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Newsletter 5

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Category: Newsletters

Last Updated: Monday, 01 May 2017 08:56

Published: Saturday, 02 July 2011 12:28

Written by Colin Sumner

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Hi everybody,

Firstly, thanks for your interest in CrimeTalk. I hope you are finding the site useful and exploring its potential. You are a growing community: in January on launch we had a mere 229 'unique visitors' and we closed June with 1258 that month. 97 people have registered; 364 follow us on Twitter and 40 use our Facebook page. So, growth in our readership is rapid, mostly from the UK and US, and we haven't even made a serious attempt at marketing yet! Next month, I will developing our network in other countries, notably Germany, Spain, Colombia, Tanzania, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Canada.

Crimetalk is still developing of course but we are getting closer to the final model, maybe completing all the aspects of the structure by September.

This last month, Curtis Jackson-Jacobs became our first 'official' correspondent and commissioning editor - for the USA. His enthusiasm for the project and skill with new media are very welcome. As indicated on the revised Editorial System page, under Help/Info etc, I am looking to engage correspondents in other countries with similar enthusiasm and skill. Volunteers please! The role would suit a young professor, doctoral student, lawyer, police, or social worker with new media skills who sees the point of CrimeTalk. On that note, I sharpened my perception of the purpose and value of CrimeTalk in a new article: CrimeTalk: purpose and value.

In June, we continued the series on Bhopal and on Nino, and were delighted to publish several other new articles:

Flowers at the altar of profit and power Part 3: Was the disaster at Bhopal "unforeseeable"?

Nino Part 3: Bad company

Food Frights

The ‘illegal leisure’ of hidden older adult drug users

A new section called In Brief was created for comments and stuff by friends of CrimeTalk that have been published elsewhere already or is, ermmm, quite brief.

Justice: RIP?

Chronicle of deaths foretold

Famous Cases : R v Müller

Distrust of banks and government: implications for criminology

Reacting to petit and grande fraud: Bernie Madoff and Wall Street

Evidence of child abuse in cults and social groups

Terrorism, economic crisis, and state-corporate crime

At the end of the month, we reorganized the front or home page to reflect more of the content 'behind' it or inside CrimeTalk. We have now collected such an interesting and useful collection of press cuttings, web links and blogs that their existence needs to be indicated on the front page. This is becoming quite a resource for research and just plain curiosity - there is now so much interesting reading inside CrimeTalk the more it integrates within the anarchy and collectivism of the internet. To some extent, we can be described as an 'aggregator' site, but we will remain committed to original stuff, good quality and creative synthesis. Above all, it is a resource.

As a result, we have abandoned the idea of 'regular columns' and there are now just articles. They will continue to appear on the front page and be placed simultaneously in the Library. The Archive section, under Comment, I created only contains links to stuff published elsewhere.

I had better stop there - it's time for a week's holiday!  I hope this is useful and explains where we've been and where we're going, especially to those of you not so familiar with the net and all its new intricacies.

Take care all,

Colin

Colin Sumner

Editor, CrimeTalk

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Newsletter 4

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Category: Newsletters

Last Updated: Monday, 01 May 2017 08:55

Published: Thursday, 12 May 2011 12:02

Written by Colin Sumner

Hits: 3470

	Our development accelerates each month. The site content expands, we have over 80 registered users, and our Twitter following is over 200. We retain the commitment to quality whilst exploring contemporary ways in which to reach a broad global public. There will be a lot more to come in the coming months, such as the extension of our social media presence, invitations to associations and politicians, use of video etc. CrimeTalk will look less and less like an academic journal as time goes by. In the meantime, I've created a Navigate the Site page within the Help/Info page to assist those less familiar with new media. Since March, we've published the second parts in the serializations by Amedeo Cottino, on Nino, and Frank Pearce & Steve Tombs, on Bhopal, and articles by Jade D'Anthro 'A Full English', Curtis Jackson-Jacobs 'Holding Cells', Mike Nellis's review of Clockwork Orange, and myself on Harold Garfinkel. Direct links to those are at the bottom of this letter. Several new pieces are in the pipeline for next month. Do keep them coming in! Just mail me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to discuss. One of my aims is to make CrimeTalk a valuable aid for teachers and students in criminology and all its constituent disciplines. To that end, we will shortly be publishing our first student project, from one of Gregg Barak's courses at Eastern Michigan. Do offer your better students, u/g and p/g, the opportunity to publish their projects with us. Mail me to discuss. With some countries, this could be a great way to enhance the stock of local research studies. At the same time, I still want to interest a wider public in talking seriously about crime, censure, and justice issues, to provide a range of accessible ways to do that, and to engage with contemporary policy debates.  Hence, after realizing how useful Twitter is, I now make several tweets every day for your interest, in fact usually they are re-tweets of other people's messages. They show in the Latest Tweets module on the Home page and the last 100 are archived on the Tweets page in the Library. They usually contain links to valuable online resources and stories. If students read our daily output, they would soon become immersed in key issues. Agnostics and Luddites amongst you: please look over the list on the Tweets page in the Library! If any of you want to tweet important info, or publicize your research and publications or make a comment via CrimeTalk, either e-mail me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or get a Twitter account and tweet your message, including web link, to me at @CrimeTalkEd and I will re-tweet it. You'd be amazed at how many of the chattering classes read these messages, and in many different countries! Remember: there's a 140-word limit. In this vein, we have also improved the CrimeTalk Facebook page. All our latest article and comment titles are automatically published there now. Latest stuff is now fully listed on your CrimSoc home page when you log in there, and that is the easiest way to check for new material. All articles now have 'social sharing' buttons at the bottom. So, if you think an article should have a wider audience, this enables you to send the link to your Facebook page or to get the link out immediately to the whole planet via our Twitter account. Again, with maximum public engagement in mind, I have created a Polls page under theResearch menu. Please vote. It may seem simplistic but the more people do that the more influential the poll. If you want your own poll, whether for research, curiosity or as a student project, just e-mail me your carefully formulated question and I will create the poll immediately. So far, few people have posted in the Forums. This will take off eventually the more readers we get and the more you see the possible uses of them, eg as virtual seminars or as ongoing research topic centres. Do please have a think about how you can use them to your advantage. Finally, a key purpose of CrimeTalk was to create an archive of valuable materials and every month we moved further towards that. There is now an Archive menu with several subject areas, each containing a growing list of online materials, such as interviews, comments, short articles, and videos. The Comments menu contains many more blog links and news feeds, and we are working with Blinkx to focus the television clips dialogue box. Please note the excellent interview with David Simon, co-creator of The Wire, from Guernica magazine, linked into our Reviews sub-menu. Plus the collection of Press Cuttings grows apace. Again, please, if there is anything you would like saving for posterity, or even just next year's work, just send me the link by e-mail. The more CrimeTalk brings together the more it becomes a special resource which saves you surfing all over the internet to pull together what you want. Many thanks for your continued support, All the best, Colin Sumner Editor Recent publications and current items of interest Holding Cells Flowers at the altar of profit and power Part 2: Explaining the Disaster at Bhopal Nino: Journey into the heart of darkness Tales from a Northern City: A full English The Bhopal Disaster: Pearce and Tombs' bibliography Editor's Blog: Harold Garfinkel, norms, conflict and change What’s it going to be then, eh? “A Clockwork Orange” at nearly 50 The Exile Nation Project The Guantanamo Files London Lives 1690-1800 Criminality and Colonial Anthropology The black male prison population in the USA Bill Moyers interviews David Simon York Deviancy Conference 2011 Our polls Economic and Social Data Service [UK] A Clockwork Orange People who eat darkness: the fate of Lucie Blackman

Newsletter 3

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Category: Newsletters

Last Updated: Monday, 01 May 2017 08:55

Published: Friday, 01 April 2011 16:34

Written by Colin Sumner

Hits: 3703

CrimeTalk         http://www.crimetalk.org.uk Newsletter 3    March 22 2011
	Just a note to tell you all that we've now completed the change of web host and hope that this will prevent any further problems in accessing the site. So, feel free to resume writing into the Forums and making comments on articles. You should be able to access the site your usual way. Let me know if you experience any difficulties. More good news: check out the first part of our important new series by Frank Pearce and Steve Tombs, reviewing the Bhopal disaster and the 2010 court judgment, and also the substantial bibliography they collected in the course of their research. The links are below. Free download copies of Toxic Capitalism, by Frank Pearce and Steve Tombs, are now available in pdf on Frank's website whose url is:  http://frankpearce.org/ Thanks for your patience. Colin Sumner   Flowers at the altar of profit and power: the continuing disaster at Bhopal The Bhopal Disaster: Pearce and Tombs' bibliography

A forum in Spanish?

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Category: Newsletters

Last Updated: Monday, 01 May 2017 08:55

Published: Saturday, 26 March 2011 13:28

Written by Colin Sumner

Hits: 4514

Hi guys,

Thanks for registering your interest in CrimeTalk. Clearly, although we are moving very fast, I have much work to do on the site yet. I appreciate your patience. However, I do see this phase positively - it is an opportunity to work with you to create a service that is valuable to you and which works. With that in mind, let me tell you that you are very welcome to make Comments on the News or begin a Bulletin Board within CrimeTalk in Spanish.

With Comments on the News, all I ask is that you insert the link into your post so that people can understand your comments

With the Bulletin Board, it would be wonderful if one of you could volunteer to be the moderator, that's the one who tells me if someone is swearing, or advertising, or saying criminal things - after s/he has tried to calm or stop the offending dialogue first. My Spanish is simply not good enough to monitor a BB in Spanish.

I would like the site to be multilingual but I have to be very careful and take things step by step. I'm sure you understand what I mean.To make a start, I will use the Google translator to translate this message - see below - tell me if it is embarassing!

I hope you will enjoy CrimeTalk.  Let me know if you have any problems or suggestions. At this stage, all feedback is very welcome.

Best regards,

Colin Sumner

En espanol, via Google:

Hola chicos,

Gracias por registrar su interés en CrimeTalk. Es evidente que, a pesar de que se están moviendo muy rápido, tengo mucho trabajo por hacer en el sitio web todavía. Le agradezco su paciencia. Sin embargo, veo esta fase positiva - es una oportunidad de trabajar con usted para crear un servicio que es valioso para usted y que trabaja. Con esto en mente, déjame decirte que eres muy bienvenido a hacer comentarios sobre las noticias o comenzar un tablón de anuncios dentro de CrimeTalk en español.

Con comentarios sobre las noticias, lo único que pedimos es que se inserta el enlace en su mensaje para que la gente pueda entender sus comentarios

Con el tablón de anuncios, sería maravilloso si uno de ustedes podría voluntario para ser el moderador, que es el que me dice que si alguien se toma de posesión, o la publicidad, o decir cosas penal - después de s / ha tratado de calmar o detener el ofender primer diálogo. Mi español es simplemente no es suficiente para controlar un BB en español.

Me gustaría que el sitio web para ser multilingüe, pero tengo que tener mucho cuidado y tomar las cosas paso a paso. Estoy seguro de que entiende lo que quiero decir. Para volver a empezar, voy a utilizar el traductor de Google para traducir este mensaje - ver más abajo - dime si que es vergonzoso!

Espero que disfrute de CrimeTalk. Déjeme saber si usted tiene cualquier problema o sugerencia. En esta etapa, todos los comentarios son muy bienvenidos.

Saludos cordiales,