Abstract
This chapter considers the way in which the military and crime nexus is currently interpreted and understood, both theoretically at a social policy level. Considering former military personnel’s involvement in crime in England, it argues that within mainstream media, public and governmental circles there are only a limited consideration of offending by ex-forces personnel. In particular, it contrasts the assumed acceptance that violent offending by veterans is linked to combat trauma, with the more complex reality of some former servicemen’s seeming heightened involvement in serious sexual violence and violent crime. Drawing on empirical evidence from research with the Howard League (Inquiry into former armed service personnel in prison. London: Howard League for Penal Reform, 2011) on former British military personnel in the English prison system, it provides a critical reflection on the veteran offender connection. It considers how little consideration has been given to the very term ‘veteran’ or the realities of this cohort’s violent and sexual crimes, and how frequently the very institution of the military is removed from any critical consideration of why they offend. It calls for greater empirical understanding of the complex motives and drivers of offending by veterans, including greater consideration of the role of the military as a backdrop to men’s future criminal violence.
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Notes
- 1.
The quotes here were generated as part of the empirical work for the Howard League inquiry into ex-armed forces in custody, and come from tape recorded and transcribed interviews with verified former service personnel in three prisons in England and Wales, a project on which the author acted as academic consultant and researcher. Further details about how they were generated are published elsewhere (Howard League 2011). Names are pseudonyms.
- 2.
Much of the literature on former armed forces personnel in Prison has employed the term Veterans in prison, yet in many ways the issue of criminal justice involved forces is made more complex by the ambiguity of the very term. While for many people the term veteran connotes at least the image or idea of service in conflict, the reality is that the very term is conceptually ambiguous to the point of being almost wholly unhelpful. That in part results from the fact that as a term it has been used to identify anyone who has served in the British Armed forces for a single day or their dependants and hence encompasses a significant group of people, many who do not self-identify with the term. In contrast the term ‘ex-service personnel in the criminal justice system’ tends to be less ambiguous and divisive and it is notable that this is that now being employed by the MoJ in the UK.
- 3.
Payne, a former soldier of the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment, became the first member of the British armed forces to be convicted of a war crime under the provisions of the International Criminal Court Act 2001 when he pleaded guilty in September 2006 to a charge of inhumane treatment. He was jailed for one year and dismissed from the army. His charge related to the beating to death of Iraqi captive Baha Mousa, despite the fact that responsibility was unlikely his sole preserve, and followed a general climate of acceptance of inhumane treatment that rises into the higher echelons of the military and government, Payne is the only individual to be held in any way liable (for a fantastic overview, see Williams 2012).
- 4.
Government figures show that in the UK, overall violent and sexual offences combined account for some 58% of all veterans’ offences in England and Wales.
- 5.
Some may take exception to the idea that the military also plays no part in cultivating accepting attitudes towards alcohol; and alcohol, it should be noted, frequently features quite prominently in both sexual and violent offending.
- 6.
Taken from authors’ personal notes (at Portcullis House, London) at the launch event of the Secretary of States inquiry into veterans in the criminal justice system. Such a line is not one in that is in keeping with Grayling’s usual unsympathetic attitudes to prisoners and those who fell under the auspices of the criminal justice system (and it is worth noting that this pronouncement was made at the height of the controversy of his ‘ban on books in prison’, much protested against by the Howard League). It is also interesting that the emphasis on combat misconstrues the reality of most veterans in custody.
- 7.
Part of the Governments Criminal Justice Agenda, termed transforming rehabilitation which sought greater involvement of the non-statutory and private sector in provision of rehabilitation services to ex-offenders, and has proved continually controversial.
- 8.
While anecdotal, an interesting complaint I have heard several times from ex-forces personnel in prison concerns how many armed forces charities refuse to work with or support any former forces personnel convicted of a sexual offences.
- 9.
At the time of writing the total male prison estate stood at 81,900, if middling estimates that approximately 6% of these men are ex-forces are correct, some 4914 individuals, which is above the female prison population of 3943. Although such calculations are somewhat crude, the point is well made that ex-forces cohort and the factors underscoring their crime have received far less academic and social consideration than women in custody.
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Treadwell, J. (2016). The Forces in the Firing Line? Social Policy and the ‘Acceptable Face’ of Violent Criminality. In: McGarry, R., Walklate, S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Criminology and War. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-43170-7_18
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