Mike Sutton (criminologist)

Michael "Mike" Sutton (born 1959) is the originator of the Market Reduction Approach (MRA) to theft.^[1][2] Described by Marcus Felson as classic research ^[3] and as a simple idea,^[4] Sutton's MRA has had a significant influence upon theory and practice regarding stolen goods markets and markets for other illicit commodities. Influential criminologists have incorporated Sutton’s work on stolen goods markets to explain the issue of offenders’ capacity to commit crimes.^[5] Hopkins Burke writes of Sutton’s earlier work on the MRA: “He suggests that judges and their advisors should consider the social harm stolen goods markets do in stimulating the incidence and prevalence of theft – and the unintended consequences of providing subsidies for the illicit sex and drugs industries."^[6] His general MRA principles have influenced work beyond research into markets for theft of high volume consumer goods, since the MRA is described as underpinning recent research into illicit markets for cultural artefacts^[7][8] and as a useful method for tackling the trade in endangered species.^[9][10]

Sutton is the founding General Editor of the open access Internet Journal of Criminology.^[11] He is Reader in Criminology, teaches hi-tech crime and crime reduction, and is founding Director of the Centre for the Study and Reduction of Hate Crimes at Nottingham Trent University. In the field of Hate Crimes, Sutton has published journal articles on the subject of inter-racial relationships and violence.^[12][13]

Biography

Sutton was born in Orpington in Kent. On graduating with BA (hons) Law and PhD from the University of Central Lancashire in 1987, he worked for 14 years as Senior Research Officer in the UK Government's Home Office Department for Research Statistics and Development, and later in the Policing and Reducing Crime Unit. He was on the team that evaluated the unit fines experiment in the UK,^[14] the findings of which led the British Government to implement means related fines.^[15] At a national level the results proved disastrous as the legislation was rapidly repealed following a media outcry.^[16] In 1996, he was part of the team that evaluated the £50m Safer Cities Project, finding it cost effective in reducing domestic burglary.^[17][18] Pease says of Sutton’s 1996 finding in his evaluation of the decision making by Safer Cities coordinators that many turned their backs on what worked in favour of what they believed should work as a “strikingly thought provoking result.”.^[19]

Research

Described as a valuable analysis in the Oxford Handbook of Criminology,^[20] Sutton's Market Reduction Approach to theft was independently evaluated by criminologists from the University of Kent^[21] who wrote that the theory remains sound but that the police implementing it in Kent (Medway towns) and Manchester in the UK experienced problems doing it properly due to particular policing management/organisational difficulties. Despite the fact that police forces are notoriously resistant to change, the so-called Sutton Bible "Tackling Theft With The Market Reduction Approach"^[22] is currently the most popular policing guide to tackling theft by cracking down on thieves selling their loot in stolen goods markets. In addition, Sutton's MRA reveals how to identify and police various types of fence (dealers in stolen goods) and the wider buying public.

Sutton's initial five-fold typology of stolen goods markets was discussed by the Secretary of State in the UK Parliament in 2004.^[23]

In 1999 Sutton's virtual ethnography of a smart card hacking group was awarded (jointly with David Mann) the British Journal of Criminology annual prize for the article^[24] that most significantly contributed to academic knowledge. This article influenced the work of UK Government Foresight Panel on Crime in 2000.^[25]

Sutton's early research into vandalism^[26] identified Peer Status Motivated Vandalism as the seventh sub-type of vandalism that was missing from the typology created by Stanley Cohen.^[27] Sutton's sub-type was identified years later by Mathew Williams (criminologist) in an article in the Internet Journal of Criminology as the most suitable explanation for the motivation behind the "virtual vandalism" he studied in a 3D Internet community.^[28]

Sutton's Home Office funded Government research report Getting the Message Across^[29] on the best use of media for reducing racial prejudice and discrimination famously found that the UK Government, and many of its departments and funded bodies, have been wasting scarce resources on unproven and non-evaluated publicity campaigns that could well have backfired and made the problem worse.

Whilst fact checking a well known story about the impact of bad data on policy making, Sutton debunked a long-standing academic myth about a misplaced decimal point in biochemistry research influencing the erroneous promotion of spinach as a good source of iron.^[30]

Sutton's MRA work Handling Stolen Goods and Theft: A Market Reduction Approach provides the most systematic and comprehensive research into stolen goods markets ever undertaken – revealing that in 1994, 11% of the population of England and Wales bought stolen goods in the past five years^[31] and outlining five key market types that show how the most commonly stolen goods are sold.

Patrick Matthew and natural selection

In 2014, Sutton published an e-book, Nullius in Verba: Darwin’s Greatest Secret,^[32] alleging that Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace plagiarised the theory of natural selection from Scottish naturalist Patrick Matthew. Matthew had published On Naval Timber and Arboriculture in 1831, twenty-eight years before Darwin's On the Origin of Species, but Darwin claimed that neither he, nor any naturalist he knew, had read Matthew's work. Sutton rejects this claim, identifying seven naturalists who cited the book before 1858, and that three of those (John Cloudius Loudon, Prideaux John Selby and Robert Chambers) were well known to Darwin and his associates. He also analysed similarities between Darwin's, Wallace's and Matthew's writings, particularly unpublished essays by Darwin and Wallace's 1855 Sarawak paper that was published in a journal edited by Selby. Sutton points out that Loudon was the editor of two influential papers on species and variety written by Blyth and that Chambers wrote, anonymously, the influential Vestiges of Creation.

Sutton's claims garnered media attention,^[33][34][35] and a paper on the topic was also accepted for the British Criminology Conference that year.^[36] Sutton's university, Nottingham Trent University, has backed his claims,^[37] but Darwin biographer James Moore declared it a "non-issue", and said that "I would be extremely surprised if there was any new evidence had not been already seen and interpreted in the opposite way.".^[35] On The Patrick Matthew Project website, Dr Mike Weale, of Kings College, London, published his position paper on Sutton's findings, a statement of reply by Sutton, and provided a link to Sutton's position paper.^[38] Until March 2015, only one picture of Matthew existed in the public domain. On March 13, 2015, Sutton exclusively published newly unearthed pictures.^[39] In May 2015, in light of the unique discovery by Sutton - contrary to the prior majority view that absolutely no naturalists had read it - that in fact seven naturalists, four of whom were well known to Darwin, and two known to Wallace, had both read and cited Matthew's book before 1858,^[40] Nottinghamshire artist Gabriel Woods completed the allegorical analogy in oils on canvas 'Immaculate Deception' depicting Darwin's and Wallace's claimed independent discoveries of Matthew's prior published hypotheses.^[41]

External links

• Official website

References