
across as just thinking of the Chanelle Miller case, you know,
a young, attractive female that does have an impact on
how the story sits and how people react to it
as well, doesn't it.
Speaker 2 (28:05):
It does, But I think when we think about the
Chanelle Miller story, it also reminds of the ways that
institutions can accord credibility to a personal story. So I
think podcasts in particular do something really intriguing, which is
invite people who I'm thinking about, these kind of career
criminals and gangsters who might be considered dishonest or distrustful
(28:28):
or dodgy from the start, and they make space for
people to tell their personal stories. I think actually some
genres of music do that too, thinking about even grime
and drill and rap music give people a space and
I guess a language of vocabulary to talk about themselves
that can offer dignity. And what these kind of genres
(28:53):
do is they kind of convey to the reader that
these stories are worth listening to, So they do something
really important.
Speaker 3 (28:59):
These stories might been.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
Told to different context, but once it's in a podcast
or once it's in a newspaper, then it sets us
up to say there's something really important here that we
should listen to. And I think, yes, Shanelle Miller's story
because it was because it had the power of the
state behind it, because it was a victim personal statement.
It had a kind of credibility to it because it
(29:20):
for it to be read out in court, has to
go through different processes, and it has this kind officialness
that sticks to it. But also actually, she was a
fantastic writer and that comes across through it, and it
just means it's fantastically readable despite being about really really
awful things having come to her.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
And I have to ask, maybe I can make this
the last question, and the Myra Hindley one was there
any public sympathy or feeling that you know, she now
has shown remarre she's done her time. Because I just wondered,
if Myra Hindley is such a well known and, as
you said, hated figure, is that case gone too far
(30:03):
for anyone to ever feel any sort of sympathy towards her.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
So when I was doing my research, I have to
shout out a guy called Tom Clark at University of
Sheffield because he was super helpful in helping me get
hold of material and also kind of filling in bits
of background information. And so I lived through the kind
of the aftermath of the Moor's murders growing up in
the sort of eighties and nineties, and was aware of Hindley.
(30:32):
This was a time when she would have been in
prison for a long time already, and her case was
under review, and she would have been in the press
quite a lot, but I didn't know a huge amount
about the details. And actually when I started writing about
Myra Hindley, it was because I wanted to write a
chapter about silences and stories that weren't told in public.
I thought, she's someone who's been silenced, and actually that
(30:54):
wasn't what I found it all. So Tom Clark wrote
a journal article looking at a letter that was published
in The Observer and it was written by Myra Hindley
and it's about five thousand words long. And she was
writing to the paper because they published something that infer
that she was had some psychological issues, and she said, actually,
(31:15):
not been reviewed by multiple psycho psychologists who've said that
I'm normal. And that's the worst thing about this is
that nobody, nobody can tell me what's wrong with me.
So how did Marahindley manage to get this five thousand
word letter in the national press. And that's because she
had over the years cultivated friendships with people, including Lord Longford,
(31:36):
who was a Catholic, who visited her in prison and
he was very interested in redemption. One of the reasons
that Hindley's case was so important was that the death
penalty was abolished right before they were sentenced. It was
technically it was paused, and then it was abolished once
they were in prison. But that meant that they were
some of the first people to have committed crimes of
(32:00):
the most serious order, but then there was no death penalty,
so what was the state going to do with them?
So they were given this initial twenty or twenty five
year sentence. I forget which one. And there were lots
of campaigners who were interested in this, including a man
whose name escapes me at the minute, but he was
editor of the Observer newspaper and he used to go
and visit Hindley in prison, and he was instrumental in
(32:23):
helping her story get told in the newspaper. So the
short answer is, yes, there were people who were sympathetic,
and most were people who were interested in reform and redemption,
and they did give Hindley a voice, and they did
allow her to tell her story in public, not that
it necessarily changed the course of her case.
Speaker 3 (32:41):
She was never.
Speaker 2 (32:42):
Released from prison, and she died in custody in the
early two thousands.
Speaker 3 (32:46):
But I think there's always.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
An audience for a story. I think, even if it's
quite a small one.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
I think, yeah, that one's always fascinated me because you know,
most people know the name Myra Hindley, certainly view of
a certain generation, most so than he and Brady. So
you know the fact that she was a woman that
you know that sticks in people's mind because of the
crimes that I.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
Committed, absolutely absolutely, and she has I mean, iconic is
the word that strings springs to mind, and not in
a good way, I think, But she was so she
was so emblematic of social anxieties at the time in
the nineteen sixties, about changing role of women, about young
(33:31):
people not seeming to want seeming to want to do
the same things that their parents had done. So they
kind of tapped into these social anxieties, and then they
were really at the heart of changes in the criminal
justice system. There was one rule about telling about prisoner
communications that changed while they were in prison, and there
(33:52):
was a time when all prisoner letters were checked on
the way out, and then as the prison population grew,
that became kind of a man and only category A
prisoners were or people who'd committed defenses against children, and
that exception was surely written with them in mind. So
they've just they've just been at the heart of so
(34:12):
much I think that was going on, and they have
this continued resonance and people are still interested in them.
Speaker 3 (34:19):
But I don't know.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
It was a it was a difficult chapter to write,
and I did wonder about including it, I think because
I thought, what could I possibly add So much has
been written about them, But I think there is something
still to say, and I enjoyed writing that chapter, I
think would be yeah. I think I did enjoy writing overall,
(34:41):
but reading about Hindley and our crimes was confronting and difficult.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
I think, yeah, I can understand that. Thank you, Thank you, Jennifer.
Do you want to say a little bit more about
the book if people want to find out a bit
more or want to purchase the book or two?
Speaker 3 (34:55):
Sure?
Speaker 1 (34:55):
So.
Speaker 2 (34:56):
The book is called What we Talk About When We
Talk About Crime, and it's published by a small independent
press called notting Hill Editions. But you can find it
online in all the usual online bookshops. You can also
buy it from Waterstins, and you can also buy it
directly from the publisher. It's very reasonably priced at only
ten ninety nine, and it's a lovely little book. It's
(35:17):
not too long, the chapters are nice and short. I
think I had a reader in mind who's hopping on
the tube or the boss or in a waiting room somewhere,
and I wanted to give them something short and thought
provoking that they could take with them wherever they went.
Speaker 1 (35:32):
It's brilliant. Thank you, Thank you so much for your
time today. Jennifer, I really appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (35:37):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (35:39):
Thank you for taking the time to listen to the podcast.
If you would like to contact the show or be interviewed,
then please email The Sociology Show podcast at gmail dot com.
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