1 - Introduction: Narrative, Criminology, and Fiction

Summary

Introduction

Bronwen Hughes’ Stander (2003) is a cinematic biography of Andre Stander, a captain in the South African Police who achieved international fame as a prolific bank robber from 1977 to 1984. The problem with the work from a criminological point of view is not that it misrepresents the character of Stander, but that it reveals the limitations of the discipline as it is for the most part practised in the English-speaking world. Although the film purports to be a biopic, Hughes fictionalises her protagonist to the extent that he bears little resemblance to the reality and the directorial sleight of hand is compounded by Thomas Jane, who plays the part with charisma, charm, and pathos. Stander's egoism, hubris, and psychopathic personality traits such as sexual predation and animal abuse have been replaced with a self-sacrificial concern for the victims of apartheid for which there is no evidence (Moorcraft and Cohen 1984). As such, the film provides an example of why most criminologists are sceptical about the criminological value of fiction and of the obstacles that must be negotiated if fiction is to be brought into the fold of the discipline. The problem for criminology, however, is revealed in the courtroom scene. Referring to the internal stability duties he has performed on behalf of the apartheid regime, Stander states simply: ‘I’m tried for robbing banks, but I have killed unarmed people’ (Stander 2003). The judge is not interested in his confession and Hughes suggests that there can be no private moral responsibility in a public administration without a moral compass. From a legal perspective, the judge is correct: Stander's actions during the Soweto uprising of 1976 were not criminal under South African law, but his armed robberies were. If criminologists want to be able to say something about the greater of the two crimes, apartheid, then they must look beyond the narrow confines of the law.

Criminology is, as the name suggests, the academic discipline that takes crime as its subject. The concept of crime is a complex one and Sandra Walklate (2017) identifies six distinct understandings: legal, moral, social, humanistic, social constructionist, and harm. In order to grapple with this diversity, six are usually reduced to two: legal and harm.