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Newsletter 10

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Last Updated: Monday, 01 May 2017 09:05

Published: Monday, 02 July 2012 04:51

Written by Colin Sumner

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Hi all, and welcome again to new members!

During the last two months, we were joined by students from the University of Ulster - hopefully, you all received your welcome email, if not please do let me know. You join students from many universities who use CrimeTalk on a regular basis. Do use it to the full and contribute with articles and comments - we want to hear your voice. Just log in, after registering, to post or comment. If you have some good work, send me an excerpt at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and you might find you'll soon be a published writer! Short comments of under 1,500 words around some important data or law or media output are the most likely to get published.

It was another record-breaking period for CrimeTalk: unique visitors shot through the roof in March, smashing the 3,000 barrier and going on to a best ever 4,396. April hit 4123, so we've clearly moved onto a new level. Nothing compared to MumsNet, but it's good for what people see as a study resource. Membership rose to 183 and the Twitter following stands at 1013; all of which is good considering I have done little marketing and am retaining high standards of content. It would be easy to double the numbers by halving the standards....

This month, the other major development was that we finally launched CrimeTalk Booksand became a full-fledged publisher. The first publication is the Spanish translation of my obituary to the sociology of deviance: Sociologìa de la Desviación: un Obituario. This will be in h/b, p/b and 2 e-book formats. The paperback is now available, with the hardback and e-book to follow soon. It will be closely followed in May by 2 e-books: on Bhopal [Frank Pearce and Steve Tombs] and Nino [Amedeo Cottino]. Support CrimeTalk by buying our books! They are bought through YPD Books, a service for independent publishers: 

YPD Books

This first book is academic but I am very interested in publishing less technical but high quality, shorter, and popularized e-books. Submissions, and discussions about submissions, are very welcome. The e-book world is exciting, and not just new technology but a format enabling new creative forms using weblinks, photos and video. 

CrimeTalk Books

Sociologìa de la Desviación: un Obituario
 

My idea of Correspondents is not working out as well, because even with enthusiasm everyone has to do their 'day job'. However, I will persevere with that idea and so welcomemore Correspondents from all over the world to contribute local news, short comments, tweets, etc and to commission articles. The work does develop journalistic skills and knowledge of social media and so suit the journalistically inclined grad student or young prof/lecturer - I'll train up anyone who wants to learn these skills. Trust me, they will augment your marketability in today's world.

There have been changes to the site: following useful feedback I created a CrimeTalk Help and Info box on the front page bottom right; I've created a Forthcoming box to advertiseCrimeTalk Books on the top right of the front/home page; modified the weblinks archive; built a Latest Links list on the Archive page for a quick catch-up; gathered most of my own writings in a new Editor's Blog module; and I've revamped our Facebook page...and probably other tinkering.

This month, because of CrimeTalk, I was invited to the press screening of At Home with the Noonans, a new documentary series on a powerful Manchester gangland family, based on 10 years' filming directed by Donal McIntyre, one of Britain's top investigative reporters. Reviews of the series which began on CI [the Crime and Investigation channel, Sky 553] are most welcome and will be fed back to Donal and the production team: see At Home with the Noonans. Hopefully, this will be the beginning of greater two-way collaboration withtelevision companies and investigative journalists.

Finally, all UK readers, do please understand that you can help me cover my costs quite simply and painlessly by buying anything from Amazon via CrimeTalk. The small commission we get will help sustain the project. Books can be bought through ourBookshop, and for anything else just use the Search box on the Bookshop page to do your buying. Please support us!

Thanks for your continued interest in CrimeTalk,

Colin Sumner

Editor, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

As always, this last month or so we published a huge range of interesting stuff. Some feature articles:

Nino, Part 6: Prison, criminal culture and the possibility of change

Financially Respectable Crimes of Wall Street

Several of the InBrief comments were exceptionally popular:

Lost innocence: children accused of sex crimes in Hong Kong

A Greek tragedy as suicides soar

Facebook foolishness by lawmen

US soldier massacres Afghan civilians

Going straight, or not, after a prison sentence

Where next for criminal justice?

The barbaric incarceration of America's youth

Bronx activists defend abortion rights

The Crime and Disorder Act - overlapping legislation or a forgotten philosophy?

Masses of really useful Social Data was uploaded:

Poet Laureate takes on the witches

The Titanic: class, crime, negligence and recklessness

Talibe: the least favored children of Senegal

The prohibition of illicit drugs is killing and criminalising our children and we are all letting it happen , says Australia 21

Mexican drug trade hits the poor families hardest

Media intrusion and human rights

Mining and crimes against native populations in a neo-colonial economy

Web of greed: Toxic bank Goldman Sachs' web of global pals

Guardian/Mixmag drug survey reveals a generation happy to chance it

Snooping: Home Affairs Committee inquiry into private investigators

How People with Mental Illness Perceive and Interact with the Police

“When I Die…They’ll Send Me Home”

Freedom of the press and statutory regulation – lessons from Finland?

Statistical bulletin on the summer 2011 riots

The Harper Government Omnibus Crime Bill

Quantitative easing - the comedy

The Archive of weblinks was expanded again and there were some highly selective but landmark press cuttings. The resource is growing! We live in interesting times.

Newsletter 9

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Last Updated: Monday, 01 May 2017 09:03

Published: Tuesday, 20 March 2012 14:13

Written by Colin Sumner

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CrimeTalk         http://www.crimetalk.org.uk                        Newsletter 9
15 February 2012
	Hi all and welcome to new members! Well, February is half over and still our first e-book is not out. Finding the right printer and distributor has been a struggle - so many offers and so little suitability - and being the publisher now has shown me that they actually do a lot of work before your book gets out! Still, I think I've cracked it now and this is a solution which should last. Watch this space! It has also been a time of reflection for me about CrimeTalk, its purpose and style. Even though it is free and offers an amazing resource, CrimeTalk seems very under-used. There are now far more resources on site than people are actually using, as far as I can tell. Do please send me any helpful thoughts you have on this to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. I am struck by the sharp contrast between the constant compliments CrimeTalk gets, how many students I'm told use it as an aid to study, which it is, and our 'unique visitor' numbers, which hit record levels month after month - on the one hand - and the apparent lack of your involvement with the site on the other. So few of you make comments on articles or post or use our social network centre, CrimSoc, or write to me about anything. Indeed only 138 have registered, yet our system stats say we had just under 3,000 unique visitors last month and over 86,000 page impressions. Our Twitter 'following' continues to grow apace, now standing at 811, and including some distinguished politicians, lawyers, campaigners, lobby groups, sociologists, probation officers, police, prisoners, novelists and journalists here and around the world. These people may not be registered with CrimeTalk but they see all my tweets advertising all new articles and often re-tweet those messages to followings of thousands. That is why it is hard to calculate our actual readership, but suffice it to say any one article could be read by at least 4,000 people on a good guess. Please compare that with the social impact of academic or other professional journals! In coming months, I want to get you all more involved in the site. So, to start with, please note that [1] if you review a book for CrimeTalk I can get a free review copy of that book for you and [2] I need more reviews of television crime dramas and of films and novels [e-mail me atThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or via our CrimSoc].   With this in mind, plus the stat that says few people spend long visiting us, reminding me how brief internet consumption is, I will be encouraging more people to register, but also let me please suggest that more of you enjoy the following: 1 Our state-of-the-art video search engine, courtesy of Blinkx. For example, you may have read Pearce & Tombs authoritative series here on Bhopal but if you hit Search Videos on the front page and then enter Bhopal in the search box on the Video page you will get a fascinating list of news items on Bhopal, many from Indian television, that brings the story so much to life. This is really an awesome facility to further one's knowledge of all kinds of criminal, judicial and moral phenomena. On CrimeTalk, researchers, students and journalists have so much data at their fingertips! 2 Our social network centre, CrimSoc, which, like Facebook, enables you to post messages and to see what's going on BUT is a lot more private. Once logged in, you can restrict your status messages to 'members only' and our internal messaging system is also private and secure. Students could form study groups here that are global and not just confined to classmates; professors and lecturers, do think about setting up student groupings! 3 The benefits of registration. Once registered and logged in, you get the full benefit of CrimSoc's list of all our recent actvities. I doubt, for example, if many of you realize how many Press Cuttings, Links and Blogs have been logged this last two months. Apart from registration, if you hit the orange RSS button on the front page and then, on the 'feed' page, bottom right, you can hit the Subscribe in Mail button to receive notification of all new articles. 'Recent activities' on CrimSoc is comprehensive though and includes everything, even comments on articles. 4 To bring our treasure trove fully to your attention, I have also made a list of Latest Links on theArchive page, which logs all our new content weblinks. The Research/websites page is constantly being added to and these take you to sites of relevant substance. This supplements theLibrary page which shows which articles have been most read on CrimeTalk so far. 5 The new Book of the Month section right at the bottom of the Home page. Buy the book from us, via Amazon and its cheap prices, by clicking on its icon and the small commission we get will help us survive and progress. Please buy books from our Bookshop. The lsit of books there is continually, selectively, updated. From the other end of the relationship, you guys can do more. I will be setting up aRecommendations/Testimonials section within the next month, once the first few proposals have gone through the relevant university committees. If any individual feels happy to make a recommendation now, please just send me your name and, ideally, a brief line or two on why you recommend CrimeTalk and what you think it can do. Just remember that I value and need your support and that CrimeTalk is for you! Please do what you can to bring it to your students and colleagues attention! And get involved, please. New writings, long and short, of all kinds are very welcome and the lead-time to publication will be very short in the next while. Feel free to advertise and strut your stuff or get your message across. We are read by a very broad, global, audience, and it is growing monthly. Thanks, Colin Sumner, Editor -------------------------------------------------------------- In January, we published 4 feature articles: Legal crimes: jurisdiction shopping Bhopal: criminal, immoral, or the cost of business as usual? UIGEA and the rise and rise of gaming and gambling in the UK Nino Part 5: family values, military culture and vendettas and several In Brief articles: You're not crazy. "It's the system stupid" 2012: more convulsions in authority or a reassertion of the old order? Racism in the Met: memories from the 1980's The Crime and Disorder Act - overlapping legislation or a forgotten philosophy? Bronx activists defend abortion rights There was also a widely read review of a television programme: 'Public Enemies': probation and risk management and we linked in a lot of useful social data: Proceedings of the Old Bailey, London's Central Criminal Court, 1674-1913 How America’s prison epidemic spread The random horror of the death penalty 'Child soldiers' of 14 with guns on London's streets Racist incidents, England and Wales, 2010/11 Mass Observation Sport and desistance from crime There was a much re-tweeted Education article: Education from the inside out: a plea for prison education. Finally, I added quite a few blogs to both the Blogs list, under the Comment menu, and the front-page BlogRoll; loads of new weblinks to the Archive and the Research/Websites lists; and, of course, many, many, Press Cuttings and Tweets, all listed under the Library menu. here's a brief sample of the best press cuttings: From Kent to Texas, grandfather facing 35 years in US jail Apple admits it has a human rights problem Night in the cells accidentally became two years in solitary Letters raise fears for last Briton in Guantanamo Lightning kills an entire football team British men forced into 'modern slavery' abroad Capo di tutti capi plays dumb when quizzed about Murdoch mafia’s “omerta” What price the new democracy? Goldman Sachs conquers Europe Arizona execution-team requirements eased

Newsletter 8

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Last Updated: Monday, 01 May 2017 09:00

Published: Thursday, 22 December 2011 18:51

Written by Colin Sumner

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Sincere season's greetings to you all!  May you all be happy and healthy in 2012! Many thanks for supporting CrimeTalk in 2011. Do please write for us and to us next year. New copy will be very welcome in January.

Increasingly, CrimeTalk is being recognized for the unique resource and tool that it is. University teachers can use it with their classes, researchers can use it as a research tool to create a network and find or share information, students should be using it daily to supplement their studies with contemporary news and informed debate, and criminal justice agencies, journalists and politicians can connect with public opinion, plus the latest debates and research, as well as talk to each other about the bigger picture. We will be doing more to make CrimeTalk an open and valuable educational tool in 2012.

Don't forget that, apart from all our articles, archived links, extensive blog list, social data resources, tweets, and press cuttings, we also have use of the state-of-the-art video search engine [e.g. to be used in the BBC's YouView in 2012] enabling access to a mine of film/visual material on crime and justice.

Last month I forgot to mention that we started a new Education section and the following articles are now published there:

Education From the Inside Out: A Plea for Prison Education

The iPad and Higher Education

Academic fraud or just the usual simulation?

Closing down creativity and standardising knowledge in education

Crime, anti-social behaviour and schools in Britain: are all schools 'at risk'?

It has been a year of great progress and exponential growth in the readership. Our monthly unique visitor total started at around 200, is now over 2,300 and will go past 2,500 this December. Our Twitter following is 711 and registrations are now at 128. Just as importantly, I feel we have maintained the quality level whilst still speaking plain English, and sometimes plain Spanish, and holding to the idea of a public magazine.

A criminological magazine in a public and virtual space where serious journalism, professional social science, criminal justice practice and political debate overlap is a first. It is a pioneering concept and understandably it will take time to find its audience and its exact shape. However it is possible to see that this audience and that shape are forming, especially on Twitter where my imagined readership seems to have emerged.

Our first e-book, my Sociologia de la Desviacion, has been delayed slightly but will appear in January at last, under a new publishing imprint, CrimeTalk Books. It will be followed in the months ahead by Frank Pearce & Steve Tombs on Bhopal and Amedeo Cottino on Nino [the full English text].

We continue the flow of interesting but high-quality articles and comments, and now welcome Karen Joe Laidler, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Centre of Criminology at the University of Hong Kong, as our Correspondent and Commissioning Editor for HK and China. In 2012 we will be hearing much more about crime and justice in Hong Kong and China. In the new year, I intend to establish firm connections with Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Tanzania, so we will finally be achieving our vision of becoming a fully global educational e-zine.

This last month or so, we have published the following articles:

Nino, Part 4: Criminality, politics and business

Motorcycle taxis: 'crime prevention' and the social exclusion of migrant workers in China

Cage homes in Hong Kong: capitalism this Christmas

and the following InBrief comments:

Occupy Oakland update: City Council smear tactics

Consumer protest and the grey market as iPhone4 release causes 'pandemonium' in Hong Kong

Injustice upon Injustice. London 2012 and the enduring legacies of Bhopal

Two years for itinerant graffiti artist

Clarkson: The Rich Get Richer, the Poor Get Prison…

Rage and riots: the Mexican wave that began in Tunisia

Mobiles, social media and prison

US elections: Corruption, bribery and a book signing

Murderous catastrophe for Iraqi people

Now I get why evangelistic criminology should be avoided...

Football, political correctness and the Suarez case

and the following Social Data sources:

10 años de Encuesta de seguridad pública de Cataluña

Child poverty in pictures

Abuses endure in Russia’s pretrial detention system

Penalties for young offenders UK 1997-2011

White working-class feel 'last in line'

European Social Survey

Everything you ever wanted to know about prostitution in Nevada

There have also been many new and useful tweets and press cuttings, listed on the front page or in our Library, and also web-links listed in our Archive and Research sections. 

Please do write into our Forums more. Use them to pass on information or to find fellow travellers or just to talk out your views. Remeber to register and log in first though so that your name and photo will show.

Finally, we remained a FREE resource in 2011, and all contributors, including myself, remain unpaid. My own costs remain substantial. I would appreciate any donations, via theDonation buttons onsite, and all UK readers could support our efforts by buying their criminology books, and getting their students and colleagues to buy their books, through our Bookshop at Amazon's nice, low, prices.

Newsletter 7

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Last Updated: Monday, 01 May 2017 08:58

Published: Tuesday, 15 November 2011 17:46

Written by Colin Sumner

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Newsletter 7                                           8 Nov. 2011
	Hi!  Thank you for being with us. It has been a relatively quiet time on the front page this last 2 months whilst I readied the Spanish translation of my Sociology of Deviance: an Obituary book for publication as both print copy and e-book, and whilst our Correspondents have been moving apartments, travelling to conferences and working on lectures and research. Nevertheless, I was delighted to receive articles from Gregg Barak on serial killer Jack Unterweger and Kate K. on the dangers of cannabis for some users and the mentally ill, as well as publishing Part 4 of Frank Pearce and Steve Tombs's review of the Bhopal disaster and recent legal proceedings. Our Stakhanovite rate of production will resume apace shortly, and with our first e-book to sell on a new e-book shop page. Of course, driving forward an e-zine of this quality and magnitude is exhausting and expensive, and so I certainly have moments of doubt and depression. However I have a beautiful vision for this thing and will not rest until it has taken full shape.  We are nearly there regarding the technology with only a few more developments to go. Our next big step forward, after publishing our first e-book [with more being commissioned], will actually be to expand our global reach to its full capacity. There are many friends overseas still to talk to! This last month we reached New Zealand and soon will make our presence felt in Australia. Our registrants now stand at 120, our Twitter following at 633 and our monthly rate of unique visitors is holding at around 1200. I hope you are all enjoying our amazing Video search engine and getting the full benefit from its 35 million videos. I suspect you aren't.  The same goes for what is now a massive archive of hand-picked press cuttings, tweets, links, blogs, journal digests and videos. I want CrimeTalk to become a daily resource for students of crime all over the world and we are well on the way to building that. Let me know if there are other things you want on board.Those of you who are in higher education: please look at how you can use CrimeTalk for teaching and enabling your students to access news and comment quickly and in a manner familiar to them. Art has always been important to me as a multimedia thinker, so I hope you like the images by Colleen Allen from her Girls of Woe collection. Colleen herself has a keen interest in the sociology of crime and has been a prison educator, as well as a social worker and parent. I will post more art onsite when and where appropriate. Please continue to urge people to register so they can log in and post on our forums, and receive these Newsletters and future offers. We are building, amongst other things, a global network of people with similar interests focussing on key issues in crime, criminology and criminal justice. You are all very welcome to use our Forums and our CrimSoc! The more people contribute to them the more CrimeTalk becomes a two-way street, an internet cafe and a meeting place - and not just a passive artefact to be consumed. Finally, Christmas is coming and for many of you a new semester after that, so please buy your Christmas gifts and next semester's books through CrimeTalk if you are a UK member. Buying through us is an easy and neat way of supporting CrimeTalk; just go to our Shopand, for books, click on the book and you'll be taken onto the Amazon site using our codename - for other items, please use the Search box below the bookshop [never go direct to the Amazon site because that way we don't get our small commission].   Colin Sumner Editor This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.">This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Since the last Newsletter, we published the following articles on the front page: Cannabis, Mental Illness and Recovery Flowers at the altar of profit and power Part 4: the Bhopal 'Settlement' Unterweger: serial killer, writer, chef, and malignant narcissist and these articles In Brief: Occupy Oakland update: City Council smear tactics Rising suicide rates in Greece Banking immoralities: rediscovering the 'moral economy'? Cops use sound cannon, heavy force and rubber bullets at Occupy Oakland The New York "Miracle" Child abuse in the USA: low tax, no services, little future Protests grow around the world Better policing keeps crime rates down Bradley Manning now 500 days in confinement Excessive billing and private profit in Medicare Mother charged with felonies for "education theft" Regulating the banks: 2019 to reform - impact on crime? Homelessness and offending There have been some useful Social Data sources put on site: Increase in use of methamphetamine in Australia NCSR study of Youth Views of August riots 2011 UNODC's 2011 Global Study on Homicide Education reduces crime: 3-state recidivism study High rates of mental health issues and risky health behaviours among Australia’s prisoners When flash mobs stop being fun US Dept. of Justice Releases Investigative Findings on the Puerto Rico Police Dept. Young people, alcohol and the media Gus John Letter to the PM, more riot info, analysis and data maps and a very, very, long list of press cuttings and tweets......