This study examined the feasibility of routine activity theory in predicting online harassment victimization of people aged 15 to 30 years in the USA, Finland, Germany, and the UK. Logistic regression models controlled for socio-demographic factors, exposure to offender, target suitability, and absence of guardianship. According to the results, between 15 percent and 20 percent of respondents reported having been victims of online harassment. Of routine activity theory variables tested, only exposure to offenders was statistically significant in each of the four countries. Females were more likely to be victims than males in Finland, but not in other countries. Those with an immigrant background had a higher likelihood of being victims in Germany, but not in the other countries, whereas the protective role of guardianship was supported in the USA and Germany. Our findings indicate that while routine activity theory is a useful tool for predicting online victimization, its feasibility varied across countries.
Scandals have featured consistently in the development and operation of public policing in England and Wales. However, criminologists have rarely explored scandal as a concept or its attempted management by criminal justice organizations. This article contributes to the filling of this gap with the intention of initiating debate on the utility of scandal as a conceptual tool for the analysis of policing and criminal justice. It identifies the core components of a scandal using an analytical framework informed by scandal research undertaken across disciplinary areas. Taking a case study approach, this framework is applied to the Leveson Inquiry which explored a combination of potentially scandalous episodes within the overarching scandal of phone-hacking. The article concludes that phone-hacking was a scandal at macro and micro levels under this framework yet damage to the reputation of the police was mitigated through active impression management and enduring characteristics of the police image.
This article engages with the European debate on the position of foreign national prisoners in the context of the European Council Framework Decision that facilitates a prisoner’s transfer between the EU Member States (FD 909/2008). The study aims at capturing the experiences of 133 Romanian prisoners held in Italian and Spanish prisons, together with their intentions to engage or not with this new opportunity. One of the main findings of this research is that the explicit aim of the FD (social rehabilitation) is likely to be challenged by the intention of the foreign prisoners to use this FD to decrease the time spent behind bars. The article also puts forward a number of policy and practice recommendations that would improve the position of foreign prisoners in European prisons.
The academic literature detailing escalations in pre-existing substance use practices is primarily understood through a biomedical lens, which situates drug escalation as a result of increases in biological markers like drug tolerance and dependence. This article seeks to frame the escalation of prescription drug misuse within a paradigm that situates drug use as a dynamic and interactional learning process shaped by set and setting. The data drawn upon for this article are derived from 41 qualitative interviews of young adults (aged 18–29 years) socially active in nightlife scenes who reported engaging in smoking prescription painkillers, sedatives, or stimulants. Results highlight how theories of drug use as a deviant behavior that is socially learned can be stretched beyond explaining patterns of initiation to also address the escalation of pre-existing drug use behaviors as users’ transition from one route of administration to another.
This article seeks to provide a historical-critical framework to reconstruct and discuss how the crime victim is portrayed within theoretical literature, policy and legal documents on restorative justice, with an emphasis on England and Wales. It first centres on a description of the most deep-rooted and wide-ranging discourses on the victim’s characteristics within restorative justice. Once these features have been organized into an ‘ideal’ model, the article traces the conditions which fed into its development, that is, the cultural context within which this model has emerged. The overall goal is not to test the ‘ideal victim’ within restorative justice, but rather to explore how this methodological tool, within a historical and critical approach, might help to shed light on some taken-for-granted assumptions of restorative justice and their legal, policy and practical implications, thus contributing to the critical assessment of this acclaimed "new frontier" of contemporary penality.
The globalisation of new public management (NPM) across OECD countries had a profound impact on the administration and management of policing policy and practice. The ideologies of NPM were enthusiastically embraced in Australia in response to high-level corruption with mixed results. This article draws on interviews with senior Australian federal police to explore the policing of organised crime in the context of NPM. Emerging themes concerned the requirement to make the ‘business case’ for resources on the basis of strategic intelligence, recognition of the complexities associated with performance measurement and institutional competition as agencies vie for limited public resources. This article questions the discursive practices of NPM policing and raises questions about notions of ‘accountability’ and ‘transparency’ for effective police approaches to organised crime.
Due to the poor reputation of the private security industry and the multiple lines of concerns raised by scholars over the potentially corrosive costs of commercial security provision, it is important to consider whether for-profit companies are a welcome addition to the network of actors who respond to the needs of domestic violence victims. Using the case study of ‘Protective Services’ in Victoria, Australia, who appear to be one of the first known instances of a private security company offering services to victims of domestic violence, we argue that there may be advantages for victims engaging with commercial providers and reasons for optimism that commercial outfits can improve feelings of safety for a particularly vulnerable and under-protected population.
The work of Bourdieu has increasingly gained interest in criminology. His theoretical framework is rich and arguably the most sophisticated approach to social inequality and difference in sociology. It has however, been criticized for bias towards the structural aspects of social life, and for leaving little space for the constitutive, and creative role of language. We argue for the inclusion of narrative for understanding street fields. Based on qualitative interviews with 40 incarcerated drug dealers in Norway, we describe the narrative repertoire of the street field, including stories of crime business, violence, drugs and the ‘hard life’. The narrative repertoire is constituted by street capital, but also upholds and produces this form of capital. Street talk is embedded in objective social and economic structures and displayed in the actors’ habitus. Narratives bind the street field together: producing social practices and social structure.
The English summer riots of 2011 resulted in the criminal justice system having to process an unprecedented number of offenders in a short timeframe. This study explores sentencing practice in the wake of the riots using the 2011 Crown Court Sentencing Survey. A multilevel model was implemented to specify the probability of receiving a custodial sentence for offences of commercial burglary. This model allows exploring differences in sentencing before and after the riots. An increased probability of receiving a custodial sentence in the post-riot period was identified. An increase in variability was also detected, changing from a state of almost perfect consistency to one in which substantial variation was observed between courts. Custodial rates for burglary increased to a level associated with more serious offences, thereby undermining the principle of proportionality. This, as well as the increased dispersion between courts, challenges other principles such as legal certainty and transparency.
In 2011 the high profile murder of Clare Wood led to the introduction of the national domestic violence disclosure scheme (‘Clare’s Law’) in England and Wales. The scheme aims to prevent the perpetration of violence between intimate partners through the sharing of information about prior histories of violence. Despite already spreading to comparable jurisdictions in the UK and Australia, to date the merits of a domestic violence disclosure scheme have been the subject of limited scholarly review and analysis. This article provides a timely critical analysis of the need for and merits of Clare’s Law. It examines the data impediments to the scheme, the need to balance the right to protection with the right to privacy and the question of victim empowerment versus responsibilization and victim blaming. The article concludes that there is a need to heed caution in adopting this policy elsewhere.
While procedural justice has been highlighted as a key strategy for promoting cooperation with police, little is known about this model’s applicability to subgroups engaged in illegal behaviour, such as illicit drug users. This study compares willingness to cooperate with police and belief in police legitimacy, procedural justice and law legitimacy among a population-based sample of Australian young adult amphetamine-type stimulant (ATS; i.e. ecstasy and methamphetamine) users and non-users. We then examine predictors of willingness to cooperate among ATS users. ATS users were significantly less willing to cooperate with police and had significantly lower perceptions of police legitimacy, procedural justice and law legitimacy, compared to non-users. However, belief in police legitimacy independently predicted willingness to cooperate among ATS users. We set out to discuss the implications of these findings for policing, including the role of procedural justice in helping police deliver harm reduction strategies.
The literature on desistance from crime has become well established in recent years with strong bodies of evidence supporting the role of factors such as employment, relationships and identity change in this process. However, the relevance of this literature to individuals convicted of sexual crimes is not known as such individuals are almost always excluded from this research. This article presents the results from one of the first empirical studies on desistance from sexual offending based on 32 in-depth life story interviews with adult males previously convicted of child sex offences. In this analysis we explore the significance of work, the role of relationships and changes in imagined selves in the self-identities of individuals successfully desisting from sexual offending. The findings provide support for all three factors in helping to sustain desistance from sex offending, but also suggest clear differences between desistance from sex offending and other types of crime in these regards.
Concerns about the criminal justice response to rape have prompted the development of victim advocacy services across a range of jurisdictions, yet research evidence about the nature, meaning and value of advocacy remains limited. This article draws upon a study evaluating an innovative advocacy model introduced in Scotland to assist reporting rape to the police. Findings from interviews with nine victims highlight the importance of advocacy that is independent of statutory and criminal justice agencies. However, it is argued that this does not mitigate the need for specialization or reform in the criminal justice response to rape and, further, that the distinction between advocacy at an individual and societal level represents a false dichotomy.
The complainants’ memory of the rape is commonly the key and frequently the only evidence in the investigation and prosecution of rape allegations. Details, specificity and consistency in the victim’s recollection are central criteria that criminal justice agents – police, prosecutors and juries – use to assess the credibility of the victim account. However, memory research has shown these to be poor indicators of the accuracy of a memory. In this article we develop a conceptual model of the pathways through which normal features of the human memory result in complaints of rape dropping out of criminal justice process without a full investigation, prosecution or conviction, with a particular focus on the role of inconsistencies in the victim account. We provide initial, tentative evidence from a large, representative sample of rape complaints and discuss implications for criminal justice policy.
Scholarship on criminal careers and desistance from crime employing longitudinal methodologies has paid scant attention to sociological and anthropological debates regarding epistemology, reflexivity and researcher positionality. This is surprising in light of a recent phenomenological turn in desistance research wherein (former) lawbreakers’ identity, reflexivity and self-understanding have become central preoccupations. In this article I interrogate aspects of the methodological ‘underside’ of qualitative longitudinal research with criminalized women through an examination of the surveillant position of the researcher. Focusing on methods, ethics and power, I examine some contradictions of feminist concerns to ‘give women voice’ in research involving re-tracing an over-surveilled and highly stigmatized population. I reflect on the effects of researcher positionality through a conceptualization of re-tracing methods as, at worst, a form of sociological stalking.
In 2013 a joint report by the Inspectorates of Probations and Prisons in England and Wales concluded that offender management in prisons was ‘not working’ and called for a fundamental review. This article considers why existing arrangements have failed and draws upon theory and research on resettlement, case management and desistance from crime, to define what a more effective system of ‘rehabilitative resettlement’ – both inside prison and ‘through the gate’ – might look like. It also comments on emerging proposals for radical change, including abandonment of the ‘end to end’ model of offender management by an outside probation officer and the development of ‘rehabilitative prisons’, in which more responsibility is placed on prisoners for managing their own rehabilitation, and a formal motivational role is created for large numbers of prison staff.
This study empirically examines the everyday problem of corrupt policing and other related abuses in Nigeria, and how these deviant behaviours engender public cynicism towards the law. In any democratic society, police officers are expected to be accountable for their actions and inactions. But the perennial problem in Nigeria is that the police are not accountable to anyone. The history of Nigeria policing is littered with accounts of deviance, malevolent attitudes towards the public and failures of the police organization in detecting or disciplining errant officers. Using a sample of 462 participants from a cross-sectional survey, this study examines whether actual or vicarious experiences of police deviance are likely to predict public cynicism towards the law. This current study corroborates previous assertions that the relationship between the police and the public in Nigeria is poor and that police deviance engenders cynicism towards the law. Implications for policymaking and law-abiding behaviour are discussed.
The link between experiences of care and criminal justice systems is well documented, yet curiously neglected in policy and practice. While the over-representation of care leavers in the justice system is often taken as given, there has been negligible change in policy and practice that appropriately responds to the needs of these individuals. Drawing on interviews with practitioners, this article highlights a series of organizational and institutional barriers to implementing a unique intervention. More broadly, such barriers contribute to the persistence of care(less) practice, facilitating the neglect of care leavers’ needs to a system dominated by risk. It is argued that the continued inertia within this area can only be construed as practice negligence and an affront to justice.
In June 2014 approx. 54 per cent of the total probation service workforce in England and Wales were transferred to the newly created Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) as part of the government’s plans to establish a market for offender management services. This marked the beginning of one of the largest and most significant migrations of criminal justice staff from the public to the private sector in England and Wales. This article presents findings from an ethnographic study of the formation of one of these CRCs through to the period immediately following the transfer into private ownership. The authors discuss the key features of this migration which are identified as ‘splitting and fracturing’, ‘adapting and forming’ and ‘exiting or accommodation’. It is contended that this development not only has significant implications for the future of probation services but also provides a unique example of the impact on an occupational culture of migration from the public to the private sector.
This article addresses the issues involved in using compliance with probation supervision as an interim outcome measure in evaluation research. We address the complex nature of compliance and what it implies. Like much research on probation and criminal justice more generally, it was not possible to use random assignment to treatment and comparison groups in the case study we address, which evaluated the SEED training programme. We therefore compare two different data analysis methods to adjust for prior underlying differences between groups, namely regression adjustment of treatment covariates that are related to the outcome measure in the sample data and regression adjustment using propensity scores derived from a wide range of baseline variables. The propensity score method allows for control of a wider range of baseline variables, including those which do not differ significantly between the two groups.
This article discusses the digital inequalities experienced by prisoners and the potential opportunities that providing ‘new’ media in prisons offer for offender rehabilitation and resettlement. Currently denied access to online and social media that most of us take for granted, and unable to communicate in ways that have become ‘ordinary’ in the wider community, it is argued that prisoners experience profound social isolation and constitute one of the most impoverished groups in the digital age. In prisons which provide selected prisoners some access to information and communication technologies, their high socio-cultural status and consequent construction as a ‘privilege’ frequently results in them being used in the exercise of ‘soft’ power by prison officer gatekeepers. Moreover, when prisoners come to the end of their sentences, they not only are faced with prejudice and poor job prospects due to their criminal record, but their digital exclusion during a period of incarceration may have compound effects and lead to long-term and deep social exclusion.
In response to the incidents of intimate partner murders of immigrant Nigerian women in the USA in recent years, a sample of immigrant Nigerian women in Houston were invited in 2013 to engage in focus group discussions of ways to tackle intimate partner violence (IPV) in the immigrant Nigerian community. Findings reveal a fundamental relationship between patriarchal ideologies and the views of immigrant women from Nigeria. Immigrant Nigerian women are likely to interpret IPV and perceive solutions to it in patriarchal ideologies and practices held in their country of origin – an approach that endorses and reinforces IPV. Based on these findings, this article recognizes the need to make patriarchy salient in studies of IPV among immigrant communities from Africa. Further, the article recognizes the absence of adequate knowledge of IPV against immigrant Nigerian women and other immigrant African women, so that IPV risk and preventive factors for these immigrant groups may not be captured sufficiently in policy and practice.
Drawing on interviews with drivers and passengers, this article discusses the perception of fear and management of victims of intercity bus robberies. It compares the victimization that takes place during bus robberies on highways and where buses are diverted off route. It addresses the relationship between perception of fear, the vehicle characteristics, multiplicity of victims, and duration of robbery. The article highlights important variations in the perception of violence according to the robbers’ victim management style as well as to the roles of and responses by drivers and passengers in the different phases of the coercive process. It concludes by arguing that it is urgent for the state to exercise its regulatory authority over these crimes and to guarantee security in bus transport.
This study examines the unique experience of participants who during their reintegration back into the community, following a conviction for sexual offending, re-engaged with religious and spiritual communities. To explore meaning Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was adopted. Four in-depth interviews of men convicted for sexual crimes were undertaken and analysed. Findings indicate that through religious affiliation participants were: exposed to new prosocial networks; provided opportunities to seek forgiveness; felt a sense of belonging and affiliation; and were psychologically comforted. However, the study also found that the process of identity transition from ‘offender’ to ‘non-offender’ was not seamless or straightforward for those with an innate sexual deviancy towards children, caution is therefore advised.
In England and Wales, ‘punishment’ is a central element of criminal justice. What punishment entails exactly, however, and how it relates to the other aims of sentencing (crime reduction, rehabilitation, public protection and reparation), remains contested. This article outlines different conceptualizations of punishment and explores to what extent offenders subscribe to these perspectives. The analysis is supported by findings from two empirical studies on the subjective experiences of imprisonment and probation, respectively. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 15 male and 15 female prisoners and seven male and two female probationers. Two primary conceptualizations of punishment were identified: ‘punishment as deprivation of liberty’ and ‘punishment as hard treatment’. The comparative subjective severity of different sentences and the collateral (unintended) consequences of punishment are also discussed. It is shown that there are large individual differences in the interpretation and subjective experience of punishment, which has implications for the concept of retributive proportionality, as well as the function of punishment more generally.
Immigration Removal Centres (IRCs) are deeply contested institutions that rarely open their doors to independent research. In this article we discuss some of the complications we faced in conducting the first national British study of everyday life in them. As we will set out, research relationships were difficult to forge due to low levels of trust and unfamiliarity with academic research. At the same time, many participants had unrealistic expectations about our capacity to assist while most exhibited high levels of distress. We were not immune from the emotional burden of the field sites. Such matters were compounded by the limited amount of published information about life in IRCs and a lack of ethical guidelines addressing such places. Drawing on related literature from prison sociology, we use our experiences in IRCs to set out a methodological account of understanding, ethics, and impact within these complex sites.
This article analyses the representations of regulated nuisance in a section of Flemish newspapers over time. It identifies the groups of people who have been successful in conveying messages in and through Flemish press news, and explores the way they have represented problems of, and suggested solutions to, regulated incivilities over the years. Furthermore, against the backdrop of newsmaking criminology, it considers whether and how crime and justice experts have contributed to shaping the Flemish media discourse on regulated incivilities over time. Overall the analysis of press news has found that the press, by giving coverage to the voices of local institutional actors, has promoted the criminalization of nuisance and, especially, of physical incivilities. The views of criminological experts, by contrast, have remained marginal. The article concludes by suggesting how such findings present a new set of empirical and conceptual challenges for newsmaking criminology, and more generally, for public criminology.
When self-service checkout (SCO) first launched in the United States in 1992 there was considerable scepticism and, perhaps not surprisingly, concern that huge losses would follow. Despite conflicting evidence on their impact on shrinkage, and customer theft in particular, consumer-oriented payment systems are an increasingly common feature of the retail environment. This paper reviews how the move to SCO has affected retail theft. Drawing on recent market research surveys suggesting that up to a third of customers regularly steal when using SCO in supermarkets, the paper outlines the aetiology of a new breed of shoplifter, ‘the SWIPERS’, and presents a typology of these offenders.
This article is about the place of those sentenced in criminal justice sanctions. Specifically, it reports on the findings of a co-productive qualitative inquiry that sought to explore the place and possibility of service user co-production within justice sanctions, drawing on the experience of people with convictions. The conclusion of the article is that participation and co-production matters in justice sanctions. The detail and implications of this conclusion are discussed.
Drawing upon the findings of a 31-month ethnographic study in a residential Therapeutic Community (TC) for substance use, this article sheds light on the challenges and contradictions which surround the introduction of increasingly commercial/business-orientated decisions within the alcohol and drug treatment field. The aim of this article is to critically reflect upon the implementation of an outcome-orientated policy directive, typically referred to as payment by results (PbR), in a residential rehabilitation service, and consider the implications which surround the initiative for those at the coal face of service delivery. The fundamental principles of PbR and the TC are discussed, as are the tensions and dilemmas which surround the implementation of a high-level policy directive that is fundamentally dissimilar to the theoretical ambitions and practice that takes place on the ground in a residential rehabilitation service. To conclude, the article suggests that incentives, with a clear focus on saving money rather than saving lives, provide little more than additional pressures and strains at the coal face of service delivery, transforming individual progression into a financially driven bureaucratic process. The findings not only illustrate the dehumanizing properties of outcome-based payment schemes but bring mainstream representations of effectiveness into sharp focus.
Approaches to intersectionality stress the importance of recognizing multiple, intersecting inequalities. As such, recent sentencing research has examined the changing role of extra-legal characteristics on United States federal sentencing outcomes in the aftermath of recent policy changes (e.g. United States v. Booker), but scholarship has less often examined these characteristics at the intersections of race/ethnicity, gender, and, especially age. This article uses an intersectional approach to examine the influence of these characteristics net of legally relevant characteristics. Using ordinary least squares regression procedures, the author examines the role of the joint effects of extra-legal variables on sentence length decisions across four distinct time periods. Net of control variables, results indicate that young black men are the group most likely to receive the longest sentences, but interesting differences between other groups also emerge.
The Scottish Crime and Justice Survey (SCJS) consistently suggests similar prevalence of domestic abuse among men and women, a finding used variously to indicate men and women’s equal risk of abuse and to dismiss the survey as a means to explore such experiences. However, assertions of equal risk are based on limited analyses of data reduced to ‘key’ figures for public dissemination, and subsequent criticisms fail to meaningfully engage with the broader data offered by the survey. Theoretically informed multivariate analyses demonstrate that risk of abuse is inadequately captured by such figures, supporting that women and men are not at equal risk, and that gender is but one of a number of influential risk factors. This article proposes the SCJS data could be put to greater use, offering rich information for developing theory and responses to violence, and that critical engagement with the survey is necessary to facilitate methodological improvement.
Desistance is generally presented in a positive light, with themes of ‘making good’ and generativity recurring in the literature. This article reports on two qualitative studies exploring the desistance journeys of two different groups of ex-offenders, drawing attention to the pains of this process. It examines the possible consequences of these ‘pains of desistance’ and how they are linked to three spheres of desistance: act-desistance; identity desistance; and relational desistance. The attempt to achieve act-desistance often led to the pain of isolation for our interviewees, while the clash between the need to achieve identity desistance and a lack of relational desistance (especially on the meso- and macro-levels) meant that they suffered the pain of goal failure. The pains of isolation and goal failure combined to lead to the further pain of hopelessness. Those interviewed were indeed ‘going straight’, but taking this path led many to a limited and often diminished life.
A growing body of research has both described and forwarded hypotheses to account for the crime drop that has been observed in many western countries since 1995. Commentators have focused on falls observed for households and individuals, with little reflection on the commercial sector. This is surprising given that previous research has recognized both the high rate of crime against some business sectors and the potential impact of crime against more economically vulnerable enterprises. This article explores the crime drop in relation to businesses in England and Wales. It considers whether there is evidence of a crime drop, the extent to which this appears to mirror the patterns observed for households/individuals and presents some tentative hypotheses to explain the patterns observed. Some suggestions are also made for areas that require further research.
The law’s response to child offenders has long animated debate and sparked doctrinal law reform in England and Wales. The provision of legal protections for children in trouble with the law has been central to such debates, and questions surrounding the age at which a child should be held criminally responsible remain a contested area of law both domestically and internationally. In 1998 England and Wales abolished the presumption of doli incapax and retained the minimum age of criminal responsibility at 10 years old; two years below the United Nations’ recommended standard. This article examines the legal protections provided for child offenders under English criminal law with a focus on the adequacy of the age of criminal responsibility, the now abolished presumption of doli incapax and the merits of a developmental immaturity defence. Drawing on data obtained from interviews conducted with members of the English criminal justice system, this article analyses the extent to which legal practitioners perceive that the existing provisions are adequate and concludes by reinvigorating debate surrounding the need for future review and reform.
It appears to be a time of turbulence within the global drug policy landscape. The historically dominant model of drug prohibition endures, yet a number of alternative models of legalization, decriminalization and regulation are emerging across the world. While critics have asserted that prohibition and the ensuing ‘war on drugs’ lack both an evidence base and legitimacy, reformers are embracing these alternatives as indicators of progressive change. This article, however, argues that such reforms adhere to the same arbitrary notions, moral dogma and fallacious evidence base as their predecessor. As such they represent the ‘metamorphosis of prohibition’, whereby the structure of drug policy changes, yet the underpinning principles remain unchanged. Consequentially, these reforms should not be considered ‘progressive’ as they risk further consolidating the underlying inconsistencies and contradictions that have formed the basis of drug prohibition.
This article outlines the findings from a rapid assessment of pilot Drug Recovery Wings (DRWs) in two women’s prisons and compares the DRW approach with work undertaken in Women’s Community Services (WCSs) commended by the Corston Report. The findings indicate that DRW1 was working more successfully in providing a ‘Corstonian’ approach than DRW2 and the reasons behind this are explored. The article argues that, while pockets of good practice such as WCSs and ‘Corstonian’ DRWs are to be commended, unless there is a continuous care pathway, modelled on Corston’s ideas for working with vulnerable female offenders such as recovering drug users, such work will be limited in its effectiveness. Ideas for how such a systematic approach might work will be outlined.
In its Strategic Objectives for Female Offenders (2013) the Coalition government reiterated its support for robust and effective sentencing options that enable the majority of non-violent women offenders to be punished in the community. While a laudable ambition, this strategy will only be successful if sentencers are aware of (and support) the options available to achieve this goal. Considering government policy in relation to current levels of awareness among the magistracy, this article explores the factors that influence sentencing decisions for women. Highlighting reservations about the suitability of community provision, it also reveals the lack of information and training that magistrates receive on this issue. While there is certainly a willingness to learn and consider more creative options when sentencing women, it is clear that better knowledge of the offender and the options available are needed. Drawing on empirical research conducted with 168 magistrates in England and Wales, this article concludes with a number of practical avenues for improved communication, advocated by magistrates themselves. With many unaware of strategic direction on this issue, the implications for policy and practice are obvious.
This article presents a study of street children’s involvement in organized crime in Bangladesh. It is based on an empirical case study conducted in Dhaka and draws on interviews with 22 street children, 80 interviews with criminal justice practitioners, NGO workers and community members and over three years of participant observation of the Bangladeshi criminal justice system and wider society. The article explains how street children work for ‘mastaans’, Bangladeshi organized crime bosses. These children are hired to carry weapons, sell drugs, collect extortion money, commit political violence and conduct contract killings. This article argues that these children are neither victims nor offenders; they are instead ‘illicit labourers’, doing what they can to survive on the streets.
This article discusses women’s involvement in sex work management – an offence defined under section 358 of the 1997 Chinese Criminal Law and one of the re-emerged areas of illegality following the economic reforms since 1978. It first provides the historical context, legislative background and relevant sections of the Chinese vice laws so as to help make sense of the data obtained. Then it discusses the methodological issues before presenting the empirical findings to explore the socio-demographic profile of the incarcerated female sex work organizers who participated in this study and their motivations for organizing others for prostitution. Based on empirical data, this article explores the impact of social conditions on female offenders in China’s reform era and also the effects of the anti-prostitution policy in the country. Moreover, through a Chinese case study, it makes contributions to broader scholarship on the sex trade regulation. It concludes with a couple of implications for policy and practice.
Bourdieu’s key conceptual tools, including the forms of capital and habitus, have recently come to be deployed with greater frequency in criminological research. Less attention has been paid to the concept of the field, which plays a crucial role in Bourdieu’s vision of how the social world operates. We develop the concept of the "street field" as a tool for scholars of crime and deviance. The concept serves as a guide for research and an instrument of vigilance, drawing attention to the agonistic nature of social relations and the role of domination, the importance of contextual factors in shaping the objects we study, the skillfulness of agents, and the transformative effects of remaining within semi-enclosed domains of social action over extended periods of time.
This article examines the psychological impact of the online dating romance scam. Unlike other mass-marketing fraud victims, these victims experienced a ‘double hit’ of the scam: a financial loss and the loss of a relationship. For most, the loss of the relationship was more upsetting than their financial losses (many described the loss of the relationship as a ‘death’). Some described their experience as traumatic and all were affected negatively by the crime. Most victims had not found ways to cope given the lack of understanding from family and friends. Denial (e.g. not accepting the scam was real or not being able to separate the fake identity with the criminal) was identified as an ineffective means of coping, leaving the victim vulnerable to a second wave of the scam. Suggestions are made as to how to change policy with regards to law enforcement to deal with this crime.
Using the example of metal theft in the United Kingdom, this study used mixed methods to evaluate the accuracy of police estimates of the involvement of organized crime groups (OCGs) in crime. Police estimate that 20–30 per cent of metal theft is committed by OCGs, but this study found that only 0.5 per cent of metal thieves had previous convictions for offences related to OCGs, that only 1.3 per cent were linked to OCGs by intelligence information, that metal thieves typically offended close to their homes and that almost no metal thefts involved sophisticated offence methods. It appears that police may over-estimate the involvement of OCGs in some types of crime. The reasons for and consequences of this over-estimation are discussed.
Airport security is increasingly governed in liberal ways, allowing for flexibilized and marketized ways of outsourcing and contracting service provisions to the private sector. This article draws on expert interviews from the aviation sector, finding that liberal security governance at German airports enables public bodies not only to cut costs through competitive tendering practices, but also to re-locate accountability for security provision to private companies. The role of the public sector subsequently becomes one of managerialism and audits. However, there is a considerable downside to the promises of market regulation, putting severe hardships on the private security workforce and potentially undermining the quality of service provision. Thus, this article ultimately claims that public bodies should choose not to marketize security, as the value of security itself could be substantially undermined by neoliberal logics.
Drawing upon ethnographic research with Police Community Support Officers (PCSOs) working in two neighbourhood policing teams in northern England, this article presents a typology of PCSO orientations to work and for the first time details the ways in which PCSOs utilize aspects of the dominant culture to manage the discord between aspirations and opportunities within the PCSO role. Engagement with aspects of the dominant culture varied according to career aspirations and orientations to work; ‘Frustrated PCSOs’ were most likely to endorse cultural characteristics as a means of facilitating integration and enhancing opportunities for crime control, while Professional PCSOs selectively endorsed aspects of the dominant culture in an effort to diversify their deployment, enhance their effectiveness and to support the acquisition of craft skills, thereby strengthening any future applications to become police officers. The article concludes by considering the resilience of the traditional police culture, particularly the dominant crime-fighting ethos therein and the implications presented for the future of the PCSO role.
Juvenile justice systems and reformatory institutions hold the potential to help young offenders and drug abusers change their behaviours and life-courses. Driven by an ambition to pave new ways to examine the inner workings of reformatory institutions this study explores how young male offenders’ gendered identities are engaged in a Danish reformatory programme. In recent years existing research on the gendered aspects of reformatory interventions has highlighted how reformatory institutions at times work to promote desistance by problematizing offenders’ and drug-abusers’ performance of hyper-masculinity and by constructing therapeutic spaces where men can reformulate softer versions of masculinity. Contributing to this line of research, this study explores and discusses how reformatory programmes at times also utilize hyper-masculine symbolism and imaginaries to encourage young offenders and drug abusers to engage in narrative re-constructions of identities and to socialize these into new subject positions defined by agency, self-responsibility and behavioural changes.
This article explores the impact of a court-based advocacy service on the prosecution of domestic violence offences. The research, conducted as part of a PhD thesis, evaluated a team of Independent Domestic Violence Advisers (IDVAs) based within a Specialist Domestic Violence Court (SDVC). The author adopted the methodology of Realistic Evaluation in order to understand first, any impact of the court-based IDVA service on court outcomes, second, how any such outcomes were achieved and, finally, in what contexts they occurred. As this article explores, effective victim advocacy has the potential to impact positively on the prosecution of domestic violence offences.
This article explores the construction of a particular form of compliance in probation practice during a period in which policy shifted from enforcement towards compliance. The article uses four concepts from Bourdieu’s field theory (habitus, field, misrecognition and symbolic violence) to highlight the way in which the shift in policy was attuned to the subjective structure of probation practitioners’ habitus but resulted in a form of compliance which was myopic in nature and thus did not adhere to what we know about habitus in probation from other research. The article explores this phenomenon through Bourdieu’s notion of misrecognition, suggesting that whilst the policy change was regarded generally positively, it is an example of ‘symbolic violence’. In turn, this tells us about practitioners’ position in the field, which is useful in terms of future analyses of how changes to the delivery of community sanctions will manifest in the coming years.
China’s economic modernization has created a new underclass population characterized by destitution and dispossession. This group is linked to social instability that intimidates the state’s control of the society. This article examines Chinese penal policy changes in the face of the rising underclass in urban areas. It sets a preliminary comparative analysis on the penal strategies of this new disadvantaged group in the USA and China. In reviewing the penal practices in both realms, the article argues that China shares an ideological affinity with its western counterparts for imposing punitive and managerial justice on the underclass. However, this rationale is realized in different ways. In China it is realized through the operation of an extensive system of administrative detention (different from criminal punishment), which is run by public security officials and is not part of the judicial system. Being located outside the judicial system enables greater efficiency by channelling the underclass through more flexible and cost-effectiveness forms of incarceration and control.
This article addresses the issue of police officers’ use of discretion when responding to domestic violence. With reference to Ericson and Haggerty’s theory of risk-oriented policing, we collected data direct from information management systems in an English police force and conducted field observations with attending officers to explore the degree to which officers used discretion to interpret the national definition of domestic violence. We also considered how officers applied national standards for recording incidents and crimes. We found that considerable discretion was required to interpret the official definition of domestic violence, and that decision making in relation to recording or otherwise incidents and crimes of domestic violence was variable. Specifically, we found examples of domestic-related incidents not recorded as such, and examples of crimes either not or incorrectly recorded. The implications of these findings for policy and practice are discussed.
Despite overwhelming evidence that imprisonment has negative consequences for family members, very few studies have explored the mechanisms by which incarceration affects families and children. In particular, the father role is crucial to family members. Together with the fact that there have been few studies on incarcerated fathers and their relationships with significant others, this study draws on the theoretical bases and predictions of the identity theory to explore qualitatively the extent of expression of the fatherhood identity and the struggles and obstacles they experience in expressing it. This study documents qualitative reports of ex-prisoners’ behavioural responses in resolving the negative emotions (if any) induced by the discrepancy between their internalized standards and the appraisals of significant others. A total of 17 Chinese participants were recruited to take part in semi-structured interviews via referrals from social service centres in Hong Kong. Results were consistent with the predictions of identity theory. That is, ex-prisoners experienced an inability to meet their fatherhood identity standard during and after incarceration, and as a result their identity standards were weakened or they experienced withdrawal of fatherhood identity. However, participants were additionally found to employ positive strategies actively in coping with their compromised identity, suggesting avenues for further research.
This article presents the results of research carried out in two Italian cities, aimed at analysing the criminal justice system’s response to intimate partner violence. Research data were collected through the content analysis of judicial files concerning offences involving violence against women by a partner or a former partner. From the research, it appears that the Italian penal system tends to selectively de-construct and fragment the acts of violence, rather than to re-construct the facts as they actually took place. In criminal proceedings, the centrality of the woman’s cooperation is unquestionable. However, the ineffective response by the penal agencies could represent an instance of ‘circular causation’ linked to the so-called ‘trained inability’ of penal actors. In order to deal adequately with these issues, specific training is required for criminal justice system practitioners. It also seems necessary to resort to specific tools for risk assessment, in order to ensure the protection of the victim.
I argue that there are unconsidered complexities to police legitimacy and use examples from my study of police–public consultation forums in Edinburgh, Scotland to illustrate. I make a number of conceptual and methodological critiques by drawing upon Steven Lukes’ social theory on power to show how legitimacy can be a product of authority relations as much as it is a cause of authority relations. This view finds support from systems-justification theory. I also tackle Beetham’s conception of legitimacy and argue that there is evidence from police studies that the police breach his key antecedents to legitimacy without incurring the expected consequences. Furthermore, I take an original methodological approach to studying police legitimacy which reveals additional insights. For instance, Bottoms and Tankebe suggest legitimacy addresses multiple ‘audiences’; I would also add that it addresses multiple recipients as legitimacy is shown to vary among officers and positions of rank.
This article analyses the use of criminal justice measures aimed at the prevention of sexual offending across England and Wales. Specifically, it focuses on measures such as the ‘sex offenders register’ and sexual offences prevention orders (SOPOs) and the use of sanctions for their breach. Following a discussion of the apparent tensions between individual rights and public protection measures we present an original analysis of data collated from Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA) area reports over a nine-year period. Our analysis reveals considerable variation between areas in both the risk-level allocation of cases, the imposition of SOPOs and sanctions for non-compliance with MAPPA. We argue that these disparities raise issues concerning both the rights and autonomy of those subjected to public protection measures and highlight the need for further detailed research into MAPPA practices.
The development of scholarship related to particular categories of people who are subject to different forms of social control often results in subfields that become or remain isolated from each other. As an example, theory and research relating to the reintegration of ex-offenders and the integration of asylum seekers have developed almost completely independently. However, both processes involve people who are marginalized and stigmatized through legal and social processes, and policies and practices in the two fields share somewhat similar concepts and goals. This article therefore seeks to identify insights through a critical comparison of these two areas of research, theory and practice, with the intention of enriching our understanding of both. This comparison highlights that the frameworks reviewed here enable us to move beyond a narrow focus on service user’s behaviours, needs or risks, and into an examination of questions of identity, belonging and justice.
The prescription of heroin to dependent users has been a distinctive feature of British drug policy for almost a century now, and in recent years the policy’s evidence-base has grown significantly. However, while the evidence for heroin assisted treatment’s effectiveness is strong it is somewhat limited by the clinical setting of the randomized control trial and thus leaves a number of important areas unexplored. This article investigates some of these through a sociological lens informed by both developments in regulatory theory and ethnographic research with a heroin-using population in north-west England. It is argued that heroin prescription has currently ‘untapped potential’ as a means of regulating heroin markets, but also that it presents a number of ‘unanswered questions’ regarding heroin’s socio-economic roles in marginalized communities and the importance of heroin-using identities.
In 2013 the governments of the Netherlands and Scotland established national police forces, replacing a tradition of largely autonomous regional police organizations. In both jurisdictions, these radical reforms have raised concerns about the consequences of these national police structures for local policing and for relationships with local communities and local government. Drawing on documentary sources and interview material from each jurisdiction and informed by insights from the policy implementation literature, the key question addressed in this article is how has the legislation that created the new national police forces been put into effect at a local level? Focusing on the impact on the governance, organization and delivery of local policing, the article reveals how the implementation in both jurisdictions involves interpretation and discretion by multiple actors so that gaps are emerging between the national ‘policy promises’ set out in the legislation and the ‘policy products’ experienced in local contexts.
The Refugee Convention states that asylum seekers should be excluded from refugee protection when there are ‘serious reasons for considering’ that they committed serious crimes. This article describes which alleged perpetrators are excluded in the Netherlands and discusses if and how confidentiality issues prevent disclosure of information about their nature and whereabouts. It concludes that law enforcement agencies typically receive information after a final decision to exclude has been made and that other actors are generally not informed at all. It is questioned to what extent this practice serves the interests of justice and security since it may frustrate successful prosecution and threaten security.
The ‘war on terror’ has marked the existence of exceptional measures involving military action abroad and the introduction of counter-terrorism legislation in the United Kingdom. Within this context fear, risk and insecurity have been intrinsic in legitimizing the measures created as being necessary to maintain national security. This article presents the findings from a study investigating the impact of the ‘war on terror’ on British Muslims’ emotions. The study revealed how facets of the ‘war on terror’, including ‘human rights and policing’, ‘What if? and pre-emption’, ‘geopolitics and reflexive fear and risk’ and ‘fear from inside the binary’ impacted participants’ emotions. Through exploring how thepolicy measures implemented in the ‘war on terror’ have influenced British Muslims’ emotions, the article takes a small step in addressing the analytical gap in criminological research on emotions in the ‘war on terror’.
This article explores desistance from crime and experiences of stigma among 19 young mothers with a criminal past. Drawing on narrative interview data from a qualitative longitudinal study of women criminalized as children, I argue that young mothers with a history of lawbreaking, as well as other markers of a spoiled past, are likely to encounter intense forms of gendered surveillance, social censure and stigma across multiple domains of identity, regardless of whether or not they are currently involved in crime. Motherhood frequently motivated the women to desist from crime, most notably in order to avoid their children experiencing the scrutiny and harmful state interventions that had such a profoundly negative impact on their own young lives. However, I conclude that many ex-offending mothers continue to be stigmatized as maternally deficient long after they have left crime behind.
The rise of branded programmes and interventions is an important, but largely under-explored, development in criminal justice. This article draws on findings from a study of a British Integrated Offender Management (IOM) scheme to ground a broader theoretical discussion of the meaning and implications of the increasing centrality of such ‘brands’. This article focuses primarily upon the ways in which criminal justice practitioners might draw upon brands in order to (re-)construct their professional identities. Ongoing fundamental reforms of criminal justice organizations, which have tended to blur the traditionally clear distinctions between professional roles, have made this need to reinforce (and indeed reconstruct) practitioner identities ever more pressing. The article closes by considering the prospects and limitations of criminal justice brands. It is argued that while brands may play an important role in ‘ethically orienting’ relevant practitioners, there is a danger that the absence of appropriate structural underpinnings may prove to be highly counter-productive.
Theories of social bonding and social capital support the argument that positive family relationships are important for resilience in resettlement after release from prison. However, this topic has rarely been addressed in prospective longitudinal studies of resettlement processes. This study gathered interview data from 39 family pairs of British male prisoners and their (ex-)partners before and after release. Questions on the father’s relationship, involvement and contact with the family were used as an index to predict seven resettlement outcomes. At the bivariate level and after control of pre-prison risk variables, family relationships predicted positive outcomes with finding accommodation, alcohol and drug use, the extent to which ex-prisoners felt they were coping with resettlement challenges and the quality of post-release family relations. In contrast, difficulties with employment and finance were neither related to previous family relations nor to the other resettlement outcomes. The findings suggest no general protective influence of family relationships during resettlement, but a strong effect on social and emotional aspects. Theoretical issues, limitations and potential practical consequences are discussed.
The extent to which police officers obey instructions and policies is of permanent concern to police leaders and the community. This is especially the case when it comes to preventing police misconduct, such as the use of excessive force. In the current study we examined officer compliance from a procedural justice and social exchange perspective. Using data collected among 536 police officers of the Metropolitana Police in Buenos Aires, we explored to what extent internal procedural justice and trust are related to: (1) officer compliance with supervisors and policies; and (2) officer endorsement of regulations on the use of force. The results indicate that perceptions of fair treatment by supervisors and trust in supervisors are positively associated with (stated) compliance. Our findings suggest that a procedural justice approach may facilitate the implementation of police policies and contribute to preventing police violence.
This article sought to assess what impact exposure to a court-mandated alcohol treatment requirement (ATR) had on offending. Recidivism risk factors were also investigated. The comparative design involved secondary analysis of three linked administrative datasets which focused upon an experimental group of 112 probationers exposed to the ATR and a comparison group of equal size supervised by the same probation area prior to their introduction. Both groups were selected from a larger pool of cases (N = 476) that were found to be significantly different on a number of key variables. Propensity score matching was used to deal with this non-equivalence. The outcome measures examined were the rate and volume of reoffending, and the time to first reoffence. The results showed no association between exposure to the ATR and the rate of reconviction at 12 months (59.8 per cent vs 63.4 per cent), the time to first reoffence (70.7 vs 81.5 days) and the number of proven reoffences (mean 2.4 vs 2.3). The factor with the largest effect on risk of recidivism was supervision completion status. These findings provide indicative evidence to inform discussions about a future programme of research in this area and potential strategies for enhancing the crime prevention impact of court-mandated alcohol treatment.
In this article we present empirical evidence on the allocation of causing death by driving offences to explore the inter-relationship between different criminal justice policy goals. Specifically, we look at the decision-making of the various parties involved in such cases: the prosecution in recommending the venue for trials; the defence in deciding whether to plead guilty or to elect trial in the Crown Court; and magistrates in deciding whether to accept jurisdiction or commit to the Crown Court. These decisions are then set within the context of the Government’s desire to achieve ‘swift and sure justice’, promote correct allocation decisions for either-way offences and reduce the number of ‘cracked trials’. The data show that many of these cases are committed to the Crown Court, only to receive a sentence within the powers of magistrates, and that the proportion of cases where this happens is higher than for mainstream offences. Our contention is that although there is something special about the offences under discussion, in that the fact that a death is involved raises issues as to how justice is seen to be done, undue focus is placed upon ‘swift justice’ which generates problems later in the process.
A reconceptualization of the idea of "community justice" is framed in the logic of the social contract and emphasizes the responsibility of the justice system for the provision of public safety. First, we illustrate the ways in which the criminal justice system has hindered the efforts of community residents to participate in the production of public safety by disrupting informal social networks. Then we turn to an examination of the compositional dynamics of California prison populations over time to demonstrate that the American justice system has failed to meet their obligations to provide public safety by incapacitating dangerous offenders. We argue that these policy failures represent a breach of the social contract and advocate for more effective collaboration between communities and the formal criminal justice system so that all parties can fulfill their obligations under the contract.
In October 2010, the UK Coalition government announced a 20 per cent reduction in the police budget over four years as part of its post-financial crisis Comprehensive Spending Review. In response to this new ‘politics of austerity’ many police forces began to consider outsourcing key services areas to the private sector on an unprecedented scale so as to make the required savings. However, this policy initiative was soon cut short. By March 2012 a prominent media debate on police ‘privatization’ was starting to heat up; in July 2012 the failure of G4S to meet the conditions of its Olympics security contract generated extensive negative publicity and triggered a parliamentary enquiry; and in the run-up to the November 2012 Police and Crime Commissioner elections many candidates could be found campaigning on an ‘anti-privatization’ platform – all of which had the effect of removing police outsourcing from the policy agenda. It had become too politically controversial. This article uses the multiple streams approach to explore the opening and closing of the police outsourcing window. In so doing, it contends that the dynamics of this policy area have ultimately been shaped by the liberal state-building process which emerged out of early enlightenment political thought and continues today.
Research on desistance or the process of ceasing criminal behavior has increased in recent years. This work has revealed a large number of factors that are related to desistance. To date, these explanations have been generally perceived as mutually exclusive and/or competitive. Interestingly, while research on desistance from crime has been a recent focus, certain work had examined crime over the life-course as far back as the early 20th century. In particular, the Gluecks offered one of the earliest "theories" of desistance, focusing on maturation. Their "maturation theory" was somewhat tautological and not well specified. However, the Gluecks were clear that further work was needed in order to specify what maturation means and how it relates to crime. In this article, five domains of maturation are articulated drawing on the literature in the life-course and developmental fields. It is argued that this new framework may help advance the criminological work on desistance.
This article explores connections between social strain, constructions and practices of masculinity and the prevalence of violence among a white working-class male demographic. The study’s evidence-base is qualitative research conducted in Scotland. It utilized life history interviews with a clinically significant sample of 40 incarcerated young male offenders convicted of violent crimes. Family, school and peer group ‘pressures’ coloured these young men’s trajectories to persistent violent reoffending. Their language highlights attachment and betrayal issues. Masculinity associated with Scottish history is a resource within Scotland which may impact on contemporary practices of masculinity. The article’s dominant thesis is that the young men’s violence reflects immersion in traumatic life histories. The masculinized cultures they encounter are likely to produce violence and limit opportunities which could help ameliorate attachment trauma.
In a context in which research evidence indicates high rates of alleged sexual victimization among adults with psychosocial disabilities, this article draws upon rape allegation data collected by the Metropolitan Police Service in April and May 2012, to explore some of the challenges that are posed to the criminal justice system by these types of complainants. Although the insights that can be generated from these data in relation to complainants with psychosocial disabilities are limited, in the context of this article it provides a valuable snapshot into contemporary patterns of rape victimization and attrition in England and Wales. It also serves as a useful stepping off point from which to highlight the need for more sustained critical research and reflection on the treatment of complainants, and the adequacy of police and prosecutor training and practice in this area.
It has been claimed that paradoxically, following the re-establishment of the Scottish Parliament in 1999, Scottish criminal justice policy, hitherto more liberal and less punitive than ‘south of the Border’, became more closely aligned with London-based policies. It has also been argued that the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) Scottish government has, since gaining power in 2007, reversed that trend in a process of ‘retartanization’. Closer examination reveals a far more complex picture. Based on interviews with key players and observers, this article suggests that there is room for a more nuanced understanding of policy, policy shifts and reform in the years leading up to and following 1999. The Scottish example raises important questions about the impact of new legislative and executive institutions, the respective influences of civil servants, special advisers, politicians, local government, media, public opinion and individual personalities on criminal justice policy, particularly in a small jurisdiction. It also raises questions about the relative importance of local, national, territorial and global influences on criminal justice policy of relevance to other devolved nations.
Highlighting the culturally contingent nature of state reactions to crime, the present case study uses content analysis to examine state talk issued by the Norwegian government following the 22 July 2011 terrorist attacks to illustrate how more moderate responses to horrific events are accomplished through government talk emphasizing themes thought to constrain as opposed to facilitate a more punitive response. Situating state discourse in the context of the Scandinavian welfare state, the present study argues that government talk surrounding the Breivik case reflects and reinforces Norway’s comparatively less volatile and competitive social order. Analysis of less incendiary government talk is needed to better understand the role of government rhetoric in shaping responses to crisis.
Recent years have seen increasing concern in relation to intellectual property crime and as a result, pressure has mounted to tackle the ‘problem’ of counterfeiting. However, despite an increasing recognition of the responsibility of public policing agencies, a strong consumer-responsibility approach has emerged. This relies on the assumption that if consumers are ‘educated’ about the ‘dangers of buying fakes’ they will refrain from doing so – resulting in a reduced demand and thus, a reduced supply. This article, which is based upon a mixed-methods empirical study investigating people’s attitudes to, and consumption of, counterfeit fashion goods, seeks to problematize the responsibility being placed upon consumers and argues that fundamentally, this is a flawed approach for anti-counterfeiting policy. This article argues that not only does this approach fail to understand consumer attitudes, but it fails to understand the nature and consumption of fashion more generally.
Drawing on research in the UK and the Netherlands, this article considers the respective legislative backgrounds, recent policy changes and their implication for sex workers in off-street environments. It considers the impact of different regulatory models on the employment rights, safety and welfare of sex workers and explores how working conditions in different indoor settings might be improved through legal and policy changes. We argue that although decriminalization of sex work is a precondition to secure the labour and human rights of sex workers, the involvement of sex workers in policy development and facilitation of different modes of working are necessary to improve their working conditions and autonomy.
The Swedish criminalization of the purchase of sex aims to abolish prostitution through targeting the demand, while decriminalizing those selling sex in an ostensible effort to protect sex workers – constructed as passive victims of gendered violence – from criminalization. Drawing from authors’ research and that of others, this article discusses the sex purchase law (sexköpslagen), exploring some of its impacts on the lives of sex workers and the dynamics of Swedish prostitution.
We argue that the law has failed in its abolitionist ambition to decrease levels of prostitution, since there are no reliable data demonstrating any overall decline in people selling sex. Furthermore, we argue that the law has resulted in increased dangers in some forms of sex work. Dangers are exacerbated by a lack of harm reduction services, which are seen to conflict with Swedish abolitionism. Moreover, discourses and social constructions informing the sexköpslagen have informed the attitudes of service providers. In addition to specific outcomes of the law, we note evictions of sex workers, problems with immigration authorities, child custody and the police, and briefly discuss these themes. Where Sweden continues to attempt to export the sexköpslagen to other parts of the world, these elements should be carefully considered.
Despite continuing interest in English and Welsh youth justice policy there has been little critical engagement with the nature of policy itself. Instead, analyses share a common methodological position whereby ‘policy’ is equated with policy ‘products’ (such as legislation or ministerial speeches). This article argues that to understand youth justice policy a wider view is required of what constitutes policy, and where and by whom it is made. It explores how policy is produced in the complex arena of social practice which, following the establishment of the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales (YJB), now constitutes the central operation of the system. Through the creation of the YJB the central youth justice system became essentially undefined. This not only gave YJB officials significant influence in shaping the direction of the youth justice system, but a broad and flexible arena in which to act. Moreover it enabled them to do so according to values and objectives potentially unconnected to ministerial outcomes. Drawing on an ethnographic study of the operation of the YJB, this article explores the policy-making work of YJB officials through the transformation of the role and activities of the YJB itself, comparing the initial parameters of its operation to the way it was defined in action. The article discusses the implications for understanding New Labour’s English and Welsh youth justice policy, and the nature of ‘policy’ itself.
This article explores the experiences of female significant others (N = 27) in the lives of young men (N = 14) subject to repeat cycles of incarceration in South Australia since 2003. It focuses on how these women conceive of their roles during and following the incarceration of their intimate and addresses in detail some of the personal, situational and structural factors that characterize their lives. A major conclusion of the article is that (ex)prisoners’ female significant others are an important but highly marginalized and often traumatized group within the correctional and post-release landscape. Additional institutional and public support for these women is needed in order to maximize their potential impact on (ex)prisoner well-being.
This article uses data from interviews with 69 self-described members and associates of street gangs in London to explore how young people choose their actions and construct their identities from the material and cultural resources they find in their locales. It explores ‘drift’ as a potential explanation of actions of gang members and finds it wanting. It suggests that Giddens’ concept of structuration, when combined with Matza and Sykes’ notion of subterranean traditions, offers a powerful tool for the explanation of how and why some young people in socio-economically deprived urban areas seek association with gangs through the performance of violence.
New Zealand was the first country to decriminalize sex work. This article provides a reflective commentary on decriminalization, its implementation and its impacts in New Zealand. New Zealand Prostitutes’ Collective (NZPC) was the key player in getting decriminalization on the policy agenda and their effective networking played an essential role to the successful campaign for legislative change. There were contentious clauses within the Prostitution Reform Act (PRA) which were of concern to NZPC and others. However, the research which informed the review of the Act has shown that decriminalization has been successful in making the industry safer and improving the human rights of sex workers within all sectors of the industry. The PRA provides several protections for sex workers, which means that their human rights and citizenship can be safeguarded. Yet there has been little movement towards decriminalization in other countries and reluctance by some to draw on New Zealand’s experience. Indeed, it cannot be claimed that decriminalization will be experienced in the same way in other countries. New Zealand is a small island with a population of just over four million and movement across its borders is more restricted than countries that are part of the European Union. Nevertheless, other countries may find the arguments used to get legislative change in New Zealand useful within their own context.
Accounts of public ‘trust and confidence’ in criminal justice agencies often fall into one of two camps. Instrumental accounts suggest that people trust police and the criminal justice system (CJS) when they believe them to be effective in fighting crime and reducing offending. Expressive or affective accounts, by contrast, suggest people place as much or more emphasis on the social meaning of justice institutions as on their instrumental activities. In this article we add to recent studies that have sought to weigh up the balance between instrumental and expressive factors. Using data from the Crime Survey for England and Wales panel experiment, we present evidence that trust in police and the wider CJS is implicated in public concerns about the nature of local order and cohesion. The expressive account appears to offer a better understanding of why people may grant trust to, or withdraw trust from, the police and the CJS.
The UK government has called for a rehabilitation revolution in England and Wales and put its faith in market testing. It hopes this will lead to greater innovation, resulting in reductions in re-offending while also driving down costs. However, many of the most innovative developments in criminal justice over recent decades have come through social innovation. Examples include restorative justice and justice reinvestment. In this article we argue that while social innovation will respond to some extent to conventional economic policy levers such as market testing, de-regulation and the intelligent use of public sector purchasing power it is not simply an extension of the neo-liberal model into the social realm. Social innovation, based on solidarity and reciprocity, is an alternative to the logic of the neo-liberal paradigm. In policy terms, the promotion of social innovation will need to take account of the interplay between government policy, social and cultural norms and individual and social capacity. Current proposals for reforming the criminal justice system may not leave sufficient scope to develop the conditions for effective social innovation.
A pilot study was implemented in three local authority areas in Scotland to test the feasibility and acceptability of delivering Alcohol Brief Interventions (ABIs) as part of routine practice in community justice. Screening for Alcohol Use Disorders (AUDs) was undertaken with offenders given Probation or Community Service Orders, with randomization of participants into control (information only) and experimental (ABI) groups. A total of 419 offenders were assessed; 195 meeting inclusion criteria, consenting to take part and for whom a report was returned. Of these, 42 per cent (n = 82) fell within the harmful/hazardous drinking ranges (eligible for an ABI) and just over half (52%; n = 43) were randomized to receive an ABI. Despite limited follow-up data to measure potential effectiveness of ABIs, the study showed that alcohol screening tools can be used successfully in this context, and that screening and ABIs can be accommodated into routine community justice practice with reasonable levels of acceptability.
In this article, we describe and make sense of the reception of a novel security good: namely, the personal GPS tracking device. There is nothing new about tracking. Electronic monitoring is an established technology with many taken-for-granted uses. Against this backdrop, we focus on a particular juncture in the ‘social life’ of tracking, the moment at which personal trackers were novel goods in the early stages of being brought to market and promoted as protective devices. Using data generated in a wider study of security consumption, our concern is to understand how this extension of tracking technology into everyday routines and social relations was received by its intended consumers and users. How do potential buyers or users respond to these novel protective devices? What is seductive or repulsive about keeping track of those towards whom one has a duty or relationship of care? How do new tracking technologies intersect with – challenge, reshape or get pushed back by – existing social practices and norms, most obviously around questions of risk, responsibility, trust, autonomy and privacy? This article sets out to answer these questions and to consider what the reception of this novel commodity can tell us about the meaning and future of security.
There have recently been a number of calls for a public criminology – although the term is ill-defined – as if such a criminology were quite new. A vigorous public criminology did indeed once exist in England and Wales but it presented problems to the politician, policy-maker and scholar, and it became largely forgotten. If a public criminology is to re-emerge, it must contend with a spate of presentational difficulties which appear to have been too little considered.
In recent years, there has been an increased focus on the use of the precautionary principle within counter-terrorism. To date much of the literature has focused on ‘high’ level executive measures. This article examines the use of the precautionary measures within counter-terrorism street policing, taking suspicionless counter-terrorism stop and search as an exemplar. The analysis highlights how the logic of precaution necessitates vague statutory drafting and extensive police discretion and how these factors detrimentally impact upon police legitimacy and compliance to human rights law. It also considers how such measures fit within the current literature on pre-crime.
This article examines citizens’ confidence in the Chinese criminal justice system, with data from the surveys collected in three provincial capitals with a random sampling strategy in 2007 and 2008. Multivariate analyses are conducted, and follow-up questions are explored with a comparative approach to assess the differences between public perceptions and the views of criminal justice officials within the current social context. The sample sizes for citizens and officials were 217 and 90, respectively. Findings show that the majority of citizens and officials believed that there was a lack of confidence in the Chinese criminal justice system, as demonstrated in the recent ‘anger-venting’ events. This finding is inconsistent with the limited empirical literature on public attitudes in China. The important factors such as perceptions of fairness, corruption and extortion of confessions are explored, and policy implications are discussed.
Gaining the offender perspective is central to understanding domestic burglary, and is well documented. This article presents findings from 30 semi-structured interviews with convicted domestic burglars conducted in Greater Manchester, UK. The findings support the dominant supposition that domestic burglars operate within a bounded rationality, broadly calculating reward and risk in the commission of their offences. In addition, it was found that a sense of abstracted morality impacted on decision making. Burglars used cognitive ‘codes of practice’ which influenced target appraisal, shaped modus operandi, guided the search process and impacted on items stolen. The findings suggest that the role of neutralization techniques and morality should be (re)incorporated into the understanding of domestic burglars as rational offenders.
In response to policy developments aiming to increase the involvement of penal voluntary organizations in criminal justice, a recent flurry of commentary has provided a marketized understanding of the penal voluntary sector and attempts to privatize it. Although this commentary has contributed significantly to the limited literature on the sector, the centrality of neoliberal policy in analysis is problematic. This article provides a critique of relevant commentary and offers a new exploration of the penal voluntary sector that extends beyond neoliberalism and marketization. A preliminary exploration of an alternative model is made, using political economy to provide a nuanced and politically enabling understanding of the role of voluntary organizations in criminal justice.
The illicit drugs website, Silk Road, presents an ideal case study for how online communication technologies are transforming crime. This article seeks to locate the offences committed via Silk Road within existing cybercrime literature, and presents a new criminological concept – the cryptomarket – to outline the contours of this new generation of online illicit marketplace. Cryptomarkets are defined as a type of website that employs advanced encryption to protect the anonymity of users. The article also analyses the implications Silk Road has for drug consumers and law enforcement, as well as the potential changes to drug distribution networks that are likely to occur if Silk Road and other cryptomarkets continue to assume a greater share of the global trade in illicit drugs. In conclusion, it is argued that while Silk Road presents a less violent alternative to conventional drug distribution networks, the risks posed by the rapid proliferation of cryptomarkets more generally are largely unknown and require further research.
The opportunity and motivation effects underlying criminal activity presented in Cantor and Land (1985) are revisited. It is argued that a full appreciation of these effects requires examination of the evolution of criminal activity over the business cycle rather than in relation to simple measures of unemployment, as has been considered often in the literature. Using the derived cyclical components of a number of socio-economic indicators, the empirical evidence in support of the proposed theoretical relationships is examined. It is found that in contrast to the results obtained when using unemployment, consideration of alternative cyclical indicators provides very strong support for the presence of opportunity and motivation effects of the form predicted by Cantor and Land (1985). An interesting distinction between results for property and violent crimes is noted and discussed.
The expansion of prison treatment programmes for personality disordered offenders as part of the ‘Rehabilitation Revolution’ in England and Wales raises significant questions about the ways in which inherent concepts of risks, rights and rehabilitation are selectively perceived and employed. Current policy supports rehabilitative opportunities that address the risks offenders pose to the public, yet remains inattentive to the risk of harm that rehabilitative programmes can pose to offenders. Examination of the risk of personal harm intrinsic to one rehabilitative intervention for personality disordered prisoners – the democratic therapeutic community – illustrates how the selective acknowledgement of human rights in contemporary penal policy, whereby prisoners’ rights are routinely tied to a status of less eligibility, has important consequences that both undermine the integrity of programme delivery and seriously jeopardize the positive duties that are inherent in the duty of care owed to prisoners by the State.
More than three decades of war in Angola have created a generation of disaffected children, poorly educated and living in crime-infested urban neighbourhoods where violence appears to have become the norm. This article is based on a self-report study of 30 juvenile offenders housed at the Observation Centre in Luanda. The article examines the children’s views on what accounts for their delinquency. What emerges from their narratives is the central importance of the neighbourhoods in which they live. In these neighbourhoods, the children have developed delinquent relationships and encountered experiences of serious violence. Most of the children attributed their offending to the economic and social problems created by the war. The study agrees with Wessells and Monteiro’s (2006) position that, in order to address this problem, a proactive approach is required in Angola that supports youth, prevents violence and enables sustainable neighbourhood development.
This article examines the links between in/visibility, agency and mobility through the narratives of 55 predominantly indoor sex workers interviewed in Melbourne, Australia, where state government regulations permit some forms of sex work under a licensing framework. This article explores the tensions around the requirement for visibility in the regulation of sex work, the utility of ‘strategic’ invisibility in the lived realities of sex work and the discursive ‘invisibilizing’ of sex workers’ agency in anti-prostitution discourses. For the workers we interviewed, ‘strategic invisibility’ was an agentic strategy that prevented stigma and protected social, economic and geographical mobility within and outside the sex industry. In Melbourne, workers’ careful management of their ‘invisibility’ as sex workers contrasted with the state’s harm minimization framework that insists on sex workers’ visibility within healthcare and licensing systems. This article draws on empirical data to suggest that regulation through licensing can both alleviate and contribute to vulnerabilizing contexts of sex work, providing useful lessons to those considering a similar system of regulation.
Adolescent to parent violence is virtually absent from policing, youth justice and domestic violence policy, despite being widely recognized by practitioners in those fields. It is under-researched and rarely appears in criminological discussions of family or youth violence. This article presents the first UK analysis of cases of adolescent to parent violence reported to the police. We analyse victim, offender and incident characteristics from 1892 cases reported to the Metropolitan Police in 2009–2010, most of which involved violence against the person or criminal damage in the home. Our findings reveal that adolescent to parent violence is a gendered phenomenon: 87 per cent of suspects were male and 77 per cent of victims were female. We argue that the absence of adolescent to parent violence from criminological discourse must be addressed if criminology is to have a thorough understanding of family violence in all its forms.
This article explores why the government strategy for women offenders has failed to achieve its key objectives despite extensive agreement about the need and direction of change and the momentum generated by the Corston Report. It argues that although the women’s policy agenda is supported by equality and human rights legislation, the operational context of the criminal justice system inhibits its realization. The reforms recognize the need for differential treatment in the pursuit of gender equality and reflect principles of distributive and non-distributive justice that promote individual welfare and social inclusion. Paradoxically, they are advanced within a criminal justice system that is predominantly concerned with the distribution of just deserts and the management of criminal risk. The inherent contradictions reflect not only theoretical differences but distinct ideological constructs that shape the ways in which concepts of equality, rehabilitation and justice are interpreted and given practical effect. The agreed policy of equal justice for women requires a culture of rights that undermines the present concepts of desert and ‘less eligibility’ and replaces risk management with rehabilitative opportunities that provide a reparative approach to social harm.
This article reports on the results of a quasi-experimental study of practitioners’ skills in probation work. Videotaped interviews were produced by a group of probation officers and analysed by researchers using a checklist designed to identify the range of skills used in one-to-one supervision. Reconviction rates were found to be significantly lower among those whose supervisors were assessed as using a wider range of skills. The article also reviews the recent history of research on practitioners’ skills in probation, and considers the implications of positive findings from this and other studies.
This article presents the findings of focus group research into public attitudes to the sentencing of drug offences. The study was commissioned by the Sentencing Council for England and Wales to inform the development of their new guideline on drug offences. There were two main findings: first, participants’ responses were generally no more punitive than current sentencing practice for less serious offences; second, participants’ overriding concerns were about the harms associated with drug offences rather than the culpability of drug offenders. Thus the findings of the study indicate that lighter sentences for drug ‘mules’ (as were subsequently introduced by the Sentencing Council’s new guideline) would be tolerated by the public. However, if the Council wishes to engage more fully with public opinion it will need to take a closer look at public concerns with harm.
The journey-to-crime literature consistently shows that the distance to crime is short, particularly for violent crimes. Recent research has revealed methodological concerns regarding various (improper) groupings of data (nesting effects). In this article we investigate one such nesting effect: the relationship between age and the distance to crime. Contrary to much of the research that investigates this phenomenon, using a large incident-based data set of more than 100,000 crime trips, we find that the relationship between age and the distance to crime is best described as quadratic but this quadratic relationship is not universal across all crime classifications.
In the context of ‘ordinary’ probation practice, quality is a contested concept, as well as an under-researched one. In this article we present the findings of a study which sought to capture, via interviews inspired by Appreciative Inquiry, the views of probation staff about the meaning(s) of ‘quality’ in probation practice. The interviews revealed a ‘frontline’ perspective on quality which has not previously been exposed or articulated as such. Drawing upon theoretical concepts developed by Bourdieu, it is argued that despite significant recent changes in the penal and probation fields in England & Wales, and some signs of adaptation in normative conceptions of probation work, there exists a culture or ‘probation habitus’ among frontline staff that is relatively cohesive and resilient.
Drawing on data from three separate studies of community policing (CP) in Scotland this article identifies common themes in the practice of contemporary CP. First, following in the wake of the global financial crisis, we have an austerity drive with cuts to policing budgets setting the context in which CP practice is now negotiated. Second all three studies evidence an increasingly entrenched performance management framework for policing which exerts pressures on beat officers to depart from established, valued and often ‘unmeasurable’ activities within CP practice. Third, we see the depletion of the traditional ‘tools of the trade’ of CP as new recruits, lacking the skills of the traditional beat officer, are assigned CP functions, while mentoring opportunities for supporting their professional development become increasingly inadequate. Finally, the idea of reassurance as a core policing goal has informed the re-organization of Scotland’s main police forces towards models which purport to increase CP numbers, visibility and public engagement. In the context of the preceding three themes however, these re-inventions of CP have been problematic in various ways: conflicted, superficial and unconnected to developments in policing and procedural justice theory around legitimacy and public confidence. Indeed, we will argue that given the formal increase in public-facing CP numbers across the sites examined here, the procedural justice perspective, with its focus on the quality of police–public encounters, has real potential to enhance the efficacy of CP in Scotland.
Using data from an original qualitative study carried out during 2009–10 with a sample located in the north of England (NES), this article considers the satisfaction levels of black minority ethnic (BME) groups with a north of England police force (NEPF). The study sought to examine existing levels (as well as improve) satisfaction with police responses among BME populations. This was done by asking local BME communities about their encounters with NEPF, including how they felt the police should respond when they are a victim of crime and more broadly how the police could better engage with BME populations. What emerged in the responses was not just practical ‘solutions’ for ‘better engagement’ but a series of narratives that placed the broader historical and contemporary complexities, and recent developments of BME relations with the police into focus. The article begins by exploring current literature and claims to knowledge in the areas of problematic police responses, especially with the use of ‘race’1 in stop and search, and developments in communicating police progress. The literature setting the context draws upon case studies from the north of England but also more generally from across the UK, using examples that while geographically located beyond the NES context have had significant impact more broadly. The findings section discusses the qualitative data from the study and explores the emerging themes of communication and the local community nexus, disconnections from young people and police (ab)use of stop and search powers. The article highlights how in addition to actually policing in a fair way, direct and indirect communication plays a key role in satisfaction levels with police services. Achieving effective communication between the police force and BME groups is a complex matter, although not impossible, mediated at times by local and historical precedents with different BME groups.
Urban redevelopment attempts to rebrand spaces. The intention is to make them appear attractive for inward financial investment; to make improvements for residents; and, to reduce crime. It is considered by some to be a problematic process that does not always achieve the desired outcomes. This is especially so during the gentrification-transition stage. This qualitative study looked at crime in a sample site that was in a gentrification-transition stage of urban redevelopment. Using data sourced from those directly involved in criminal activity, this study argues that crime reduction in gentrification-transition environments is especially difficult to achieve. This is because disorganization in the built environment and economic inequality intensifies in areas experiencing gentrification-transition. Coupled with consumer pressures of the modern era, the result is a space where particular types of crime occur, often in significantly higher volumes than was the case prior to redevelopment.
To address whether there is a systematic racial bias in the language used to describe offenders and victims in Canadian print media, content analysis was conducted in four Canadian local newspapers. Using 12 sub-themes relating to fear and marginalization, the results of the 1190 sampled crime articles indicate that white offenders were disproportionately criminalized and dehumanized. In addition, articles describe crimes against white victims with significantly more fearful language, while visible minority victims were blamed for their own victimization. The results reflect a bias mainly through explanations for crime rather than in what newspapers report about crime and offenders. The racialization of offender and victims creates a powerful hierarchal treatment between those who are and are not ‘meant’ to have their lives impacted by crime and for whom being a victim of crime is tragic.
The resurrection of former prisons as museums has caught the attention of tourists along with scholars interested in studying penal tourism. This work expands on previous research on prison museums in Buenos Aires, Melbourne, and Sydney to include London. The analysis advances a cultural sociology of punishment by throwing critical light on three thematic couplings: prisons/economics; religion/governance; and pain/penal progress. While reflecting on those unifying subjects, the discussion addresses the manner by which prison museums tell a historical tale about their host city with respect to punishment and social control. Observations and interpretations are situated within a growing literature on museum studies, penal spectatorship, and dark tourism.
Transnational corporate bribery is complexly organized at a multi-jurisdictional level. However, enforcement remains at the local, national level where investigators and prosecutors are pressured to respond using frameworks for enforcement created by intergovernmental organizations. These legal frameworks are incorporated into national laws which result in legal convergence between jurisdictions but the ‘functional equivalence’ approach of intergovernmental organizations enables divergence in enforcement practices. This article analyses two theoretically comparable anti-corruption enforcement systems, those of the UK and Germany, to evidence an understanding of policy responses at the operational level. Irrespective of the enforcement system implemented (centralized or decentralized, use of corporate criminal liability or not, among other dimensions), enforcement faces significant structural, legal, procedural, evidential and financial obstacles, even where the will to enforce the law is high. Consequently, criminal law enforcement is currently implausible.
Marks and Fleming (2006: 178–179) have conjectured that ‘if we are to expect the police to behave democratically, it is important for the police themselves to experience democratic engagement within the organisations in which they work’. This article tests their conjecture, using data from a survey of frontline officers in Ghana. In particular, it explores whether police support for, and satisfaction with, democracy and police commitment to procedural justice in police–public encounters are driven by experiences of organizational distributive justice and procedural justice. The findings show strong support for democracy and for procedural justice in police–public encounters, but they also indicate dissatisfaction with ‘the way democracy works’. Further analyses suggest that assessments of distributive justice and procedural justice within the Ghanaian police service are the main drivers of support for democracy, satisfaction with democracy and commitment to procedural justice in police–public encounters. The findings thus lend support to the Marks–Fleming conjecture. It was also found that satisfaction with personal financial circumstance undermines commitment to procedural justice in police–public encounters.
Victim statement policies are a controversial topic inspiring several decades of debate. Criminal justice systems internationally have implemented diverse types of victim statement policies; however, regardless of the type of policy, literature supports that victims seldom provide statements. Despite these findings, few studies have explored the notification and utilization of these policies. The current study selects the Victim Personal Statement (VPS) policy in England and Wales to evaluate what factors influence whether victims are informed of the VPS, and what factors influence one’s decision to provide a VPS by using British Crime Survey (BCS) data. The findings support that several victim, offender, offense, and jurisdictional characteristics influence both notification and utilization of victim statements. The implications for these findings regarding victim statement policies are discussed.
While a topic of considerable interest in the 1990s and early 2000s, there has been little literature on partnership working in the public sector in recent years. This is surprising given that the practice has been extended through the national roll-out of Neighbourhood Policing in England and Wales in 2008. This article presents a reassessment of how the police operate in partnership with other agencies. In contrast to the previous literature, our research suggests that police officers involved in partnerships find them effective, crucial to their work and, at times, enjoyable. Rather than conflicting with traditional police culture, partnership work is enhanced by, and enhances, the police orientation towards the pragmatic. We explore the implications of this for our understandings of police culture.
The illegal enterprise-model has become very popular in the research of organized crime. However, the theoretical foundations of the economic analysis of organized crime can be criticized in a fundamental way, since two key explanatory principles, the model of ‘homo economicus’ and ‘efficient markets’, do not seem to fit the empirical phenomena to be explained. The shortcomings of the economic approach are demonstrated by presenting findings from the Dutch Organized Crime Monitor, an ongoing research project based upon systematic analysis of closed, extensive police investigations into 120 cases of organized crime. These findings highlight social embeddedness (also in cases of transnational organized crime), social relations, work relations, leisure activities and sidelines and life events shaping involvement in organized crime and developments in criminal careers, and manipulation and violence embedded in social relations. The latter demonstrate that offender behaviour is not so much driven by market mechanisms (or the ‘invisible hand’), but rather by the ‘visible hand’ of social relations, and the ‘visible hand’ of manipulation and violence.
Drawing upon original survey research this article seeks to identify the generative processes that influence perceptions of the police in the context of an inner-city neighbourhood in Northern Ireland that has been affected by increases in crime and disorder in the aftermath of the peace process. Conceptually we draw upon recent research from England and Wales that outlines confidence in the police in terms of instrumental and expressive dimensions. We apply this framework and consider whether it provides a useful template for understanding the post-conflict dynamics of police–community relations in our study area. Contrary to much received wisdom our analysis suggests that instrumental concerns about crime and illegal activity are a more influential predictor of attitudes to the police than expressive concerns with disorder and anti-social behaviour. Consequently our discussion points to the variance in local and national survey data and questions the degree to which the latter can usefully inform our understanding of trends and developments in discrete micro-spaces. Our conclusion outlines the potential policy implications for state policing practice in deprived urban spaces.
The Prolific and Other Priority Offender (PPO) programme was introduced in 2004 to target the most prolific and persistent offenders within Community Safety Partnership areas. Based on identifying offenders through local crime analysis, intensive supervision and targeted intervention, evaluations have shown promising results. By using a ‘theory of change’ approach as an analytical framework and a local PPO project as a case study, this article begins to question whether the rationale behind the PPO programme can be viewed as ‘plausible’, if key strands of implementation are ‘doable’ and if the desired outcomes are ‘testable’. The article argues that although the rationale for the PPO programme might be plausible, doubts are raised over its likely impact on local crime rates and the extent PPO projects might be able to target prolific offenders effectively. Finally, it suggests that although testable outcomes can be established, the extent to which the programme has enhanced our understanding of desistance is questionable.
Logistic regression was used to assess five different police actions that an investigating police officer can choose to employ when handling a domestic violence call. Each significantly increases the likelihood the prosecutor will file charges: obtain photographs (60 percent); find and arrest the defendant (94 percent); obtain an emergency protective order (87 percent); locate additional witnesses (68 percent); and list more than one criminal charge in the police report (284 percent). Three optional police actions increase the likelihood of criminal conviction: find and arrest the defendant (78 percent); obtain an emergency protective order (102 percent); list more than one charge (142 percent). Survival analysis shows a sixth action, completing the investigation the same day, to significantly increase rates of criminal case filing and also rates of criminal conviction. A strong case, best practices model for the investigation of domestic violence incidents was validated and is presented. Police discretion is discussed. Lawmakers should consider making these optional investigative actions mandatory.
This article develops an expansive notion of confinement as a lens through which to think about the lives of former prisoners, former fighters and slum dwellers in a post-conflict setting characterized by political volatility, exorbitant poverty and limited opportunities. The theoretical purpose of the article is to explore whether an expansive notion of confinement might help us make sense of the lives of people whose possibilities are limited materially, spatially and discursively. The intention – inspired by Loïc Wacquant, Zygmunt Bauman and archaeologist Eleanor Casella – is ‘to move beyond the prison as the dominant optic for thinking about confinement’. The concept of confinement under development is illustrated with empirical examples culled from fieldwork in prisons and a poor urban neighbourhood in Freetown, Sierra Leone, West Africa. The orientation is towards confinement as site, practice and state of mind. The argument is that an expansive notion of confinement that attends to space, time, practices, meanings and states of mind is a useful way of thinking about the situated struggles of people living in prison and relative poverty.
Policy debate assumes the point of probation is to administer community punishment, reduce reoffending and protect the public. Dominant punitive and instrumental understandings of probation’s work have regarded the human rights of offenders as of secondary importance or even as obstacles to attaining these objectives. This article argues that, on the contrary, policy and practice should be grounded on human rights rather than on direct endeavours for effectiveness. It advances a personal and ethical understanding of probation and, considering probation’s principal tasks of enforcement, rehabilitation and public protection, argues that a respectful professional relationship is indispensable, though threatened by punitive and instrumental approaches. The concept of obliquity – the idea that some of our most important goals are best achieved indirectly – can explain how a personal approach can turn out not only to respect ethical entitlements, but indeed to be more effective in the terms that probation sets for itself.
This paper takes the opportunity to reflect upon the trajectory and consequences of the anti-social behaviour policy framework in the United Kingdom (UK) from its inception to date. It contends that despite, and paradoxically because of, the interventions launched to confront anti-social behaviours, perceptions of these behaviours have remained stubborn to improvement. In effect, anti-social behaviour policy has fed negative stereotypes of youth and positioned young people as a metaphor for deeper social malaise. The paper suggests a theoretical framework for understanding the mechanisms through which this perverse consequence has been realized. This task is facilitated conceptually through an exploration of the meaning of tolerance and the considerations that inform (in)tolerant assessments by citizens. Further, we progress to consider evidence of the interplay between these assessments and forces impacting upon social (dis)connectedness in the UK. This enables us to demonstrate how the anti-social behaviour policy suite underpins the intolerance of youth.
This paper considers the rise of third sector agencies as key criminal justice providers within the context of the marketization of probation and other crime management responses. We posit that the ‘rehabilitation revolution’ has significant implications for the voluntary and community sector in particular and criminal justice provision in general. Pointing towards incremental colonization of the third sector by criminal justice concerns, we trace the creeping discourse of economic risk, exemplified by the commodification of provision, increased contractualization of services and the application of cost–benefit measures. We argue that government policy is being driven by a behavioural economics of risk that attempts to ‘nudge’ the sector in discrete directions through the use of incentivization, market competition and steers toward entrepreneurship. In such a context, the position of marginal groups with high needs but potentially poorer outcomes may be perilous, consigning high risk and ‘at-risk’ groups to further exclusion.
In 1965, alongside the abolition of capital punishment, a mandatory life sentence for murder was implemented in England and Wales. The mandatory life sentence served as a signal to the public that the criminal justice system would still implement the most severe sanction of life imprisonment in cases of murder. Nearly 50 years later, this article examines whether the imposition of a mandatory life sentence for murder is still in the best interests of justice or whether English homicide law would be better served by a discretionary sentencing system. In doing so, the article considers debates surrounding the political and public need for a mandatory life sentence for murder by drawing upon interviews conducted with 29 members of the English criminal justice system. This research concludes that a discretionary sentencing framework is required to adequately respond to the many contexts within which the crime of murder is committed.
Violence against teachers is seen as a growing problem by both professional bodies and the media. However, this account fails to acknowledge differing views about what actually constitutes violence and how those that experience violence comprehend it. Drawing on literature on workplace violence and fear of crime, this article seeks to identify how we can begin to understand better violence against teachers. Furthermore, by examining secondary school teachers’ own narratives in depth, it is identified that a number of factors influence the meanings that they attach to their own experiences of workplace violence. This includes their professional identity, feelings about their pupils and their role as a teacher, their own sense of vulnerability, levels of experience and general feelings about schools and young people today.
Technology plays an increasing role in policing and other aspects of the criminal justice process. This article will briefly outline the notion of a criminal justice ‘techno-fix’ as a potential attempt by criminal justice agencies to use technology as a source of legitimacy. It will then go on to explore a range of alternate scenarios focusing on the possibility that increasing use of technologies in general, and surveillance technologies in particular (both in terms of formal surveillance by criminal justice agencies and informal surveillance of these agencies by sections of the general public) may actually contribute to challenges to the legitimacy of criminal justice agencies, in part because of deeply embedded but unrealistic cultural assumptions about the capabilities of technology.
Qualitative data from16 offenders were analyzed to understand the process of reintegration from their perspective. The offenders identified six factors that they felt influenced their ability to reintegrate and desist from crime: (1) substance abuse; (2) employment; (3) family support; (4) types of friends; (5) personal motivation to change; and (6) age. A large majority indicated that drug abuse was a major contributor to their criminal activities. Most said supports from family, friends, and treatment services were important for successful reintegration. Those who were successful tended to have both a personal desire to change and a support system that helped them reintegrate and desist from drug use and crime. Support had more impact among those who desired to change and those who received support were more likely to perceive that change is possible.
This article explores the ways in which African approaches to policing challenge western preferences for transparent and equitable forms of partnership-based policing. It uses the experience of the Nigeria Police Force in metropolitan Kano to question the value of police–public partnerships as the best way to tackle crime and communal conflict in cities where multiple religious and secular norms and processes affect the meaning and delivery of security and justice. Based on recent fieldwork, the article argues that while the need to negotiate with Kano’s semi-state and informal policing providers has not reconfigured the Nigerian police’s authority practices, the city’s relative stability owes much to the political and technical skills with which senior officers manage Kano’s competitive environment. Policing in Kano emphasizes the need for clarity of purpose, actionable intelligence and robust operations, rather than partnership.
The 2006 Co-ordinated Prostitution Strategy recommended local ‘needs’-based responses to target street sex work, and to this end consultation with members of the wider community – an approach that has also been more recently recommended by the current Coalition government in 2011. This article draws on empirical data collated over two years in the city of Cardiff, Wales. It focuses on Partnerships and Communities Together (PACT) meetings as a primary pathway for police/public consultation, and highlights how despite a lack of community representation at PACT, street sex work can become a community priority to be addressed with a punitive response. However, a public opinion survey carried out with 205 Cardiff residents suggests the wider community are more tolerant and very concerned about the safety of street workers. In conclusion we suggest that PACT priorities can misinterpret and misrepresent the views and opinions of the community.