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Dr Rod Earle

Senior Lecturer In Youth Justice

School of Health, Wellbeing & Social Care

rod.earle@open.ac.uk

Biography

Professional biography

I joined the Youth Justice team in July 2008. Before that I worked throughout the late 1980s and the 1990s as a youth justice worker in the London Borough of Lambeth, where I also completed a part-time Masters degree in Criminology at Middlesex University Centre for Criminology. My dissertation considered the prospects for restorative justice in the youth justice system of England and Wales and, in 2000, I joined the Public Policy Research Unit at Goldsmiths College to work on the National Evaluation of introduction of Referrral Orders into the youth justice system.

After that, at the London School of Economics I worked with Professor Tim Newburn on an evaluation of the use of visual recordings of police suspect interviews and then secured a fixed term teaching contract at the University of Surrey Sociology Dept, teaching undergraduate and postgraduate criminology.

In 2006 I started teaching with the Open University as an Associate Lecturer in Region 13 (D315), and also taught criminology courses as a visiting lecturer at the LSE, City University and Westminster.

Immediately before joining the OU full time in 2008 I spent two years with Dr Coretta Phillips (LSE) on an ethnographic research project examining men's ethnic and social identities in prison. I have published widely from this research and in 2014 completed my PhD by Publication in the Dept. of Social Policy and Criminology, here at The Open University.  

In 2011 I helped to establish British Convict Criminology, a group modelled on a similar group in the USA that supports and encourages ex-prisoners who are active in criminology. The group has established mentor support for prisoners studying criminology. I have published several articles on the subject and my book, Convict Criminology - Inside and Out, was published in June 2016 by Policy Press. You can take a closer look here:  http://policypress.co.uk/convict-criminology

Research interests

I maintain a variety of research interests around youth justice. In 2015 I completed, with my OU colleague Wayne Taylor, an evaluation of the Milton Keynes Enterpise Mentors project, funded by The Cabinet Office Vulnerable and Deprived Young People's Fund.  I worked with the Welsh Youth Justice Academic Advisory Group (WYJAAG) to help produce their report on the prosepcts and options of developing distinctive approaches to young people's offfending behaviour in Wales (2022/3). I have also been a member of the Youth Justice Board (YJB) Academic Liaison Group since 2019.  

In general terms my interests cluster around gender, race and racism, crime and social justice. More specifically these include interests in prison research, penality and masculinities.

Almost every year since 2011 I have organised Convict Criminology panels at the British Society of Criminology annual conference. These provide 'user' and 'lived experience' perspectives on aspects of criminal justice, prison life and research and criminology. Convict Criminology is a group of academics that helps people with first hand experience of criminal justice and penal sanctions to develop critical perspectives on criminology. 

Most recently I have been writing with Alpa Parmar and Coretta Phillips around questions of race, racism, criminology and criminal justice. Together we organised an international symposium on racism and criminology in 2018 and subsequently edited a Special Race Matters Issue of the journal Theoretical Criminology. Also emerging from the symposium was the formation of a Race Matters Network within the British Society of Criminology. I have published and co-published several papers on 'Whiteness' as a critical dynamic within structures of race and racism. 

Teaching interests

Youth Justice, obviously enough, but with particular reference to the idea of the research practitioner, restorative justice, prisons, penality, criminological and social theory. 

I am committed to developing teaching and learning materials that challenge racism and expose its effects in personal and social life.  

Impact and engagement

I have particpated in consultations and workshops about race and ethnicity with prisoners in HMP Grendon. I facilitiated workshops in Belfast with ex-prisoners to help provide prisoner perspectives on the review of the Northern Irealand criminal justice system. I'm a founder member of the British Society of Criminology (BSC) Prison Research Network and also helped to establish the BSC Race Matters Network. 

External collaborations

I am on the editorial advisory board of the journals Criminology and Criminal Justice and Incarceration

I am on the advisory board of the Prison Reform Trust's Prisoner Engagement Project

International links

I've presented papers on my research and convened panels at national and international conferences, including the annual conference of the American Society of Criminology, the Australia and New Zealand Society of Criminology, European Society of Criminology and the Inter-University Conference in Croatia.

Projects

Vulnerable, disengaged young people

Prospects have asked the OU to be the Evaluation partner on this project. To evaluate the Enterprise Mentors scheme as academic partner to Prospect group, working with Milton Keynes Youth Offending Team and Christian Foundation. Conduct interviews and observations, develop and administer research instruments, such as monitoring and time-use diaries etc. Gather and analyse data, write evaluation report(s) and disseminate.

Howard League Youth Participation

A small scale evaluation of a 3-year youth participation project launched by the Howard League for Penal Reform. The evaluation will assess how project objectives are met and work collaboratively with the Howard League to develop its potential. The youth participation project delivers an advice line for young people in custody and seeks to develop other innovatory and incidental services to promote young people’s awareness of their rights in the youth justice system.

Building on Positive Convictions

The project focuses on the perspectives of men who have been imprisoned and gone on to become criminologists. It challenges conventional disciplinary boundaries and is both radical and innovative in foregrounding the perspectives of the small number of academics who can combine first hand experiences of imprisonment with theorisation of crime and punishment – convict criminologists. It asks whether these unusual combinations of prison experience and criminology can tell us something new about the role of imprisonment in society, the lives of prisoners (and academics), the experience of imprisonment and the prospects of rehabilitation. Historically, as criminology has grown police officers, probation staff, social workers and prison officers have contributed positively to the discipline, and benefitted from studying it. People from these professional backgrounds have successfully made the transition to careers in criminology, but recently something else has happened. Ex-convicts are making the journey into criminology. How does an ex-convict study crime and punishment and make sense of their personal experience? What research questions does an ex-convict have about prisons, punishment and rehabilitation? How do they teach criminology differently? Do they research prison and prisoners differently? Ethnographic pioneer, Bronislaw Malinowski sums up the epistemological thesis of the proposal: ‘In order to explain a cultural product it is necessary to know it. And to know it, in matters of thought and emotion, is to have experienced it.’ Imprisonment is much studied by criminologists, but rarely experienced directly. This research changes that.

Publications

Book

Exploring Urban Youth Culture Outside of the Gang Paradigm: Critical Questions of Youth, Gender and Race On-Road (2023)

Degrees of Freedom: Prison Education at The Open University (2019)

Convict Criminology - Inside and Out (2016)

The Palgrave Handbook of Prison Ethnography (2015)

Youth Justice Handbook - Theory, Policy and Practice (2009)

Youth Justice Handbook: Theory, Policy and Practice (2009)

Book Chapter

Tackling whiteness as a decolonising task in contemporary criminology (2023)

Criminal Questions, Colonial Hinterlands, Personal Experience: A symptomatic reading (2023)

Convict criminology without guarantees: proposing hard labour for an unfinished criminology (2023)

Conclusions, Compromises and Continuing Conversations (2023)

Introduction: Youth and ‘On-Road’ – Making Gender and Race Matter (2023)

Doing Time for Convict Criminology (2021)

A University Without Walls (2019)

From prisoner to student (2019)

Pioneers and Politics: Open University Journeys in British and Irish prisons in Long Kesh during the years of conflict 1972-1975 (2019)

Open universities, close prisons: critical arguments for the future (2019)

Narrative Convictions, Conviction Narratives: The Prospects of Convict Criminology (2019)

Opening and Introductions: Education for the many, prison for the few (2019)

Being inside: Masculine imaginaries, prison interiors (2018)

Anti-racist criminology? (2017)

Race, Ethnicity, Multiculture and Prison Life (2016)

Finding Secrets and Secret Findings: Confronting the Limits of the Ethnographer's Gaze (2015)

Prison ethnography at the threshold of race, reflexivity and difference (2015)

Men, Masculinity and Crime (2015)

Prison Life, Sociology of: Recent Perspectives from the United Kingdom (2015)

Walking amongst the Graves of the Living: Reflections about Doing Prison Research from an Abolitionist Perspective (2015)

Inside white: racism, ethnicity and social relations in English prisons (2013)

Law, Leadership and management (2013)

Restorative justice and the right to move on: toward deinstitutionalising the stigma of a criminal conviction (2012)

Cultural diversity, ethnicity and race relations in prison (2011)

Globalisation, power and knowledge in youth justice (2010)

'Con-viviality' and beyond – identity, ethnicity and social relations in a young men's prison (2010)

The United Nations, children's rights and juvenile justice (2009)

Living in a box: young men’s prison identities (2009)

Transitions to adulthood (2009)

Referral Orders (2008)

The Referral Order (2005)

Digital Artefact

Courting disaster and indulging the Whiteness of the criminological imagination. (2021)

Degrees of Freedom - prison education at The Open University (2020)

Little white lies: Whiteness, reflexivity, race and criminology (2019)

Journal Article

‘People are Trapped in History and History is Trapped Inside Them’: Exploring Britain’s Racialized Colonial Legacies in Criminological Research (2023)

Creating convict criminology in the UK: a response to Aresti, Darke and Ross from members of the British Convict Criminology group (2023)

[Book Review] The cage of days: Time and temporal experience in prison by Carceral, K.C. and Flaherty, Michael G. (2022)

Seeing is Believing: How the Layering of Race is Obscured by “White Epistemologies” in the Criminal Justice Field (2022)

Exploring narrative, convictions and autoethnography as a convict criminologist (2021)

Sensory Penalties: Exploring the Senses in Spaces of Punishment and Social Control. By Kate Herrity, Bethany E. Schmidt and Jason Warr (Emerald, 2021, 296pp., £70.00 Hbk) (2021)

No Cell for the Soul: Prison, Philosophy and Bernard Stiegler - A Short Appreciation (2021)

A Voice Within: An Autoethnographic Account of Moving from Closed to Open Prison Conditions by a Life‐Sentenced Prisoner (2021)

The Open University and Prison Education in the UK – the first 50 years (2021)

Glimpses across 50 years of prison life from members of British Convict Criminology (2020)

Race matters in criminology: Introduction to the Special Issue (2020)

Review Essay: They think it's all over...' (2020)

Dear British criminology: Where has all the race and racism gone? (2020)

[Book Review] Everyday Desistance: The Transition to Adulthood Among Formerly Incarcerated Youth (2019)

Convict Criminology in England: Developments and Dilemmas (2018)

Insider and out: reflections on a prison experience and research experience (2014)

Telling and showing with criminology (2014)

Developing convict criminology beyond North America (2014)

Review: A Political Ecology of Youth and Crime, by Alan France, Dorothy Bottrell and Derrick Armstrong (2013)

Review. 'Doing Harder Time? The Experiences of An Ageing Male Prison Population in England and Wales' by Natalie Mann (2013)

‘Muslim is the new black’ - new ethnicities and new essentialisms in the prison (2013)

On the inside: prison ethnography around the globe (2013)

What do ethnographers do in prison? (2013)

Review. Enforcing the Convict Code: Violence and Prison Culture, by R. Trammell (2013)

Book review. Prisoners' Rights: Principles and Practice (2013)

‘Who’s the Daddy?’ – ideas about fathers from a young men’s prison (2012)

Digesting men? Ethnicity, gender and food: perspectives from a 'prison ethnography' (2012)

Ethnicity, multiculture and racism in a Young Offenders' Institition (2011)

Boys' zone stories: perspectives from a young men's prison (2011)

Reading difference differently? Identity, epistemology and prison ethnography (2010)

Review. 'Out There/in Here: Masculinity, Violence and Prisoning'. By Elizabeth Comack (2009)

Ethnicity and social relations in a Young Offenders Institution (2008)

Book Review: CCTV and Policing: Public Area Surveillance and Police Practices in Britain by Benjamin Goold (2005)

Review:Pan-African Issues in Crime and Justice, (eds) Anita Kalunta-Crumpton and Biko Agonizo (2005)

Book review 'Comparative Criminal Justice' by Frances Pakes (2005)

Book Review, 'Restorative Justice and Accountability' by Declan Roche (2004)

Murray Bookchin - Left, Right and Wrong but Nobody's Bogeyman - review essay (2002)

Referral Orders: Some Reflections on Policy Transfer and 'What Works' (2002)

Book Review, 'Juvenile Justice In Scotland: Twenty-Five Years of the Welfare Approach' (2001)

Creative Tensions? Young Offenders, Restorative Justice and the Introduction of Referral Orders (2001)

Other

Book Review: Labelled a Black Villain: and Understanding the Social Deprivation Mindset. By Trevor Hercules. Reviewer: Rod Earle (2020)

Anti-racist criminology? A recall (2017)

Pushing the boundaries of prison ethnography (2015)

Presentation / Conference

Race Matters: A New Dialogue Between Criminology and Sociology (2018)

Prison and university: a tale of two institutions? (2011)

Report

The Introduction of Referral Orders into the Youth Justice System: Final report (2002)

The introduction of referral orders into the youth justice system: first interim report (2001)

Thesis

Men in Prison: Con-viviality, Race and Culture (2014)