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Britain criminalising young BME people could spark a new crisis on the streets | Kehinde Andrews

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Racism in the criminal justice system increases marginalisation of minority young people, says black studies professor Kehinde Andrews

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For the last slide on evaluation, there is a document on here called C+D theory and evaluation which will help

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Crime prevention- Right wing pre reading 

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Crime prevention- Right wing pre reading 

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In their publication The New Criminology the neo-Marxists Taylor, Walton and Young said that they agreed with Marxism on three key issues in relation to crime. They agree that the economy is the most important part of society, and it is from this that crime is born.

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:: "Stitching" - from "stitching up", whereby offenders are charged with a crime when there is insufficient evidence. Police know that prosecutors will never proceed with the case but the crime appears in police records to have been "solved".

:: "Skewing" - when police activity is directed at easier-to-solve crimes to boost detection rates, at the expense of more serious offences such as sex crimes or child abuse.

:: "Nodding" - where clear-up rates are boosted by persuading convicted offenders to admit to crimes they have not committed, in exchange for inducements such as a lower sentence.

Dr Patrick, who researched the subject for a PhD, said: "The academics call this 'gaming' but police officers would call it fiddling the figures, massaging the books or, the current favourite term, 'good housekeeping'. It is a bit like the police activities that we all thought stopped in the 1970s."

Serving police officers confirmed that the tricks were being used and gave examples of how they had been implemented.

In one case, an offender shot at another man at close range but missed and broke a window behind his target. The offence was recorded as criminal damage rather than attempted murder.

In another example, a man robbed in a city's red-light district - an area he had been innocently passing through - was told by officers they would be unable to record the crime without informing his wife he had been the area, leading to the complaint being withdrawn.

One detective, who declined to be named, said: "Name any crime and I'll tell you how it can be fiddled."

Simon Reed, vice-chairman of the Police Federation, which represents front line officers, said: "This research demonstrates that senior officers are directing and controlling widespread manipulation of crime figures.

"The public are misled, politicians can claim crime is falling and chief officers are rewarded with performance-related bonuses."

Last month Denis O'Connor, the Chief Inspector of Constabulary, published an official report into the way police record violent crime and admitted the figures may be skewed by "perverse incentives" around government performance targets.

Dr Patrick's research highlighted figures from his own former force, West Midlands, which reveal what happened when senior officers cracked down on one of the gaming techniques.

Rank and file officers were told in 2002 that informal police warnings could no longer be counted as a detection for common assaults.

Within 12 months the number of recorded common assaults dropped from 22,000 to 3,000 while thousands more crimes switched to the category "other woundings".

"Such a rapid adjustment indicates the organisational nature of the phenomenon and suggests some form of co-ordination and direction by management," the research said.

"The scale of the 'gaming' behaviours measured in this thesis ... suggested senior officers were either directly orchestrating the behaviour or turning a blind eye to it."

Dr Patrick believes other gaming techniques are still being used in forces across the country.

The report also warned that the use of "stitching" was "significant", while "cuffing" had continued after the introduction of Home Office rules which were supposed to guarantee and standardise the way crimes are recorded.

"Cuffing" can involve a situation where a victim of crime is accused of making a false crime report, and is therefore treated like a suspect rather than an injured party, Dr Patrick said.

"You cannot have members of the public who have been victims of crime coming to the police for help and being treated like suspects. That is not right and it will erode confidence in the police," he said.

Dr Patrick found that watchdogs such as Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC) and the Police Standards Unit had a "general tendency to underplay the scale and nature" of gaming.

He was scathing of HMIC's failure to tackle the problem, noting there were no examples of chief police officers being publicly criticised by inspectors for this type of crime figure manipulation.

HMIC tended privately to refer examples of widespread gaming to the Home Secretary or the police authority rather than "hold the chief constable to account" because of the risk of political embarrassment, he said.

Dr Patrick concluded that HMIC inspectors should be made accountable to Parliament rather than the Home Office, and suggested they should be drawn from other professions rather than solely from senior police ranks.

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By David Barrett, Home Affairs Correspondent 

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Police force 'tricks' to 'fiddle' crime figures

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"Stitching" - from "stitching up", whereby offenders are charged with a crime when there is insufficient evidence. Police know that prosecutors will never proceed with the case but the crime appears in police records to have been "solved".

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Despite closing slightly this year, the education gap between male and female students is still of concern to both academics and the government alike.

Last weekend, a panel of experts at the Being a Man festival at London's Southbank Centre debated the possible reasons for the gap, and ways the issue might be resolved.

Chaired by gender research specialist Sandy Ruxton, the experts acknowledged that, since 1996, there has been a growing disparity between the grades attained by male and female students.

A government report published last year found that 7.3 per cent more girls were achieving five or more A* - C grades than boys at GCSE. And, several months ago, Mary Curnock Cook of UCAS revealed that British girls were, on average, a third more likely to progress to higher education than their male peers. But what is the root cause of this problem? Is the curriculum unfairly gendered in favour of female students, or do boys just not possess the desire to learn?

Sean Simms is a transition manager at the UK based charity Working with Men. He proposes that the education gender gap may have been caused by a shortage of male teachers.

"There is a distinct lack of male presence within education," says Simms. "I think it is too simplistic to say that an increase in this male presence would change young boys' attitude to learning and attainment, but I think it would definitely help.

"And why stop at male teachers?" Simms continues. "Why not look to the wider community and ask male family members, entrepreneurs and business professionals to have some kind of contact with young men in education to influence them? That would enable the students to consider possible career paths, and highlight how their education is connected to - and will eventually lead to - what they want to pursue in the future. We need to use these personal insights to create a spark and inspire these young boys."

Credit: Getty

Simms also suggested that the lack of male teachers could be most detrimental earlier in boys' academic careers, despite any major exams being over a decade away.

"There is currently a minimal male presence in Key Stage 1," observes the transition manager, "and this is a crucial stage of education. At this early stage, young boys' education tends to be dominated on both sides of the school gate by women. I believe this lack of a male presence is having a lasting impact on a boy's perception of where men belong in the world of education.

"I've spoken to year 9 boys," Simms continues, "and they've told me that they'd prefer to speak to male teachers. One in particular said, 'they understand us, they've been through what we're going through. They know what it's like to be a boy in this position'. So I suggest, to close this gender gap, we need to get more men present in schools - not just in teaching - but in all areas of the school structure."

Errol Lawson, a motivational schools speaker, believes that it is increasingly difficult for modern schoolboys to establish an identity during their early years. Citing the rise of gender fluidity as a cause for this problem, Lawson thinks that this confusion may be leading to distraction in the classroom.

"To solve this," says Lawson, "I think we need to get back to a place in society where it's okay to be solely a man, and it's okay to be a woman. And we need to teach boys that it is okay to want to grow up and become a typical man, because there are some specifically male traits and qualities that may be useful.

"We need to help them develop that," Lawson continues. "I'm not talking about hypermasculinity here, just character stuff that it might be useful for men to build upon in order for them to function with clearer goals in society."

Ann Cayenne, a conflict resolution worker who works alongside Sean Simms, disagrees with Lawson. She argues that "with working class families, where the father may have a job such as a car mechanic or bricklayer, his son may aspire to that stereotypically masculine role. And then he may not apply himself at school. But the father's daughter, who would likely not aspire to these typically male jobs, would need to study in order to create opportunities for herself - and this would widen the gender gap."

Cayenne also cited the transition between primary and secondary schools to be more socially awkward for boys than girls, and suggested that this emotional turmoil may result in a social environment unconducive to learning.

"Year six is one of these transition points for young boys. They have their SATS and they're getting ready to transition into secondary school. You see boys in primary school and they're hugging their friends and getting on. Suddenly, when they move to secondary school, they're terrified of any physicality."

Sean Simms agrees.

"Absolutely," says the transition manager. "They're terrified of being branded 'gay'. So there's absolutely no touching, and no crying anymore. They have to suppress their emotions as they move into secondary school and, unlike girls, are therefore constantly uncomfortable and distracted in the learning environment."

Credit: Rex Features

The experts concluded that the stigma surrounding male emotion was the probable cause of the gender education gap. Cayenne spoke of Troops to Teachers, a program in which ex-army personnel are brought into secondary schools to teach. This scheme was introduced by education officials who believed that a lack of discipline had led to the disparity between genders. However, the panel unanimously agreed that this was not the case, and that encouraging emotion in schoolboys may instead be the most effective solution.

Andy Wimbush is an English literature tutor at the University of Cambridge. The majority of students who enrol on Wimbush's course are women, a fact the tutor finds troubling.

"Men don't seem to be drawn to creative subjects," Wimbush says, "and I don't know why this is. Is there a taboo in boys being conscientious, being devoted to their work in some way? And, if so, why?

"Possibly, through society's expectations, boys are being dissuaded from these humanities courses because they are subjects in which a little emotion may be useful? Especially in literature, paying attention to your emotions is a way of understanding the work that you are studying. Boys tend to have, what we call in literature, 'the hermeneutics of suspicion' - which means that if they feel a writer is trying to affect them emotionally in some way, they try to undermine that, and pick it apart.

"I wonder whether there's a danger that young men feel as though they can't respond to a work of literature, or drama, or art with sincerity, with openness, with love. I suspect that this is the 'other half', if you like, of the problem we have in getting young girls to enrol on STEM courses."

The panel were angered somewhat by the fact that despite there being a plethora of STEM schemes that encourage young women to enrol onto the male-dominated science subjects, there is no equivalent for young men to point them in the direction of the humanities.

Ann Cayenne concluded the debate by suggesting that there may be double standards in schooling, favouring female students over the male. Indeed, she revealed that many boys she has spoken to believe that teachers treat female students less severely.

"In terms of a solution for attainment," says Cayenne, proposing her answer to the education gender gap problem, "it's all about highlighting potential in young males, offering more opportunities and starting conversations around their individuals goals and aspirations. Helping them get where they want to be rather than telling them what they need to achieve."

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How do we close the education gender gap?

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Despite closing slightly this year, the education gap between male and female students is still of concern to both academics and the government alike. Last weekend, a panel of experts at the Being a Man festival at London's Southbank Centre debated the possible reasons for the gap, and ways the issue might be resolved.

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One year ago schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head by Taliban gunmen - her "crime", to have spoken up for the right of girls to be educated. The world reacted in horror, but after weeks in intensive care Malala survived. Her full story can now be told.

She is the teenager who marked her 16th birthday with a live address from UN headquarters, is known around the world by her first name alone, and has been lauded by a former British prime minister as "an icon of courage and hope".

I didn't want my future to be imprisoned in my four walls and just cooking and giving birth
Malala Yousafzai

She is also a Birmingham schoolgirl trying to settle into a new class, worrying about homework and reading lists, missing friends from her old school, and squabbling with her two younger brothers.

She is Malala Yousafzai, whose life was forever changed at age 15 by a Taliban bullet on 9 October 2012.

I have travelled to her home town in Pakistan, seen the school that moulded her, met the doctors who treated her and spent time with her and her family, for one reason - to answer the same question barked by the gunman who flagged down her school bus last October: "Who is Malala?"

The Swat Valley once took pride in being called "the Switzerland of Pakistan". It's a mountainous place, cool in summer and snowy in winter, within easy reach of the capital, Islamabad. And when Malala was born in 1997 it was still peaceful.

Just a few hours' driving from Islamabad brings you to the foot of the Malakand pass, the gateway to the valley. The winding road up to the pass leaves the plains of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province, far below.

I remember it well from childhood holidays in Pakistan. But my latest trip felt very different - the BBC crew made the journey with a military escort. Although the Pakistan army retook control of Swat from the Taliban in 2009 and it is arguably now safer for foreigners than some other areas, the military clearly didn't want to take any chances.

Historically, the north-west has been one of Pakistan's least developed regions. But Swat, interestingly, has long been a bright spot in terms of education.

Find out more

Watch Mishal Husain's Panorama special on Malala on Monday 7 October at 20:30 BST on BBC One
Malala: Shot for Going to School
Until 1969, it was a semi-autonomous principality - its ruler known as the Wali. The first of these was Miangul Gulshahzada Sir Abdul Wadud, appointed by a local council in 1915 and known to Swatis as "Badshah Sahib" - the King. Although himself uneducated, he laid the foundation for a network of schools in the valley - the first boys' primary school came in 1922, followed within a few years by the first girls' school.

The trend was continued by his son, Wali Miangul Abdul Haq Jahanzeb, who came to power in 1949. Within a few months, he had presented the schoolgirls of Swat to the visiting prime minister of Pakistan, Liaquat Ali Khan, and his wife Raana. As his grandson Miangul Adnan Aurangzeb says: "It would have been unusual anywhere else in the [North-West] Frontier at that time, but in Swat girls were going to school."

The new Wali's focus soon turned to high schools and colleges, including Jahanzeb College, founded in 1952, where Malala's father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, would study many years later. Soon, Swat became known across Pakistan for the number of professionals it was producing - especially doctors and teachers. As Adnan Aurangzeb says, "Swat was proud of its record on education... one way to identify a Swati outside of Swat was that he always had a pen in his chest pocket, and that meant he was literate."

Against this backdrop, the fate that befell the schools of Swat in the first years of the 21st Century is particularly tragic.

By the time Malala was born, her father had realised his dream of founding his own school, which began with just a few pupils and mushroomed into an establishment educating more than 1,000 girls and boys.

It is clear that her absence is keenly felt. Outside the door of her old classroom is a framed newspaper cutting about her. Inside, her best friend Moniba has written the name "Malala" on a chair placed in the front row.

This was Malala's world - not one of wealth or privilege but an atmosphere dominated by learning. And she flourished. "She was precocious, confident, assertive," says Adnan Aurangzeb. "A young person with the drive to achieve something in life."

In that, she wasn't alone. "Malala's whole class is special," headmistress Mariam Khalique tells me.

And from the moment I walk in, I understand what she means. Their focus and attention is absolute, their aspirations sky-high. The lesson under way is biology, and as it ends I have a few moments to ask the girls about their future plans - many want to be doctors. One girl's answer stops me in my tracks: "I'd like to be Pakistan's army chief one day."

Part of the reason for this drive to succeed is that only white-collar, professional jobs will allow these girls a life outside their homes. While poorly educated boys can hope to find low-skilled work, their female counterparts will find their earning power restricted to what they can do within the four walls of their home - sewing perhaps.

Malala's diary: 3 January 2009

I had a terrible dream yesterday with military helicopters and the Taleban. I have had such dreams since the launch of the military operation in Swat.

My mother made me breakfast and I went off to school. I was afraid going to school because the Taleban had issued an edict banning all girls from attending schools

Only 11 students attended the class out of 27. The number decreased because of Taleban's edict. My three friends have shifted to Peshawar, Lahore and Rawalpindi with their families after this edict.
Diary of a Pakistani schoolgirl Faces of the year: Malala and others Schoolgirls in Birmingham on Malala
"For my brothers it was easy to think about the future," Malala tells me when we meet in Birmingham. "They can be anything they want. But for me it was hard and for that reason I wanted to become educated and empower myself with knowledge."

It was this future that was threatened when the first signs of Taliban influence emerged, borne on a tide of anti-Western sentiment that swept across Pakistan in the years after 9/11 and the US-led invasion of Afghanistan.

Like other parts of north-west Pakistan, Swat had always been a devout and conservative region, but what was happening by 2007 was very different - radio broadcasts threatening Sharia-style punishments for those who departed from local Muslim traditions, and most ominously, edicts against education.

The worst period came at the end of 2008, when the local Taliban leader, Mullah Fazlullah, issued a dire warning - all female education had to cease within a month, or schools would suffer consequences. Malala remembers the moment well: "'How can they stop us going to school?' I was thinking. 'It's impossible, how can they do it?'"

But Ziauddin Yousafzai and his friend Ahmad Shah, who ran another school nearby, had to recognise it as a real possibility. The Taliban had always followed through on their threats. The two men discussed the situation with local army commanders. "I asked them how much security would be provided to us," Shah recalls. "They said, 'We will provide security, don't close your schools.'"

It was easier said than done.

By this time, Malala was still only 11, but well aware of how things were changing.

Malala's diary: 18 January 2009

My father told us that the government would protect our schools. The prime minister has also raised this issue. I was quite happy initially, but now I know but this will not solve our problem.

"Here in Swat we hear everyday that so many soldiers were killed and so many were kidnapped at such and such place. But the police are nowhere to be seen.

"Our parents are also very scared. They told us they would not send us to school until or unless the Taleban themselves announce on the FM channel that girls can go to school. The army is also responsible for the disruption in our education.
Diary of a Pakistani schoolgirl (ii)
"People don't need to be aware of these things at the age of nine or 10 or 11 but we were seeing terrorism and extremism, so I had to be aware," she says.

She knew that her way of life was under threat. When a journalist from BBC Urdu asked her father about young people who might be willing to give their perspective on life under the Taliban, he suggested Malala.

The result was the Diary of a Pakistani Schoolgirl, a blog for BBC Urdu, in which Malala chronicled her hope to keep going to school and her fears for the future of Swat.

She saw it as an opportunity.

"I wanted to speak up for my rights," she says. "And also I didn't want my future to be just sitting in a room and be imprisoned in my four walls and just cooking and giving birth to children. I didn't want to see my life in that way."

The blog was anonymous, but Malala was also unafraid to speak out in public about the right to education, as she did in February 2009 to the Pakistani television presenter Hamid Mir, who brought his show to Swat.

I was surprised that there is a little girl in Swat who can speak with a lot of confidence, but I was concerned about her security
Hamid Mir

"I was surprised that there is a little girl in Swat who can speak with a lot of confidence, who's very brave, who's very articulate," Mir says. "But at the same time I was a bit concerned about her security, about the security of her family."

At that time it was Ziauddin Yousafzai, Malala's father, who was perceived to be at the greatest risk. Already known as a social and educational activist, he had sensed that the Taliban would move from the tribal areas of Pakistan into Swat, and had often warned people to be on their guard.

Malala herself was concerned for him. "I was worried about my father," she says. "I used to think, 'What will I do if a Talib comes to the house? We'll hide my father in a cupboard and call the police.'"

No-one thought the Taliban would target a child. There were however notorious incidents where they had chosen to make an example of women. In early 2009, a dancer was accused of immorality and executed, her body put on public display in the centre of Mingora. Soon afterwards, there was outrage across Pakistan after a video emerged from Swat showing the Taliban flogging a 17-year-old girl for alleged "illicit relations" with a man.

Ziauddin Yousafzai must have known that Malala's high profile in the valley put her at some risk, even though he could not have foreseen the outcome.

"Malala's voice was the most powerful voice in Swat because the biggest victim of the Taliban was girls' schools and girls' education and few people talked about it," he says. "When she used to speak about education, everybody gave it importance."

By the time Malala was shot in 2012, the worst days of Taliban power in Swat had receded. A high-profile military operation had cleared out most militants but others had stayed behind, keeping a low profile.

"Life was normal for normal people, but for those people who had raised their voice, it was now a risky time," says Malala.

She was one of those people.

When I saw the blood on Malala, I fell unconscious
Fellow pupil Kainat Riaz

On the afternoon of 9 October, she walked out of school as normal and boarded a small bus waiting outside the gates. These vehicles are seen everywhere in Mingora - a little like covered pickup trucks, open at the back, with three lines of benches running the length of the flatbed. Each could carry about 20 people and would be waiting to take the girls and their teachers home at the end of the school day.

In Malala's case, it was only a short journey, past a small clearing where children played cricket, and along the canal bank to her house. Once she had walked, but then her mother, Tor Pekai, intervened. "My mother told me, 'Now you are growing up and people know you, so you must not go on foot, you must go in a car or a bus so then you will be safe,'" Malala says.

That day, she was in the middle of her exams, and had a lot on her mind. But there was still the usual after-school chat and gossip to share with Moniba, who was sitting next to her. But as the bus progressed along its route Malala says she did notice something unusual - the road seemed deserted. "I asked Moniba, 'Why is there no-one here? Can you see it's not like it usually is?'"

Moments later, the bus was flagged down by two young men as it passed a clearing, only 100 yards from the school gates. Malala doesn't recall seeing them but Moniba does. To her they looked like college students.

Then she heard one ask: "Who is Malala?" In the seconds between that question and the firing beginning, Moniba at first wondered if the men were more journalists in search of her well-known friend. But she quickly grasped that Malala had sensed danger. "She was very scared at that time,' she remembers. The girls looked at Malala, thereby innocently identifying her.

The two girls sitting on Malala's other side, Shazia Ramzan and Kainat Riaz, were also injured.

"I heard the firing, then I saw lots of blood on Malala's head," says Kainat. "When I saw that blood on Malala, I fell unconscious."

Moniba says the bus remained there for 10 minutes, before anyone came to the aid of the panic-stricken women and children.

When they reached hospital, it was assumed all four girls were wounded, because Moniba's clothing was drenched in her friend's blood.

News of the shooting spread quickly. Malala's father was at the Press Club when a phone call came to tell him one of his school buses had been attacked. He feared at once that it was Malala who had been targeted. He found her on a stretcher in the hospital.

"When I looked towards her face I just bowed down, I kissed her on the forehead, her nose, and cheeks," he says. "And then I said, 'You're my proud daughter. I am proud of you.'"

Malala had been shot in the head and it was clear to everyone, including the Pakistan army, that her life was in danger. A helicopter was scrambled to airlift her to the military hospital in Peshawar - a journey that would eventually take her not just away from Swat but away from Pakistan.

The Combined Military Hospital in Peshawar is the best medical facility in the region, treating not just military personnel but their families too. As he flew in with Malala, Ziauddin Yousafzai was braced for the worst, telling relatives at his family home in rural Swat to make preparations for a funeral. "It really was the most difficult time in my life," he says.

From the helipad, Malala was brought in by ambulance and placed in the care of neurosurgeon Col Junaid Khan.

"She was initially conscious, but restless and agitated, moving all her limbs," he says. The entry wound of the bullet was above her left brow. From there it had travelled down through her neck and lodged in her back.

Malala was treated as a severe head injury case and placed under observation. After four hours, she deteriorated visibly, slipping towards unconsciousness. A scan revealed a life-threatening situation - her brain was swelling dangerously and she would need immediate surgery.

"The part of the brain involved was concerned not only with speech but also giving power to the right arm and leg," Khan says. "So contemplating surgery in this very sensitive area can have risks. The person can be paralysed afterwards."

Malala's story is just the beginning in the BBC's 100 Women season.

More than a century after women began winning the right to vote, we want to find out what life is like for women today - and what might happen next.

We're planning a unique global event on Friday 25 October. Join in the conversation and tell us what you think on Twitter using #100Women.
Full coverage: BBC 100 Women
Nevertheless, he told Malala's father that surgery was vital to save her life - a portion of her skull had to be removed to relieve pressure on the brain.

The procedure began with shaving part of Malala's hair, and then cutting away the bone, before placing the portion of removed skull inside her abdomen in case it could be later replaced. Blood clots and damaged tissue were extracted from inside the brain.

Before that day, Khan says, he had never heard the name Malala Yousafzai, but he was soon left in no doubt that he was treating a high-profile patient. Camera crews besieged the hospital compound as a tide of shock and revulsion spread through Pakistan.

TV presenter Hamid Mir looks back on the attack and the country's realisation that the Taliban were capable of shooting a young girl as a defining moment. "It gave me a lot of courage and strength [a sense] that enough is enough, now is the time to speak against the enemies of education," he says. "If they can target a little girl like Malala, they can target anyone."

From Adnan Aurangzeb, so closely connected to Swat and its people, there was anger - not just at the Taliban but at the government of Pakistan, which he held accountable for failing to protect Malala.

"She should have been under the protection of Pakistan," he says. "Not left to go unescorted like any normal student in an area infested with militants and Taliban."

Inside the intensive care unit in Peshawar, Malala appeared to respond well to the surgery. Her progress was by now being followed not just in Pakistan but around the world. In Islamabad, the army chief General Ashfaq Kayani was taking a keen interest, but wanted a definitive and independent opinion on Malala's chances.

As it happened, his officers were looking after a team of British doctors at the time - a group from Birmingham who had come to Pakistan to advise the army on setting up a liver transplant programme. The multi-disciplinary team was led by emergency care consultant Javid Kayani, a British Pakistani who maintains close links with the land of his birth.

When the request for help came through, Kayani knew which one of the team he wanted to take with him to Peshawar on the helicopter that was standing by. Given Malala's age, paediatric intensive care specialist Fiona Reynolds was the obvious choice. Although she had her doubts about security in Peshawar, she had heard enough about Malala from news reports to feel the risk was worth taking. "She'd been shot because she wanted an education, and I was in Pakistan because I'm a woman with an education, so I couldn't say 'no,'" she says.

The quality of the intensive care was potentially compromising her final outcome
Fiona Reynolds

What the doctors discovered in Peshawar, though, was not encouraging. Although Malala had had what Reynolds calls "the right surgery at the right time", she was being let down by the post-operative care. A similar patient in the UK would have been having her blood pressure checked continuously via an arterial line - according to Malala's charts, hers had last been checked two hours earlier.

Reynolds' instinct told her that Malala could be saved, but everything depended on how she would be cared for.

"The quality of the intensive care was potentially compromising her final outcome, both in terms of survival and in terms of her ability to recover as much brain function as possible," she says.

That clinical opinion would be vital to Malala's future. An army intensive care specialist was sent to bolster the team in Peshawar, but when Malala deteriorated further, she was airlifted again, this time to a bigger military hospital in Islamabad.

In the first hours after her arrival there, Fiona Reynolds remained very worried. Malala's kidneys appeared to have shut down, her heart and circulation were failing, and she needed drugs to support her unstable blood pressure. "I thought she was probably going to survive, but I wasn't sure of her neurological outcome, because she'd been so sick. Any brain damage would have been made worse."

As Malala gradually stabilised, over the next couple of days, Reynolds was asked for her opinion again - this time on her rehabilitation. She asked what facilities were available, knowing that acute medicine is often far ahead of rehab. That was indeed the case in Pakistan. "I said that if the Pakistan military and the Pakistan government were serious about optimising her outcome... I said that everything that she would need would be available in Birmingham."

On 15 October 2012, Malala arrived at the Queen Elizabeth hospital in Birmingham, where she would remain for the next three months. She had been kept in a medically induced coma, but a day later the doctors decided to bring her out of it. Her last memory was of being on a school bus in Swat - now she was waking up surrounded by strangers, in a foreign country.

"I opened my eyes and the first thing I saw was that I was in a hospital and I could see nurses and doctors," she says. "I thanked God - 'O Allah, I thank you because you have given me a new life and I am alive.'"

Malala's parents and brothers were still in Pakistan but Javid Kayani was standing at her bedside.

"When she woke up she had this very frightened look and her eyes were darting back and forth," he says.

"We knew she couldn't speak because she had a tube down her throat to assist her breathing. But I knew that she could hear so I told her who I was and I told her where she was, and she indicated by her eye movements that she understood."

Malala then gestured that she wanted to write, so a pad of paper and a pencil were brought. She attempted to write, but she had poor control of the pencil - unsurprising for someone with a head injury. Instead, an alphabet board was found and Javid Kayani watched her point to the letters one by one.

"The first word that she tapped out was 'country'. So I assumed she wanted to know where she was and I told her she was in England. And then the next word was 'father' and I told her that he was in Pakistan and he'd be coming in the next few days. That was the limit of the conversation."

More "conversations" would take place with one of the few visitors allowed in - Fiona Reynolds, who brought Malala a pink notebook in which to write down her questions.

Malala showed it to me, It is a poignant reminder of her search for answers in that period, especially the page where she simply asks, "Who did this to me?"

For Reynolds, the fact that Malala was able to articulate her questions was a huge relief.

"I was hoping that her cognitive abilities would still be there. I was also hoping that she hadn't lost the power of speech. So the fact that she was mouthing words and writing - I thought she's not lost the ability to speak.

"And remember she was talking in her third language [Pashto is Malala's mother tongue, Urdu her second language], so her speech centre was pretty intact."

Malala would go on to make an outstanding recovery, a tribute not just to the quality of the care she received - but also, her doctors told me, to her own resilience and determination.

Once she was out of intensive care, doctors began to consider what could be done about the paralysis of the left side of her face, which had caused great distress to her parents when they were reunited with her in Birmingham. Malala's father felt she had lost her smile.

"When she used to try to smile I would look at my wife and a shadow would fall on her face, because she thought, 'This is not the same Malala I gave birth to, this is not the girl who made our lives colourful.'"

Malala's ear specialist Richard Irving thinks that in those early weeks, she was troubled by her new appearance.

"She was very reluctant initially to speak, she preferred to be photographed from the good side," he says. "I think it probably did have an emotional impact on her, which she didn't really voice to anyone, but it's very easy to understand in a 15-year-old."

After tests and scans, Irving's view was that the facial nerve was unlikely to repair itself, but without surgery, he couldn't be sure exactly what state it was in. The procedure would be a lengthy one, and this time Malala was herself able to weigh up the risks.

"She was in control," Irving says. "She would take advice from her father but she was making the decisions. She took a great interest in her medical care and didn't leave it to someone else."

During a 10-hour operation last November, he discovered that Malala's facial nerve had been entirely severed by the bullet and that a 2cm section of it was missing. For any movement to return to her face, the two ends of the nerve would have to be re-attached, but the missing section made it impossible to do this along the original route. Instead, Irving decided to expose the nerve and re-route it so it travelled a shorter distance.

In February this year, a further operation replaced the skull section removed by the surgeons in Pakistan, with a titanium plate. A cochlear implant was also inserted into Malala's left ear to correct damage to her hearing caused by the bullet. No further surgery is said to be required - her face should continue to improve over time, with the help of physiotherapy.

On 12 July, nine months after the shooting, came a major milestone - Malala stood up at the UN headquarters in New York and addressed a specially convened youth assembly. It was her 16th birthday and her speech was broadcast around the world.

"One child, one teacher, one book, one pen can change the world," she said.

How did it feel to speak in public once again - this time on a bigger stage than she could ever have imagined?

Malala's speech to the UN

Speech delivered to 500 young people aged 12-25 from around the world

Malala called on politicians to take urgent action to ensure every child can go to school

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon also addressed the session, calling Malala "our hero"

The event, described by the UN as Malala Day, was organised by former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, now the UN Special Envoy for Global Education

Fanatics fear education, Malala says
"When I looked at 400 youth and people from more than 100 countries... I said that I am not only talking to the people of America and the other countries, I am talking to every person in the world," she says.

Ziauddin Yousafzai remembers it as the biggest day of his life. For him, Malala's speech was an assault on negative perceptions of Pashtuns, of Pakistanis and of Muslims.

"She was holding the lamp of hope and telling the world - we are not terrorists, we are peaceful, we love education."

Malala was introduced to the audience in New York that day by former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the UN's special envoy on global education.

He has no doubt about her power to focus attention on the bigger picture of nearly 60 million out-of-school children around the world. "Because of Malala," he says, "there is a public understanding that something is wrong and has got to be done."

There is even speculation she could be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

The girl from Swat has gone global, but she still believes she can and will return home to Pakistan. Few would advise her to do that anytime soon. There are still fears for her security and also criticism that she attracts too much attention, especially in the West.

But she seems sanguine about any criticism. "It's their right to express their feelings, and it's my right to say what I want," she says. "I want to do something for education, that's my only desire."

The danger for Malala is that the more time she spends away from Pakistan, the less she will be seen at home as a true Pakistani, and the more she will be identified with the West. But she has little time for distinctions between East and West.

"Education is education," she says. "If I am learning to be a doctor would there be an eastern stethoscope or a western stethoscope, would there be an eastern thermometer or a western thermometer?"

Still only 16, she has to balance being the world's most high-profile educational campaigner, in demand around the world, with the completion of her own schooling.

"I am still the old Malala. I still try to live normally but yes, my life has changed a lot," she tells me.

There are moments when she misses her old anonymity, but says it's "human nature" to want what you don't have.

She is an extraordinary young woman, wise beyond her years, sensible, sensitive and focused. She has experienced the worst of humanity, and the best of humanity - both from the medics who cared for her and the messages from many thousands of well-wishers.

I find one of those well-wishers in her own street in Swat, just outside the home that she never made it back to, on the afternoon she was shot. He is a young man called Farhanullah and he says the Taliban have blighted his life, destroying Swat's economic, social and educational fabric. Malala was "Pakistan's daughter", he says. "We should be proud that she has made such a big sacrifice for Pakistan."

I ask if he would like to send a message to Malala. Yes, he says. "She should continue her struggle. We are all with her."

The voice of the girl whom the Taliban tried to silence a year ago has been amplified beyond what anyone could have thought possible.

When I ask her what she thinks the militants achieved that day, she smiles.

"I think they may be regretting that they shot Malala," she says. "Now she is heard in every corner of the world."
Watch Mishal Husain's Panorama special You can follow the Magazine on Twitter and on Facebook Malala: Shot for Going to School on Monday 7 October at 20:30 BST on BBC One

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The girl who was shot for going to school

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One year ago schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head by Taliban gunmen - her "crime", to have spoken up for the right of girls to be educated. The world reacted in horror, but after weeks in intensive care Malala survived. Her full story can now be told.

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Introduction

The United Nations defines violence against women as "any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual, or mental harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life." (1)

Intimate partner violence refers to behaviour by an intimate partner or ex-partner that causes physical, sexual or psychological harm, including physical aggression, sexual coercion, psychological abuse and controlling behaviours.

Sexual violence is "any sexual act, attempt to obtain a sexual act, or other act directed against a person's sexuality using coercion, by any person regardless of their relationship to the victim, in any setting. It includes rape, defined as the physically forced or otherwise coerced penetration of the vulva or anus with a penis, other body part or object."

Scope of the problem

Population-level surveys based on reports from victims provide the most accurate estimates of the prevalence of intimate partner violence and sexual violence. A 2013 analysis conduct by WHO with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the South Africa Medical Research Council, used existing data from over 80 countries and found that worldwide, 1 in 3, or 35%, of women have experienced physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner or non-partner sexual violence (3).

Almost one third (30%) of all women who have been in a relationship have experienced physical and/or sexual violence by their intimate partner. The prevalence estimates of intimate partner violence range from 23.2% in high-income countries and 24.6% in the WHO Western Pacific region to 37% in the WHO Eastern Mediterranean region, and 37.7% in the WHO South-East Asia region.

Globally as many as 38% of all murders of women are committed by intimate partners. In addition to intimate partner violence, globally 7% of women report having been sexually assaulted by someone other than a partner, although data for non-partner sexual violence are more limited. Intimate partner and sexual violence are mostly perpetrated by men against women.

Risk factors

Factors associated with intimate partner and sexual violence occur at individual, family, community and wider society levels. Some are associated with being a perpetrator of violence, some are associated with experiencing violence and some are associated with both.

Risk factors for both intimate partner and sexual violence include:

lower levels of education (perpetration of sexual violence and experience of sexual violence);

a history of exposure to child maltreatment (perpetration and experience);

witnessing family violence (perpetration and experience);

antisocial personality disorder (perpetration);

harmful use of alcohol (perpetration and experience);

having multiple partners or suspected by their partners of infidelity (perpetration);

attitudes that condone violence (perpetration);

community norms that privilege or ascribe higher status to men and lower status to women; and

low levels of women's access to paid employment.

Factors specifically associated with intimate partner violence include:

past history of violence

marital discord and dissatisfaction

difficulties in communicating between partners

male controlling behaviors towards their partners.

Factors specifically associated with sexual violence perpetration include:

beliefs in family honour and sexual purity

ideologies of male sexual entitlement

weak legal sanctions for sexual violence.

Gender inequality and norms on the acceptability of violence against women are a root cause of violence against women.

Health consequences

Intimate partner (physical, sexual and emotional) and sexual violence cause serious short- and long-term physical, mental, sexual and reproductive health problems for women. They also affect their children, and lead to high social and economic costs for women, their families and societies. Such violence can:

Have fatal outcomes like homicide or suicide.

Lead to injuries, with 42% of women who experience intimate partner violence reporting an injury as a consequence of this violence.

Lead to unintended pregnancies, induced abortions, gynaecological problems, and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV. The 2013 analysis found that women who had been physically or sexually abused were 1.5 times more likely to have a sexually transmitted infection and, in some regions, HIV, compared to women who had not experienced partner violence. They are also twice as likely to have an abortion.

Intimate partner violence in pregnancy also increases the likelihood of miscarriage, stillbirth, pre-term delivery and low birth weight babies. The same 2013 study showed that women who experienced intimate partner violence were 16% more likely to suffer a miscarriage and 41% more likely to have a pre-term birth.

These forms of violence can lead to depression, post-traumatic stress and other anxiety disorders, sleep difficulties, eating disorders, and suicide attempts. The 2013 analysis found that women who have experienced intimate partner violence were almost twice as likely to experience depression and problem drinking.

Health effects can also include headaches, back pain, abdominal pain, gastrointestinal disorders, limited mobility and poor overall health.

Sexual violence, particularly during childhood, can lead to increased smoking, drug and alcohol misuse, and risky sexual behaviours in later life. It is also associated with perpetration of violence (for males) and being a victim of violence (for females).

Impact on children

Children who grow up in families where there is violence may suffer a range of behavioural and emotional disturbances. These can also be associated with perpetrating or experiencing violence later in life.

Intimate partner violence has also been associated with higher rates of infant and child mortality and morbidity (through, for example diarrhoeal disease or malnutrition).

Social and economic costs

The social and economic costs of intimate partner and sexual violence are enormous and have ripple effects throughout society. Women may suffer isolation, inability to work, loss of wages, lack of participation in regular activities and limited ability to care for themselves and their children.

Prevention and response

There are a growing number of well-designed studies looking at the effectiveness of prevention and response programmes. More resources are needed to strengthen the prevention of and response to intimate partner and sexual violence, including primary prevention - stopping it from happening in the first place.

There is some evidence from high-income countries that advocacy and counselling interventions to improve access to services for survivors of intimate partner violence are effective in reducing such violence. Home visitation programmes involving health worker outreach by trained nurses also show promise in reducing intimate partner violence. However, these have yet to be assessed for use in resource-poor settings.

In low resource settings, prevention strategies that have been shown to be promising include: those that empower women economically and socially through a combination of microfinance and skills training related to gender equality; that promote communication and relationship skills within couples and communities; that reduce access to, and harmful use of alcohol; transform harmful gender and social norms through community mobilization and group-based participatory education with women and men to generate critical reflections about unequal gender and power relationships.

To achieve lasting change, it is important to enact and enforce legislation and develop and implement policies that promote gender equality by:

ending discrimination against women in marriage, divorce and custody laws

ending discrimination in inheritance laws and ownership of assets

improving women's access to paid employment

developing and resourcing national plans and policies to address violence against women.

While preventing and responding to violence against women requires a multi-sectoral approach, the health sector has an important role to play. The health sector can:

Advocate to make violence against women unacceptable and for such violence to be addressed as a public health problem.

Provide comprehensive services, sensitize and train health care providers in responding to the needs of survivors holistically and empathetically.

Prevent recurrence of violence through early identification of women and children who are experiencing violence and providing appropriate referral and support

Promote egalitarian gender norms as part of life skills and comprehensive sexuality education curricula taught to young people.

Generate evidence on what works and on the magnitude of the problem by carrying out population-based surveys, or including violence against women in population-based demographic and health surveys, as well as in surveillance and health information systems.

WHO response

At the World Health Assembly in May 2016, Member States endorsed a global plan of action on strengthening the role of the health systems in addressing interpersonal violence, in particular against women and girls and against children.

WHO, in collaboration with partners, is:

Building the evidence base on the size and nature of violence against women in different settings and supporting countries' efforts to document and measure this violence and its consequences, including improving the methods for measuring violence against women in the context of monitoring for the Sustainable Development Goals. This is central to understanding the magnitude and nature of the problem and to initiating action in countries and globally.

Strengthening research and capacity to assess interventions to address partner violence.

Undertaking interventions research to test and identify effective health sector interventions to address violence against women.

Developing guidelines and implementation tools for strengthening the health sector response to intimate partner and sexual violence and synthesizing evidence on what works to prevent such violence.

Supporting countries and partners to implement the global plan of action on violence by:

Collaborating with international agencies and organizations to reduce and eliminate violence globally through initiatives such as the Sexual Violence Research Initiative, Together for Girls, the Violence Against Women Working Group of the International Federation of Obstetrician-Gynecologists (FIGO) and the UN Joint Programme on Essential Services Package for Women Subject to Violence.

(1) United Nations. Declaration on the elimination of violence against women. New York : UN, 1993.

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The United Nations defines violence against women as "any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual, or mental harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life."

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Joseph Rowntree- life on low income today

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Joseph Rowntree- life on low income today

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A new report by Loughborough University for JRF Falling short: the experiences of families living below the Minimum Income Standard looks at 30 families who are all living below the Minimum Income Standard (MIS). This is an income level determined by regular research asking the public what they think is required for an acceptable living standard in the UK today - including social participation as well as physical essentials. Some are managing to get by, but can't imagine being able to stretch to a day trip or low cost family holiday. Others struggle to afford material necessities like food and school uniforms.

New hazards and uncertainties, such as zero-hours contracts, payday loans, less stable housing situations and benefit changes have made life precarious, risking more severe forms of deprivation for some. Even when working, many families are struggling to meet their needs and keep up with social expectations. A crucial factor is stability: those with unstable jobs, insecure housing or fluctuating benefits are far more vulnerable than those on a more even keel. Being able to fall back on the support of extended family is also critical, with grandparents helping to look after young children while parents work and sometimes paying for things like holidays or children's activities, or helping out financially in a crisis.

The research, which is part of JRF's strategy to solve poverty, found that the experience of families is varied. Summarising the experiences of low income among participants in the study, in terms of how well they are coping and whether things are improving or getting worse, they can be divided into four broad groups: getting on, getting by, getting stuck and getting harder.

Getting stuck and getting harder

Life on a low income means hard choices for many families. Karen and Ben* live with their children aged three and seven. Ben works full time and the family receive tax credits. The couple have a fairly low mortgage, but are constantly struggling to meet household bills, at the same time as paying around a quarter of their income on child maintenance and loan repayments.

"We really do struggle on a weekly basis to even survive some weeks", says Karen. "Some weeks, like the last week of every month we are flat broke. We'll have beans on toast because we've spent money on the kids. We got ourselves into a little situation of borrowing all the time because before we got insurance out on the boiler, the boiler was constantly packing up. My husband's car kept breaking down or the kids needed some new clothes. At the minute my son has clothes that are two or three, and he's nearly four."

Many people like Karen and Ben are getting stuck in a situation where they find it hard to keep afloat. Some of these families are dependent on borrowing, and can't see an immediate way of improving their lives. They spend a lot of time juggling resources, but still end up going without. Factors that make coping on a low income more difficult include higher outgoings on items such as rent or debt. Some have seen things go wrong, in their own lives or others', and this makes them highly risk averse. This can mean, for example, preferring a prepaid electricity meter, even though it costs more, to the uncertainties associated with facing a large bill or risking direct debit payments that might bounce or wipe out their bank accounts.

For some families, ill health or disability - either among parents or children - is a big factor. Parents' own physical and mental health can restrict their ability to earn - with some unable to work at all - while others needed more time off than usual. Children's health impacts on parents' earning ability, with frequent hospital visits, appointments with professionals or trips to school and school exclusions taking priority. Parents in these circumstances don't feel they can take on a job given all the extra responsibilities, or have drastically reduced their hours to help cope.

Louise and Ian* live with their children, who range from toddler to secondary school age. Ian had to stop work because of his health some years ago, so the family's only income is from benefits. Louise and Ian's life revolves around the children.

"If there's a last bit of food left in the freezer I will go without and let the kids have it", says Louise. "Any money we've got left over from the food shopping, if they needed anything it goes straight on them." Louise had recently needed new shoes, but then decided against it when she thought of other expenses coming up. "We had one birthday yesterday and another on Monday so it just got to me then."

Ian and Louise never go out socially together, as any outings are as a family and for the children. "You can't really go out [as a couple] and have kids at the same time" says Ian.

For other families in the study, life was getting harder and their finances overwhelming them. Families in these situations risk not being able to afford the basics, such as food. Some have made unsuccessful attempts to make finances add up after a family separation - for example trying to afford mortgage payments on one income. Others are trying to get to grips with accumulated debt, including high-interest sources such as doorstep lenders or instalment buying. Unsecured household debt in the UK is reaching a record high, and more and more people are borrowing just to pay the bills.

Unsurprisingly, the parents in this study are prioritising the basic necessities of life - food, warmth, shelter and good health. Where these basic needs are at risk, parents are taking the strain, sometimes neglecting their own diet or not buying themselves new clothes so that their children have enough. Some families face real material hardship such as inadequately heated or damp homes; others can't afford to pay for other things like after school activities. Parents are also consistently sacrificing their own social needs: many can't remember when they last had a night out.

Relationships between partners can be severely tested by the experience of living on a low income. Some parents talk of how money worries are a cause of tension, for example, where couples have different attitudes to money and budgeting, but valued pulling through tough times together. Many spoke of mental health difficulties such as anxiety and depression, which can make it harder to deal with the considerable demands of budgeting on a low income. It can be tough dealing with the demands of budgeting on a low income in such circumstances. And it doesn't necessarily end there: other evidence shows that children from the poorest families are four times more likely than rich ones to experience several mental health problems growing up.

Getting on and getting by

Among parents in the study who felt that they were coping, a few do see their lives as getting better and they are moving towards a better living standard. These families are in a relatively secure situation with a steady income and no debts, and are actively getting on, for example through saving, buying a house or taking up education opportunities.

Families who are getting on generally have stable, reasonably paid employment and don't need to pay for childcare. This is sometimes helped by the availability of extended family, both to help look after children and giving significant financial support such as a deposit to secure a mortgage. Even for those whose lives are not improving generally, grandparents can provide crucial financial support. In some cases, they help out when there is a crisis. In others, their help prevents children missing out on valued aspects of growing up - paying for a holiday or an after school activity that their parents can't afford.

Such extended family support is common among the group of parents who are getting by. While their income is not improving, this group is making ends meet pretty well - although this involves hard work and disciplined spending. Parents are highly organised to cope well: juggling payment demands, comparing prices, seeking out discounts and carefully managing their budgets. They are generally in a stable position; a few have become lone parents in recent times, but any temporary crisis that this caused in their financial situation had been sorted out.

Angela* lives with her primary school aged children. Her income has drastically reduced since splitting from her husband, and she stopped working due to her health. Nonetheless, Angela feels that she is managing well: she is on top of her bills and is able to 'squirrel away' a little money for emergencies. This is mostly due to her organised budgeting and resourcefulness. She controls her finances tightly and can account for every penny - she receives her benefits weekly, uses prepayment meters and spreads out her bill payments. She finds internet banking and using a debit card helpful so she can keep track of her spending and the money she has available. Angela describes herself as a 'bargain hunter'; she knows which shops are best value for different goods, and uses the internet to pick up cheap deals. She stocks up on special offers, buys and cooks food in bulk, and stores meals in the freezer; as well as being cost effective, this means that if she was ever short of money she could still provide a good meal for the family. Angela is proud of being disciplined with her spending and only buys what she thinks she can afford. She has had a loan in the past, but now would rather save up to buy things outright as using credit would be a last resort for her.

Angela's situation illustrates how some people on low incomes are able to keep up with household bills without getting into arrears. Not all the families we spoke to have always been in this situation - a number of those getting by have managed to clear (sometimes substantial) debt, and changed their attitude to money so as not to repeat the experience. A few sometimes use a catalogue retailer for a large purchase or have a credit card, but are able to pay it off rather than get into debt. Some would like to be able to afford occasional treats, and feel that they would like to spend more on things such as holidays, activities, trips for the children and in some cases on a car. Another parent who isn't working and is raising a family on her own spoke about "Just being able to go shopping and not stress. You know my big dream at the moment - and it is the smallest thing - just not having to calculate every single thing and how much it's all adding up to. It's nothing to some people and you walk round the supermarket and you see these people with Finest this and Finest that and the best of and you think I just want one of them just to try it, but the only way I'm going to get to try that is if it's reduced of an evening and I get there at 7.00pm and beat every other bugger else to it... I want my ability to be able to shop and not have a migraine by the time I come out the other end from having to be a mathematician."

The expense of Christmas and birthdays is a common concern among families in the study. While Christmas is seen as a really important time for children, the financial stress this puts on parents is evident and they talked about it as a source of 'dread' and 'stress'. People plan way ahead, buying presents throughout the year if they have any spare money or spot a bargain. Some use supermarket loyalty points, save loose change or put Child Benefit into Christmas vouchers. However, for others, borrowing to fund purchases means that the impact on budgets kicks in afterwards. Catalogues, buy now/pay later or Provident loans are used as a form of funding, and viewed as a mixed blessing - a 'godsend' until the money has to be paid back and then 'oh God, why did I do that?'

The difficulty for some families is that there is just not enough money to go around. Parents feel demoralised, with nothing left to cut back on. They have little sense of control because as fast as money comes in, it goes straight out again with nothing left.

Having no financial back-up means if there's an unplanned expense, it throws a spanner in the works. Funding an MOT or car repairs, replacing large household goods if they break down, or dealing with an emergency can be problematic and not easily met from the day-to-day income. In these situations, families have to borrow, use catalogues, overdrafts or credit cards, or try to juggle their budget and payment of other bills - which can mean reorganising a whole system of finely balanced finances.

So how can we provide stability for these families?

The causes and effects of a low income cannot be solved overnight. Above all, parents want to be able to provide their children with a feeling of 'normality' - a basic standard of living that they can rely on. Yet four out of five low-paid workers remain stuck in low pay after 10 years. The problems faced by low income families don't disappear when they enter work: tax credits are essential in making ends meet for working families.

This research shows how policies which help address low family income need to aim for greater stability in four key areas. Families need stable jobs, with steady earnings that they can rely on. Where earnings remain low and the state helps out, or where people can't work, they need benefits that they can guarantee will not be reduced or taken away. In meeting their housing needs, they require the security that has been provided by social housing and which at present is often lacking in the private rented sector. Finally, they need reliable and affordable childcare, so that if help from extended family is not available parents are not preventing for working. Support in these four areas would go a long way to providing the stability that these two million families below the Minimum Income Standard crave - so they can get on, rather than simply get by, in modern Britain.

JRF's strategy to solve UK poverty is being launched in September. It recommends a plan that boosts people's incomes by making work pay, and making housing and childcare more affordable. A plan that ensures our education system gives all of our children the best start in life and ensures they have the skills they need to get well-paid jobs with opportunities to progress. A plan that promotes long-term economic growth that benefits everyone. A plan that supports families to stay together, and communities to help themselves. By working together with vision and commitment we can take start to create a prosperous society built on decent living standards and opportunities for everyone to fulfil their potential. You can follow our progress at www.jrf.org.uk/solve-uk-poverty

Read the full reports

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A new report by Loughborough University for JRF Falling short: the experiences of families living below the Minimum Income Standard looks at 30 families who are all living below the Minimum Income Standard (MIS).

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Young people are nearly three times more likely to be unemployed than the rest of the population, the largest gap in more than 20 years, according to an analysis of official figures.

The number of people aged 16-24 who are not in full-time education or employment has increased by 8,000 over the last quarter. With 498,000 in that age group without a job, an analysis by the House of Commons library for Labour shows that young people now fare comparatively worse than at any point since 1992.

Their unemployment rate is 14.4%. The overall unemployment rate now stands at 5.7% of the total working population, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

The work and pensions secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, has warned that unemployed teens under a future Tory government would be forced to pick up litter or carry out other community work if they want to receive benefits.

The Conservatives have accused Labour of seeking to "talk down the economy" by latching on to the recent youth unemployment figures when the total number out of work in the UK fell by 97,000 to 1.86 million in the three months to December.

However Rachel Reeves, the shadow work and pensions secretary, said there could be "no doubt" that there was a genuine issue with youth unemployment that needed to be addressed.

She said: "It has been three months in a row [that youth unemployment has gone up]. It went up by 3,000 this month and 30,000 last month. There is an issue and we want ministers to focus on it before it becomes even more of a problem.

"We have got German levels of adult unemployment but the rest of Europe's levels of youth unemployment. There are specific issues around youth unemployment.

"I don't think there is any denying there is an issue here. Unemployment of people aged between 16 and 24 is more than 16% now. And is going up. And there is also a wages issue. Wages for the population as a whole are £1,600 a year worse off than five years ago. If you are in your 20s, average wages are down £1,800."

The figures emerge on the eve of the publication of a Fabian Society report warning that over the next 15 years rising prosperity will not be shared across society.

High-income households are projected to see their incomes rise 11 times as quickly as low-income households, with family incomes for the rich projected to rise by £13,000 a year. Low-income households will be just £200 better off, in 2014 prices.

Based on Office for Budget Responsibility and ONS assumptions, though GDP per person is assumed to grow by 32% over the period, the living standards for low- and middle-income households are projected to stagnate with real disposable incomes growing by just 2% and 9% respectively, it is also claimed.

The report finds that social security and tax credit policies are the principle cause of rising poverty and inequality so it warns against any major cuts to benefits after the election.

Andrew Harrop, co-author of the report and general secretary of the Fabian Society, said: "The UK has endured a decade of falling living standards. Poverty and inequality are on the rise and our projections show they will continue to rise long into the future, unless politicians act.

"The gloomy prognosis we report is not inevitable. Political choices, not unstoppable economic forces will determine the extent of inequality in 2030. We need to take a long view of this problem, but also have an immediate plan ready for after the election. The new government should make full employment and action on low pay its top two economic priorities. It should then establish a 'Prosperity Fund' to recycle to families the tax revenues generated from more people being in work and in better paid jobs. So-called 'predistribution' must pay for redistribution.

"Poverty and inequality could rise by even more than our projections if politicians introduce major benefit cuts after the election. Is that the Britain of the future we want?"

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Youth unemployment rate is worst for 20 years, compared with overall figure

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Young people are nearly three times more likely to be unemployed than the rest of the population, the largest gap in more than 20 years, according to an analysis of official figures. The number of people aged 16-24 who are not in full-time education or employment has increased by 8,000 over the last quarter.

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How has life expectancy changed over time? - Office for National Statistics

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Education, age and class continue to create a 'digital divide' in internet use and access, according to new research led by the University of Leicester.

An unprecedented analysis has found that - despite a number of government policies aimed at tackling the issue - inequalities in Internet access and use mirror those evident in other areas of society.

Research conducted by Dr Patrick White, a senior lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of Leicester, suggests that adults with lower levels of education, those older than 65, and those working in manual jobs, were less likely to use the Internet for banking, purchasing, looking for work or accessing government services.

These inequalities continue, despite an increase in Internet access and use during the first decade of the 21 st century.

The study, published in the journal Information, Communication and Society, and co-authored with Professor Neil Selwyn of Monash University, analysed data on more than 47,000 adults from 2002 to 2010.

The data was collected by the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE).

The proportion of respondents reporting Internet access rose from 43 per cent to over 71 per cent over the nine years covered.

However, individuals in occupational classes ABC1 - roughly corresponding to "middle class" - were still over three and half times more likely to report having online access compared to those in classes C2DE - roughly denoting "working class" - in 2010.

Education and age were also found to be strongly related to access. Respondents who had stayed in full-time education beyond the age of 16 or had recently participated in learning were more than twice as likely to have Internet access while those aged over 65 years were five times less likely to report be able to go online at home.

Using the Internet for banking, purchasing, looking for work and accessing government services all rose over the period studied but were still minority activities, even among those with Internet access at home.

Being younger, a member of class ABC1 and having a history of educational participation increased the chances of making online purchases, and class and education were similarly related to accessing government services online.

Class was also related to using online banking services, while youth and education were the most important factors in increasing the likelihood of using the Internet to look for work. Ethnicity was only strongly linked to one of the uses, with those describing themselves as White being more likely to purchase goods or services online. After other factors has been controlled for, no substantial differences between male and females were found, suggesting there is little in the way of a 'sex divide' in terms of basic access and use.

Dr White said: "Although Internet access and use have increased substantially over the past decade, the increases among some groups have been quicker.

"In what is now a familiar trend, those groups who are already relatively advantaged - the young, educated and those with higher status occupations - have taken advantage of the opportunities offered by the Internet at a faster pace than the rest of society.

"There is a danger that rather than serving to equalize opportunities, as some had hoped, the Internet is merely reinforcing the inequalities that exist elsewhere in society.

"Clearly, addressing the 'digital divide' requires more than just providing access to the appropriate technology - patterns of use are rooted in social, rather than just technical, problems. Any effective solutions will have to address this social aspect of the problem."
Ends Notes to editors:
For more information, please contact 0116 223 1450 or at: patrick.white@le.ac.uk

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Education, age and class continue to create a 'digital divide'

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Education, age and class continue to create a 'digital divide' in internet use and access, according to new research led by the University of Leicester. An unprecedented analysis has found that - despite a number of government policies aimed at tackling the issue - inequalities in Internet access and use mirror those evident in other areas of society.

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British Muslims are suffering an "explosion" in faith-based hatred with many women now afraid to conduct their daily lives, according to a new report which also warns of heightened racism following the vote on Brexit.

The annual survey by the anti-Muslim hate monitoring group Tell MAMA found a 326 per cent rise in incidents last year, while the Muslim Council of Britain group of mosques said it had compiled a dossier of 100 hate crimes over the weekend alone.

Political leaders including David Cameron and Jeremy Corbyn both voiced concern in the Commons on Monday, while Labour grandee Harriet Harman said many now seemed to believe it was "open season" for racists.

Poles and other minority groups have suffered several verbal attacks throughout the country in recent days, and the National Police Chiefs' Council said it had detected a 57 per cent rise in reports to a police online hate crime reporting site between Thursday and Sunday compared to the corresponding days four weeks ago.

In utter shock: just been called p**i in my home town! Haven't heard that word here since the 80s..!
- Sima Kotecha (@sima_kotecha) June 27, 2016

On Monday, Sima Kotecha, a reporter for Radio 4's flagship Today programme, said on Twitter that she was in "utter shock" after having been called a "P**i", adding: "Haven't heard that word here since the 80s."

But Tell MAMA said its annual report showed the surge in anti-Muslim hatred, fuelled by terrorist incidents, was happening well before the EU referendum.

Its survey found that while far right activists are often behind the incidents online, many attacks are happening in the real world - at schools and colleges, in restaurants and on public transport. The number of offline incidents rose 326 per cent in 2015 from 146 to 437.

It said the effect on Muslim women - particularly those wearing any Islamic clothing - was now so grave that many were being prevented from conducting "day to day activities".

The group's chair, former labour communities minister Shahid Malik, said: "We stand in unchartered territory", adding: "The statistics paint a profoundly bleak picture of the explosion of anti-Muslim hate both online and on our streets, with visibly Muslim women being disproportionately targeted by cowardly hatemongers. This exponential growth is testament to the fact that despite great efforts to fight anti-Muslim hatred, as a society we are still failing far too many of our citizens.

"With the backdrop of the Brexit vote and the spike in racist incidents that seems to be emerging, the government should be under no illusions, things could quickly become extremely unpleasant for Britain's minorities. So today more than ever, we need our government, our political parties and of course our media to act with the utmost responsibility and help steer us towards a post-Brexit Britain where xenophobia and hatred are utterly rejected. Failure to demonstrate the necessary maturity in leadership at this delicate moment in our history could have some significant and far-reaching consequences for us all."

Its report said the greatest impact was being felt by women who were visibly Muslim and "whose ability to travel and be free from fear and intimidation is being increasingly curtailed given national and international events".

It said 61 per cent of victims in the cases it recorded involved women and of those, 75 per cent were clearly identifiable as Muslim, for example due to their headscarves or veils. Tell MAMA said women were more likely to be attacked or abused while travelling on public transport to town and city centres or when shopping. Some 11 per cent of incidents occurred in schools and other colleges, it said, with 35 cases of abusive behaviour or physical attacks. Tell MAMA said Ofsted and the Department for Education should consider anti-Muslim bullying and hate in their evaluations of schools.

Many incidents have been reported widely before. Last November, a woman who was caught on CCTV abusing a pregnant Muslim woman on a London bus - accusing her of being a supporter of Isis- was given a suspended jail sentence.

Other victims include taxi drivers. One man, Yasir Hussain, told The Independent, he had been called a "P**i bastard" on 18 June this year, after another driver pulled up alongside his minicab and hurled abuse at him.

Tell MAMA said its data suggested the largest proportion of incidents involved perpetrators aged between 13 and 18. Tell MAMA said the finding "suggests some teenagers are being radicalised and are moving away from the mainstream views of their age group who are much more multicultural in their orientation".

In the Commons on Monday, Mr Cameron described incidents of racism directed at migrants in the wake of the referendum result as "despicable", while London Mayor Sadiq Khan ordered Scotland Yard to be "extra vigilant".

Meanwhile, Dr Shuja Shafi, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said: "As the results of the referendum became known, I called for our politicians to come together and heal the divisions that have emerged as a result of the campaign. Now we are witnessing the shocking extent of this with reports around the country of hate speech and minorities being targeted.

"Our country is experiencing a political crisis which, I fear threatens the social peace."

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Muslims are suffering from a surge in faith-based attacks after Brexit

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British Muslims are suffering an "explosion" in faith-based hatred with many women now afraid to conduct their daily lives, according to a new report which also warns of heightened racism following the vote on Brexit.

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New figures showing an annual rise in net migration to the UK have provoked fierce debate but many myths persist about the effects of immigration.

Here are some of the most common misconceptions:

'Migration is higher than ever before '

Annual net migration actually dipped in the year to September compared to the record-setting figures on the 12 months to June, from 336,000 to 323,000.

Although the latest number is still a rise on 2014, only 2,000 more people immigrated to the UK in the latest period analysed.

"The latest increase in net migration was not statistically significant compared with 2014," a spokesperson for the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said.

"This net increase was the result of a decrease in emigration...and immigration being at a similar level to the previous year."

Net migration from the EU, 172,000, saw a slight increase on 2014 and the figure for non-EU citizens was also slightly up at 191,000.

In real terms, EU immigration was up from 246,000 to 257,000, while non-EU immigration was down from 289,000 to 273,000.

The ONS said the changes were "not statistically significant" for either group, although a 15,000 jump in immigration from EU2 countries - Romania and Bulgaria - was notable.

'The refugee crisis is pushing immigration out of control'

As stated above, the main cause of the rise in net migration is not immigration itself but a drop in emigration.

Asylum applications also rose for the fifth successive year in the UK according to the ONS, but the increase is negligible in light of the arrival of more than 1 million refugees in Europe.

The number of applications lodged in the year to September 38,878, an annual increase of 20 per cent, the figure is nowhere near the UK's 2002 peak of 103,000.

Germany, by contrast, had taken more than 353,000 applications in the year to October, while Hungary was on 204,000 and Sweden on 94,000.

The rate of asylum seekers per million people in the UK was 185, lower than Ireland, Iceland and Switzerland.

Most refugees arriving in Britain last year came from Eritrea, followed by Iran, Pakistan, Sudan and Syria.

An additional 1,200 Syrians granted humanitarian protection under the Government's resettlement scheme, which was introduced after David Cameron refused to sign up to EU quotas, were not counted in the figure.

Rates for granting applications varied widely across different nationals, with almost 90 per cent of Syrians being accepted as refugees compared to just a fifth of Pakistani nationals.

'Immigrants are coming here for benefits'

One of the most frequently raised allegations about immigrants entering the UK is that they aim to exploit the national welfare system, despite numerous studies showing European migrants pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits.

David Cameron once called public concern about benefits tourism "widespread and understandable" but research has not found a statistical foundation for the fears.

Recent immigrants have made a net contribution of £20 billion to the UK over the last ten years, according to a UCL study, and foreigners are barred from several types of benefits without having permanent residency in the UK, unlike those on work visas, students and asylum seekers don't qualify.

In 2013, a spokesperson for the European Employment Commissioner said the British Government had "completely failed to come up with any specific evidence" to show that its welfare system was being abused and that EU nationals pay more in tax and other contributions than they receive in benefits.

In that same year, a European Commission report showed that unemployed EU migrants made up less than 5 per cent of migrant claimants across the bloc and that fewer than 38,000 were claiming Jobseeker's Allowance.

A leaked Home Office document later admitted that the Government keeps no figures on how many EU nationals claim welfare payments.

A study by University College London estimated that migrants coming to the UK since 2000 have been 43 per cent less likely to claim benefits or tax credits compared to the British-born workforce. "Immigrants, especially in recent years, tend to be younger and better educated than the UK-born and less likely to be unemployed," the Centre for Economic Performance at LSE concluded in a separate report.

'Immigrants are taking our jobs'

The latest ONS statistics show that employment rates for arriving migrants are high.

Of the 290,000 people who immigrated for work in the year to September 2015, almost 60 per cent had already secured a job and the share rose to two thirds for Romanians and Bulgarians.

Around 165,000 EU citizens came to the UK for work-related reasons, with 96,000 arriving to a "definite job" and 69,000 looking for work.

Around two million non-British EU nationals are currently working in the UK, as well as 1.2 million non-EU nationals and 28.3 million Brits, according to the latest statistics from the Labour Force Survey.

Visas granted for skilled work and other working visas were on the rise but those for study fell slightly following policy restrictions brought in by the Conservative government.

But the figures do not necessarily mean new arrivals are "taking British jobs", experts have cautioned.

In its 2015 General Election briefing, the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics observed: "There is still no evidence of an overall negative impact of immigration on jobs, wages, housing or the crowding out of public services.

"Any negative impacts on wages of less skilled groups are small. One of the largest impacts of immigration seems to be on public perceptions."

Its research found that immigrants tend to be better educated and younger than their UK-born counterparts, while their share of the market for new jobs has remained "broadly the same".

Jonathan Portes, Principle Research Fellow at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, suggested employment fears may stem from the fact that areas with high immigration, such as London, also tend to be where the job market moves more quickly

"It's fairly obvious that wages are generally higher and jobs easier to come by in areas of high immigration like London, while many low migration areas have relatively depressed labour markets," he added.

"It'strue that, if an immigrant takes a job, then a British worker can't take that job - but it doesn't meant he or she won't find another one that may have been created, directly or indirectly, as a result of immigration."

'Migration causes crime'

Anti-immigration groups have used fears of criminality as a key focus, particularly following the sex attacks in Cologne and reports of increased crime rates in areas of Europe being directly affected by the refugee crisis.

A report by LSE in 2013 found that crime actually fell significantly in areas that had experienced mass immigration from eastern Europe, with rates of burglary, vandalism and car theft down since 2004.

The research concluded that there was "no causal impact of immigration on crime...contrary to the 'immigration causes crime' populist view expressed in some media and political debate".

Brian Bell, a LSE research fellow, told the Guardian: "The view that foreigners commit more crime is not true. The truth is that immigrants are just like natives: if they have a good job and a good income they don't commit crime."

A 2008 report for the Association of Chief Police Officers found that national crime rates have continued to fall despite rising net migration over a number of years.

The research found that offending rates among Polish, Romanian and Bulgarian communities were in line with the general population.

'It puts a strain on public services, hospitals and schools'

UCL's Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration at University College London found that European immigrants to the UK pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits, effectively subsiding public services.

"A key concern in the public debate on migration is whether immigrants contribute their fair share to the tax and welfare systems", co-author Professor Christian Dustmann wrote.

"Our new analysis draws a positive picture of the overall fiscal contribution made by recent immigrant cohorts, particularly of immigrants arriving from the EU."

While school places and hospital beds are under pressure in many areas, much of the change arises from rising birth rates, the effects of an ageing population and other factors that local and national government has failed to respond to by expanding provision.

Additionally, figures from the Health and Social Care Information Centre showed that 11 per cent of NHS staff are not British, including more than a quarter of doctors.

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New figures showing an annual rise in net migration to the UK have provoked fierce debate but many myths persist about the effects of immigration. Here are some of the most common misconceptions: Annual net migration actually dipped in the year to September compared to the record-setting figures on the 12 months to June, from 336,000 to 323,000.

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The wanted posters offered a £500 reward for information that might lead to a team of ruthless criminals: "Peter Piatkok, a native of Russia, an Anarchist ... complexion sallow; Joe Levi ... foreign appearance, speaking fairly good English, thickish lips, erect carriage ... A woman aged 26-27, fairly full breasts, sallow complexion, face somewhat drawn ... Foreign appearance." The posters appeared almost exactly 100 years ago, not far from the area of London about to host the Olympic Games which, the Metropolitan police suggested last week, have now been targeted for easy pickings by predatory eastern European gangs.

The quarry being hunted by the police back in 1911 were Latvian anarchists engaged in a struggle with the tsar of Russia and in need of funds, to which end they had already carried out a deadly robbery in Tottenham, prompting the Times headline: "Alien Robbers Run Amok." When they were tracked down to 100 Sidney Street, in Stepney, the home secretary, Winston Churchill, called in the Scots Guards from the Tower of London and directed the operation himself. When the house caught fire during the siege, he prevented the fire brigade from extinguishing it: "I thought it better to let the house burn down rather than spend good British lives in rescuing those ferocious rascals." Calls for tighter restrictions on immigration from eastern Europe were immediately made by an outraged press.

Now the Met police's Operation Podium, which has the security brief for the Olympics, suggests that a fresh batch of eastern European miscreants are heading to London and have already been impersonating police officers and extorting bogus "fines" from unwary tourists. Earlier this year, the Daily Mail blamed a quarter of all London crimes on eastern European crooks, although this turned out to be an exaggerated figure that was later corrected. What's it all about?

Fast forward from the Sidney Street siege to 2006 and the world's largest-ever cash robbery, £53m stolen from a Securitas cash depot in Tonbridge, Kent, by a gang dressed in latex masks and police uniforms. The inside man for this robbery was Ermir Hysenaj, an Albanian who entered the UK as a teenager in 1999, claiming to be a Kosovan refugee. He moved to Hastings and remained in touch with a childhood friend from Albania, Jetmir Bucpapa, a wide boy who had paid money to a smuggler to take him across the Adriatic sea in a speedboat and had made his way across western Europe, also posing as a Kosovan refugee.

As Howard Sounes recounts in his book on the case, Heist, through Albanian friends, Bucpapa met a small-time local villain, Lea Rusha, who in turn introduced him to the man regarded as the robbery's ringleader, Lee Murray, a cage-fighter. The plot was hatched. Hysenaj signed up with a recruitment firm that had the contract to supply staff to Securitas's nearby depot. He was interviewed for a job as cash administrator and, six days later, having passed the security checks with false name and birth-date, became the inside man.

Confident that no one could understand him, Hysenaj spoke in Albanian on his mobile phone to Bucpapa, passing on details of the depot's security weaknesses. But the robbery was a sloppy one. Hysenaj, no longer working in the depot but easily traced, was picked up soon by Kent police. His mobile phones linked him to Bucpapa. At the end of an Old Bailey trial in 2008, both were jailed along with the other robbers. The involvement of two eastern Europeans alongside British villains was seen as significant by police and criminals alike, in that such a spectacular crime would normally have only been undertaken by a homogenous crew.

In the same year, there was a fatal shooting in an Albanian/Kosovan social club in Acton, west London. A gunman had opened fire, killing one man and wounding two others. The reason for the shooting? A turf war over which Albanian gang was entitled to steal from the parking meters of Westminster. Using skeleton keys, small teams of Albanian-speaking Kosovans, Montenegrans and Albanians had been supping heartily from one of Westminster council's most reliable revenue streams.

To the police, it was a puzzle. Robbing parking meters was not one of organised crime's portfolios. Who would put so much effort into something so painstaking - all those sacks of coins - that yielded such relatively small sums? But to those involved, a share of the £1,243,000 that was stolen in one year alone in Westminster was worth the bother, not least because no home-grown criminals seemed interested in the franchise - and because coins, unlike banknotes, are untraceable. So if someone tried to trespass on this territory, they had to be chased off. The gunman, Herland Bilali, fled to Denmark, was tracked down, extradited and is now serving a life sentence with a 34-year tariff; a co-defendant, Timi Spahiu, protests his innocence. Another Albanian parking-meter turf war murder in Golders Green in 2008 remains unsolved.

A couple of years earlier, Luan Plakici, an Albanian "immigration expert", as he described himself without irony, was jailed for 23 years. He had smuggled around 50 eastern European women, mainly from Moldova and Romania, into Britain for prostitution. He entered the country as an asylum seeker in 1999 and worked for law firms as an interpreter. His trial at Wood Green crown court was a rarity. Usually, the witnesses are too frightened of what might happen to their relatives at home to appear. This time, some brave young women gave evidence against him.

So do those crimes - big robbery, gangland murders, organised sex-trafficking - mean that there is a wave of high-level eastern European crime in Britain? Since Churchill's "ferocious rascals" perished in the flames, newly arrived immigrants from all over the world have been blamed for importing professional crime and violence into Britain. In chronological order, from the start of the last century - Russians/Jews/Latvians (robbery, firearms), Chinese (opium in the 20s), Italians (protection rackets, robbery, gaming in the 30s), Maltese (vice in the 40s and 50s), Chinese again (heroin in the 60s), Pakistanis (heroin in the 70s), West Indians (marijuana, gun crime in the 70s), Turks (heroin in the 80s), Colombians (cocaine in the 90s), Nigerians (fraud now) have all been associated in the public mind with the breaking of a new crime wave on the shores of Britain.

The pattern has been that within most waves of immigration is a small criminal group. They benefit from the fact that the police don't speak their language, know their records or have their fingerprints. Some of their compatriots, to whom they are an embarrassment, will eventually join the police, which means, a generation or so later, they can no longer act with impunity. Since the 90s, the most prominent new arrivals have been from eastern Europe and they, like their predecessors, come with a small criminal class attached, as duly enacted in David Cronenberg's 2007 film, Eastern Promises.

Muhamed Veliu, an Albanian investigative journalist, feels that his countrymen, in particular, have had a bum rap. "Only a small minority are involved in organised crime but the tabloids have created a stereotype of Albanians as the new gangsters," he said when I spoke to him last year about the cases. "In the past 12 years in Britain, I have read only one positive story about an Albanian - a barrister, in Time Out - but there are Albanian doctors in the NHS, Albanian LSE lecturers, Albanians in the restaurant business. The success stories are never reported." However, he added, the Securitas robbery was regarded with some national pride in Albania: "It was 'the crime of the century', it was seen as very different from making money from prostitution, which is the lowest form of crime. It is wrong, of course, but they did need bravery to get involved and at least they went for a bank, that was the feeling in the Albanian community. The British media are now trying to stereotype the whole Albanian community."

A survey carried out by the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) in 2008 found no evidence for suggestions that eastern Europeans were responsible for any crime wave. Peter Fahy, the chief constable who co-authored the report, noted that "you get misunderstandings, you get rumours".

Crime has always been an import-export affair and in many ways mirrors "legitimate" business. As old family firms in Britain have been replaced by multinationals so, too, have the family-based gangs in Britain (the Krays, Richardsons, Arifs, Adams) been overtaken by multinationals, where different nationalities co-operate in the pursuit of higher profits. This is a two-way street. Many British criminals have moved abroad, most famously establishing themselves on the Costa del Crime. Many still operate there, making money from everything from bent time-share deals to drugs smuggled in from Morocco; more than 2,000 Britons had their collars felt in Spain last year alone. British criminals also made themselves at home everywhere from Thailand to Florida. The police may well be right when they say that the Games will attract villains from the east but, if there was to be an Olympics for crime, homegrown Britons would still be going for gold.
Topics

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Has eastern European immigration fuelled a crime wave in Britain?

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The wanted posters offered a £500 reward for information that might lead to a team of ruthless criminals: "Peter Piatkok, a native of Russia, an Anarchist ... complexion sallow; Joe Levi ... foreign appearance, speaking fairly good English, thickish lips, erect carriage ... A woman aged 26-27, fairly full breasts, sallow complexion, face somewhat drawn ...

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Who is most likely to be a victim of crime?

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Who is most likely to be a victim of crime?

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There were 2.1m violent incidents in England and Wales in 2011/12, with 3% of adults victimised, according to the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) published today.

The release shows that the number of violent incidents has halved from its peak in 1995, when the survey estimated over 4.2m violent incidents. The CSEW asks people face-to-face about their experiences of, attitudes about and perceptions of a range of crimes. Last month we reported on the police recorded crimes and wrote about they can differ from the CSEW statistics:

Though police-recorded crimes are down 8.4%, the number of crimes reported in the survey has fallen by 7.1%. 8.9 million crimes were reported in the survey in the year ending September 2012, while the police recorded 3.8 million crimes in this period.

The statistics published today on violent crime and sexual offences cover a range of offence types. The CSEW state that "violence spans minor assaults, such as pushing and shoving that result in no physical harm through to serious assault and murder. Sexual assault covers offences from indecent exposure to rape."

So what are the key findings from the release?

Homicide

540 homicides were recorded for 2011/12 - this is the lowest since 1989 and down 15% on 2010/11. Homicide covers murder, manslaughter and infanticide.

The number of homicides recorded by the police increased from 1961 to 2002/03 but has seen a generally downward trend since. The peak includes 172 homicides committed by Harold Shipman, which although were committed over a long period of time, were recorded by police in 2002/03 as a result of Dame Janet Smith's inquiry.

The chart below shows the number of homicide offences recorded by the police in England and Wales from 1961 to 2011/12. It's important to note however, that the figures are based on the year in which offences are recorded by police rather than the year of the incident.

Two thirds of homicide victims in 2011/12 were men. Homicides against men were also more likely to be committed by a friend or acquaintance whereas for women it was most likely to be committed by a partner or ex-partner.

There were 9.7 recorded homicide offences per million people in 2011/12. Children under the age of one were the group most likely to be a victim at 21 homicides per million population. This is followed by those aged 16 to 29 with a homicide rate at 15 per million population.

To remind us how rare homicides are in England and Wales, the CSEW has helpfully provided some other numbers on causes of death for comparison:

Figures for 2011 show that more people were killed as a result of falls (3,885), intentional self-harm (3,644), and transport accidents (1,815), but fewer were killed by exposure to smoke fire and flames (242) or accidental drowning or submersion (175)

Weapons

Knifes and sharp instruments continue to be the most common method of killing according to the report with 209 such homicides recorded in 2011/12 - this is down on 234 recorded for 2010/11.

In the last year almost a quarter of male homicide victims were killed by hitting or kicking without a weapon and 26% of female victms were strangled or asphyxiated. 39 homicide victims were killed by shooting in 2011/12, down on the previous year which included 12 victims of the Cumbria shooting. The number of homicide victims killed by shooting however is at the lowest number since 1989.

Sexual and intimate violence

Women were more likely than men to have experienced domestic or sexual violence - 3% of women had experienced some form of sexual assault (including attempts) in the past year, compared with 0.3% of men according to the CSEW 2011/12.

The difference between women and men was narrower when looking at victims of domestic abuse, which includes sexual and non-sexual abuse. 7.3% of women (1.2m) and 5% of men (800,000) reported having experienced domestic abuse in the last year.

Because questions in this category are particularly prone to under-reporting, the survey also includes a self-completion module which has a large impact on results. Of all respondents who stated they were a victim of domestic violence in the past year in the self-completion module, only 5% had reported this in face-to-face interviews.

Intimate violence includes experience of emotional, financial and physical abuse by partners or family members, as well as sexual assaults and stalking by any person. The most common form of intimate violence for both men and women was non-sexual partner abuse. When asked if they had experienced this type of abuse since the age of 16, 24% of women and 13% of men said yes.

Just as with other crimes and offences in the survey, the prevalence of intimate violence varies according to the victim's characteristics. For women. those aged 16-19 or 20-24 were more likely to be victims of domestic abuse or stalking. Sexual assault was most likely to occur to women aged 16-19. The highest risk group for domestic abuse amongst women were those that were separated, who made up 1 in 5 victims.

As well as asking about experience of intimate violence, respondents were asked questions to indicate their attitude towards it. 8% of people stated that if the victim was under the influence of drugs then they were 'completely' or 'mostly' responsible for someone sexually assaulting or raping. 7% stated flirting heavily with an abuser beforehand made a victim responsible, and 6% thought this true if the victim was drunk.

Victims of violence

The CSEW provides some interesting data into the characteristics associated with being a victim of violence. Young men are most likely to be victims of violence according to the report.

Men were nearly twice as likely as women (3.8% compared with 2.1%) to have experienced one or more violent crimes in the year prior to interview. The figures also showed that single people had the highest chance of being a victim (6.6%).

The CSEW states that although the profile of those most likely to be victims remains similar across all types of violence, this differs for domestic and sexual violence offences where women are more likely than men to be victims.

The table below shows the number of incidents by crime type recorded by the CSEW. The downloadable spreadsheet includes the data since 1981 and all the data behind the charts. What can you do with this data?

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Crime statistics for England & Wales: violent crime and sexual offences

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There were 2.1m violent incidents in England and Wales in 2011/12, with 3% of adults victimised, according to the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) published today. The release shows that the number of violent incidents has halved from its peak in 1995, when the survey estimated over 4.2m violent incidents.

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The likelihood of becoming a victim of crime - ONS

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Vandalism had the highest victimisation rate of all crimes covered by the survey, with around 1 in 20 households having experienced such a crime in the preceding 12 months (5.8%).

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What about middle class crime?

Bullets

Middle class people commit a variety of crimes

Sutherland pointed out that they were likely to commit the kind of crime which is difficult to catch and convict people for.

States can commit illegal acts too, but rarely is anyone made to go to court

Middle class people tend to be treated more kindly by the criminal justice system

Money laundering - when money made through criminal activities is put through schemes so that it cannot be traced and can be spent

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Much of the sociology of crime is actually about working class crime, but this tends to overlook the point that the middle classes are also criminal too. Stephen Farrall and Suzanne Karstedt (2007) found that crime and illegality is common throughout all classes in Britain from the third of the people who admitted that they had paid in cash to a cleaner, plumber or other tradesman to avoid paying tax, to the 20% who have taken items from work. They found that the middle classes are Britain's biggest lawbreakers with 64 per cent of middle-class admitting to criminal actions. Curiously, these people view themselves as 'upstanding citizens'. The figure compares with 55 per cent of the general population and 43 per cent of those on lower incomes. A sample of 2,000 adults admitted morally dubious activities such as parking in disabled bays and pocketing too much change. It was often high earners who were guilty of such behaviour, and they justified it by suggesting temporary financial setbacks even though sometimes they had very high pay. In 2008, research for the G4S Security Services discovered that those admitting dodging fares on public transport were most likely to be high earning men who considered their behaviour to be morally acceptable.

Probably one of the first people to consider middle class crime was the American criminologist, Edwin Sutherland. Sutherland is associated with differential association theory which suggests that criminal behaviour is learned. Explaining crime by saying that a thief needs the money ignores the fact that most people get jobs to earn money. People behave in a criminal manner because they have social contacts with people who are criminal, or do not have contact with honest people. He studied people who stole for living, professional thieves. His best known work was White Collar Crime (1949) where he analysed the crimes of the American middle class or white collar workers. His main point was that the crime of the middle classes was under-reported and understudied. He claimed that the working class committed crimes such as murder and burglary which can be blamed on poverty or psychology. Middle class criminals are educated, intelligent and well -off. They commit crime because they have access to large sums of money and can trick people. Many of these people do not even see their behaviour as criminal.

Since this original work, it has been clear that there are many dubious and criminal practices among the middle classes. For many years tobacco companies hid their knowledge of the cancer causing properties of cigarettes and other companies did not disclose that products were damaging or unsafe. Many wealthy people evade tax. Drug crime is often conducted as a business at multi-millionaire levels of investment. In Britain the trade is estimated to be worth between £4bn and £6.6bn a year. The Home Office estimates there are 300 large-scale drug importers, 3,000 wholesalers and 70,000 street dealers. There is organised crime, such as money laundering or computer identity fraud. Generally, the term occupational crime is used to describe crime where people cheat their employers or customers for personal gain. Corporate crime is used to describe when companies themselves act in an illegal fashion. Many people die or are injured in work each year by employers who fail to implement health and safety legislation. It is safe to assume that middle class crime is seriously under-reported and that we have very little knowledge of the true extent of crime committed by the rich.

The state itself can act in illegally, so recently, many have argued that the war in Iraq was illegal and the reasons that were used to justify it were false. Others believe that nuclear arms and weapons of mass destruction are illegal. The charity, Amnesty International fights for the victims of governments who have imprisoned protesters illegally.

Research conducted into 'private' crime such as domestic violence (Dobash and Dobash), child sex abuse (Baker and Duncan) and more public crimes such as football hooliganism (Murphy et al) and drugs offences are committed by people from all social classes. There are, however, dramatic differences between the way that the criminal justice system treats middle class and white collar crime. One of the best known examples is the way in which benefit fraud is pursued by the government and the media but tax evasion which arguably costs the country ten times as much is largely ignored. The evidence from interactional research suggests that the crimes of the different social classes are treated differently by the criminal justice system. Middle class people tend to have lighter sentences in more pleasant circumstances. Category D prisons are generally known as 'White Collar prisons' and these have very low levels of security so that prisoners may even work in the daytime and return to prison at night.

Questions

1. Suggest reasons why we have little knowledge of the true amount of racially motivated crime that occurs.

2. Suggest reasons why people who have been the victims of racist crime are unwilling to come forward.

Keywords

1. Differential association theory - People behave in a criminal manner because they have social contacts with people who are criminal, or do not have contact with honest people.

2. Professional thief - makes a living by stealing

3. Corporate crime - crime committed by companies

4. Organisational crime - crime committed by individuals

5. State crime - crime committed by countries

6. White collar crime - middle class crime

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deall trosedd :: understanding crime: what about middle class crime?

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Deall Trosedd :: Understanding Crime: What about middle class crime?

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Bullets Middle class people commit a variety of crimes Sutherland pointed out that they were likely to commit the kind of crime which is difficult to catch and convict people for.

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In the mid-1970s The State of New Jersey announced a "Safe and Clean Neighborhoods Program," designed to improve the quality of community life in twenty-eight cities. As part of that program, the state provided money to help cities take police officers out of their patrol cars and assign them to walking beats. The governor and other state officials were enthusiastic about using foot patrol as a way of cutting crime, but many police chiefs were skeptical. Foot patrol, in their eyes, had been pretty much discredited. It reduced the mobility of the police, who thus had difficulty responding to citizen calls for service, and it weakened headquarters control over patrol officers.

Many police officers also disliked foot patrol, but for different reasons: it was hard work, it kept them outside on cold, rainy nights, and it reduced their chances for making a "good pinch." In some departments, assigning officers to foot patrol had been used as a form of punishment. And academic experts on policing doubted that foot patrol would have any impact on crime rates; it was, in the opinion of most, little more than a sop to public opinion. But since the state was paying for it, the local authorities were willing to go along.

Five years after the program started, the Police Foundation, in Washington, D.C., published an evaluation of the foot-patrol project. Based on its analysis of a carefully controlled experiment carried out chiefly in Newark, the foundation concluded, to the surprise of hardly anyone, that foot patrol had not reduced crime rates. But residents of the foot patrolled neighborhoods seemed to feel more secure than persons in other areas, tended to believe that crime had been reduced, and seemed to take fewer steps to protect themselves from crime (staying at home with the doors locked, for example). Moreover, citizens in the foot-patrol areas had a more favorable opinion of the police than did those living elsewhere. And officers walking beats had higher morale, greater job satisfaction, and a more favorable attitude toward citizens in their neighborhoods than did officers assigned to patrol cars.

These findings may be taken as evidence that the skeptics were right- foot patrol has no effect on crime; it merely fools the citizens into thinking that they are safer. But in our view, and in the view of the authors of the Police Foundation study (of whom Kelling was one), the citizens of Newark were not fooled at all. They knew what the foot-patrol officers were doing, they knew it was different from what motorized officers do, and they knew that having officers walk beats did in fact make their neighborhoods safer.

But how can a neighborhood be "safer" when the crime rate has not gone down-in fact, may have gone up? Finding the answer requires first that we understand what most often frightens people in public places. Many citizens, of course, are primarily frightened by crime, especially crime involving a sudden, violent attack by a stranger. This risk is very real, in Newark as in many large cities. But we tend to overlook another source of fear-the fear of being bothered by disorderly people. Not violent people, nor, necessarily, criminals, but disreputable or obstreperous or unpredictable people: panhandlers, drunks, addicts, rowdy teenagers, prostitutes, loiterers, the mentally disturbed.

What foot-patrol officers did was to elevate, to the extent they could, the level of public order in these neighborhoods. Though the neighborhoods were predominantly black and the foot patrolmen were mostly white, this "order-maintenance" function of the police was performed to the general satisfaction of both parties.

One of us (Kelling) spent many hours walking with Newark foot-patrol officers to see how they defined "order" and what they did to maintain it. One beat was typical: a busy but dilapidated area in the heart of Newark, with many abandoned buildings, marginal shops (several of which prominently displayed knives and straight-edged razors in their windows), one large department store, and, most important, a train station and several major bus stops. Though the area was run-down, its streets were filled with people, because it was a major transportation center. The good order of this area was important not only to those who lived and worked there but also to many others, who had to move through it on their way home, to supermarkets, or to factories.

The people on the street were primarily black; the officer who walked the street was white. The people were made up of "regulars" and "strangers." Regulars included both "decent folk" and some drunks and derelicts who were always there but who "knew their place." Strangers were, well, strangers, and viewed suspiciously, sometimes apprehensively. The officer-call him Kelly-knew who the regulars were, and they knew him. As he saw his job, he was to keep an eye on strangers, and make certain that the disreputable regulars observed some informal but widely understood rules. Drunks and addicts could sit on the stoops, but could not lie down. People could drink on side streets, but not at the main intersection. Bottles had to be in paper bags. Talking to, bothering, or begging from people waiting at the bus stop was strictly forbidden. If a dispute erupted between a businessman and a customer, the businessman was assumed to be right, especially if the customer was a stranger. If a stranger loitered, Kelly would ask him if he had any means of support and what his business was; if he gave unsatisfactory answers, he was sent on his way. Persons who broke the informal rules, especially those who bothered people waiting at bus stops, were arrested for vagrancy. Noisy teenagers were told to keep quiet.

These rules were defined and enforced in collaboration with the "regulars" on the street. Another neighborhood might have different rules, but these, everybody understood, were the rules for this neighborhood. If someone violated them, the regulars not only turned to Kelly for help but also ridiculed the violator. Sometimes what Kelly did could be described as "enforcing the law," but just as often it involved taking informal or extralegal steps to help protect what the neighborhood had decided was the appropriate level of public order. Some of the things he did probably would not withstand a legal challenge.

A determined skeptic might acknowledge that a skilled foot-patrol officer can maintain order but still insist that this sort of "order" has little to do with the real sources of community fear-that is, with violent crime. To a degree, that is true. But two things must be borne in mind. First, outside observers should not assume that they know how much of the anxiety now endemic in many big-city neighborhoods stems from a fear of "real" crime and how much from a sense that the street is disorderly, a source of distasteful, worrisome encounters. The people of Newark, to judge from their behavior and their remarks to interviewers, apparently assign a high value to public order, and feel relieved and reassured when the police help them maintain that order.

Second, at the community level, disorder and crime are usually inextricably linked, in a kind of developmental sequence. Social psychologists and police officers tend to agree that if a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken. This is as true in nice neighborhoods as in rundown ones. Window-breaking does not necessarily occur on a large scale because some areas are inhabited by determined window-breakers whereas others are populated by window-lovers; rather, one unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares, and so breaking more windows costs nothing. (It has always been fun.)

Philip Zimbardo, a Stanford psychologist, reported in 1969 on some experiments testing the broken-window theory. He arranged to have an automobile without license plates parked with its hood up on a street in the Bronx and a comparable automobile on a street in Palo Alto, California. The car in the Bronx was attacked by "vandals" within ten minutes of its "abandonment." The first to arrive were a family-father, mother, and young son-who removed the radiator and battery. Within twenty-four hours, virtually everything of value had been removed. Then random destruction began-windows were smashed, parts torn off, upholstery ripped. Children began to use the car as a playground. Most of the adult "vandals" were well-dressed, apparently clean-cut whites. The car in Palo Alto sat untouched for more than a week. Then Zimbardo smashed part of it with a sledgehammer. Soon, passersby were joining in. Within a few hours, the car had been turned upside down and utterly destroyed. Again, the "vandals" appeared to be primarily respectable whites.

Untended property becomes fair game for people out for fun or plunder and even for people who ordinarily would not dream of doing such things and who probably consider themselves law-abiding. Because of the nature of community life in the Bronx-its anonymity, the frequency with which cars are abandoned and things are stolen or broken, the past experience of "no one caring"-vandalism begins much more quickly than it does in staid Palo Alto, where people have come to believe that private possessions are cared for, and that mischievous behavior is costly. But vandalism can occur anywhere once communal barriers-the sense of mutual regard and the obligations of civility-are lowered by actions that seem to signal that "no one cares."

We suggest that "untended" behavior also leads to the breakdown of community controls. A stable neighborhood of families who care for their homes, mind each other's children, and confidently frown on unwanted intruders can change, in a few years or even a few months, to an inhospitable and frightening jungle. A piece of property is abandoned, weeds grow up, a window is smashed. Adults stop scolding rowdy children; the children, emboldened, become more rowdy. Families move out, unattached adults move in. Teenagers gather in front of the corner store. The merchant asks them to move; they refuse. Fights occur. Litter accumulates. People start drinking in front of the grocery; in time, an inebriate slumps to the sidewalk and is allowed to sleep it off. Pedestrians are approached by panhandlers.

At this point it is not inevitable that serious crime will flourish or violent attacks on strangers will occur. But many residents will think that crime, especially violent crime, is on the rise, and they will modify their behavior accordingly. They will use the streets less often, and when on the streets will stay apart from their fellows, moving with averted eyes, silent lips, and hurried steps. "Don't get involved." For some residents, this growing atomization will matter little, because the neighborhood is not their "home" but "the place where they live." Their interests are elsewhere; they are cosmopolitans. But it will matter greatly to other people, whose lives derive meaning and satisfaction from local attachments rather than worldly involvement; for them, the neighborhood will cease to exist except for a few reliable friends whom they arrange to meet.

Such an area is vulnerable to criminal invasion. Though it is not inevitable, it is more likely that here, rather than in places where people are confident they can regulate public behavior by informal controls, drugs will change hands, prostitutes will solicit, and cars will be stripped. That the drunks will be robbed by boys who do it as a lark, and the prostitutes' customers will be robbed by men who do it purposefully and perhaps violently. That muggings will occur.

Among those who often find it difficult to move away from this are the elderly. Surveys of citizens suggest that the elderly are much less likely to be the victims of crime than younger persons, and some have inferred from this that the well-known fear of crime voiced by the elderly is an exaggeration: perhaps we ought not to design special programs to protect older persons; perhaps we should even try to talk them out of their mistaken fears. This argument misses the point. The prospect of a confrontation with an obstreperous teenager or a drunken panhandler can be as fear-inducing for defenseless persons as the prospect of meeting an actual robber; indeed, to a defenseless person, the two kinds of confrontation are often indistinguishable. Moreover, the lower rate at which the elderly are victimized is a measure of the steps they have already taken-chiefly, staying behind locked doors-to minimize the risks they face. Young men are more frequently attacked than older women, not because they are easier or more lucrative targets but because they are on the streets more.

Nor is the connection between disorderliness and fear made only by the elderly. Susan Estrich, of the Harvard Law School, has recently gathered together a number of surveys on the sources of public fear. One, done in Portland, Oregon, indicated that three fourths of the adults interviewed cross to the other side of a street when they see a gang of teenagers; another survey, in Baltimore, discovered that nearly half would cross the street to avoid even a single strange youth. When an interviewer asked people in a housing project where the most dangerous spot was, they mentioned a place where young persons gathered to drink and play music, despite the fact that not a single crime had occurred there. In Boston public housing projects, the greatest fear was expressed by persons living in the buildings where disorderliness and incivility, not crime, were the greatest. Knowing this helps one understand the significance of such otherwise harmless displays as subway graffiti. As Nathan Glazer has written, the proliferation of graffiti, even when not obscene, confronts the subway rider with the inescapable knowledge that the environment he must endure for an hour or more a day is uncontrolled and uncontrollable, and that anyone can invade it to do whatever damage and mischief the mind suggests."

In response to fear people avoid one another, weakening controls. Sometimes they call the police. Patrol cars arrive, an occasional arrest occurs but crime continues and disorder is not abated. Citizens complain to the police chief, but he explains that his department is low on personnel and that the courts do not punish petty or first-time offenders. To the residents, the police who arrive in squad cars are either ineffective or uncaring: to the police, the residents are animals who deserve each other. The citizens may soon stop calling the police, because "they can't do anything."

The process we call urban decay has occurred for centuries in every city. But what is happening today is different in at least two important respects. First, in the period before, say, World War II, city dwellers- because of money costs, transportation difficulties, familial and church connections-could rarely move away from neighborhood problems. When movement did occur, it tended to be along public-transit routes. Now mobility has become exceptionally easy for all but the poorest or those who are blocked by racial prejudice. Earlier crime waves had a kind of built-in self-correcting mechanism: the determination of a neighborhood or community to reassert control over its turf. Areas in Chicago, New York, and Boston would experience crime and gang wars, and then normalcy would return, as the families for whom no alternative residences were possible reclaimed their authority over the streets.

Second, the police in this earlier period assisted in that reassertion of authority by acting, sometimes violently, on behalf of the community. Young toughs were roughed up, people were arrested "on suspicion" or for vagrancy, and prostitutes and petty thieves were routed. "Rights" were something enjoyed by decent folk, and perhaps also by the serious professional criminal, who avoided violence and could afford a lawyer.

This pattern of policing was not an aberration or the result of occasional excess. From the earliest days of the nation, the police function was seen primarily as that of a night watchman: to maintain order against the chief threats to order-fire, wild animals, and disreputable behavior. Solving crimes was viewed not as a police responsibility but as a private one. In the March, 1969, Atlantic, one of us (Wilson) wrote a brief account of how the police role had slowly changed from maintaining order to fighting crimes. The change began with the creation of private detectives (often ex-criminals), who worked on a contingency-fee basis for individuals who had suffered losses. In time, the detectives were absorbed in municipal agencies and paid a regular salary simultaneously, the responsibility for prosecuting thieves was shifted from the aggrieved private citizen to the professional prosecutor. This process was not complete in most places until the twentieth century.

In the l960s, when urban riots were a major problem, social scientists began to explore carefully the order maintenance function of the police, and to suggest ways of improving it-not to make streets safer (its original function) but to reduce the incidence of mass violence. Order maintenance became, to a degree, coterminous with "community relations." But, as the crime wave that began in the early l960s continued without abatement throughout the decade and into the 1970s, attention shifted to the role of the police as crime-fighters. Studies of police behavior ceased, by and large, to be accounts of the order-maintenance function and became, instead, efforts to propose and test ways whereby the police could solve more crimes, make more arrests, and gather better evidence. If these things could be done, social scientists assumed, citizens would be less fearful.

A great deal was accomplished during this transition, as both police chiefs and outside experts emphasized the crime-fighting function in their plans, in the allocation of resources, and in deployment of personnel. The police may well have become better crime-fighters as a result. And doubtless they remained aware of their responsibility for order. But the link between order-maintenance and crime-prevention, so obvious to earlier generations, was forgotten.

That link is similar to the process whereby one broken window becomes many. The citizen who fears the ill-smelling drunk, the rowdy teenager, or the importuning beggar is not merely expressing his distaste for unseemly behavior; he is also giving voice to a bit of folk wisdom that happens to be a correct generalization-namely, that serious street crime flourishes in areas in which disorderly behavior goes unchecked. The unchecked panhandler is, in effect, the first broken window. Muggers and robbers, whether opportunistic or professional, believe they reduce their chances of being caught or even identified if they operate on streets where potential victims are already intimidated by prevailing conditions. If the neighborhood cannot keep a bothersome panhandler from annoying passersby, the thief may reason, it is even less likely to call the police to identify a potential mugger or to interfere if the mugging actually takes place.

Some police administrators concede that this process occurs, but argue that motorized-patrol officers can deal with it as effectively as foot patrol officers. We are not so sure. In theory, an officer in a squad car can observe as much as an officer on foot; in theory, the former can talk to as many people as the latter. But the reality of police-citizen encounters is powerfully altered by the automobile. An officer on foot cannot separate himself from the street people; if he is approached, only his uniform and his personality can help him manage whatever is about to happen. And he can never be certain what that will be-a request for directions, a plea for help, an angry denunciation, a teasing remark, a confused babble, a threatening gesture.

In a car, an officer is more likely to deal with street people by rolling down the window and looking at them. The door and the window exclude the approaching citizen; they are a barrier. Some officers take advantage of this barrier, perhaps unconsciously, by acting differently if in the car than they would on foot. We have seen this countless times. The police car pulls up to a corner where teenagers are gathered. The window is rolled down. The officer stares at the youths. They stare back. The officer says to one, "C'mere." He saunters over, conveying to his friends by his elaborately casual style the idea that he is not intimidated by authority. What's your name?" "Chuck." "Chuck who?" "Chuck Jones." "What'ya doing, Chuck?" "Nothin'." "Got a P.O. [parole officer]?" "Nah." "Sure?" "Yeah." "Stay out of trouble, Chuckie." Meanwhile, the other boys laugh and exchange comments among themselves, probably at the officer's expense. The officer stares harder. He cannot be certain what is being said, nor can he join in and, by displaying his own skill at street banter, prove that he cannot be "put down." In the process, the officer has learned almost nothing, and the boys have decided the officer is an alien force who can safely be disregarded, even mocked.

Our experience is that most citizens like to talk to a police officer. Such exchanges give them a sense of importance, provide them with the basis for gossip, and allow them to explain to the authorities what is worrying them (whereby they gain a modest but significant sense of having "done something" about the problem). You approach a person on foot more easily, and talk to him more readily, than you do a person in a car. Moreover, you can more easily retain some anonymity if you draw an officer aside for a private chat. Suppose you want to pass on a tip about who is stealing handbags, or who offered to sell you a stolen TV. In the inner city, the culprit, in all likelihood, lives nearby. To walk up to a marked patrol car and lean in the window is to convey a visible signal that you are a "fink."

The essence of the police role in maintaining order is to reinforce the informal control mechanisms of the community itself. The police cannot, without committing extraordinary resources, provide a substitute for that informal control. On the other hand, to reinforce those natural forces the police must accommodate them. And therein lies the problem.

Should police activity on the street be shaped, in important ways, by the standards of the neighborhood rather than by the rules of the state? Over the past two decades, the shift of police from order-maintenance to law enforcement has brought them increasingly under the influence of legal restrictions, provoked by media complaints and enforced by court decisions and departmental orders. As a consequence, the order maintenance functions of the police are now governed by rules developed to control police relations with suspected criminals. This is, we think, an entirely new development. For centuries, the role of the police as watchmen was judged primarily not in terms of its compliance with appropriate procedures but rather in terms of its attaining a desired objective. The objective was order, an inherently ambiguous term but a condition that people in a given community recognized when they saw it. The means were the same as those the community itself would employ, if its members were sufficiently determined, courageous, and authoritative. Detecting and apprehending criminals, by contrast, was a means to an end, not an end in itself; a judicial determination of guilt or innocence was the hoped-for result of the law-enforcement mode. From the first, the police were expected to follow rules defining that process, though states differed in how stringent the rules should be. The criminal-apprehension process was always understood to involve individual rights, the violation of which was unacceptable because it meant that the violating officer would be acting as a judge and jury-and that was not his job. Guilt or innocence was to be determined by universal standards under special procedures.

Ordinarily, no judge or jury ever sees the persons caught up in a dispute over the appropriate level of neighborhood order. That is true not only because most cases are handled informally on the street but also because no universal standards are available to settle arguments over disorder, and thus a judge may not be any wiser or more effective than a police officer. Until quite recently in many states, and even today in some places, the police made arrests on such charges as "suspicious person" or "vagrancy" or "public drunkenness"-charges with scarcely any legal meaning. These charges exist not because society wants judges to punish vagrants or drunks but because it wants an officer to have the legal tools to remove undesirable persons from a neighborhood when informal efforts to preserve order in the streets have failed.

Once we begin to think of all aspects of police work as involving the application of universal rules under special procedures, we inevitably ask what constitutes an "undesirable person" and why we should "criminalize" vagrancy or drunkenness. A strong and commendable desire to see that people are treated fairly makes us worry about allowing the police to rout persons who are undesirable by some vague or parochial standard. A growing and not-so-commendable utilitarianism leads us to doubt that any behavior that does not "hurt" another person should be made illegal. And thus many of us who watch over the police are reluctant to allow them to perform, in the only way they can, a function that every neighborhood desperately wants them to perform.

This wish to "decriminalize" disreputable behavior that "harms no one"- and thus remove the ultimate sanction the police can employ to maintain neighborhood order-is, we think, a mistake. Arresting a single drunk or a single vagrant who has harmed no identifiable person seems unjust, and in a sense it is. But failing to do anything about a score of drunks or a hundred vagrants may destroy an entire community. A particular rule that seems to make sense in the individual case makes no sense when it is made a universal rule and applied to all cases. It makes no sense because it fails to take into account the connection between one broken window left untended and a thousand broken windows. Of course, agencies other than the police could attend to the problems posed by drunks or the mentally ill, but in most communities especially where the "deinstitutionalization" movement has been strong-they do not.

The concern about equity is more serious. We might agree that certain behavior makes one person more undesirable than another but how do we ensure that age or skin color or national origin or harmless mannerisms will not also become the basis for distinguishing the undesirable from the desirable? How do we ensure, in short, that the police do not become the agents of neighborhood bigotry?

We can offer no wholly satisfactory answer to this important question. We are not confident that there is a satisfactory answer except to hope that by their selection, training, and supervision, the police will be inculcated with a clear sense of the outer limit of their discretionary authority. That limit, roughly, is this-the police exist to help regulate behavior, not to maintain the racial or ethnic purity of a neighborhood.

Consider the case of the Robert Taylor Homes in Chicago, one of the largest public-housing projects in the country. It is home for nearly 20,000 people, all black, and extends over ninety-two acres along South State Street. It was named after a distinguished black who had been, during the 1940s, chairman of the Chicago Housing Authority. Not long after it opened, in 1962, relations between project residents and the police deteriorated badly. The citizens felt that the police were insensitive or brutal; the police, in turn, complained of unprovoked attacks on them. Some Chicago officers tell of times when they were afraid to enter the Homes. Crime rates soared.

Today, the atmosphere has changed. Police-citizen relations have improved-apparently, both sides learned something from the earlier experience. Recently, a boy stole a purse and ran off. Several young persons who saw the theft voluntarily passed along to the police information on the identity and residence of the thief, and they did this publicly, with friends and neighbors looking on. But problems persist, chief among them the presence of youth gangs that terrorize residents and recruit members in the project. The people expect the police to "do something" about this, and the police are determined to do just that.

But do what? Though the police can obviously make arrests whenever a gang member breaks the law, a gang can form, recruit, and congregate without breaking the law. And only a tiny fraction of gang-related crimes can be solved by an arrest; thus, if an arrest is the only recourse for the police, the residents' fears will go unassuaged. The police will soon feel helpless, and the residents will again believe that the police "do nothing." What the police in fact do is to chase known gang members out of the project. In the words of one officer, "We kick ass." Project residents both know and approve of this. The tacit police-citizen alliance in the project is reinforced by the police view that the cops and the gangs are the two rival sources of power in the area, and that the gangs are not going to win.

None of this is easily reconciled with any conception of due process or fair treatment. Since both residents and gang members are black, race is not a factor. But it could be. Suppose a white project confronted a black gang, or vice versa. We would be apprehensive about the police taking sides. But the substantive problem remains the same: how can the police strengthen the informal social-control mechanisms of natural communities in order to minimize fear in public places? Law enforcement, per se, is no answer: a gang can weaken or destroy a community by standing about in a menacing fashion and speaking rudely to passersby without breaking the law.

We have difficulty thinking about such matters, not simply because the ethical and legal issues are so complex but because we have become accustomed to thinking of the law in essentially individualistic terms. The law defines my rights, punishes his behavior and is applied by that officer because of this harm. We assume, in thinking this way, that what is good for the individual will be good for the community and what doesn't matter when it happens to one person won't matter if it happens to many. Ordinarily, those are plausible assumptions. But in cases where behavior that is tolerable to one person is intolerable to many others, the reactions of the others-fear, withdrawal, flight-may ultimately make matters worse for everyone, including the individual who first professed his indifference.

It may be their greater sensitivity to communal as opposed to individual needs that helps explain why the residents of small communities are more satisfied with their police than are the residents of similar neighborhoods in big cities. Elinor Ostrom and her co-workers at Indiana University compared the perception of police services in two poor, all-black Illinois towns-Phoenix and East Chicago Heights with those of three comparable all-black neighborhoods in Chicago. The level of criminal victimization and the quality of police-community relations appeared to be about the same in the towns and the Chicago neighborhoods. But the citizens living in their own villages were much more likely than those living in the Chicago neighborhoods to say that they do not stay at home for fear of crime, to agree that the local police have "the right to take any action necessary" to deal with problems, and to agree that the police "look out for the needs of the average citizen." It is possible that the residents and the police of the small towns saw themselves as engaged in a collaborative effort to maintain a certain standard of communal life, whereas those of the big city felt themselves to be simply requesting and supplying particular services on an individual basis.

If this is true, how should a wise police chief deploy his meager forces? The first answer is that nobody knows for certain, and the most prudent course of action would be to try further variations on the Newark experiment, to see more precisely what works in what kinds of neighborhoods. The second answer is also a hedge-many aspects of order maintenance in neighborhoods can probably best be handled in ways that involve the police minimally if at all. A busy bustling shopping center and a quiet, well-tended suburb may need almost no visible police presence. In both cases, the ratio of respectable to disreputable people is ordinarily so high as to make informal social control effective.

Even in areas that are in jeopardy from disorderly elements, citizen action without substantial police involvement may be sufficient. Meetings between teenagers who like to hang out on a particular corner and adults who want to use that corner might well lead to an amicable agreement on a set of rules about how many people can be allowed to congregate, where, and when.

Where no understanding is possible-or if possible, not observed-citizen patrols may be a sufficient response. There are two traditions of communal involvement in maintaining order: One, that of the "community watchmen," is as old as the first settlement of the New World. Until well into the nineteenth century, volunteer watchmen, not policemen, patrolled their communities to keep order. They did so, by and large, without taking the law into their own hands-without, that is, punishing persons or using force. Their presence deterred disorder or alerted the community to disorder that could not be deterred. There are hundreds of such efforts today in communities all across the nation. Perhaps the best known is that of the Guardian Angels, a group of unarmed young persons in distinctive berets and T-shirts, who first came to public attention when they began patrolling the New York City subways but who claim now to have chapters in more than thirty American cities. Unfortunately, we have little information about the effect of these groups on crime. It is possible, however, that whatever their effect on crime, citizens find their presence reassuring, and that they thus contribute to maintaining a sense of order and civility.

The second tradition is that of the "vigilante." Rarely a feature of the settled communities of the East, it was primarily to be found in those frontier towns that grew up in advance of the reach of government. More than 350 vigilante groups are known to have existed; their distinctive feature was that their members did take the law into their own hands, by acting as judge, jury, and often executioner as well as policeman. Today, the vigilante movement is conspicuous by its rarity, despite the great fear expressed by citizens that the older cities are becoming "urban frontiers." But some community-watchmen groups have skirted the line, and others may cross it in the future. An ambiguous case, reported in The Wall Street Journal involved a citizens' patrol in the Silver Lake area of Belleville, New Jersey. A leader told the reporter, "We look for outsiders." If a few teenagers from outside the neighborhood enter it, "we ask them their business," he said. "If they say they're going down the street to see Mrs. Jones, fine, we let them pass. But then we follow them down the block to make sure they're really going to see Mrs. Jones."

Though citizens can do a great deal, the police are plainly the key to order maintenance. For one thing, many communities, such as the Robert Taylor Homes, cannot do the job by themselves. For another, no citizen in a neighborhood, even an organized one, is likely to feel the sense of responsibility that wearing a badge confers. Psychologists have done many studies on why people fail to go to the aid of persons being attacked or seeking help, and they have learned that the cause is not "apathy" or "selfishness" but the absence of some plausible grounds for feeling that one must personally accept responsibility. Ironically, avoiding responsibility is easier when a lot of people are standing about. On streets and in public places, where order is so important, many people are likely to be "around," a fact that reduces the chance of any one person acting as the agent of the community. The police officer's uniform singles him out as a person who must accept responsibility if asked. In addition, officers, more easily than their fellow citizens, can be expected to distinguish between what is necessary to protect the safety of the street and what merely protects its ethnic purity.

But the police forces of America are losing, not gaining, members. Some cities have suffered substantial cuts in the number of officers available for duty. These cuts are not likely to be reversed in the near future. Therefore, each department must assign its existing officers with great care. Some neighborhoods are so demoralized and crime-ridden as to make foot patrol useless; the best the police can do with limited resources is respond to the enormous number of calls for service. Other neighborhoods are so stable and serene as to make foot patrol unnecessary. The key is to identify neighborhoods at the tipping point-where the public order is deteriorating but not unreclaimable, where the streets are used frequently but by apprehensive people, where a window is likely to be broken at any time, and must quickly be fixed if all are not to be shattered.

Most police departments do not have ways of systematically identifying such areas and assigning officers to them. Officers are assigned on the basis of crime rates (meaning that marginally threatened areas are often stripped so that police can investigate crimes in areas where the situation is hopeless) or on the basis of calls for service (despite the fact that most citizens do not call the police when they are merely frightened or annoyed). To allocate patrol wisely, the department must look at the neighborhoods and decide, from first-hand evidence, where an additional officer will make the greatest difference in promoting a sense of safety.

One way to stretch limited police resources is being tried in some public housing projects. Tenant organizations hire off-duty police officers for patrol work in their buildings. The costs are not high (at least not per resident), the officer likes the additional income, and the residents feel safer. Such arrangements are probably more successful than hiring private watchmen, and the Newark experiment helps us understand why. A private security guard may deter crime or misconduct by his presence, and he may go to the aid of persons needing help, but he may well not intervene-that is, control or drive away-someone challenging community standards. Being a sworn officer-a "real cop"-seems to give one the confidence, the sense of duty, and the aura of authority necessary to perform this difficult task.

Patrol officers might be encouraged to go to and from duty stations on public transportation and, while on the bus or subway car, enforce rules about smoking, drinking, disorderly conduct, and the like. The enforcement need involve nothing more than ejecting the offender (the offense, after all, is not one with which a booking officer or a judge wishes to be bothered). Perhaps the random but relentless maintenance of standards on buses would lead to conditions on buses that approximate the level of civility we now take for granted on airplanes.

But the most important requirement is to think that to maintain order in precarious situations is a vital job. The police know this is one of their functions, and they also believe, correctly, that it cannot be done to the exclusion of criminal investigation and responding to calls. We may have encouraged them to suppose, however, on the basis of our oft-repeated concerns about serious, violent crime, that they will be judged exclusively on their capacity as crime-fighters. To the extent that this is the case, police administrators will continue to concentrate police personnel in the highest-crime areas (though not necessarily in the areas most vulnerable to criminal invasion), emphasize their training in the law and criminal apprehension (and not their training in managing street life), and join too quickly in campaigns to decriminalize "harmless" behavior (though public drunkenness, street prostitution, and pornographic displays can destroy a community more quickly than any team of professional burglars).

Above all, we must return to our long-abandoned view that the police ought to protect communities as well as individuals. Our crime statistics and victimization surveys measure individual losses, but they do not measure communal losses. Just as physicians now recognize the importance of fostering health rather than simply treating illness, so the police-and the rest of us-ought to recognize the importance of maintaining, intact, communities without broken windows.

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In the mid-1970s The State of New Jersey announced a "Safe and Clean Neighborhoods Program," designed to improve the quality of community life in twenty-eight cities. As part of that program, the state provided money to help cities take police officers out of their patrol cars and assign them to walking beats.

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What are Right realist theories of crime and deviance?

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Hundreds of people have died from the effects of toxic gases which leaked from a chemical factory near the central Indian city of Bhopal.

The accident happened in the early hours of this morning at the American-owned Union Carbide Pesticide Plant three miles (4.8 km) from Bhopal.

Mr Y P Gokhale, managing director of Union Carbide in India, said that methyl isocyanate gas (MIC) had escaped when a valve in the plant's underground storage tank broke under pressure.

This caused a deadly cloud of lethal gas to float from the factory over Bhopal, which is home to more than 900,000 people - many of whom live in slums.

Chaos and panic broke out in the city and surrounding areas as tens of thousands of people attempted to escape.

More than 20,000 people have required hospital treatment for symptoms including swollen eyes, frothing at the mouth and breathing difficulties.

Thousands of dead cats, dogs, cows and birds litter the streets and the city's mortuaries are filling up fast.

Bhopal resident, Ahmed Khan, said: "We were choking and our eyes were burning. We could barely see the road through the fog, and sirens were blaring.

"We didn't know which way to run. Everybody was very confused.

"Mothers didn't know their children had died, children didn't know their mothers had died and men didn't know their whole families had died."

The Union Carbide factory was closed immediately after the accident and three senior members of staff arrested.

Medical and scientific experts have been dispatched to the scene and the Indian government has ordered a judicial inquiry.

It is understood the Indian Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi, will be flying to the area within the next few days.

This was one of the world's worst industrial accidents. <br>

Nearly 3,000 people died from the effects of the poisonous gas in the days following the disaster. <br>

Estimates say that some 50,000 people were treated in the first few days suffering terrible side-effects, including blindness, kidney and liver failure. <br>

Campaigners say nearly 20,000 others have since died from the effects of the leak. <br>

Investigations into the disaster revealed that something had gone fundamentally wrong with a tank storing lethal methyl isocyanate (MIC). <br>

In 1989 Union Carbide, which is now a subsidiary of Dow Chemical, paid the Indian Government £470m in a settlement which many described as woefully inadequate. <br>

But in 1999 a voluntary group in Bhopal which believed not enough had been done to help victims, filed a lawsuit in the United States claiming Union Carbide violated international law and human rights. <br>

In November 2002 India said it was seeking the extradition of former Union Carbide boss Warren Anderson from the US. <br>

Mr Anderson faces charges of "culpable homicide" for cost-cutting at the plant which is alleged to have compromised safety standards. <br>

In October 2004, the Indian Supreme Court approved a compensation plan drawn up by the state welfare commission to pay nearly $350m to more than 570,000 victims of the disaster. <br>

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BBC ON THIS DAY | 3 | 1984: Hundreds die in Bhopal chemical accident

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Hundreds of people have died from the effects of toxic gases which leaked from a chemical factory near the central Indian city of Bhopal. The accident happened in the early hours of this morning at the American-owned Union Carbide Pesticide Plant three miles (4.8 km) from Bhopal.

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An unexpected 25% surge in personal thefts and a 4% increase in burglaries are recorded in the first set of official quarterly crime figures since the economic recession took hold.

A worrying rise in what the Home Office calls "stealth and snatch thefts" is accompanied by a 5% increase in robberies at knifepoint, according to the police-recorded crime figures published today comparing October to December 2008 with the same period in 2007.

The figures show a 16% drop in gun crime and a fall in the number of people stabbed to death from 59 to 52 over the same period. They record that the increase in robberies at knifepoint occurred within the context of an overall 2% fall in the total number of street robberies.

Overall there was a 4% drop in offences recorded by the police. The British Crime Survey, which is based on a survey of 40,000 people's experience of crime, shows that the volume of all types of offences , including violent crime, remained broadly stable during 2008.

The figures contain the first confirmation of Home Office projections that the economic recession and rise in unemployment are likely to be accompanied by an increase in some types of crime, particularly involving theft of property and burglary. The 4% rise in burglary, including domestic burglary, last winter comes on top of a similar increase between July and September and marks the end of a sustained 55% decline in burglary since the mid-1990s.

Home Office statisticians said the 25% rise in personal thefts reported by the British Crime Survey was statistically significant but it was too early to say whether it indicated a change in recent trends. They pointed out that it was not reflected in the police crime figures or other BCS categories of personal acquisitive crime.

The Association of Police Authorities described it as a "worrying development" that would be closely monitored so that any correlation with the economic downturn could be established and action taken.

The Home Office minister Vernon Coaker said: "We know that we are facing some new challenges now and are focusing our experience and knowledge to tackle these head-on." He said ministers were already working with police, charities, DIY stores and insurers to target repeat burglars and help people secure their homes.

The rise in personal thefts was accompanied by falling rates of violent crime, robbery, sexual offences and gun crime, Coaker said.
Topics

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Crime figures show rise in theft as recession bites

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An unexpected 25% surge in personal thefts and a 4% increase in burglaries are recorded in the first set of official quarterly crime figures since the economic recession took hold.

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Additional reading (useful case study). 

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Additional reading (useful case study). 

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Marxist criminologists see power being held by the Bourgeoisie and laws are a reflection of Bourgeois ideol ogy . The legal system (lawyers, judges and the courts) and the police all serve the interests of the Bourgeoisie. These institutions are used to control the masses, prevent revolution and keep people in a state of false consciousness.

For the purposes of A2 Sociology, the Marxist perspective on crime may be summarised into four key points:

1. Capitalism is Crimogenic -This means that the Capitalist system encourages criminal behaviour.

2. The Law is made by the Capitalist elite and tends to work in their interests.

3. A ll classes, not just the working classes commit crime, and the crimes of the Capitalist class are more costly than street crime.

4. T he state practices Selective Law Enforcement - The Criminal Justice system mainly concerns itself with policing and punishing the marginalised, not the wealthy, and this performs ideological functions for the elite classes.

Key Sociologists associated with this perspective are William Chambliss (1978) and Laureen Snider (1993). Examples of more contemporary theorists include Professors Tombs and Whyte (See later).

Read the following two pages and summarise the four key points in your own words under four headings.

Many Marxists see crime as a natural 'outgrowth' of the capitalist system. The Capitalist system can be said to be crimogenic in three major ways -
The first reason that Capitalism is Crimogenic is because it encourages individuals to pursue self-interest before everything else.
Marxist Sociologist David Gordon says that Capitalist societies are 'dog eat dog societies' in which each individual company and each individual is encouraged to look out for their own interests before the interests of others, before the interests of the community, and before the protection of the environment. If we look at the Capitalist system, what we find is that not only does it recommend that we engage in the self-interested pursuit of profit is good, we learn that it is acceptable to harm others and the environment in the process. Please see KT's blog post - 'On The incredible immorality of corporate greed' for referenced examples of Corporations acting immorally in the pursuit of profit.

Marxists point out that in a Capitalist society, there is immense competitive pressure to make more money, to be more successful, and to make more profit, because in a competitive system, this is the only way to ensure survival. In such a context, breaking the law can seem insignificant compared to the pressure to succeed and pressures to break the law affect all people: from the investment banker to the unemployed gang member.

Marxists theorise that the values of the Capitalist system filter down to the rest of our culture. Think again about the motives of economic criminals: The burglars, the robbers, and the thieves. What they are doing is seeking personal gain without caring for the individual victims.
Secondly, Capitalism is Crimogenic because it encourages us to want things we don't need and can't afford
Companies such as Coca Cola and McDonald's spend billions of dollars every year on advertising, morphing their products into fantastical images that in no way resemble the grim reality of the products or the even grimmer reality of the productive processes that lie behind making their products. Advertising is a long way beyond merely providing us with information about a product; it has arguably become the art of disinformation.

It is doubtless that corporations benefit through advertising, and modern Capitalism could not exist without the culture of consumerism that the advertising industry perpetuates, and activities have pointed to many downsides. One of the most obvious is that the world of advertising presents as normal a lifestyle that may be unattainable for many people in British Society.

For those millions who lack the legitimate means to achieve the materialist norm through working, this can breed feelings of failure, inadequacy, frustration and anger at the fact that they are working-but-not-succeeding. In short, Advertising creates the conditions that can lead to status frustration, which in turn can lead to crime.

Merton and Nightingale have pointed out that for some the desire to achieve the success goals of society outweigh the pressure to obey the law, advertising only adds to this strain between the legitimate means and the goal of material success.
Thirdly, Capitalism is Crimogenic because it creates inequality and poverty
The Capitalist system is one of radical inequality. At the very top we have what David Rothkopf calls the 'Superclass' , mainly the people who run global corporations, and at the very bottom we have the underclass (in the developed world) and the slum dwellers, the street children and the refugees in the developing world.

The Sociologists Zygmunt Bauman points out that the super wealthy effectively segregate themselves from the wealthy, through living in exclusive gated communities and travelling in private jets and armoured vehicles with security entourages. If people can afford it, they move to a better area, and send their children to private schools. However, this doesn't prevent the poor and the rich from living side by side.

Marxists argue that this visible evidence of massive inequalities give people at the bottom a sense of injustice, a sense of anger and a sense of frustration that they are not sharing in the wealth being flaunted in front of them (the flaunting is the point is it not?) As a result, Capitalism leads to a flourishing of economic crime as well as violent street crime.

William Chambliss even goes so far as to say that economic crime ''represents rational responses to the competitiveness and inequality of life in capitalist societies". As we have seen from previous studies. Drug dealers see themselves as innovative entrepreneurs. So internalised is the desire to be successful that breaking the law is seen as a minor risk.

Marxists hold that more egalitarian societies based on the values of the co-operation and mutual assistance, have lower crime rates, as can be evidence from Bruce Parry's visit to the extremely egalitarian Island of Anuta

Does Capitalism encourage competition over co-operation?

Does exploitation lie at the heart of the Capitalist system?

Does Capitalism encourage us to be selfish consumers?

Does Capitalism cause crime?

Basic Marxist theory holds that the superstructure serves the ruling classes, thus the state passes laws which support ruling class interests.

Evidence for this can be found in the following:

Property rights are much more securely established in law than the collective rights of, for instance, trade unions . Property law clearly benefits the wealthy more than those with no property. William Chambliss has argued that 'at the heart of the Capitalist system lies the protection of Private Property. Consider the fact that there are roughly 100, 000 people recognised as homeless in the United Kingdom, and 300, 000 houses lying empty. The rights of the property owners to keep their properties empty are put before the rights of the needy to shelter.

Laureen Snider (1993) argues that and which might threaten profitability. Having tried so hard to attract investment the last thing the state wants to do is alienate the large corporations. The state is thus reluctant to pass - or enforce - laws against such things as pollution, worker health and safety and monopolies. Capitalist states are reluctant to pass laws which regulate large capitalist concerns

While the lack of regulation in these areas is obvious in the third world, in most of Europe, there are many laws protection the environment and health and safety, but fines for them are relatively low, and, until 2007, no individual member of a corporation could be prosecuted for damaging the environment or endangering worker safety through corporate practise.

A further recent example which could be used to support this is the deregulation of financial markets prior to the financial crisis of 2008 and subsequent 'credit crunch' and economic recession. The activities of the vast majority of bankers and financiers were not seen as illegal and, far from being prosecuted, many grew rich through the payments of large bonuses.

People have unequal access to the law . Having money to hire a good lawyer can delay trials, meaning the difference between being found not guilty or guilty, and influence the length of one's sentence and the type of prison one goes to. Thus for Marxists, punishment for a crime may depend and vary according to the social class of the perpetrator. Poorer criminals tend to receive harsher punishments than rich criminals. As evidenced in one of the examples above, Mark Thatcher received only a suspended sentence for assisting mercenaries in a military coup against a democratically elected government.

Discussion Question: Can you think of any other ways in which the law works in the interests of the elite?
Marxists argue that although they are hidden from view, the crimes of the elite exert a greater economic toll on society than the crimes of the 'ordinary people'. Laureen Snider (1993) points out that the cost of White Collar Crime and Corporate Crime to the economy far outweighs the cost of street crime by 'typical' criminals. Two contemporary organisations: Multinational Monitor and Corporate Watch, specialise in documenting the illegal activities of corporations.

In the section below we look at two types of white collar crime - Fraud and Health and Safety infringements. Both of these sound either terribly complex or terribly unexciting (or both) which means people are generally uninterested in hearing about them, and this general lack of public interest is something which helps the elite get away with an incredibly high level of criminality.

White Collar Crime: Crimes committed in the furtherance of an individual's own interests, often against the corporations of organisations within which they work.

Corporate Crime: Those crimes committed by or for corporations or businesses which act to further their interests and have a serious physical or economic impact on employees, consumers and the general public. The drive is usually the desire to increase profits.

The Cost of Financial Crime (Fraud)

Organisations such as Corporate Watch and.... Multinational Monitor, suggest that Corporate Fraud is widespread. The General Accounting Agency of the USA has estimated that 100s of savings and loans companies have failed in recent years due to insider dealing, failure to disclose accurate information, and racketeering. The cost to the taxpayer in the USA of corporate bail outs is estimated to be around $500 billion, or $5000 per household in the USA.

In 2009 the disgraced financier Bernie Madoff was sentenced to the maximum 150 years in prison for masterminding a $65bn (£38bn) fraud that

The US district judge Denny Chin described the fraud as "staggering" and said the "breach of trust was massive" and that a message was being sent by the sentence. There had been no letters submitted in support of Madoff's character, he said. Victims in the courtroom clapped as the term was read out.

Madoff pleaded guilty to 11 counts of fraud, theft and money laundering. The sentencing, in what has been one of the biggest frauds ever seen on Wall Street, was eagerly anticipated. Described by victims in written testimony as a "thief and a monster", Madoff has become an emblem for the greed that pitched the world into recession. Nearly 9,000 victims have filed claims for losses in Madoff's corrupt financial empire.

Madoff masterminded a huge "Ponzi" scheme. Instead of investing client's money in securities, it was held with a bank and new deposits used to pay bogus returns to give the impression that the business was successful. At the time of his arrest in December, he claimed to manage $65bn of investors' money, but in reality there was just $1bn left.

Corporate America has suffered a series of massive frauds during the past decade, including scandals at Enron, WorldCom, Tyco and more recently the financial empire run by Texas billionaire Allen Stanford. Former WorldCom chief Benrard Ebbers is serving 25 years for accounting fraud. Former Enron chief executive Jeffrey Skilling was sentenced to more than 24 years in prison although the sentence was overturned. He remains in prison awaiting resentencing.
Discussion Question: Are crimes such as fraud more harmful to society than violent crime?
David Gordon argues that the police mainly focus on policing working class (and underclass) areas and the justice system mainly focuses on prosecuting working and underclass criminals. By and large the system ignores the crimes of the elite and the middle classes, although both of these classes are just as likely to commit crime as the working classes.

Gordon argues that the disproportionate prosecution of working class criminals ultimately serves to maintain ruling-class power and to reinforce ruling class ideology (thus performing 'ideological functions' for the ruling class.)

According to Gordon 'selective law enforcement' benefits the Capitalist system in three major ways:

We may also add a fourth benefit, that all of the police, court and media focus on working class street crime means that our attention is diverted away from the immorality and greed of the elite classes.

Related Posts
Evaluating the Marxist Perspective on Crime (part 1)

Assess the Contribution of Marxism to our Understanding of Crime and Deviance - outline essay plan
The Marxist Perspective on the Family The Marxist Perspective on Education
Dependency Theory (Marxism applied to global development)
Selected Sources

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Marxist criminologists see power being held by the Bourgeoisie and laws are a reflection of Bourgeois ideology. The legal system (lawyers, judges and the courts) and the police all serve the interests of the Bourgeoisie. These institutions are used to control the masses, prevent revolution and keep people in a state of false consciousness.

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https://sociologytwynham.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/09-marxist-perspective1.mp3

Marxists effectively developed labelling theory so it would recognise the social and political structures in which labels are created and adhered. In a sense Marxists appreciated the logic of labelling particularly as it examined the processes through which deviance is defined, secured and sanctioned.

However for Marxists labelling theory failed to account for why some behaviours were defined as deviant and other not. Instead Marxists looked at how certain social groups achieved the power to apply labels to certain acts and whether or not these same social groups were having 'their own' law and order protected.

It's easier to understand Marxist perspectives of crime, if you fully grasp the Marxist social theory (in fact it's easier to understand all the perspectives of crime this way). For Marxists all social phenomena are explainable through society's means of production. Our capitalist means of production mean those who own the means of production have structural control over those who don't. This causes social inequality and social conflict.

Marxist views of crime are best understood has having three distinct elements or processes :

1. Criminogenic capitalism

2. The role of the state and law making

3. Selective enforcement

Criminogenic capitalism: Bonger (1916) was the first to apply notions of social conflict to the subject of crime and here's a few of his central themes:

1. Criminal law exists to protect the interests of the powerful

2. The dynamics of capitalism encourages egoism and greed which in turn motivates both the working and ruling-classes are prone to crime as they don't care about each other

3. Poverty prompts crime to the extent it creates a desperate need for food and other necessities

The role of the state and law making: sixty years later Chambliss' Marxist perspective on crime moved Bongor's points forward by concentrating on the role of the economic production on social relations (including crime):

1. the ruling-class will violate laws with impunity while members of the subject class will be punished

2. acts are defined as criminal because it's in the interests of the ruling-class to define them so

3. crime will persist in capitalist societies because such societies promote inequalities, class-conflict and penal laws expand accordingly

Selective enforcement: Spitzer (1975) argues deviants and criminals are 'constructed' when certain groups (working-class) create problems those who rule. Therefore any person who calls into question the social conditions under which capitalist production takes place are likely to find themselves subjected to a process of criminalisation.

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Marxists effectively developed labelling theory so it would recognise the social and political structures in which labels are created and adhered. In a sense Marxists appreciated the logic of labelling particularly as it examined the processes through which deviance is defined, secured and sanctioned. However for Marxists labelling theory failed to account for why some...

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Interactionist theories of Crime and Deviance 

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Interactionist theories of Crime and Deviance 

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Interactionist views on Crime and Deviance

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Subcultural theories- strengths and weaknesses (Evaluation)

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Subcultural theories- strengths and weaknesses (Evaluation)

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Subcultural theories- an introduction (video)

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Subcultural theories- an introduction (video)

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Struggling with AO3 marks?

This video is a useful overview to get those AO3 marks!

(Make notes at 6.20)

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Functionalist Perspectives of Family and Society

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The second of two screencasts explaining how to write effective essays for A/S and A level Sociology.

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1995

Armstrong wins a stage at the Tour de France. He finishes 36th, the first time he finishes the race.

1996

Armstrong is diagnosed with testicular cancer. The cancer had spread to his lungs, lymph nodes, abdomen and brain; undergoes surgery the next day to have the malignant testicle removed.

1997

He establishes the Lance Armstrong Foundation to benefit cancer research and cancer patients.

1999

En route to winning the 1999 Tour de France, Armstrong tests positive for the corticosteroid triamcinolone. He evades sanctions by providing a back-dated doctor's certificate claiming the substance is in a skin cream.

2000

- Wins the Tour de France for a second consecutive year and two months later wins the bronze medal at the Sydney Olympic Games.

- Publishes book: It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life.

2001

Wins the Tour de France for the third time.

2002

- Wins his fourth consecutive Tour de France.

- A 21-month investigation into whether the US Postal Team used performance enhancing drugs during the 2000 Tour de France closes after finding no evidence of illegal drug use.

2003

Armstrong wins his fifth consecutive Tour de France by 61 seconds.

2004

Wins his sixth consecutive Tour de France.

2005

Wins his seventh Tour de France in a row. The newspaper l'Equipe alleges that EPO was found in several samples provided by Armstrong during the 1999 Tour, when these were retested for research purposes. The UCI commissions a report into the affair from the Dutch anti-doping consultant Emile Vrijman.

2006

Report is released; it clears Armstrong's name. However, in March 2015 the UCI's Independent Commission finds that "UCI had no intention of pursuing an independent report; UCI's approach prioritised the fight against Wada and the protection of its star athlete".

2008

- Armstrong announces his return to professional cycling.

- UCI president Pat McQuaid states that Armstrong will be permitted to make his comeback at the Tour Down Under in January 2009 in spite of the fact that their rules state he should be available for out of competition testing for six months beforehand; he is not eligible to race until 1 February but is permitted to race from 20 January.

2009

- Armstrong comes third in the Tour de France.

- He crashes during the Amgen Tour of California and is taken to a hospital. The same day he denies allegations of doping made by former team-mate Floyd Landis.

2010

- Armstrong hires a defence lawyer to represent him in a federal investigation into allegations of fraud and doping.

- Armstrong comes in 23rd place in his final Tour de France.

2011

Armstrong announces his retirement from professional cycling, saying he wants to devote more time to his family and the fight against cancer.

2012

- Justice Department prosecutors announce they are closing a criminal probe of Armstrong without filing charges that he used performance enhancing drugs.

- The US Anti-Doping Agency notifies Armstrong of an investigation into new doping charges.

- Usada announces it has filed doping charges against Armstrong. Armstrong's attorney calls the decision to charge him "wrong" and "baseless".

- Armstrong files a federal lawsuit in a Texas district court to halt the doping case against him.

- A federal judge dismisses Lance Armstrong's lawsuit against the United States Anti-Doping Agency saying his right to due process is being violated.

- Declares he will no longer fight charges of illegal doping. Shortly after Armstrong's announcement, Usada says it will strip Armstrong of his seven Tour de France titles and impose a lifetime ban on him.

- Usada's report on Armstrong is released. It accuses him of leading "the most sophisticated, professionalised and successful doping programme that sport has ever seen".

- Armstrong announces he is stepping down as chairman of Livestrong.

- Nike terminates its contract with Lance Armstrong. Anheuser-Busch also announces it will not renew its contract with Armstrong after it expires in 2012.

- UCI strips Armstrong of his seven Tour de France titles and bans him for life.

- Oakley announces it is severing ties with Armstrong.

2013

- The International Olympic Committee strips Armstrong of the bronze medal he won at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia.

- In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, Armstrong admits to using banned performance-enhancing drugs.

- The US Department of Justice joins a lawsuit against Armstrong that was originally filed by former team-mate Floyd Landis.

- The Justice Department files a lawsuit against Armstrong and his company Tailwind Sports for millions of dollars that the US Postal Service spent to sponsor his team. The complaint charges that the use of prohibited drugs constitutes a breach of contract.

- Brian Cookson ousts Pat McQuaid in battle for UCI presidency.

2014

- Cookson announces formation of Independent Commission for Reform in Cycling (CIRC) to look into historic doping in the sport and the UCI's relationship with Armstrong.

- Armstrong meets CIRC.

2015

- An arbitration panel orders Armstrong and Tailwind Sports to pay $10m (£6.5m) in a fraud dispute with a promotions company SCA for what it called an "unparalleled pageant of international perjury, fraud and conspiracy" that covered up his use of performance-enhancing drugs.

- Armstrong pleads guilty to careless driving for hitting two parked cars in Aspen, an incident for which his girlfriend initially took the blame, and pays a $238.50 fine.

- UCI publishes report from Independent Commission for Reform in Cycling, which asserts that Armstrong "benefited from a preferential status afforded by the UCI leadership".

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Timeline: Lance Armstrong's journey from deity to disgrace

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How Lance Armstrong's career turned from unparalleled success to the biggest doping scandal ever seen in the sport

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What is the functionalist view on crime and deviance?

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This video will be removed from Youtube shortly and migrated to www.precookedsociology.com . Please update links/bookmarks. Lecture on the functionalist view on Crime and Deviance from www.precokedsociology.com . Functionalism is a structuralist theory of crime. This is because they argue that crime and deviance can only be explained by looking at the way societies are organised socially, that is, their social structures.

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Want to keep your "in a relationship" or "married" status on Facebook? You might want to log off Facebook.

One in seven people said they'd considered divorce because of their spouses' questionable activity on Facebook, Skype, Snapchat, Twitter or What'sApp, a recent survey of 2,000 married Brits found.

Almost a quarter of those polled by the law firm Slater and Gordon said they had at least one argument a week related to social media use, with 17 percent admitting they fought about it every day. (Those numbers are high, but in all honesty, there's endless fodder for arguments with this: "Was it really necessary to friend request an ex-girlfriend from freshmen year?" "We saw 'Taken 3' together -- why'd you just check yourself in at AMC?")

Also interesting to note: Fifty-eight percent of those polled said they knew their partner's passwords, even if their spouse was unaware of it.

Meanwhile, back here in the states, divorce attorneys agree that social media has increasingly played a part in marriage breakdowns. In 2010, 81 percent of divorce attorneys surveyed by the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers said they'd seen an increase in the number of cases using social networking evidence in the five years prior. The attorneys said Facebook was the number one source for finding online evidence, with 66 percent admitting they'd found evidence by combing the site.

Way to ruin marriages, Mark Zuckerberg.
Keep in touch! Check out HuffPost Divorce on Facebook and Twitter. Sign up for our newsletter here.

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Stay Off Social Media (Or Risk Divorce), New Survey Says

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Want to keep your "in a relationship" or "married" status on Facebook? You might want to log off Facebook. One in seven people said they'd considered divorce because of their spouses' questionable activity on Facebook, Skype, Snapchat, Twitter or What'sApp, a recent survey of 2,000 married Brits found.

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The Flight From Conversation - The New York Times

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The Flight From Conversation - The New York Times

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A businessman laments that he no longer has colleagues at work. He doesn't stop by to talk; he doesn't call. He says that he doesn't want to interrupt them. He says they're "too busy on their e-mail." But then he pauses and corrects himself. "I'm not telling the truth. I'm the one who doesn't want to be interrupted. I think I should. But I'd rather just do things on my BlackBerry."

A 16-year-old boy who relies on texting for almost everything says almost wistfully, "Someday, someday, but certainly not now, I'd like to learn how to have a conversation."

In today's workplace, young people who have grown up fearing conversation show up on the job wearing earphones. Walking through a college library or the campus of a high-tech start-up, one sees the same thing: we are together, but each of us is in our own bubble, furiously connected to keyboards and tiny touch screens. A senior partner at a Boston law firm describes a scene in his office. Young associates lay out their suite of technologies: laptops, iPods and multiple phones. And then they put their earphones on. "Big ones. Like pilots. They turn their desks into cockpits." With the young lawyers in their cockpits, the office is quiet, a quiet that does not ask to be broken.

In the silence of connection, people are comforted by being in touch with a lot of people - carefully kept at bay. We can't get enough of one another if we can use technology to keep one another at distances we can control: not too close, not too far, just right. I think of it as a Goldilocks effect.

Texting and e-mail and posting let us present the self we want to be. This means we can edit. And if we wish to, we can delete. Or retouch: the voice, the flesh, the face, the body. Not too much, not too little - just right.

Human relationships are rich; they're messy and demanding. We have learned the habit of cleaning them up with technology. And the move from conversation to connection is part of this. But it's a process in which we shortchange ourselves. Worse, it seems that over time we stop caring, we forget that there is a difference.

We are tempted to think that our little "sips" of online connection add up to a big gulp of real conversation. But they don't. E-mail, Twitter, Facebook, all of these have their places - in politics, commerce, romance and friendship. But no matter how valuable, they do not substitute for conversation.

Connecting in sips may work for gathering discrete bits of information or for saying, "I am thinking about you." Or even for saying, "I love you." But connecting in sips doesn't work as well when it comes to understanding and knowing one another. In conversation we tend to one another. (The word itself is kinetic; it's derived from words that mean to move, together.) We can attend to tone and nuance. In conversation, we are called upon to see things from another's point of view.

FACE-TO-FACE conversation unfolds slowly. It teaches patience. When we communicate on our digital devices, we learn different habits. As we ramp up the volume and velocity of online connections, we start to expect faster answers. To get these, we ask one another simpler questions; we dumb down our communications, even on the most important matters. It is as though we have all put ourselves on cable news. Shakespeare might have said, "We are consum'd with that which we were nourish'd by."

And we use conversation with others to learn to converse with ourselves. So our flight from conversation can mean diminished chances to learn skills of self-reflection. These days, social media continually asks us what's "on our mind," but we have little motivation to say something truly self-reflective. Self-reflection in conversation requires trust. It's hard to do anything with 3,000 Facebook friends except connect.

As we get used to being shortchanged on conversation and to getting by with less, we seem almost willing to dispense with people altogether. Serious people muse about the future of computer programs as psychiatrists. A high school sophomore confides to me that he wishes he could talk to an artificial intelligence program instead of his dad about dating; he says the A.I. would have so much more in its database. Indeed, many people tell me they hope that as Siri, the digital assistant on Apple's iPhone, becomes more advanced, "she" will be more and more like a best friend - one who will listen when others won't.

During the years I have spent researching people and their relationships with technology, I have often heard the sentiment "No one is listening to me." I believe this feeling helps explain why it is so appealing to have a Facebook page or a Twitter feed - each provides so many automatic listeners. And it helps explain why - against all reason - so many of us are willing to talk to machines that seem to care about us. Researchers around the world are busy inventing sociable robots, designed to be companions to the elderly, to children, to all of us.

One of the most haunting experiences during my research came when I brought one of these robots, designed in the shape of a baby seal, to an elder-care facility, and an older woman began to talk to it about the loss of her child. The robot seemed to be looking into her eyes. It seemed to be following the conversation. The woman was comforted.

And so many people found this amazing. Like the sophomore who wants advice about dating from artificial intelligence and those who look forward to computer psychiatry, this enthusiasm speaks to how much we have confused conversation with connection and collectively seem to have embraced a new kind of delusion that accepts the simulation of compassion as sufficient unto the day. And why would we want to talk about love and loss with a machine that has no experience of the arc of human life? Have we so lost confidence that we will be there for one another?

WE expect more from technology and less from one another and seem increasingly drawn to technologies that provide the illusion of companionship without the demands of relationship. Always-on/always-on-you devices provide three powerful fantasies: that we will always be heard; that we can put our attention wherever we want it to be; and that we never have to be alone. Indeed our new devices have turned being alone into a problem that can be solved.

When people are alone, even for a few moments, they fidget and reach for a device. Here connection works like a symptom, not a cure, and our constant, reflexive impulse to connect shapes a new way of being.

Think of it as "I share, therefore I am." We use technology to define ourselves by sharing our thoughts and feelings as we're having them. We used to think, "I have a feeling; I want to make a call." Now our impulse is, "I want to have a feeling; I need to send a text."

So, in order to feel more, and to feel more like ourselves, we connect. But in our rush to connect, we flee from solitude, our ability to be separate and gather ourselves. Lacking the capacity for solitude, we turn to other people but don't experience them as they are. It is as though we use them, need them as spare parts to support our increasingly fragile selves.

We think constant connection will make us feel less lonely. The opposite is true. If we are unable to be alone, we are far more likely to be lonely. If we don't teach our children to be alone, they will know only how to be lonely.

I am a partisan for conversation. To make room for it, I see some first, deliberate steps. At home, we can create sacred spaces: the kitchen, the dining room. We can make our cars "device-free zones." We can demonstrate the value of conversation to our children. And we can do the same thing at work. There we are so busy communicating that we often don't have time to talk to one another about what really matters. Employees asked for casual Fridays; perhaps managers should introduce conversational Thursdays. Most of all, we need to remember - in between texts and e-mails and Facebook posts - to listen to one another, even to the boring bits, because it is often in unedited moments, moments in which we hesitate and stutter and go silent, that we reveal ourselves to one another.

I spend the summers at a cottage on Cape Cod, and for decades I walked the same dunes that Thoreau once walked. Not too long ago, people walked with their heads up, looking at the water, the sky, the sand and at one another, talking. Now they often walk with their heads down, typing. Even when they are with friends, partners, children, everyone is on their own devices.

So I say, look up, look at one another, and let's start the conversation.

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A businessman laments that he no longer has colleagues at work. He doesn't stop by to talk; he doesn't call. He says that he doesn't want to interrupt them. He says they're "too busy on their e-mail." But then he pauses and corrects himself. "I'm not telling the truth.

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Will males solve the gender divide?

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The global business elite will descend on the upmarket Swiss resort of Davos this week for the World Economic Forum's annual meeting, which this year focuses on the transforming power of technology - or the fourth industrial revolution.

Long regarded as a leading platform on key international issues, Davos has in some quarters become a byword for a champagne-soaked chums club of the global financial elite, personified by the "Davos man". Last year's delegate list was 83% male, despite the introduction of an unambitious quota for the WEF's strategic partners to bring one woman in every group of five senior executives. And this year the female quotient has only increased by 1%.

So while transforming the lives of future generations through technology is a worthy topic for debate, we might well ask what a gathering that is so grossly gender-unbalanced is likely to do to close the worrying digital divide between the sexes globally.

Excluded women

Too many women are being excluded from the technological revolution. The UN estimates that some 200 million more men have access to the internet than women and this chasm is especially wide in developing countries. It's vital that this industrial revolution doesn't entrench gender divides.

The digital exclusion of women is primarily a product of social inequalities. In many global south countries, women occupy traditional roles in the home or in the primary production sector, such as farming. According to the UN's report, The World's Women 2015, women are more likely than men to be unemployed or to work in the home or smallholding, which usually implies that they have little or no monetary income. In Oceania, sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia, between 30 and 55% of employed women are contributing family workers, about 20% higher than men in the same regions. With many women beginning these roles in their childhood years, their access to digital technology is limited early on and often never recovers.

This process of digital exclusion creates barriers to prosperity. It can restrict women's ability to gain employment and use digital health and education services. In low-income countries, the entry point for the internet is often through a mobile phone, but ownership patterns can disadvantage women here too. In sub-Saharan Africa, there is a 13% gender gap in mobile phone ownership overall and in Niger, that gap is as wide as 45%.

Digital divide restricts growth

There is plenty of evidence to suggest that digital access can help boost women's personal development and wider prosperity. The Women and the Web report by Intel found that enabling greater internet access in the developing world would contribute an estimated $13bn-$18bn (£9bn-12.6bn) to annual GDP across 144 countries, while 70% of the women they surveyed said they considered the internet "liberating".

Extra income derived from digital access for women is often invested back into families and communities: Arancha Gonzalez, head of the International Trade Centre, a joint agency of the World Trade Organisation and the UN, has estimated that women reinvest as much as 90% of their income into education, nutrition, household expenditure and caring for children and elderly relatives.

Despite its pivotal role in advancing digital access, business in general has been slow to help break down the digital divide. But there are signs this is changing: a Google initiative called Helping Women Get Online is working to improve female digital literacy in India. The project provides how-to guides and videos to get women started on the internet, with a goal of getting 50 million more online.

Meanwhile, Andela, a web and software development firm, has made skilling up women in Africa a key part of its business model. It runs a bootcamp scheme that identifies promising young female coders and recruits them to its network of Africa-based programmers who work as part of multinational teams on digital projects.

The WEF claims gender parity is one of its key global issues and the subject will be discussed as this year's forum, albeit as a side issue.

But a group that is so male and so western needs to be more representative if it is to fulfil its remit as the "World" Economic Forum. No less than 65% of nearly 3,000 delegates at Davos last year were from North America and western Europe, versus just 4% from Africa. So listening to more voices from the developing world - especially female ones - and allowing them to participate would be a good place to start.

US president Barack Obama - who has never attended Davos - stated last year that "the internet is not a luxury, it is a necessity". Before we embark on the next steps of the global technological revolution, we must ensure that the most basic of online tools are accessible to all.

None of us - including those attending Davos - should be content that something as transformative and integral to our daily lives as the internet remains out of reach for people around the world who have so much to gain in terms of their future prosperity by getting connected.
Professor Henrietta Moore is director of UCL Institute for Global Prosperity Topics

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Davos: how can an event that's 82% male solve the digital gender divide?

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The global business elite will descend on the upmarket Swiss resort of Davos this week for the World Economic Forum's annual meeting, which this year focuses on the transforming power of technology - or the fourth industrial revolution.

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Children from poorer homes are becoming victims of a "digital divide" because their parents lack the skills to help them use the internet as effectively as their middle-class counterparts, says research.

A study of internet use among more than 1,500 youngsters, conducted by the London School of Economics, revealed that children from better-off backgrounds not only had greater access to the world wide web at home but were more likely to exploit its array of resources.

The authors warn that, while "internet-literate" parents produce web-literate children because they can guide and support them, youngsters whose parents are less well informed could harm their education and job prospects.

The socio-economic differences are striking: 88% of middle-class children but only 61% of working-class youngsters have accessed the internet at home. The data suggests that well-established advantages enjoyed by many middle-class children, such as access to books and help with their homework, also extend to technology.

The two-year study, based on interviews with youngsters aged nine to 19, also raises concerns about how youngsters actually use the internet.

While 90% of those who go online daily or weekly use the internet for homework, a fifth admitted having copied something from it for a school project and passing it off as their own.

Perhaps more worryingly for parents, 57% of daily and weekly users access pornography. Most said they had seen it by accident, mainly through pop-up adverts or accidentally clicking on to porn sites. Fifty-four per cent claimed not to be bothered by the encounter.

The study also found that parents underestimate the negative experiences of online communication for their children, despite being wary of the dangers.

A third of daily and weekly users aged nine to 19 said they had received unwanted sexual or nasty comments online or by text message, though only 7% of parents were aware their child had received sexual comments and only 4% that their child had been bullied online.

Parents surveyed said they were concerned about how to manage their children's internet use, although almost a fifth admitted not knowing how to help their children use the web safely. Nearly two-thirds of 12- to 19-year-olds reported taking some measure to hide their online activities from parents.

Sonia Livingstone, professor of social psychology at the LSE and co-author of the research with Dr Magdalena Bober, said parents could be targeted for internet literacy support, and suggested that going online with their children could help improve awareness of risks.

But she warned they also needed to balance this with respect for their children's privacy, since this would improve trust and ensure safety issues were discussed more openly.

A group of youngsters dubbed "disengaged youth" in the report were least likely to engage with the internet, least likely to have access at home, and were least expert internet users, Prof Livingstone said.

"Now that many young people rely on the internet for information, homework help and careers guidance, the more it matters that some of them are getting left behind.

"Not knowing how to best use the internet may have a negative impact on their education and employment opportunities."
Topics

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Working-class children fall foul of digital divide

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Children from poorer homes are becoming victims of a "digital divide" because their parents lack the skills to help them use the internet as effectively as their middle-class counterparts, says research.

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Print as you need it-
We are doing Globalisation
Crime and Deviance

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For writer, professor, and self-proclaimed cyborg Donna Haraway, we are already assimilated.

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Hi all- finally sorted the twitter!

Please follow:  @SociologyTux

Miss C :)

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Manuel Castells's Network Society | geof

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Manuel Castells's Network Society | geof

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Castells is a professor of urban geography at Berkley. He has written a number of books and articles about geography, the city, and the information society, including a three-volume analysis of contemporary capitalism, titled The Information Age. Garnham (2004, p. 165) refers to this as "the most sophisticated version" of the theory of the information society.

Castells' analysis involves economic, social, political, and cultural factors. I will focus on the economic, with a brief introduction to his analysis of space and the changing role of the nation state, and follow with an outline of some critiques of his work. Regrettably, this leaves much unmentioned, such as his theory of timeless time, of the social divides in modern cities and societies, or his examination of specific cases of social action in the context of what he calls the information city.

The Network Society

Castells (2000a; 2000b) claims that we are passing from the industrial age into the information age. This historical change is brought about by the advent of new information technologies - particularly those for communication and biological technologies. Society remains capitalist, but basis of the technological means by which it acts has changed from energy to information. This information is of central importance in determining economic productivity. Communications technologies allow for the annihilation of space and for globalization; the potential for rapid and asynchronous communication also changes the relationship to time. And, while he explains that networks are not a new form of social organization, they have become a "key feature of social morphology" (2000a, p. 5). This is because communication technologies, such as the Internet, allow for decentralization of operations and focusing of control, increasing the effectiveness of networks relative to hierarchical structures. Of business he writes, "[t]he main shift can be characterized as the shift from vertical bureaucracies to the horizontal corporation" (2000b, p. 176).

According to Castells, power now rests in networks: "the logic of the network is more powerful than the powers of the network" (quoted in Weber, 2002, p. 104). Some networks, such as that of financial capital, are global in scale. Networks also exist within and between businesses, where the organizational unit has shifted from being capability-oriented (e.g. accounting, human resources, etc.) to being project-oriented. Resources - including employees, consultants, and other businesses - are brought together to work on a particular project, then dispersed and reallocated when the task is complete. The ability of an actor in the network - be it a company, individual, government, or other organization - to participate in the network is determined by the degree to which the node can contribute to the goals of the network. This new environment requires skilled flexible workers: the organization man gives way to the flexible woman (Castells, 2000a, p. 12). This leads to a binary process of inclusion and exclusion from the network. The people at the bottom are those who, with nothing to offer the network, are excluded.

Capital and Labor

Castells distinguishes the terms "information" and "informational". He says that information has been an essential component of all societies, whether capitalist or not. In the new "network economy", information becomes a key factor in economic productivity. Today, for example, for example, the flow of capital into currencies, commodities, and stocks is based upon access to information about relevant topics, from international politics to climate change, weather predictions, and social trends. In that sense, the importance of information in contemporary society is not new. What is new, he claims, is the informational shift to the manipulation of information itself: the "action of knowledge upon knowledge itself" (Castells, 2000b, p. 17) is now the basis to increased productivity.

Castells argues that the operation of networks, particularly their ability to include or exclude actors on the basis of their ability to contribute to the goals of the network, has individualized labor: "the work process is globally integrated, but labor tends to be locally fragmented" (2000a, p. 18). The constantly-shifting "variable geometry" of networks individualizes labor. In consequence, the era of industrial-age conflict between production-based classes ends: individual workers no longer comprise classes, much of the power of the capitalists has shifted to those who manage the networks (for example, the fund manager has greater control than the investors whose money s/he manages), and the class of human capitalists has been replaced by the collective faceless capitalist of the network.

Despite the disappearance of capitalists and the proletariat, exploitation and differentiation remain. In Castells' analysis, labor is fundamentally divided into networked labor, which serves the goals of the network, and switched-off labor, which has nothing to offer the network and in the context of the network economy is non-labor (that is not to say their labor has no value - the realm of discarded labor is also the realm of criminal organizations outside the networks; Castells mentions that the networks can make "perverse" use of these masses of people). Networked labor is itself divided into two groups. Self-programmable labor - such as financial analysts, company officers, journalists - manages information; it is flexible and skilled. Its interests coincide with the goals of the network. Generic labor (including many workers in natural resource, manufacturing, and service industries, also minimum wage and sweatshop labor) is deskilled, interchangeable and disposable; for these people, the goal is simple survival so as not to be relegated to the class of switch-off irrelevant labor.

Flows vs. Places and the Role of the Nation State

Castells is an urban geographer, so his examination of space is central to his work. One of his key spacial characterizations of the information age is the "space of flows". This is the domain of networks - of capital, of information, of business alliances, etc. He argues that "While organizations are located in places, . . . the organizational logic is placeless, being fundamentally dependent on the space of flows that characterizes information networks" (Castells in Nyíri, 2004, p. 23). This space of flows challenges what Castells calls the space of places, including regional communities and nation states. Networks lead to the "destruction of human experience" (Castells in Nyíri, p. 10): power is separated from political representation, production from consumption, information from communication.

The inclusion/exclusion logic of the network "switches off . . . people and territories dubbed as irrelevant from the perspective of dominant interests" (Castells in Nyíri, 2004, p. 7). This enforces domination: "[d]omination depends . . . on the simultaneous capacity of . . . elites to articulate themselves and disarticulate the masses" (Waterman, 2004, p.49). Groups may choose to develop their own networks with their own goals, but if they wish to interact with the dominant networks in society they must adapt to the goals of those networks.

In opposition to the space of flows is the space of places. While "the space of flows can be abstract in social, cultural, and historical terms, . . . places are . . . condensations of human history, culture and matter." (Castells, 1990, p. 14). Hence, resistance to the space of flows of the networks arises in the form of communities oriented around places. These communities are often closed, based on fundamentalist or tribal identities. Those dislocated or excluded by the network society (such as unneeded labor) naturally gravitate to such identities of communal resistance - or are relegated to them: "elites are cosmopolitan, people are local" (Castells, 2000b, p. 446). Castells has argued (1990, p. 21) that for communal identity to be a site of democratic resistance communities must reach out and build links (network) with other communities of other cultures. However, his position has since shifted (Nyíri, 2004), and recent history has shown that the groups that isolate themselves from the network are often reactionary and exclusionary.

This clash between flows and places has consequences for the nation state. Sovereignty is ceded both upwards to the space of flows and downwards to regional and communal groups. States are caught in a bind. If they represent the identities of the communities within them, they isolate themselves from the network. If they obey the network logic, they cease to represent their populations; they become nodes in the network and surrender their sovereignty: "[n]ation states will survive, but not so their sovereignty" (Castells in Nyíri, p. 8)

Critiques of the Network Society

The first and simplest critique of Castells is that his depiction of the contemporary world is so familiar, even derivative (Webster, 2002, p. 115). Its propositions about the character of contemporary society seem commonplaces: the increasing importance of information and knowledge, the increasing speed and of financial and other transactions and the consequent destabilization, the growing gap between the knowledge-rich and the knowledge-poor, the sense that we are indeed in a time of social and technological discontinuity. However, this can also be seen as a success in capturing contemporary life.

More serious criticisms target Castells' analysis of the role of information, of production, and of the relationship between between informational labor and capitalism. These critiques call into question his claim that the present economic and social situation is a new age, rather than a continuation of industrial capitalism.

Modes of Production and Development

Webster (2004; 2002) and Garnham (2004a) have accused Castells of technological determinism. Castells distinguishes between the mode of production - which determines how production surpluses are distributed - and the mode of development, which drives productivity and thereby determines the amount of surplus production. The mode of development is technological: according to Castells, the industrial mode of development centered on energy; since the oil shock and stagflation of the 1970s capitalism has seized upon informationalism to produce growth. However, he does not believe that capitalism created the informational mode of development as a solution to this challenge, instead tracing it to "the autonomous dynamics of technological discovery and diffusion" (2000b, p. 59).

The theoretical problem raised by Webster is the relative autonomy of the mode of development. The mode of development influences social relations, but is not determined by capitalism and, according to Castells, may survive it: "the new economy . . . may well outlast the mode of production where it was born" (Castells, 2000a, p. 11). For Webster, this implies that the mode of development follows its own technological logic, is "in key respects, beyond the reach of politics" (2004, p. 17), and therefore despite Castells' protestations to the contrary, his theoretical basis - like that of Bell - is technologically determinist.

Garnham's (2004a) criticism centers on productivity. He asks whether what he calls the "thermodynamic" model of productivity, based on inputs and outputs of energy, can be applied to information, which he suggests is non-entropic. Castells claims that the network economy relies on productivity increases made possible by information technology. But, says Garnham, there is little evidence of such productivity increases. Furthermore, he says, the "lack of a stable calculable relationship between the value of outputs . . . lies behind the historical difficulties in commodifying information" (Garnham, 2004b, p. 191). In other words, even if information output is increasing productivity, this activity is difficult for capitalists to measure and commodify, therefore it is difficult to integrate into a capitalist economy.

Alternatively, Garnham (2004a) says, productivity can be examined in terms of consumption and investment and the relations of production. Here, both he and Webster criticize the relatively autonomous role of the mode of development, emphasizing instead determining role of the mode of production. Technology is put to work at the behest of capital: "the informational mode of development is developed for and put at the service of a set of property relations and the goal of accumulation, not vice versa" (Garnham, 2004a, p. 174).

Capital and Labor

This downplaying of the role of capital also applies to Castells suggestion that much of the power of capital has been appropriated by informational (self-programmable) labor, particularly those actors who are at the juncture of different networks (Castells, 2000a, p. 16). As Webster (2002, p. 114) points out, this is very similar to the concept of a meritocracy, in which individuals have power in proportion to their knowledge, skills, or the value of their labor. This hierarchy of power therefore results, in Webster's words (p. 115), from "a 'natural' form of inequality that is supra-social, although of inordinate social consequence". Again, the informational mode of development appears to be autonomous of - and in fact supersedes - the capitalist material base. A meritocratic model, of course, sidesteps the social and historical process - affected by factors such as wealth, education, and social relationships - by which labor is created: of how individual workers come to be self-programmable, generic, or irrelevant.

The problem with informational labor is more involved, however, for - as with other theories of the information society (Webster, 2002, pp. 115-119), it is a slippery concept to define. Castells includes such a wide diversity of tasks under the rubric of informational labor that it is difficult to accept the interests and values of these workers as a group. Webster provides the examples of journalists, stockbrokers, and surgeons. The relations between these occupations and the information they deal with is anything but consistent, and the group as a whole anything but homogeneous. (Is it level of education? communication? influence?) In fact, it seems that the other groups he mentions - commodity labor, surplus labor, etc. are far more homogeneous - in their work and in their common interests - than is informational labor.

Castells also claims that the information age is still a capitalist age (although he suggests the informational mode of development could survive the end of capitalism), but it is post-capitalist. In his model, capitalists are no longer the ruling class: their power has been usurped by the networks. The true logic of the system is the logic of the networks. But this is not new. Marx wrote (quoted in Garnham, 2001, p. 240):

The function fulfilled by the capitalist is no more than the function of capital - viz. the valorization of value by absorbing living labor - executed consciously and willingly. The capitalist functions only as personified capital, capital as a person, just as the worker is no more than labor personified.

Garnham's comment (2001, p. 240-1) is that "a given person or group can only be described as capitalist in those moments when s/he or they are acting in conscious and willed accord with the logic of capital accumulation." Again, as both Garnham and Webster explain, the capitalists remain in control. The propertied class has better access to education, and its members are dominant in the top managerial positions which Castells claims are in control of the networks (Webster, 2002, p. 118).

Conclusion

First, the familiarity of Castells' analysis, and the connections he draws between the disparate phenomena and factors he examines, is valuable (here I have looked at the forces dissolving the sovereignty of the nation state).

Webster and Garnham present credible critiques of Castells' concept of an information age. The network society is more convincingly a development of industrial society than an entirely new construct. Capitalism is still the economic basis for society; the manifestation of capitalism's power in faceless networks is a phenomenon going back to Marx's original critique of the system in the 19th century. Meanwhile, the social changes wrought by information technology are not yet on the same scale as the intense period of upheaval that corresponded to the technologies whose effects were greatest in the first half of the 20th century, including the oil industry, the automobile, the aeroplane, electrification, the telephone, and nuclear physics. These criticisms affect not only the question of whether we are entering a new age, but also some of Castells' theoretical foundations.

Garnham's (2004a) wrote his criticism of Castells' treatment of productivity in 1998. The argument has since been weakened by more recent studies of the matter which have found evidence for significant productivity growth arising from the adoption of information technology. For example, Stiroh (2002) claims that annual productivity growth for the nonfarm business sector averaged 1.3% between 1973 and 1995, but the average rate has increased to 2.5% between 1995 and 2000. He credits this increase to information technology.

Castells does seem to be of two minds about the role of technology. On one hand, he describes it as enabling rather than determining: "The internationalization of the economy is only possible because of information technology. It is not information technology which pushes the process." (1990, p. 9). His (2001) recounting of the history of the Internet also shows how that technology is a product of social forces, themselves shaped by the context of the capitalist society in which they were embedded. On the other hand, Garnham and Webster are correct that Castells seems to be elevating technology to a priviledged topic of analysis. In the context of a wider examination of society and the relations of production, his claims for the epochal impact of information technology seem suspect. However, I find that accusations of technological determinism go to far. Current theories of the social construction of technology do not reject technological determinism out of hand; theories of the social shaping and co-production of technology (e.g. Jasanoff, 2004; Mackenzie & Wajcman, 1999), for example, reject the binay distinction between technological and social determination, and instead examine how society and technology to shape each other.

Notes

References

Castells, M. (1990). The infomational city: A framework for social change. Canada: University of Toronto.

Castells, M. (2000a). Materials for an exploratory theory of the network society. British Journal of Sociology Vol. No. 51 Issue No. 1 (January/March 2000) pp. 5-24.

Castells, M. (2000b). The rise of the network society (2nd ed.). U.S.: Blackwell Publishing.

Castells, M. (2001). The internet galaxy. U.K.: Oxford University Press.

Friedmann, J. (2004). Reading Castells: zeitdiagnose and social theory. In F. Webster & B. Dimitriou (Eds.), Manuel Castells, Volume III (pp. 152-164). London: Sage Publications.

Garnham, N. (2001). Contribution to a political economy of mass-communication. In M.G. Durnham & D. M. Kellner (Eds.), Media and cultural studies (pp. 225-252). U.S.: Blackwell Publishing.

Garnham, N. (2004a). Information society theory as ideology. In F. Webster (Ed.), The Information Society Reader. New York: Routledge.

Garnham, N. (2004b). "Information society" as theory or ideology. In F. Webster & B. Dimitriou (Eds.), Manuel Castells, Volume III (pp. 185-196). London: Sage Publications.

Jasanoff, S. (2004). The idiom of co-production. In S. Jasanoff (Ed.), States of knowledge: the co-production of science and social order (pp. 1-45). New York: Routledge.

MacKenzie, D. & J. Wajcman. (1999). Introductory essay: The social shaping of technology. In D. Mackenzie & J. Wajcman (Eds.), The social shaping of technology (pp. 3-27). U.K.: Open University Press.

Nyíri, J. C. (2004). Review of Castells, the information age. In F. Webster & B. Dimitriou (Eds.), Manuel Castells, Volume III (pp. 5-34). London: Sage Publications.

Stiroh, K. J. (2002). Information technology and the U.S. productivity revival: A review of the evidence. Retrieved November 27, 2005 from http://www.newyorkfed.org/research/economists/stiroh/ks_busec.pdf

Waterman, P. (2004). The brave new world of Manuel Castells. In F. Webster & B. Dimitriou (Eds.), Manuel Castells, Volume III (pp. 35-57). London: Sage Publications.

Webster, F. (2002). Theories of the information society. U.S.: Routledge.

Webster, F. (2004). Information and urban change: Manuel Castells. In F. Webster & B. Dimitriou (Eds.), Manuel Castells, Volume II (pp. 15-39). London: Sage Publications.

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Castells is a professor of urban geography at Berkley. He has written a number of books and articles about geography, the city, and the information society, including a three-volume analysis of contemporary capitalism, titled The Information Age. Garnham (2004, p. 165) refers to this as "the most sophisticated version" of the theory of the information society.

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The campaign for women's liberation never went away, but this year a new swell built up and broke through. Since the early summer, I've been talking to feminist activists and writers for a short book, All The Rebel Women, and as I tried to keep up with the protests, marches and talks, my diary became a mess of clashing dates. The rush was such that in a single weekend in October, you could have attended a feminist freshers' fair in London, the North East Feminist Gathering in Newcastle, a Reclaim the Night march in Edinburgh, or a discussion between different generations of feminist activists at the British Library (this sold out in 48 hours, was moved to a room four times bigger, and sold out again).

You could have joined one of the country's 149 local grassroots groups, or shared your experience of misogyny on the site Laura Bates, 27, started in April 2012. Her Everyday Sexism Project has proved so successful that it was rolled out to 17 countries on its first anniversary this year, tens of thousands of women worldwide writing about the street harassment, sexual harassment, workplace discrimination and body-shaming they encounter. The project embodies that feminist phrase "the personal is political", a consciousness-raising exercise that encourages women to see how inequality affects them, proves these problems aren't individual but collective, and might therefore have political solutions. This year, 6,000 stories that have been sent to the project about harassment or assault on public transport - the majority never reported to authorities - were used to train 2,000 police officers in London, and create a public awareness campaign. In its first few weeks, says Bates, the reporting of harassment on public transport soared. Everyday Sexism currently has more than 108,000 followers on Twitter. Of course, following a social media account isn't the same as joining a political party, but to put this engagement in perspective, Tory membership is now at 134,000.

Welcome to the fourth wave of feminism. This movement follows the first-wave campaign for votes for women, which reached its height 100 years ago, the second wave women's liberation movement that blazed through the 1970s and 80s, and the third wave declared by Rebecca Walker, Alice Walker's daughter, and others, in the early 1990s. That shift from second to third wave took many important forms, but often felt broadly generational, with women defining their work as distinct from their mothers'. What's happening now feels like something new again. It's defined by technology: tools that are allowing women to build a strong, popular, reactive movement online. Just how popular is sometimes slightly startling. Girlguiding UK introduced a campaigning and activism badge this year and a summer survey of Mumsnet users found 59% consider themselves feminists, double those who don't. Bates says that, for her, modern feminism is defined by pragmatism, inclusion and humour. "I feel like it is really down-to-earth, really open," she says, "and it's very much about people saying: 'Here is something that doesn't make sense to me, I thought women were equal, I'm going to do something about it.'"

As 2013 unfolded, it became impossible to ignore the rumble of feminist campaigners, up and down the country. They gathered outside the Bank of England in early July, the first burst of a heatwave, dressed as aviators, suffragettes and warrior queens, organised by Caroline Criado-Perez, 29, shouting for women's representation on bank notes and beyond.

They demonstrated outside the Sun headquarters, organised by Yas Necati, 17, in a protest against Page 3, the biggest image of a woman that appears each day in the country's biggest-selling newspaper - a teenager or twentysomething smiling sunnily in her pants. Necati, a student at sixth-form college, laughed shyly as she told me about the mocked-up pages she has sent Sun editor David Dinsmore, suggesting feminist comedians, artists and writers to appear on the page instead. One of her favourites showed a woman flashing bright blue armpit hair. The the No More Page 3 petition started by Lucy-Anne Holmes, 37, in August 2012,, has been signed by 128,000 people.

Ikamara Larasi, 24, started heading a campaign to address racist and sexist stereotypes in music videos, just as students began banning summer hit Blurred Lines on many UK campuses, in response to its sexist lyrics. Jinan Younis, 18, co-founded a feminist society at school, experienced online abuse from some boys in her peer group - "feminism and rape are both ridiculously tiring," they wrote - and wasn't deterred. Instead, she wrote an article about it that went viral. When I spoke to her in September, she was juggling shifts in a call centre, babysitting for neighbours, preparing for university, while helping out with a campaign to encourage feminist societies in schools countrywide. UK Feminista, an organisation set up in 2010 to support feminist activists, has had 100 people contact them this year, wanting to start their own school group. In late August, their national day of action against lads' mags included 19 protests across the UK.

Thousands more feminists raised their voices online. Bates and Soraya Chemaly, 47, were among those who set up a campaign against misogynist pages on Facebook, including groups with names such as "raping a pregnant bitch and telling your friends you had a threesome". Supporters sent more than 60,000 tweets in the course of a swift, week-long push, convincing the social media behemoth to change its moderation policies.

Southall Black Sisters protested outside the offices of the UK Border Agency against racist immigration laws and propaganda - including the notorious "Go Home" vans. They also marched in solidarity with protesters in Delhi, who began a wave of demonstrations following the death of a woman who was gang raped in the city last December, protests against rape culture that soon spread to Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The African LGBTI Out & Proud Diamond Group demonstrated opposite Downing Street after allegations emerged of the sexual abuse of women held at Yarl's Wood immigration removal centre.

The Fawcett Society continued to show how cuts to benefits, services and public-sector jobs pose "triple jeopardy" to women (in 2013 women's unemployment reached a 26-year high). Rape Crisis South London spearheaded a successful campaign to criminalise the possession of pornography that depicts rape. And 40 Days of Choice challenged the anti-abortion campaigners who have become worryingly prominent in the UK recently.

The Edinburgh fringe hosted a surprising run of feminist comedians, including Mary Bourke, with her show Muffragette. Bourke memorably noted in a BBC interview this summer that the open-mic circuit has become a "rape circle" in recent years. Feminist standups were ready to respond. Nadia Kamil, 29, performed a set including a feminist burlesque, peeling off eight layers of clothing to reveal messages such as "pubes are normal" and "equal pay" picked out in sequins. She also explained the theory of intersectionality through a vocoder, and gave out badges with the slogan "Smash the Kyriarchy". (She hoped audience members would look up any words they were unfamiliar with later, such as " kyriarchy" and " cis".)

Bridget Christie, 42, won the Foster's Edinburgh comedy award with A Bic for Her, in which she railed against sexist comments by racing driver Stirling Moss, and talked about "ethical filing" - taking sexist magazines off shop shelves and dumping them straight in the bin. She wasn't encouraging other people to do this, she emphasised. She just wanted to point out that she had been doing it for months - months - with no problem at all.

Women marched through London for Million Women Rise and Reclaim the Night, and organised events in 207 countries for One Billion Rising, a day of demonstrations to highlight the UN statistic that one in three women will be raped or beaten in her lifetime. As part of this event, the UK parliament debated whether sex and relationship education should be on the national curriculum, and six months later, in her summer holidays, Lili Evans, 16, started the Campaign4Consent with Necati, calling for consent education in schools.

A chorus rose against online misogyny. Criado-Perez highlighted the string of rape threats sent to her on Twitter, writer Lindy West published the comments she received, ("There is a group of rapists with over 9,000 penises coming for this fat bitch," read one), and the academic and broadcaster Mary Beard, Lauren Mayberry from the band Chvrches, and Ruby Tandoh from The Great British Bake Off, all spoke out on this issue. If you want to know how deeply some people resent the idea of women's advancement, the stream of online misogyny has been perhaps the most obvious, ugly backlash yet.

But bald attempts to silence women only made the movement larger and louder. They convinced those who had never thought about misogyny before that it was clearly still alive, and convinced those who were well aware of it to keep going.

When Nimko Ali, 29, spoke out against female genital mutilation, with her group, Daughters of Eve, she received death threats. She kept speaking strongly, wittily, discussing both her own experience of FGM and her "fanny forward" list of supporters, putting an issue long marginalised firmly on the political agenda. In November, Alison Saunders, the new Director of Public Prosecutions, suggested she expected the first prosecution for FGM to happen in the UK fairly soon.

Some of those leading the biggest campaigns, including Bates, only started calling themselves feminists in the last few years, which shows how nascent this wave is. Larasi bursts out laughing when I ask if she has always considered herself a feminist. "Definitely not," she says. She has been working at the black women's organisation Imkaan for three or four years, and was raised by a feminist mother, but it was only last year that she started using the term to describe herself. She began identifying specifically as a black feminist in February 2013. This means she doesn't feel she has to "pick a side", she says, between the movements for women's rights and for racial equality, and she is now a member of the thriving Black Feminists group in London - there is also one in Manchester.

The majority of activists I speak to define themselves as intersectional feminists - or say they try to live up to this decription - and when I mention this to Kimberlé Crenshaw, the US law professor who coined the term intersectionality in 1989, she's genuinely surprised. The theory concerns the way multiple oppressions intersect, and although, as Crenshaw says, it can be interpreted in a wild variety of ways, today's feminists generally seem to see it as an attempt to elevate and make space for the voices and issues of those who are marginalised, and a framework for recognising how class, race, age, ability, sexuality, gender and other issues combine to affect women's experience of discrimination. Younis considers intersectionality the overriding principle for today's feminists, and Ali says she constantly tries to check her privilege, to recognise how hierarchies of power are constructed.

There are women and men of all ages involved in this movement - at a Lose the Lads' mags protest in York, for instance, I met an activist who had been at the women's liberation conference in 1978. But many of those at the forefront are in their teens and 20s, and had their outlook formed during decades in which attitudes to women were particularly confusing.

They grew up being told the world was post-feminist, that sexism and misogyny were over, and feminists should pack up their placards. At the same time, women in the public eye were often either sidelined or sexualised, represented in exactly the same way as they had been in the 70s, albeit beneath a thin veil of irony. Finn Mackay says when she started the London Feminist Network in 2004, the two main issues motivating those who joined were the massive growth of the beauty industry, and "pornification" - the infiltration of pornographic imagery into the mainstream via Playboy-branded pencil cases, for instance, and the trend for pubic waxes. Those concerns have continued, and help explain the focus of many current feminist campaigns, which address the wallpaper of women's lives, the everyday sexism - lads' mags, Page 3, rape pages on Facebook, cosmetic surgery advertising - and calls for positive representation on bank notes and in broadcasting.

But the feminist consciousness of the fourth wave has also been forged through the years of the financial crash and the coalition government, and many activists have been politicised and influenced by other movements, particularly the student campaign against fees, but also the wider campaign against cuts and the Occupy movement. The quick, reactive nature of many of the feminist campaigns cropping up today reflects the work of activists more generally in a biting world of unemployment and under-employment, workfare, zero-hours contracts, bedroom taxes, damaging rhetoric against immigrants, the disabled and those who need support from the state.

With so many pressing issues, feminists are fighting on several fronts, and the campaigns of the past few years have often been started by individuals or small groups, who have responded to issues they feel strongly about, and can usefully address. Holmes and Necati both grew up with the Sun at home, which has shaped their opposition to Page 3. Criado-Perez was outraged by all-male discussions of teenage pregnancy and breast cancer treatment on the Today programme, so set up a database of female experts, The Women's Room, with Catherine Smith in 2012. In the first three days of that year, seven women were killed by men, and Karen Ingala Smith, chief executive of the charity Nia, started counting the toll of misogynist murders. Her Counting Dead Women project puts names and stories to the statistics we often hear, and is asking the government to take an integrated approach to understanding violence against women.

There are, of course, differences of opinion when it comes to which subjects feminism should be addressing. How could there not be, in a movement that represents half the population, and aims for liberation for all? But what's exciting about these individual campaigns is the way they're building a movement capable of taking on structural, systemic problems. As the philosopher Nina Power notes, there are teenage girls today, growing up with Twitter and Tumblr, who have a perfect grasp of feminist language and concepts, who are active on a huge range of issues - some of those I talk to are starting to work on economic analyses of women's predicament, the ways in which neo-liberal policies such as the rolling back of the state and low taxes for the rich, have shaped modern inequalities.

The movement's concerns are forever shifting, and will likely do so powerfully when some of today's young activists encounter the pay gap, childcare costs and pregnancy discrimination in their own lives. "What is it going to be like," says Power, "to have this generation of people who are totally attuned to all these terms and categories and thinking through all these issues from a very young age?" Brought up to know they are equal to men, fourth-wave feminists are pissed off when they're not treated as such, but have more than enough confidence to shout back. Misogynists, watch out.
All the Rebel Women: The rise of the fourth wave of feminism by Kira Cochrane is out now as a Guardian Shorts Originals ebook (£1.99). Visit guardianshorts.com to find out more. Topics

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The fourth wave of feminism: meet the rebel women

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The campaign for women's liberation never went away, but this year a new swell built up and broke through. Since the early summer, I've been talking to feminist activists and writers for a short book, All The Rebel Women, and as I tried to keep up with the protests, marches and talks, my diary became a mess of clashing dates.

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BBC - Future - Does globalization mean we will become one culture?

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BBC - Future - Does globalization mean we will become one culture?

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Stroll into your local Starbucks and you will find yourself part of a cultural experiment on a scale never seen before on this planet. In less than half a century, the coffee chain has grown from a single outlet in Seattle to nearly 20,000 shops in around 60 countries. Each year, its near identical stores serve cups of near identical coffee in near identical cups to hundreds of thousands of people. For the first time in history, your morning cappuccino is the same no matter whether you are sipping it in Tokyo, New York, Bangkok or Buenos Aires.

Of course, it is not just Starbucks. Select any global brand from Coca Cola to Facebook and the chances are you will see or feel their presence in most countries around the world. It is easy to see this homogenization in terms of loss of diversity, identity or the westernization of society. But, the rapid pace of change also raises the more interesting question of why - over our relatively short history - humans have had so many distinct cultures in the first place. And, if diversity is a part of our psychological make-up, how we will fare in a world that is increasingly bringing together people from different cultural backgrounds and traditions?

To get at this question, I argue that we need to understand what I call our unique 'capacity for culture'. This trait, which I outline in my book Wired for Culture, makes us stand alone amongst all other animals. Put simply, we can pick up where others have left off, not having to re-learn our cultural knowledge each generation, as good ideas build successively upon others that came before them, or are combined with other ideas giving rise to new inventions.

Take the axe as an example. At first we built simple objects like hand axes chipped or "flaked" from larger stones. But these would give way to more sophisticated axes, and when someone had the idea to combine a shaped club with one of these hand axes, the first "hafted axe" was born. Similarly when someone had the idea to stretch a vine between the ends of a bent stick the first bow was born and you can be sure the first arrow soon followed.
Life savers
In more recent history, this 'cumulative cultural adaptation' that our capacity for culture grants has been accelerated by the rise of archiving technology. Papyrus scrolls, books and the internet allow us to even more effectively share knowledge with successive generations, opening up an unbridgeable gap in the evolutionary potential between humans and all other animals.

Chimpanzees, for example, are renowned for their "tool use" and we think this is evidence of their intelligence. But you could go away for a million years and upon your return the chimpanzees would still be using the same sticks to 'fish' for termites and the same rocks to crack open nuts - their "cultures" do not cumulatively adapt. Rather than picking up where others have left off, they start over every generation. Just think if you had to re-discover how to make fire, tan leather, extract bronze or iron from earth, or build a smartphone from scratch. That is what it is like to be the other animals.

Not so for humans. Around 60,000 years ago, cumulative cultural adaptation was what propelled modern humans out of Africa in small tribal groups, by enabling us to acquire knowledge and produce technologies suitable to different environments. Eventually these tribes would occupy nearly every environment on Earth - from living on ice to surviving in deserts or steaming jungles, even becoming sea-going mariners as the Polynesians did. And amongst each one we see distinct sets of beliefs, customs, language and religion.

The importance of the tribe in our evolutionary history has meant that natural selection has favoured in us a suite of psychological dispositions for making our cultures work and for defending them against competitors. These traits include cooperation, seeking affiliations, a predilection to coordinating our activities, and tendencies to trade and exchange goods and services. Thus, we have taken cooperation and sociality beyond the good relations among family members that dominate the rest of the animal kingdom, to making cooperation work among wider groups of people.

In fact, we have evolved a set of dispositions that allow us to treat other members of our tribe or society as "honorary relatives", thereby unlocking a range of emotions that we would normally reserve for other family members. A good example of this so-called cultural nepotism is the visceral feeling you have when one of your nation's soldiers is lost in battle - just compare that feeling to how you react to the news of a similar loss of a soldier from another nation. We also see our cultural nepotism in the dispositions we have to hold doors for people, give up our seats on trains, or contribute to charities, and we might even risk our lives jumping into a river to save someone from drowning, or when we fight for our countries in a war.

Of course, this nepotism is not just a positive force. It is also a trait that can be exploited by propagandists and to produce Kamikaze-like or other suicidal behaviors. But the success of cooperation as a strategy has seen our species for at least the last 10,000 years on a long evolutionary trajectory towards living in larger and larger social groupings that bring together people from different tribal origins. The economies of scale that we realize even in a small grouping 'scale up' in larger groups, so much so that larger groups can often afford to have armies, to build defensive walls around their settlements. Large groups also benefit from the efficiencies that flow from a division of labour, and from access to a vast shared store of information, skills, technology and good luck.
'One world'
And so in a surprising turn, the very psychology that allows us to form and cooperate in small tribal groups, makes it possible for us to form into the larger social groupings of the modern world. Thus, early in our history most of us lived in small bands of maybe 50 to 200 people. At some point tribes formed that were essentially coalitions or bands of bands. Collections of tribes later formed into chiefdoms in which for the first time in our history a single ruler emerged.

Eventually several chiefdoms would come together in nascent city-states such as Catal-Huyuk in present day Turkey or Jericho in the Palestinian West-Bank, both around 10,000 years old. City-states gave way to nations states, and eventually to collections of states such as the United Kingdom or the United States, and even in our modern world to collections of nations such as seen in the European Union. At each step formerly competing entities discovered that cooperation could return better outcomes than endless cycles of betrayal and revenge.

This is not to say that cooperation is easy, or that it is never subject to reversals. Just look at the outpouring of cultural diversity that sprang up with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Despite being suppressed for decades, almost overnight Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Chechnya, Tajikistan, Moldova, Kyrgyzstan, and Dagestan reappeared, all differentiated by culture, ethnicity, and language.

So how will these two competing tendencies that comprise our evolved tribal psychology - one an ancient disposition to produce lots of different cultures, the other an ability to extend honorary relative status to others even in large groupings - play out in our modern, interconnected and globalised world? There is in principle no reason to rule out a "one world" culture, and in some respects, as Starbucks vividly illustrates, we are already well on the way.

Thus, it seems our tribal psychology can extend to groups of seemingly nearly any size. In large countries such as the United Kingdom, Japan, the United States, Brazil, India and China hundreds of millions and even over a billion people can all be united around a single tribal identity as British or Japanese, American, Indian or Chinese and they will have a tendency to direct their cultural nepotism towards these other members of their now highly extended tribe. If you take this behaviour for granted, just imagine 100,000 dogs or hyenas packed into a sporting arena - not a pretty sight.
'Bumpy road'
But two factors looming on the horizon are likely to slow the rate at which cultural unification will happen. One is resources, the other is demography. Cooperation has worked throughout history because large collections of people have been able to use resources more effectively and provide greater prosperity and protection than smaller groups. But that could change as resources become scarce.

This must be one of the most pressing social questions we can ask because if people begin to think they have reached what we might call 'peak standard of living' then they will naturally become more self-interested as the returns from cooperation begin to leak away. After all, why cooperate when there are no spoils to divide?

Related to this, the dominant demographic trend of the next century will be the movement of people from poorer to richer regions of the world. Diverse people will be brought together who have little common cultural identity of the sort that historically has prompted our cultural nepotism, and this will happen at rates that exceed those at which they can be culturally integrated.

At first, I believe, these factors will cause people to pull back from whatever level of cultural 'scaling' they have achieved to the previous level. An example is the nations of the European Union squabbling over national versus EU rights and privileges. A more troubling example might be the rise of nationalist groups and political parties, such as Marine le Pen's Front National in France, or similar far right groups in Britain and several European nations.

Then, if the success of modern societies up to this point is anything to go by, new and ever more heterogeneous and resource-scarce societies will increasingly depend upon clear enforcement of cultural or democratically derived rules to maintain stability, and will creak under the strain of smaller social groupings seeking to disengage further from the whole.

One early harbinger of a sense of decline in the sense of 'social relatedness' might be the increasing tendencies of people to avoid risk, to expect safety, to be vigilant about fairness, to require and to be granted "rights." These might all be symptoms of a greater sense of self-interest, brought about perhaps by declines in the average amount of "togetherness" we feel. When this happens, we naturally turn inwards, effectively reverting to our earlier evolutionary instincts, to a time when we relied on kin selection or cooperation among families for our needs to be met.

Against this backdrop the seemingly unstoppable and ever accelerating cultural homogenization around the world brought about by travel, the internet and social networking, although often decried, is probably a good thing even if it means the loss of cultural diversity: it increases our sense of togetherness via the sense of a shared culture. In fact, breaking down of cultural barriers - unfashionable as this can sound - is probably one of the few things that societies can do to increase harmony among ever more heterogeneous peoples.

So, to my mind, there is little doubt that the next century is going to be a time of great uncertainty and upheaval as resources, money and space become ever more scarce. It is going to be a bumpy road with many setbacks and conflicts. But if there was ever a species that could tackle these challenges it is our own. It might be surprising, but our genes, in the form of our capacity for culture, have created in us a machine capable of greater cooperation, inventiveness and common good than any other on Earth. And of course it means you can always find a cappuccino just the way you like it no matter where we wake up.
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Does globalization mean we will become one culture?

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Stroll into your local Starbucks and you will find yourself part of a cultural experiment on a scale never seen before on this planet. In less than half a century, the coffee chain has grown from a single outlet in Seattle to nearly 20,000 shops in around 60 countries.

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Donna Haraway (1985) A Cyborg Manifesto 

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Donna Haraway (1985) A Cyborg Manifesto 

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Feminism and Digital Communication

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Why some couples can't admit how they met

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Why some couples can't admit how they met

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Young people in India have traditionally had their marriages arranged by their families but now, armed with smartphones and dating apps, some are taking control of their own love lives. Simon Maybin spoke to three couples who met online.

Two pairs of eyes meet surreptitiously, then flit away from each other, their owners hoping no-one has noticed. No Bollywood love song plays - in this real-life romance, the only soundtrack is the unmistakable clackety-clack of a train beetling across eastern India.

The eyes belong to 22-year-old Varsha and Rahul who is 27.

"I was returning from one of my aunt's homes," says Varsha with an irrepressible smile. "His granny was there so we started talking about our families and I don't know what happened but I got interested in him."

She spoke to Rahul's grandmother, but not to him. And he didn't speak to her.

"I didn't dare talk to her," says Rahul. "Her mother was there and her brother was also there."

In India, many would consider it inappropriate for strangers of the opposite sex to talk to each other. But these days, there's more than one way to start a conversation.

"I thought that he was a good man and wanted to be friends with him, so I started searching for him on Facebook," says Varsha. She didn't even know Rahul's name, but she knew where he worked and his sister's name, and that was enough to track him down.

The moment Kumar was out on the floor, everybody just stopped to watch
Garima

They started chatting and swapping photos. Messaging rather than speaking made it easier to keep their budding relationship secret.

"We couldn't talk in front of everyone," says Varsha. Without her own bedroom, she was afraid even the glow of her smartphone would alert her family to what was going on.

"She used to hide under the blanket," says Rahul.

After a month or so chatting online, they started meeting in secret. It wasn't just that they were dating - still seen as taboo by many Indians - but Varsha and Rahul are from different castes, the inherited social classes that continue to play a big role in Indian life, despite discrimination based on caste being outlawed. The idea of being romantically involved with someone from another caste is completely unthinkable for most people in India.

A few months before that auspicious train journey and 1,000 miles south-east, in Bangalore, another love story had begun. This time, the soundtrack was the clatter of bowling pins.

"The moment Kumar was out on the floor, everybody just stopped to watch," says Garima. "You were the Big Lebowski," she jokes, with a glint of pride in her eye.

They were at a bowling night organised by Floh, an online dating service that arranges events for singles who don't want an arranged marriage. Impressed, Garima messaged Kumar the next day and asked him out for juice.

They got on well and several more dates followed that week. Garima decided to mention Kumar to her mother, including the fact that he belongs to another religion - he's a Hindu and Garima's family are Jain.

After our first meeting it was very clear to me that he was the one that I was looking for
Shruti

The next time she visited her parents, it quickly became clear her new relationship was a hot topic. "My father was furious!" she says.

He had enlisted her uncle's help to do some online detective work and found out all about Kumar.

"He said, 'You don't even understand. He's a non-vegetarian and he drinks. You will not be able to live with this person.'"

Vegetarianism is a big part of the Jain belief system and Garima's family is teetotal. No-one in her family had ever married outside their sub-sect of Jainism.

A thousand miles and more north, in Delhi, another modern romance was getting under way. The sounds of barking dogs and children playing spilled into the modest ground-floor flat Nitin, who's 30, shared with his parents. Killing time on Facebook, an advert caught his eye. It was for TrulyMadly, India's top home-grown dating app.

"My parents were already looking for a match, so I thought, 'Why not give it a try?'" he says.

Across the city, Shruti, a year younger than Nitin, saw the same advert. Similarly weary of her parents' attempts to find her a partner, she too liked the idea of taking control of her own romantic destiny.

"I think within a week-and-a-half I started speaking to Nitin," Shruti says. "So we exchanged a few messages on that dating app and decided that we wanted to meet. After our first meeting it was very clear to me that he was the one that I was looking for, and I'm going to go ahead and finalise this guy for sure."

So a whirlwind romance, with marriage on the cards after just one date. Their families were introduced immediately and were delighted to discover they were from the same religion and caste.

I had to run a campaign to try to see who I could convince first and then use their power to convince the rest
Garima

But Shruti and Nitin lied to their parents about how they'd met.

"If you are going through a dating app, parents won't think you'll get a good partner," says Shruti. "They think people are just there to have fake relationships - they will spend some time with a girl or boy and after that they will just leave."

Nitin puts it down to "a generation gap".

Their parents didn't find out how Nitin and Shruti had met until after a big engagement ceremony, just a few months before the wedding. Already so far down the track, they chose not to object.

For Garima, with the soft spot for tenpin bowlers and the furious father, things were not so simple. She and Kumar realised that they needed to get engaged to help convince her family how serious they were, and that their different religions didn't matter. But that was just the start. They didn't want to get married without her family's permission.

"I had to run a campaign to try to see who I could convince first and then use their power to convince the rest."

A year of intense lobbying, persuading and cajoling followed. Garima's father was the hardest to win over, but eventually, grudgingly, he said, "Yes." The wedding was arranged and the day before the big day, Kumar got to meet his father-in-law for the first time.

"I get manoeuvred into this room where there's four elders sitting. But I don't know who is who," he says. Kumar had never even seen a photo of Garima's father.

"So it was a little awkward, yeah."

For Varsha and Rahul, who met on the train, dealing with their parents has been even harder. They didn't dare tell their families they were in a relationship with someone from another caste, instead running 1,000 miles away to Delhi.

They decided they should get married. "It was a very simple wedding," says Varsha. With just two guests, it was small by any standard, and minuscule for India.

Then Rahul called his parents to explain why he'd gone to Delhi - that he was in love and had got married.

"Their reaction was pathetic," he says, real anger in his otherwise gentle voice.

"They started, 'I'll kill you, I'll cut you into pieces.'"

They took the threats seriously. So-called honour killings of people who marry someone from another caste are not unheard of in India.

It's tough for Rahul and Varsha, but they're still thrilled at having found each other. They just want their parents - like the other two couples' families - to catch up with what love means to this new generation of independent-minded and empowered young Indians.

The dating game - How are apps changing the way we find love? Although many around the world have found themselves empowered by dating apps, others tell of despair and, in extreme cases, threats of blackmail.
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Why some couples can't admit how they met

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Young people in India have traditionally had their marriages arranged by their families but now, armed with smartphones and dating apps, some are taking control of their own love lives. Simon Maybin spoke to three couples who met online. Two pairs of eyes meet surreptitiously, then flit away from each other, their owners hoping no-one has noticed.

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On Tuesday the Sun surprised no one by coming out all guns blazing in favour of Brexit in the EU referendum.
The editorial said:

The EU cannot reform.

Remain has conducted a deceitful campaign. It has been nasty, cynical, personally abusive and beneath the dignity of Britain.

Our country has a glorious history.

This is our chance to make Britain even greater, to recapture our democracy, to preserve the values and culture we are rightly proud of.

A VOTE FOR LEAVE IS A VOTE FOR A BETTER BRITAIN.

Leave are also seven points ahead according to a new YouGov poll for The Times today, with 11 per cent of voters still undecided.

Speaking on the Today programme on Radio 4 this morning the Sun's associate editor Trevor Kavanagh said that owner Rupert Murdoch had nothing to do with the paper's latest editorial stance.

If you're still on the fence, though, people online are resharing an old quote from Murdoch about the scope of his power and influence which says a lot about the Sun's Euroscepticism.

It's from an Anthony Hilton column in the Evening Standard:

I once asked Rupert Murdoch why he was so opposed to the European Union. 'That's easy,' he replied. 'When I go into Downing Street they do what I say; when I go to Brussels they take no notice.'

Murdoch famously only backs who he thinks will be winners - and the results have gone the same way the Sun has endorsed in every electoral contest since 1974.

In 2014 the Scottish Sun took its time deciding what it thought about the independence referendum before backing the No campaign. In 1992 the Sun claimed to have snatched general election victory away from Labour, while it bestowed its favour on Tony Blair's landslide in 1997.

What a time to live in a democracy.

The Sun's endorsement of Leave shows once again how Murdoch effortlessly outmanoeuvres and knifes every Prime Minister he gets bored with.
- Robin McGhee (@RobinMcGhee) June 13, 2016

More: Quiz: Do you know more or less about Brexit than the average person?

More: People are re-sharing this terrifying John Whittingdale quote about Rupert Murdoch from 2006

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As the Sun backs Brexit remember Rupert Murdoch's terrifying quote

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On Tuesday the Sun surprised no one by coming out all guns blazing in favour of Brexit in the EU referendum. The editorial said: The EU cannot reform. Remain has conducted a deceitful campaign. It has been nasty, cynical, personally abusive and beneath the dignity of Britain.

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Printer Giant fires staff for asking for payrise

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Printer Giant fires staff for asking for payrise

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Printer and software giant Lexmark has fired dozens of workers from its factory in the Mexican city of Ciudad Júarez after they demanded a pay rise of $0.35 per day.

Hundreds of workers at the printer cartridge plant went on strike last week, calling for the company to increase its daily rate for experienced employees from 114 to 120 pesos - a raise of approximately $0.35.

Days later, Lexmark fired around 120 of the striking workers. Most of those dismissed had been involved in attempts to set up an independent union to advocate pay increases and improvements in working conditions.

The mass layoff has left families in dire straits in the run-up to the holidays. Low-paid workers in Mexico often rely on the traditional end of year benefit - known as the Aguinaldo - to settle debts and pay for Christmas.

Ciudad Júarez is the hub of Mexico's manufacturing sector, with around 300,000 factory workers but no independent unions. The city - located over the border from El Paso, Texas - was until recently the most dangerous in the world as warring drug cartels battled over territory.

But despite ongoing security concerns, American companies are drawn to the city by tax benefits offered through the North American Free Trade Agreement, low transport costs due to its proximity to the border and low wages. Mexico's minimum daily wage is 70 pesos - around $4.

The bilateral trade relationship between Mexico and the US is worth over half a trillion dollars a year.

This year has seen a wave of protests by factory workers in Ciudad Júarez amid growing anger low pay, harsh conditions and weak labour rights which campaigners say haven't improved in decades.

Lexmark, a world leader in laser printers, is worth $2.01bn. In 2014, its revenue totalled $3.7bn, though it has fallen this year. It employs 14,000 people worldwide.

Discontent among its workers had been brewing for months, with reports of harassment, unfair wage deductions and unsafe work conditions as well as poor wages.

Miriam Delgado, 37, who was fired last week after five years and seven months at Lexmark, told the Guardian: "They didn't provide face masks or gloves to protect us, many people have injured hands. They cut our salaries for being even slightly late, even if our children were sick and we had to take them to hospital, and we had to put up with harassment from supervisors."

In October, the disgruntlement intensified after the company rejected a request to increase the top salary band to 120 pesos a day.

In response, a group of 78 workers, including Delgado, submitted a formal request to start a union before the state government's Board of Conciliation and Arbitration in hope of negotiating improvements.

The 78 were among the group fired last week after participating in a strike with around 700 colleagues.

Susana Prieto Terrazas, the lawyer representing the workers, told news website Sin Embargo that the layoffs suggested collusion between the company and the state government, as only the Board of Conciliation and Arbitration had the list of names.

Government officials have publicly accused the labour organisers of self-interest, and said striking was not the right way to improve conditions.

An unfair dismissal complaint will be lodged before the Board this week, said Prieto Terrazas.

In a statement Jerry Grasso, company spokesman, told the Guardian: "We take our values of mutual respect and employee satisfaction very seriously. We are committed to engaging in open and honest conversations with our employees to ensure Lexmark continues to be a rewarding place to work."

Delgado, who has worked in factories since moving to Ciudad Juarez 30 years ago, told the Guardian: "They fired those of us who were trying to organise and fight. Nothing has changed in Juarez, we are still forced to put up with unjust and undignified working conditions. I don't know what I will do, but I can't work in the factories anymore."

Lexmark's disputes with labor have landed the firm in legal trouble domestically as well: in 2010 an LA county superior court judge found that the company's longstanding "use it or lose it" vacation policy (which disallowed employees from rolling vacation days into the new year) was in fact illegal; a year later an appeals court ruled against the company again, though it reduced the multimillion-dollar payout on appeal.

The policy, which was ruled wage theft, had been in place since Lexmark spun off from IBM in 1991.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Lexmark spun off from Microsoft, instead of IBM. Topics

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Printer giant Lexmark fires Mexico factory workers demanding $0.35 raise

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Printer and software giant Lexmark has fired dozens of workers from its factory in the Mexican city of Ciudad Júarez after they demanded a pay rise of $0.35 per day. Hundreds of workers at the printer cartridge plant went on strike last week, calling for the company to increase its daily rate for experienced employees from 114 to 120 pesos - a raise of approximately $0.35.

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It was love at first "like".

When Arte Vann, of New York, and Erica Harris, of California, connected on Instagram last winter, they clicked immediately. They quickly fell in love while dating long-distance, and finally met face-to-face for the first time on Friday night at the LA Ontario international airport.

Within an instant, Vann proposed and the two got married in the unlikely confines of the southern California airport terminal.

By Tuesday morning, the newlyweds were moving into a house together and enjoying their new celebrity status as the unlikely Insta-marriage couple.

"We're still amazed," said a giddy Harris, 36. "We'll sit and stare into each other's eyes, and we're still in shock that we have each other."

"It was the best moment of my life," added Vann, 40, recounting when they hugged for the first time after he got off his flight - for which he had purchased a one-way ticket. "I was so happy. It was such a long road without having her ... I waited for a very long time."

In February of 2015, Harris (@beauty_deride) stumbled on the Instagram account of Vann (@inkflow_prodigy), who often posts images of his original writing on the photo-sharing site. She "liked" one of his posts - a poem - and started following him.

He immediately followed back, and soon the two were rapidly exchanging messages and flirting in the comment sections of each other's photos. "She was just really funny and really spontaneous," said Vann, recalling his first impression of her. "She just made me smile. I could tell she was such a good person and a great mother and that she cared about people."

After it got too tiring to type messages on their smartphones, they decided to talk on the phone. "Our words were flying at each other, and we just talked for five hours straight," Harris said. Vann, who was working as a chef at a resort, said he didn't get any sleep the night of their first phone call.

We want to share with other broken people out there that there's hope. We've found healing through this love.

Erica Harris

After that conversation, any doubts they had about each other and the authenticity of their Instagram personas quickly began to vanish. They started talking daily - often for hours on end, at times even falling asleep together while they were still on the line, Vann said.

Within a week, Vann told her that he loved her - and although Harris was at first scared to admit it out loud, she soon told him that she had also fallen in love with him.

Harris said she had been very skeptical of men after a difficult marriage had fallen apart. Although she had dabbled in online dating, she never thought she would meet someone special on the internet, especially on a random site like Instagram.

But she couldn't ignore their instant connection. "We feel so blessed that we have each other."

At one point during their relationship, the two even temporarily deleted their Instagram accounts so they would stop wasting time on the site and getting distracted by anonymous commenters. They've since rejoined the site and now have hundreds of fans liking their photos and congratulating them on their marriage.

They both said they were anxious to meet in real life, but never worried that it would be awkward or that their love would not be equally powerful in person.

"It was magical," Harris said of the moment they finally met.

Because Vann's mother was not able to attend the airport ceremony, Harris invited a CBS Los Angeles reporter to film the rapid proposal and wedding so that they would have video footage to share. Within a day, the Insta-couple's story spread across social media, with reporters from across the country trying to reach the lovebirds.

Harris never anticipated their story would go viral, but she said they were happy to use the 15 minutes of fame to remind people that it's possible to find love in the most unexpected places.

"We were both so broken. We want to share with other broken people out there that there's hope," she said. "We've found healing through this love."
Topics

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Love at first 'like': we met on Instagram and now we're married

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It was love at first "like". When Arte Vann, of New York, and Erica Harris, of California, connected on Instagram last winter, they clicked immediately. They quickly fell in love while dating long-distance, and finally met face-to-face for the first time on Friday night at the LA Ontario international airport.

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In this year's semi-annual study from investment bank Piper Jaffray, 'Taking Stock With Teens', around 6,500 teens in the US were polled to find out which social network they thought was most important.

#WhatBritishMuslimsReallyThink: Muslims are revealing what's on their minds right now

Snapchat claimed a narrow victory with 28 per cent of the votes, closely followed by Instagram which got 27 per cent.

In the same survey last spring, Instagram was the clear winner - and Snapchat trailed way behind in fourth place, behind Twitter and Facebook.

Over the course of the last year Snapchat has introduced a bunch of new features that could've made it speak more clearly to the yoof.

In particular, people have been having a lot of fun with face swapping since it launched a few weeks ago.

Man types wrong bit of code, accidentally deletes entire company

And there are no prizes for guessing which networks came last.

Google+ was bottom of the barrell with a pretty unsurprising one per cent, beaten only by Tumblr and Pinterest which each had 2 per cent of the votes.
H/T Mashable

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We finally know which app is most popular with teens

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In this year's semi-annual study from investment bank Piper Jaffray, 'Taking Stock With Teens', around 6,500 teens in the US were polled to find out which social network they thought was most important. #WhatBritishMuslimsReallyThink: Muslims are revealing what's on their minds right now Snapchat claimed a narrow victory with 28 per cent of the votes, closely followed by Instagram which got 27 per cent.

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The article from Denise Carter (2005)

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additional information-  an important study for developments in digital forms of communication.
1. Click on the box below
2. Click on view original
3. Click onto preview book when opened
4. search in the online book for carter

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The idea of virtual realities has a long and complex historical trajectory, spanning from Plato's concept of the cave and the simulacrum, to artistic styles such as Trompe L'oeil, and more recently developments in 3D film, television and gaming.

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Digital Divide still affecting the poorest

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Digital Divide still affecting the poorest

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Spread of internet has not conquered 'digital divide' between rich and poor - report

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Study by World Bank praises potential of technology to transform lives, but warns of risk of creating a 'new underclass' of the disconnected

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It is NOT a luxury

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Information technology is Not a Luxury, Digital Divide Debate - BBC World Service

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Information technology is an essential tool for the developing world