The ‘crime walk’ was developed by Professor Maggie O’Neill and Dr. Ivan Hill from the School of Applied Social Sciences at Durham University in collaboration with HMP Durham Prison Writer in Residence, Sheila Mulhern and Jackie Woods as part of the Ghosts of our Future Arts Council funded project.

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There is a long tradition of walking in ethnographic and anthropological research, but not in criminology. Building upon earlier work that combines walking as a method alongside participatory, creative, biographical and visual research (O’Neill 2010 & Hubbard, O’Neill & Stenning 2013, O’Neill 2014) to generate knowledge and understanding, we suggest that walking can be a way of both knowing and understanding the history of crime, justice, punishment in city spaces. The development of the Durham walk illustrates this.

Walking through the city, engaging with spaces and places associated with crime and justice is a way of seeing and feeling the history of crime, justice and punishment in the present, in the buildings, spaces, archives and memories of residents.

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During the development of the walk we sought to get in touch with the history, building and places in sensory and corporeal ways. Walking is a very helpful method of attuning a person to place and conducting a critical recovery of histories of crime, justice and punishment in the present.

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In sociological/criminological research walking is not just what we do to get from a to b but integral to our perception of an environment and a powerful way of communicating about experiences and ways of knowing across cultural divides, time and history.

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Walking in the city focuses attention on the sensory, kinaesthetic and mobile dimensions of lived experience and the relationship between the visual and other senses. Walking enables multi-sensory experience & ways of knowing (Edensor 2010, Myers 2010, Pink et al 2010, Pink 2008, Pink 2012, O’Neill and Perivolaris 2014).

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Creating the Walk

In creating the walk we walked the city many times documenting the places and spaces of crime, justice and punishment, talking to the people we met there. We visited the Tithe Barn museum at Durham prison and the museum and library at Palace Green looking at photographs and historical documents. Prof. Tim Blackman [Middlesex University], Dr David Sutton [Durham Ghosts Walks], Dr Kirsty McCarrison and Dr Sarah Price [Heritage Collections, University Library Palace Green were particularly helpful.

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We also connected with local people who have knowledge of the area, the history and the stories about Durham.   Taking an ethnographic approach we spoke to local people whilst walking and mapping the potential route; we learnt a lot from this local knowledge.

In summary we connected with the places, spaces, archives, photographs, and stories by and from local people on ‘Ghosts of the Future.’ We also included theories of crime and justice that we are familiar with, especially the work of Foucault and Wacquant.

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We visited the prison library, worked with the Sheila Mulhern, Jackie Woods and Katherine Shanks. We also attended some of the writing workshops and learnt about the creative writing produced around the theme of ghosts of our future.

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When we had gathered as much as we needed we created the route asking where are the key spaces and places of crime and justice in Durham city for a walkable route in the city centre.

The walk was launched on Halloween 2014 with the Ghosts of our Future team and subsequently tried out on our students and colleagues and we adapted the walk it in response to their overwhelmingly positive feedback.

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Artist Mark Alder walked with us mapped the route and created the beautiful map of the walk that can be downloaded from this web site.

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We hope you enjoy the walk, downloading and walking the crime and justice walk.

Prof. Maggie O’Neill and Dr Ivan Hill.

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Maggie took up a Chair in Sociology and Criminology at York University in April 2016, followed by Professorship in Sociology &Criminology at University College Cork in December 2018. Ivan  was a Senior Teaching Fellow at Durham University until his retirement to Scotland with his wife where he enjoyed gardening and the beauties of the natural world. 

 

This project is dedicated to the memory of Ivan Hill, a wonderful and much

loved friend, teacher, researcher and academic. Rest in Peace Dr Ivan Hill. 

 

Acknowledgement

The Crime Walk was developed by criminologists Professor Maggie O’Neill and Dr Ivan Hill in consultation with artist and map maker Mark Alder, writer Sheila Mulhern, Jacqueline Woods [Durham County Library], Katherine Shanks [Durham County Library and Durham prison library], Prof. Tim Blackman [Middlesex University], Dr David Sutton [Durham Ghost Walks], Dr Kirsty McCarrison and Dr Sarah Price [Heritage Collections, University Library Palace Green], Durham Museum, and some of the residents of Durham who shared their stories with O’Neill and Hill as they wandered Durham’s streets in search of the histories of crime, justice, punishment and stories of murder, mystery and executions

References

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Edensor, T. (2010) ‘Walking in Rhythms: place, regulation, style and the flow of experience’ in Visual Studies, 25 (1): 46–58.

Foucault, M (1977) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, London: Allen Lane.

Myers, M. (2010) ‘Walk with me, talk with me: the art of conversive wayfinding’, Visual Studies, 26 (1): 50–68

O’Neill, M. (2014)   ‘Participatory Biographies: Walking, Sensing, Belonging’ in O’Neill, M. Roberts, B. Sparkes, A. (Eds) Advances in Biographical Methods: creative applications, London: R outledge

O’Neill, M. and Hubbard, P. (2010) ‘Walking, sensing, belonging: ethno-mimesis as performative praxis’, Visual Studies, 25 (1): 46–58.

O’Neill, M. and Stenning, P. (2013). Walking biographies and innovations in visual and participatory methods: Community, Politics and Resistance in Downtown East Side Vancouver, in C. Heinz and G. Hornung (Eds) The Medialization of Auto/Biographies: Different Forms and their Communicative Contexts, Hamburg: UVH.

O’Neill, M. and Perivolaris, J. (2014) ‘A Sense of Belonging: Walking with Thaer through migration, memories and space ‘in Crossings: journal of migration and culture Volume 5 Issue 2-3

Pink, Sarah (2008). Mobilising Visual Ethnography: Making Routes, Making Place and Making Images [27 paragraphs]. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 9(3), Art. 36, http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0803362.

Pink, S. Hubbard, P. O’Neill, M. & Radley, A. (2010) ‘Walking across disciplines from ethnography to arts practice’ in Visual Studies, 25 (1): 46–58

Pink, S. (2012) Advances in Visual Methods, London: Sage

Wacquant, L. (2010) ‘Join a gym or a stamp club, says boxing professor ‘in Network Summer http://loicwacquant.net/assets/Papers/JOINAGYMSTAMPCLUB.pdf [accessed: 15th February 2016]

Wacquant, L. (2008) Urban Outcasts, Cambridge: Polity

Wacquant, L. (2009) Punishing the Poor, Cambridge: Polity