Our Criminal Past: Caring for the Future

'Our Criminal Past' aims to create a new interdisciplinary research network of UK-based scholars working in the field of the criminal, legal and penal history of Britain. The network will uniquely bring these scholars together with archivists and those engaged in an educational and heritage capacity in museums and prisons over a series of seminars, sustained through an web-based network resource. It aims to bring together scholars, researchers and heritage and penal stakeholders who are invested (academically and/or professionally) in 'Our Criminal Past'. However, this network is innovative in that its focus will be to concentrate on the future of our criminal past. Thus 'Caring for the Future' of the history of crime is fundamental to the network discussions, collaborations and outputs, both during the scope of the funding bid, and in the future.

The creation of the network is in recognition of the growing importance of 'Our Criminal Past' not only to academics but also to archives, heritage professionals, educationalists and other in the wider community who have an investment in how 'Our Criminal Past' is to be preserved, presented and transmitted. Through the sharing of good practice, the bringing together of expertise, this network will provide both innovation and value for money in its potential for strategic research planning and future collaboration.

The network will explore three inter-related themes: Digitisation, New Social Media and the Future of Our Criminal Past; Educating Historians of Crime: Classroom, Archive, Community: Representing Penal Histories: Displaying and Narrating the Criminal Past. Our intention is to create a dynamic network by developing a website, holding three one-day seminar/workshops and creating and maintaining a database of crime and penal history collections.

The aim is to enable a forum for discussion and debate about future research directions, the sustainability of research in relation to new technology and funding-streams; the role of individuals, communities and institutions in shaping and preserving our criminal past. By bringing together academics from a range of disciplines (history, criminology, education, tourism, cultural studies) with archivists, educationalists, librarians, heritage practitioners, the network and the activities will provide a forum from which to explore ideas that could lead to new projects in and resources for the history of crime. The themes have been identified as important areas of cross and multidisciplinary interest in terms of existing, current and future research and as themes that have contemporary and cultural significance beyond the academy.

The first theme will explore technological developments which are increasingly impacting on histories of crime. As well as exploring the priorities and futures of digitisation and role of new social media (such as blogs, facebook, twitter) it will consider the priorities and realities of funding the preservation and presentation of histories of crime. The second theme addresses the history of crime as an educational resource, recognising that education, in schools, in universities, in museums and archives and in penal institutions, is a powerful medium with the potential to influence the future shape of communities and their institutions. The third theme explores the specific presentation of crime history in museums, seeking to develop dialogues on the variation in practice and policy in cultural institutions. As academics involved in the research and publication of the history of crime we are uniquely placed to address these themes in a comparative and interdisciplinary context. The network, through the seminar days and website, will develop a broad intercultural dialogue on the preservation and presentation of histories of crime and its future.

Who will benefit from the research network?

The research network will contribute to academic debates on crime and punishment history and the digitisation of criminal and social history records more broadly but its specific benefit is in the collaborative exploration of ideas with those working to preserve and present crime history for future generations. Therefore the key aim of the specialist research network is to ensure the participation of the public sector and third sector, particularly those working in museums, libraries and archives and this group will be the main beneficiaries. In addition we also hope to widen public engagement through existing relationships with local history societies, specialist crime history societies and through working with archives, museums and libraries to enable an innovation and unique platform for collaborative engagement.

How will they benefit?

In the short term, these groups will benefit through engagement with the seminars, knowledge exchange with each other and with academics. In the medium to long term, we would like to encourage better working relationships and the working together of these groups with colleagues in Universities to facilitate dissemination of crime history research to encourage wider public dissemination. Previous successful applications to the ESRC by Godfrey (on habitual offending, for example) and current project (Johnston, Godfrey & Cox - The costs of imprisonment: a longitudinal study, RES-062-23-3102) have arranged workshops to further public engagement. A workshop at Keele in November 2009, for example, was attended by members of local history societies, police officers, and local magistrates. The Co-I has previously organised a highly successful one-day event with the London Metropolitan Archives on 'Researching Criminal and Prison Lives' in February 2012, about 40-50 people attended (for example, students, archivists, family historians, public) and the Principal Development Officer (Jan Pimblett) for the archives is keen to work with us again. Thus we have a track record in targeting user and beneficiary groups in order to enhance impact.

The present network will develop and expand upon existing and new relationships with the user groups outlined above by the creation and enhancement of the website, throughout and beyond the bid period. This will contribute in the longer term to the preservation, presentation and dissemination of crime and punishment history in archives, museums and galleries for future generations - contributing more broadly to the 'care for the future' of 'Our Criminal Past'.

Our plans for the enhancement of the website (supported initially by technical assistance; see Justification of Resources) will enable and encourage the engagement of all beneficiaries in order to achieve impact. To ensure the participation and continuing involvement of key speakers and invited participants to each event the creation of the website will provide to be the most accessible means by which we disseminate and engage with those within the archives, museums and libraries sector, as well as the wider media, policy makers and charitable organisations who have expertise on contemporary and historical crime and criminal justice matters. A user-friendly website will also appeal to a much broader public audience in the short and the longer term. We will foster positive relationships with the organisations mentioned here (London Met Archives, Galleries of Justice), who engage with the broader public (for example, teachers, family historians), which has significant potential to increase impact in the longer term. An innovative aim of the network will be to solicit the feedback and opinions of former works and inmates of the criminal justice system. The collaboration with expert commentators and penal professionals (see Case for Support) through the network seminar days and website has the potential for innovative and creative impacts.