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19 January 2011: Dick Hobbs on R4's Thinking Allowed on crime in West Belfast

"Committing crime in West Belfast carries a double jeopardy. As well as the police, there are the paramilitaries to look out for. Between 1973 and 2007 there were two and a half thousand shootings and beatings attributed to republican paramilitaries as punishment attacks. Young people have been 'tarred and feathered', had their legs broken, hundreds have been 'knee-capped' and a few have been 'executed' - i.e. murdered - in response to what they are assumed to have done. For three years at the height of this practice Heather Hamill lived and worked in the Catholic Community of West Belfast to research the pseudo-judicial process administered by the IRA. As punishment attacks are growing again, this time at the hands of dissident republican groups, she discusses paramilitary punishment attacks with Laurie and the criminologist Professor Dick Hobbs." (BBC R4)

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Professor Dick Hobbs joined the University in January 2011 from the LSE. He has research interests in professional and organised crime, violence, and the political economy of crime. He is also interested in ethnographic work and working class entrepreneurship and the night-time economy. Dick is currently leading an ESRC funded research project on ‘A Sociology of Policing and Police-Community Relations at the London 2012 Olympics’.