Risky Character in Crime and Writing on Crime

What is character and how does it influence how we think of criminal subjectivity and criminal responsibility? How does it bear on who is considered liable to risk and read as risky? This symposium brings together legal scholars, criminologists, journalists, and narrative theorists to investigate the question of risky character in legal and narrative contexts.

Is there a resurgence of character in the present and, if so, how might we account for it in our disciplines? Nicola Lacey argues that this shift has led to a situation where ‘bad’ character is considered not only ‘constitutive of guilt’ but also ‘probative of guilt’ and that ‘character’ – which often involves caricature – might be interpreted as a ‘short cut to proof’ and consequently as symptomatic of political and economic pressures that are changing the shape of law and narrative. Ekow Yankah thinks of these pressures as producing what he terms ‘punishing character’, where ‘flat’ or stereotyped portrayals of certain subjects who are deemed risky creates a situation where there is a clear inference between character and intent.

The symposium will consist of a lecture by Professor Nicola Lacey and two panels on narrative character and legal character that will collectively seek to generate a discussion around these questions. The symposium seeks to drive new and urgent conversations about the imagining of risky character and the materialisation of risk in social and legal contexts today.

Topics

• sentencing
• IPPs
• policing
• character in the criminal court

Keynote

Professor Nicola Lacey, 5:15 to 6:15pm

Speakers

• Samantha Asumadu
• Dr Lambros Fatsis
• Professor Nicola Lacey (keynote)
• Professor Matthew Rubery
• Danny Shaw
• David James Smith
• Professor Findlay Stark

Organisers

Dr Jess Cotton and Professor Clair Wills