Sunday Reflections

Labelled a Black Villain: and Understanding the Social Deprivation Mindset

Book description

Heavily featured in the media when it first appeared, Trevor Hercules has now updated and added to a work that led to his involvement challenging Government ministers and MPs on youth and black crime. Part biography, part critique of the system, part innovative proposals, this book is essential reading at a time of gun, knife and gang crime.

Heavily influenced by the author’s thoughts on how a mindset is created in all deprived communities in which ambition, employment, opportunity and advancement are thought impossible — something bound up with the advantages of the few (and where black people are concerned the shadow of the UK’s colonial past) — he guides readers along the pathways he discovered ‘the hard way’ as a dangerous young offender.

With a new Introduction, Foreword by Duncan Campbell, extended chapters and a whole new part on the Hercules Programme the book challenges entrenched ways of thinking and examines the Social Deprivation Mindset (SDM) that unless something is done to change it holds back countless young people to the detriment of society as a whole.

An extended edition of a classic work. By an adviser to Government on youth crime. Explains the ground-breaking SDM approach. Essential reading at a time of gun and knife crime. Now fully indexed.

Reviews

‘Now is the time more than ever for Government and others to take on board Trevor’s SDM technique for preventing youth, gun and knife crime’-- Justine Greening, former MP and Secretary of State for Education.

‘Magnificent ... a must read’— The Voice.

‘Hercules is on a mission to help young black men avoid prison … to divert them from crime by challenging the way they see the world’— Duncan Campbell.

‘Thank you for the Social Deprivation Mind-set Mr Hercules’— Black Youth of Communities.

‘Trevor knows the streets and Labelled a Black Villain — the first British prison memoir by a Black man — is to be commended to anyone interested in confronting the current challenges of gang crime, knife crime and disaffected youth — black or white’— Mike Nellis, Emeritus Professor of Criminal and Community Justice, Centre for Law, Crime and Justice, University of Strathclyde.

Author

Trevor Hercules is a reformed armed robber who served time in Wandsworth, Wormwood Scrubs, Parkhurst and other prisons. He has since spent 25 years working with young people and developing the “Hercules Programme”, aka the SDM. An adviser to the Ministry of Justice and MPs his other works include The Rage Within (2006). His wider interests include black history and culture, and playing the guitar.

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CCJS Podcast

I notice that in addition to his monthly recollections of cases from his days as a Probation Officer in London, Mike Guilfoyle has been interviewed by the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies and the podcast can be found here.  

History

The Centre for Crime and Justice Studies was established in July 1931 as the 'Association for the Scientific Treatment of Criminals'.

It was renamed the 'Institute for the Scientific Treatment of Delinquency' in July 1932, and the 'Institute for the Study and Treatment of Delinquency' in 1951. It adopted its current name – the 'Centre for Crime and Justice Studies' – in 1999.

The aim of the early founders of what became the Centre was to promote the notion, backed by scientific research, that there were better ways of dealing with offenders than prison and to translate this notion into action. This aspiration was crystallised in the first Annual Report, published in 1932, as follows:

• To initiate and promote scientific research into the causes and prevention of crime.
• To establish observation centres and clinics for diagnosis and treatment of delinquency and crime.
• To coordinate and consolidate existing scientific work in the prevention of delinquency and crime.
• To secure cooperation between all bodies engaged in similar work in all parts of the world, and ultimately to promote an international organisation.
• To assist and advise through the medium of scientific experts the judicial and magisterial bench, the hospitals and government departments in the investigation, diagnosis and treatment of suitable cases.
• To promote and assist in promoting educational and training facilities for students in the scientific study of delinquency and crime.
• To promote discussion and to educate the opinion of the general public on these subjects by publications and by other means.

In its early years ISTD was strongly oriented to psychoanalytical approaches to crime and criminality. Significant early figures included Dr Grace Pailthorpe, Dr Edward Glover, Professor Sigmund Freud, Professor Carl Jung and Doctor Otto Rank. The Portman Clinic, now part of the NHS, was set up by ISTD in 1933 to treat delinquent and criminal patients through psychoanalytic psychotherapy.

After the second world war ISTD was at the forefront of developments in the emerging discipline of Criminology in the UK. In 1953 it set up 'The Scientific Group for the Discussion of Delinquency Problems' as a forum for academic debate and analysis of crime and criminality. The Group became independent of ISTD in 1955 and in 1961 adopted its current name of 'The British Society of Criminology'.

In 1950, ISTD published the first issue of the British Journal of Delinquency. In 1960 the Journal's name was changed to the British Journal of Criminology, reflecting, in Edward Glover's words, 'the long distance policy of the ISTD to effect the extension of research into various non-criminal fields of observation'. The journal is now one of the foremost English language peer review journals in its subject area.

Today, the Centre operates as an independent educational charity that advances public understanding of crime and criminal justice.