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Penal Practices and the Ghost Road

We need allegory and analogy to help us understand things that puzzle us, but choosing an inept metaphor can lock us in to a misleading line of thinking. In penological study, an example of a hackneyed, beguiling but unfitting metaphor

Robert Canton June 20, 2022June 20, 2022 Uncategorized No Comments Read more

Don’t get mad, get … sad

Liberal criminologists and others who believe that levels of punishment are, in general, excessive can be discomfited by events that prompt outrage. Notably, murders, rapes, violence against women, children and other vulnerable people, hate crime, cruelty to animals and no

Robert Canton February 6, 2021February 6, 2021 Uncategorized No Comments Read more

The European Probation Rules: A Celebration and a Reflection

The European Probation Rules   (EPR) (Recommendation CM / Rec (2010) 1) were formally adopted on 20th January 2010 by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe. They are now ten (almost eleven!) years old and this anniversary

Robert Canton November 11, 2020November 11, 2020 Uncategorized No Comments Read more

Norman Bishop: A Tribute

(Norman and Karin. Lisbon 2001. Photo taken by the author.) Norman Bishop died at the end of July 2020, at the age of 99. Because of his great age and long retirement, many people will be unaware of his inspirational

Robert Canton August 3, 2020August 6, 2020 Uncategorized 3 Comments Read more

Disgust, disdain and suspicion: Some obstacles to desistance

This striking picture by Michael Sowa is on the front cover of William Miller’s absorbing study The Anatomy of Disgust I am (or maybe you are) arriving late at (or maybe returning to) the table. There is a chair for

Robert Canton July 12, 2020July 12, 2020 Uncategorized No Comments Read more

On wild beasts, viruses, war and crimes: metaphors and their effects

One way of finding out what is this? is to ask what is this like?, deploying metaphor and other forms of allegory. In a study to explore the effects of metaphor on thinking, Paul Thibodeau and Lera Boroditsky asked people

Robert Canton May 17, 2020May 17, 2020 Uncategorized No Comments Read more

Against short prison sentences – and long ones

There is considerable opposition to short prison sentences these days. Most criminologists have long been convinced of their pointlessness and now politicians are showing signs of being persuaded as well. The argument has already been won in Scotland  and Rory

Robert Canton February 7, 2019 Uncategorized No Comments Read more

Should sentences for animal cruelty be increased?

In the lead up to their annual conference, the Conservatives are proposing marked increases in sentences for those convicted of animal cruelty  –  though not, apparently, for the cruelties involved in hunting foxes. And from time to time, the newspapers

Robert Canton October 1, 2017October 1, 2017 Uncategorized No Comments Read more

A Suitable Amount of Crime (Nils Christie)

‘Crime does not exist. Only acts exist, acts often given different meanings within various social frameworks.’ (Christie 2004: 3)  Nils Christie makes an instructive distinction between crimes and ‘deplorable acts’.  Some deplorable acts (and of course there will be disagreements

Robert Canton June 1, 2017June 1, 2017 Uncategorized No Comments Read more

No monsters (Nils Christie)

Christie wrote of his difficulties in finding monsters. “Once I was supposed to meet a guaranteed monster. I went to see him and met a man like most men. … My search tells me that it seems possible to understand

Robert Canton May 29, 2017May 29, 2017 Uncategorized No Comments Read more
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