I’m Harvey Oldershaw, a third-year law and criminology student who took part in Dr Chris Moore’s project “Crime Prevention, Social Activism, and Ordinary Life in 1980s Britain.”
Throughout June and July, I was researching different crime prevention schemes in the 1980s in Britain. I was initially drawn to this project since I am interested in both criminology and history, the latter of which I studied at A-level and the former which I currently study alongside law. Throughout my criminology course we had delved into crime in the 1980s – looking at what criminological theories there were at the time, the public’s fear of crime and the government’s response to it. I therefore thought that this internship would provide me with some greater insight, which I could both directly apply to my studies and use to develop my researching skills.
On the first day of the internship, I was able to meet the other two interns undertaking the project, which was invaluable to the work we undertook as we were able to communicate throughout the 6-week period and see what each other were doing and how we were getting on. A few days later, we met with our project lead, who gave us some more detailed information about the internship and gave us our initial tasks. He wanted us to look at three different crime prevention initiatives set up and operating throughout the 1980s and 90s predominantly. As there were three of us we were each given a scheme to go away and research. This entailed searching through newspaper archives for any mention of the scheme, which in my case was Crimestoppers, in order to gain an understanding of the media and publics’ opinions.
I initially started looking through the Daily Mirror in an effort to understand their perspective on Crimestoppers. Being a more centrist/leftist newspaper it was then interesting to contrast this with the Daily Mail, a more right-wing paper. After spending many hours looking through articles it was interesting to see what sort of trends emerged over 10+ years. One thing that especially stood out to me was the dramatic growth of Crimestoppers from its inception. Despite initial concerns over how much it may actually achieve, the scheme quickly created a new, widely-used avenue for informers to give information to the police, with the key selling point being that the phoneline was anonymous. The scheme was set up by Michael Ashcroft, a controversial Tory businessman, but this fact was never really connected with Crimestoppers, as it seemed to ascend past politics. Every few months or even week seemingly a new initiative within the Crimestoppers umbrella would emerge, relating to a very niche but relevant crime issue, such as scaffolding theft or benefits fraud. The Daily Mirror especially was highly critical of Ashcroft but meanwhile was actively collaborating with Crimestoppers.
After having thoroughly researched through both newspapers and made some overarching conclusions, the three of us interns and our project lead met up again to discuss next steps and what we had found. It was very interesting to see what the other two interns had found when looking into Crimewatch UK and Neighbourhood Watch respectively, as it provided me with a wider understanding of the period. Following on from this meeting I then set about trying to get more information on Crimestoppers by looking at other British newspapers. I first looked at The Times, followed by The Independent, The Financial Times, The Listener and The Spectator. It was interesting to see what all of these different papers thought about the scheme, such as The Independent, which heavily focused on the idea of an ‘informer state’ being created and therefore criticising Crimestoppers. Throughout the internship I made notes on these articles as well as inputting brief summaries on each into a shared Excel document which allowed all of us to put all of our information in the same place.
Overall, I found the internship very insightful and engaging. It widened my understanding of the period and gave me some very useful information about different newspapers and their opinions. It also strengthened my researching skills, as well as my ability to organise the information I found in an easily understandable and accessible way. I was able to develop my time management skills, as I needed to make sure I completed the 40 hours over the 6 week period, fitting it in amongst other commitments. Finally, it allowed me to further my critical analysis skills, having to make conclusions and spot trends within a large bank of information. This skill is especially important for my degree, and will help me to succeed when going into the final year of my course.
Harvey Oldershaw, LLB Law with Criminology