British Journal of Criminology - Advance Access

The Impact of Co-Offending

Andresen, M. A., Felson, M. — 2009-07-01

Co-offending has a major impact on the arithmetic of crime rates and the burdens on the justice system. This paper studies co-offending by single year of age using data that comprise 750,000 negative police contacts (those charged, chargeable and suspected in criminal offenses) in a largely metropolitan dataset from British Columbia, Canada, 2002–06. We find that shifts in co-offending rates within teenage years are extremely rapid and highly sensitive to sample age ranges, such that a single co-offending rate for all teenagers is misleading. Co-offending opens a range of policy options and issues concerning the presence of youth hangouts and offender convergence settings that can assist the search for suitable co-offenders.

Governing Through Anti-Social Behaviour: Regulatory Challenges to Criminal Justice

Crawford, A. — 2009-07-01

The ‘anti-social behaviour’ agenda in Britain and the introduction of diverse new powers and regulatory tools represent a major challenge to traditional conceptions of criminal justice. This article argues that the language of regulation has been appropriated and deployed to cloak and legitimize ambitious (yet ambiguous) bouts of hyper-active state interventionism. These may have more to do with quests to demonstrate government's capacity to be seen to be doing something tangible about public anxieties than with meaningful behavioural change. Rather, regulatory ideas are being used to circumvent and erode established criminal justice principles, notably those of due process, proportionality and special protections traditionally afforded to young people. Consequently, novel technologies of control have resulted in more intensive and earlier interventions.

COMMUNITY POLICING OR ZERO TOLERANCE?: Preferences of Police Officers from 22 Countries in Transition

Lum, C. — 2009-06-26

Since the 1970s, approximately 60 countries in the world have experienced major political transition away from authoritarianism towards democracy and more liberal modes of governance. Subsequently, this era has provided opportunities for researchers to observe how major changes in the political environment affect a country's policing practices. This study is the first of a two paper series on the relationship between democratization and police attitudes, preferences and behaviours. This study reports the results of a pilot study of 315 police supervisors from 22 transitioning nations asking about their preferences towards two different styles of crime prevention—community-oriented policing and zero tolerance approaches. The results indicate that the officers from countries more democratically consolidated tend to have stronger relative preferences towards community-oriented policing over zero tolerance styles.

'We Are Going To Rape You And Taste Tutsi Women': Rape during the 1994 Rwandan Genocide

Mullins, C. W. — 2009-06-22

Over the past decades, scholars have paid greater attention to sexual violence, in both theorization and empirical analysis. One area that has been largely ignored, however, is sexual violence during times of armed conflict. This paper examines the nature and dynamics of sexual violence as it occurred during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Drawing upon testimonies given to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), descriptions of rapes—both singular and mass—were qualitatively analysed. In general, three broad types of assaults were identified: opportunistic assaults, which seemed to be a product of the disorder inherent within the conflict; episodes of sexual enslavement; and genocidal rapes, which were framed by the broader genocidal endeavours occurring at the time.

From The 'Old' to the 'New' Suspect Community: Examining the Impacts of Recent UK Counter-Terrorist Legislation

Pantazis, C., Pemberton, S. — 2009-06-22

The ‘war on terror’ has emerged as the principal conflict of our time, where ‘Islamic fanaticism’ is identified as the greatest threat to Western liberal democracies. Within the United Kingdom, and beyond, this political discourse has designated Muslims as the new ‘enemy within’—justifying the introduction of counter-terrorist legislation and facilitating the construction of Muslims as a ‘suspect community’. In this paper, we develop Hillyard's (1993) notion of the ‘suspect community’ and evidence how Muslims have replaced the Irish as the main focus of the government's security agenda whilst also recognizing that some groups have been specifically targeted for state surveillance. We conclude that the categorization of Muslims as suspect may be serving to undermine national security rather than enhance it.

Social Control in the Face Of Security and Minority Threats: The Effects of Terrorism, Minority Threat and Economic Crisis on the Law Enforcement System in Israel

Sela-Shayovitz, R. — 2009-06-19

This study focuses on a combination of security, minority and economic threats that occurred concurrently during the Second Intifada in Israel and their impact on social control. The Israeli situation provides a unique opportunity for implementing the natural experiment approach. This study was based on an interrupted time-series analysis of a restricted time period, namely 1995–2005. ARMA models were used to examine the effects of Intifada period, terrorist attacks, unemployment rates and ethnic origin on pre-trial detention rates. The findings support the minority threat hypothesis. A strong and statistically significant interaction effect was found between the Second Intifada and ethnic origin: pre-trial detentions of Arabs increased during the Intifada and were higher than those of Jews. The results partially support the economic threat hypothesis.

Exceptionalism and the 'War On Terror': Criminology Meets International Relations

Aradau, C., van Munster, R. — 2009-06-12

Criminology and International Relations (IR) share a relatively wide vocabulary: political violence, crime, security, deterrence, war on terror, risk, human rights and freedom. Particularly in the case of the ‘war on terror’, similar concerns and conceptual tools have increasingly surfaced on both sides. Nonetheless, one debate—namely Carl Schmitt's theory of the exception and its uptake in IR—has travelled less well. This article argues that there is value in engaging with the IR debates on the exception. From the perspective of IR, the exception makes possible different insights about the dialectics between law and crime by unpacking the constitutive role of the politics of fear, the importance of the ‘international’ and the transformed relationship to the future. It also exposes the deteriorating effects of the ‘war on terror’ on justice, democracy and social transformation.

PRISON ISLAM IN THE AGE OF SACRED TERROR

Hamm, M. S. — 2009-06-09

Research indicates that Islam is the fastest growing religion among prisoners in Western nations. In the United States, roughly 240,000 inmates have converted to the faith since the 9/11 attacks. According to federal law enforcement, Saudi-backed Wahhabi clerics have targeted these prisoners for terrorist recruitment. The present research examines this claim from several different perspectives. First, it reviews the literature on prisoner conversions to Islam and concludes that there are opposing viewpoints on the matter. One side of the debate takes an alarmist stance, arguing that prisons have become incubators for Islamic terrorism; the other side asserts that Islam plays a vital role in prisoner rehabilitation. Second, results of a two-year study of prisoner radicalization and terrorist recruitment in US prisons are reported. The motives for prisoner conversions to Islam are discussed along with the effects of conversion on inmate behaviour; the role played by gangs and charismatic leaders in radicalizing prisoners; and the social processes by which inmates move from radicalization to operational terrorism. Third, two case studies are presented. One involves a terrorist plot waged by a gang of Sunni prisoners at California's New Folsom Prison; the other looks at the inmate-led Islamic Studies Program at Old Folsom Prison, which has adopted a de-radicalization agenda. It is argued that inmate self-help programmes may do more than the state to prevent radicalization and terrorist recruitment behind bars.

JUSTICE IN A TIME OF TERROR

Hudson, B. — 2009-06-03

The war on terror has seen the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan; the use of torture on detainees in Guantanamo Bay; extension of periods of detention without trial, and increased levels of surveillance and control in the United Kingdom and the United States. Although being fought in the name of justice and democracy, the war on terror seems to have brought about curbs on freedom to citizens of the Western democracies and brutality rather than justice to those who are designated enemies and suspects in the war. This article looks at aspects of the war on terror from the perspective of a concern to defend the ideal of justice. Under headings of justice and legality, the lesser evil, the threat to liberal values, and justice and the other, war and occupation, torture, curtailment of civil liberties and the extent to which we each have a responsibility to protect the rights of those who are not our fellow citizens and who do not appear to share our values and our commitments to rights and freedoms are discussed. Recent writings by Michael Walzer on just and unjust wars, Michael Ignatieff on the use of the lesser evil, Jacques Derrida on the rights of the stranger to hospitality and Drucilla Cornell on the need to defend our ideals at the time when we are most likely to forsake them are drawn upon to help examine the fate of and the prospects for justice in a time of terror.

'I'M A MUSLIM, BUT I'M NOT A TERRORIST': VICTIMIZATION, RISKY IDENTITIES AND THE PERFORMANCE OF SAFETY

Mythen, G., Walklate, S., Khan, F. — 2009-06-03

Since the events of 11 September 2001, Muslim minority groups have been subjected to pervasive scrutiny in the United Kingdom. The 7 July 2005 attacks have led to young Muslims’ being party to intensified modes of monitoring, surveillance and intervention by crime and security agencies. The introduction of multiple forms of counter-terrorism regulation by the state has been underpinned by discourses of (in)security, which have defined British Muslims en bloc as a risky, suspect population. Against this wider backdrop, this paper presents the findings from a study investigating the effects of these processes on young British Pakistanis in the North-West of England. Giving voice to these young people, we explore their responses to risk-victimization and articulate the impacts of legal and cultural regulation both on the management of Muslim identities and performances of safety in the public sphere.

PUBLIC HEALTH AND FEAR OF CRIME: A Prospective Cohort Study

Jackson, J., Stafford, M. — 2009-05-30

Public insecurities about crime are widely assumed to erode individual well-being and community cohesion. Yet, robust evidence on the link between worry about crime and health is surprisingly scarce. This paper draws on data from a prospective cohort study (the Whitehall II study) to show a strong statistical effect of mental health and physical functioning on worry about crime. Combining with existing evidence, we suggest a feedback model in which worry about crime harms health, which, in turn, serves to heighten worry about crime. We conclude with the idea that, while fear of crime may express a whole set of social and political anxieties, there is a core to worry about crime that is implicated in real cycles of decreased health and perceived vulnerability to victimization. The challenge for future study is to integrate core aspects of the everyday experience of fear of crime with the more layered and expressive features of this complex social phenomenon.

THE TRANSFORMATION OF VIOLENCE IN IRAQ

Green, P., Ward, T. — 2009-05-28

This article explores the connections between various forms of organized political violence and ostensibly private, non-political violence in post-invasion Iraq, focusing on gender-based violence and the links between militias and organized crime. We argue that, as in other civil wars, much of the violence is ‘dual-purpose’, simultaneously serving private and political goals, and that despite a decline in violence since 2007, the situation created by the overthrow of the previous dictatorship remains extremely dangerous.

Pre-Crime and Counter-Terrorism: Imagining Future Crime in the 'War on Terror'

McCulloch, J., Pickering, S. — 2009-05-11

This article looks at pre-crime in the context of counter-terrorism. Pre-crime links coercive state actions to suspicion without the need for charge, prosecution or conviction. It also includes measures that expand the remit of the criminal law to include activities or associations that are deemed to precede the substantive offence targeted for prevention. The trend towards anticipating risks as a driving principle in criminal justice was identified well before 2001. However, risk and threat anticipation have substantially expanded in the context of contemporary counter-terrorism frameworks. Although pre-crime counter-terrorism measures are rationalized on the grounds of preventing terrorism, these measures do not fit in the frame of conventional crime prevention. The article argues that the shift to pre-crime embodies a trend towards integrating national security into criminal justice along with a temporal and geographic shift that encompasses a blurring of the borders between the states’ internal and external coercive capacities. The counter-terrorism framework incorporates and combines elements of criminal justice and national security, giving rise to a number of tensions. One key tension is between the ideal of impartial criminal justice and the politically charged concept of national security. Pre-crime counter-terrorism measures can be traced through a number of interlinking historical trajectories including the wars on crime and drugs, criminalization and, more fundamentally, in colonial strategies of domination, control and repression. The article concludes by identifying a number of challenges and opportunities for criminology in the shift from post-crime criminal justice to pre-crime national security.