Global-level data suggests that the number of women and girls in prison is growing and at a faster rate than the male prison population is. In order to meaningfully address this shift in female deviance and criminalization, more attention should be given on the specific ways that women and girls are labeled “deviants” and subsequently criminalized. Women and girls have been criminalized, imprisoned, and harshly punished for “moral” offenses such as adultery or premarital sex or for violations of dress codes or even for being a member of the LGBTQ community. Women and girls have also been reportedly been imprisoned for running away from their homes (often from abusive situations), for being raped, and even for being forced into prostitution. Furthermore, victims of domestic violence or sex trafficking and sex workers have been administratively detained or simply detained for seeking asylum, having committed no crime. The feminist criminological perspective has widened an understanding of all forms of female deviance. This perspective stresses the importance of contextual analysis and of incorporating unique experiences of women and girls at the intersection of not only gender, race, class, and ethnicity but also nationality, religion, sexual orientation, political affiliation, and immigration or migration status, and against the backdrop of national as well as international conflict. Now the challenge is develop effective solutions both to address female victimization and to end the silencing of women and girls through criminalization on a global level. Effective implementation of a gender-mainstreaming strategy, adopted in United Nations policies such as “the Bangkok Rules,” is one of the proposed solutions.
Article
Female “Deviance” and Pathways to Criminalization in Different Nations
Syeda Tonima Hadi and Meda Chesney-Lind
Article
Femicide: The Notion, Theories, and Challenges for Research
Daniela Bandelli and Consuelo Corradi
Since the 1990’s, the notion of femicide has disseminated in civil society, the media, policy making, and scientific literature and has helped movements to draw attention to violence against women. The notion was coined to reveal the sexual politics of the murder of women and call militants to action. Today, it is increasingly used with the meaning of killing a woman because she is a woman, emphasizing gender and misogyny as the main motives. Femicide as well as the consequences of its application in diverse research areas are explored from a historical, legal, international, and activist point of view. The political thrust of the notion has proven to be useful in raising awareness on the emergency of the problem. However, the notion becomes unclear when it is used as a heuristic tool because (a) there is more than one interpretation about which types of homicide should be included and which fall beyond the definition of femicide and (b) the gender identity of the victim is not the only or the central motive of the homicide—both caveats pose problems to quantitative data collection and comparison. Available literature on homicide, family, and intimate partner violence offers a complex picture on why men kill women: explanations include diverse and interrelated factors pertaining to individual characteristics of perpetrators and victim, their relational history, and the influence of sociocultural environment, including a culture of male superiority and control. In addition, scientific literature has suggested that the importance of gender equality variables as a predicting factor for intimate partner violence should not be taken for granted, but it should be tested at the empirical level. Accurate options are suggested that yield robust and comparable empirical data for the advancement of knowledge and prevention.
Article
Frameworks of Critical Race Theory
Lee E. Ross
Critical race theory (CRT) concerns the study and transformation of relationships among race, (ethnicity), racism, and power. For many scholars, CRT is a theoretical and interpretative lens that analyzes the appearance of race and racism within institutions and across literature, film, art, and other forms of social media. Unlike traditional civil rights approaches that embraced incrementalism and systematic progress, CRT questioned the very foundations of the legal order. Since the 1980s, various disciplines have relied on this theory—most notably the fields of education, history, legal studies, feminist studies, political science, psychology, sociology, and criminal justice—to address the dynamics and challenges of racism in American society. While earlier narratives may have exclusively characterized the plight of African Americans against institutional power structures, later research has advocated the importance of understanding and highlighting the narratives of all people of color. Moreover, the theoretical lenses of CRT have broadened its spectrum to include frameworks that capture the struggles and experiences of Latinx, Asian, and Native Americans as well. Taken collectively, these can be regarded as critical race studies. Each framework relies heavily on certain principles of CRT, exposing the easily obscured and often racialized power structures of American society. Included among these principles (and related tenets) is white supremacy, white privilege, interest convergence, legal indeterminacy, intersectionality, and storytelling, among others. An examination of each framework reveals its remarkable potential to inform and facilitate an understanding of racialized practices within and across American power structures and institutions, including education, employment, the legal system, housing, and health care.
Article
Gangs and Globalization
Alistair Fraser and Elke Van Hellemont
It has been a century since Frederic Thrasher researched his pioneering text on youth gangs in Chicago. In it he depicts gangs as a street-based phenomenon that emerged from the combined forces of urbanization, migration, and industrialization—with new migrant groups seeking to find a toehold on the American Dream. Gangs were discrete and highly localized, drawing on names from popular culture and the neighborhood, seeking ways to survive and thrive amid the disorganization of the emerging city. In the 21st century, street gangs have been identified in urban contexts all over the world and have become increasingly viewed as a transnational phenomenon that is qualitatively different from Thrasher’s neighborhood groups. Processes of globalization have created a degree of flow and connectedness to urban life that is unlike any other stage in human history. Yet a close reading of Thrasher shows that some of the key themes in the study of gangs in a global context—urban exclusion, grey economies, human mobility, and cultural flow—were presaged in Thrasher’s work. In a global era, however, these processes have intensified, amplified, and extended in ways that could not have been predicted.
We elaborate the spatial, economic, social, cultural, and technological implications of globalization for gangs across five principle areas: (1) Gangs in the Global City; (2) Gangs, Illicit Markets, and the Global Criminal Economy; (3) Mobility, Crimmigration, and the “Transnational Gang”; (4) Gangs and Glocalization; and (5) The Gang Mediascape. Taken together, these themes seek to offer both a conceptual vocabulary and empirical foundation for new and innovative studies of gangs and globalization. Empirical evidences from Europe, the United States, and beyond, emphasize the uneven impacts of globalization and the ways in which national and cultural dynamics are implicated in the study of gangs in the 21st century.
Article
Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing
Brooke B. Chambers and Joachim J. Savelsberg
Genocide and ethnic cleansing are among the most deadly human-made catastrophes. Together with other forms of government violence, such as war crimes and crimes against humanity, the death toll they caused during the 20th century alone approximates 200 million. This is an estimated ten times higher than the number of deaths resulting from all violence committed in civil society during the same period. Yet the definition of genocide, its perception as a social problem, and the designation of responsible actors as criminals are all relatively recent. Globalization, international organizations, nongovernmental organizations, and cultural shifts are interrelated contributors to this process of redefinition.
While genocide and ethnic cleansing often appear to be unpredictable and chaotic, they nonetheless underlie a socio-logic across time and space. As the field of study evolved, scholars debated the role of authority and ideology in enabling violence. Today, consensus has shifted away from deterministic explanations about intrinsic hatred engrained in particular groups to sociological factors. They include the role of political regimes, war, organization, and narratives of ethnic hatred, each of which can play a role in facilitating violence.
Recent developments also include the creation of new institutional mechanisms that seek to punish perpetrators and prevent the occurrence of genocide and ethnic cleansing. Among them are criminal justice responses that work potentially through deterrence, but also—more fundamentally—through the initiation of cultural change. Prosecutions, as well as supplemental mechanisms such as truth commissions, may indeed lead to a radical shift in the perception of mass violence and those responsible for it, thereby delegitimizing genocidal and ethnic cleansing campaigns.
Article
Global Anomie Theory
Anamika Twyman-Ghoshal
Global anomie theory (GAT), as articulated by Nikos Passas, provides an explanation of the impact of globalization and neoliberalism on nations and the conditions within them to create anomie resulting in deviance. Drawing on Merton’s anomie theory, GAT includes an analysis of the global structural and cultural forces acting on the relations between society and individuals. The theory is integrative, incorporating anomie with other criminological approaches and with knowledge from related social sciences. GAT is designed to provide a comprehensive macro-level theory on the social context for deviance.
The global anomie approach suggests that neoliberal globalization is a root cause of anomie and dysnomie, creating an environment conducive to crime and social harm. The theory posits that the growth and intensity of neoliberalization has multiplied criminogenic asymmetries creating discrepancies between cultural goals and the legitimate means of achieving those goals. The interconnections generated by globalization are manifest through increased social mobility, enhanced international communication, and intensified international trade. This process has been magnified globally, stressing the importance of an unfettered free market, espousing material goals, economic growth, and consumerism. In this environment of growing interconnectedness, reference groups are broadened, which influence aspirations, steering them increasingly toward economic goals. Simultaneously, the process of globalization exposes inequities, stratifications, exclusions, and marginalization, which impede access to the sought-after material goals, creating both absolute and relative deprivation. Echoing Merton’s work, Passas argues that when aspirations are not realized, such blockages lead to systematic frustrations. Individuals adapt to the strain in different ways, some through deviance. Deviant behavior is rationalized under these structural conditions, which when successful and allowed to continue with impunity, becomes established and normative for others in society, including for those that do not experience the original strain. At the same time, the theory identifies the impact of neoliberal globalization on governance. Normative standards and control mechanisms are reduced in an effort to shrink government intervention and oversight; this includes reducing social support mechanisms to make way for a privatized market. The ability of governments to act effectively is further impeded as deviant adaptations become normalized, creating an environment of dysnomie.
Article
Global Commercial and Sexual Exploitation of Children
Julie Anne Laser-Maira, Charles E. Hounmenou, and Donna Peach
The term commercial sexual exploitation of children (CSEC) refers to the for-profit sexual exploitation of children and youth through buying, trading, or selling sexual acts. CSEC is a subset of children and youth who are victims of human trafficking or trafficking in persons (TIP). The Stockholm Declaration defines CSEC as a form of coercion and violence against children that amounts to forced labor and a contemporary form of slavery; there are many forms of CSEC, including child prostitution, child marriage, early marriage, forced marriage, temporary marriage, mail-order brides, child labor, child servitude, domestic servitude, begging, massage, sex tourism, child pornography, online streaming of sexual abuse, sexual extortion of children, and sexual solicitation of children. Not all experiences of sexual servitude are globally recognized. It is critical to explore the concepts of race, inequality, power, culture, and globalization and how they impact the commercial sexual exploitation of children.
Article
The Global Comparative Study of Gangs and Other Non-State Armed Groups
Nicholas Barnes
After nearly a hundred years of debate and analysis, the gang concept remains hotly contested within the social sciences. Once thought to be an exclusively American phenomenon, the study of gangs has become increasingly global over the last decade. Countries from every world region have observed the emergence of gangs and gang-like groups. In some places, gangs resemble their American counterparts, while in others they engage not only in petty crime and drug trafficking but in targeted assassinations, corruption of public officials, and racketeering as well. These activities make them less like the delinquent youth groups they were once conceived as and more akin to organized crime. In less stable and violent contexts, gangs have even been incorporated into ethnic militias, rebel groups, and paramilitaries or have taken on a more vigilante ethos by combating violence and providing some semblance of order. The remarkable proliferation of the gang form and the incredible variation in the phenomenon across the globe requires a reassessment of the gang concept.
In the limited literature that focuses on the study of gangs cross-nationally, several conceptualizations have been proposed. Some scholars have attempted to separate smaller street gangs from a variety of other related phenomena: prison gangs, drug gangs, and organized crime. They have done so by crafting a more restrictive concept. However, while separating street gangs from other criminal groups may make sense in the American or European context, it applies less well to other parts of the globe where such organizational forms have become thoroughly integrated, thus blurring these traditional conceptual boundaries. At the same time, some scholars have advocated for a conceptual framework that captures the transformative nature of gangs and encompasses any and all types of gangs and gang-like groups. Such an evolutionary framework fails, however, to distinguish between gangs and a huge variety of criminal and political nonstate armed groups that share little in terms of their origins, motivations, or activities. It can be argued that the best conceptualization is a minimal one that incorporates gangs and many gang-like groups but avoids conceptual stretching to include virtually all nonstate armed groups. Ultimately, contemporary scholars of gangs within any national context must be increasingly attentive to the global dimensions of the gang organizational form and the various overlapping and multifaceted relationships they maintain with a variety of other nonstate armed groups.
Article
Global Development and Crime
Mahesh K. Nalla, Gregory J. Howard, and Graeme R. Newman
One common claim about crime is that it is driven in particular ways by development. Whereas the classic civilization thesis asserts that development will yield declining crime rates, the conflict tradition in criminology as well as the modernization school expect rises in crime rates, although for different reasons. Notwithstanding a raft of empirical investigations into the matter, an association between development and crime has not been consistently demonstrated. The puzzling results in the literature may be owing to the challenges in conceptualizing and operationalizing development. They are also almost certainly attributable to the serious problems related to the cross-national measurement of crime. Given the current state of knowledge and the prospects for future research, evidence reportedly bearing on the development and crime relationship should be received with ample caution and skepticism. Refinements in measurement practices and research strategies may remedy the extant situation, but for now the relationship between development and crime is an open and complicated question.
Article
Global Developments in Policing Provision in the 21st Century
Clifford Shearing and Philip Stenning
Significant developments in our understandings of, and thinking about, “policing” have occurred in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. These have been reflected in redefinitions of the words “police” and “policing” that scholars use when writing about it. By the middle of the 19th century the word "police" in English was understood to refer to the state-sponsored institution responsible for order maintenance, crime control, and law enforcement, and its officers; and the word policing referred to what its officers did to achieve these objectives. Police were typically referred to as “the police,” indicating that they uniquely performed this role. But in the decades after the Second World War, scholars and consultants brought the world’s attention to a dramatic growth in nonstate institutions that were fulfilling similar roles; they were referred to as “private security.”
Research revealed that private security were undertaking the same tasks and responsibilities as the police were but doing so in different ways, with different objectives, and different means. They more often saw their role as loss prevention—rather than crime control—and did not see presenting offenders before the criminal justice system as a good way to achieve that. Rather, they developed ways of achieving order and preventing losses that drew on the power of their clients—for instance to exclude troublemakers from their property—rather than the kinds of legal powers relied on by the police, which they typically did not have anyway. Policing scholars began to talk of “private police” and “private policing.” What is more, research revealed that within a couple of decades of the end of the Second World War, private security personnel had come to outnumber public police personnel, in some countries by as much as 3 to 1. It also became apparent that even within government there was an increasing number of organizations and personnel, other than “the police,” such as customs officials, tax inspectors, and so forth, who could also be considered to be doing policing. Many police researchers redefined themselves as policing researchers, interested in studying all these different public and private organizations and personnel who seemed to be doing policing, and what their relationships with each other were.
By the 1990s, in light of these research findings, policing scholars began to talk about plural policing provision, rather than just about the relationships between “private security” and “the police.” A whole lot of new questions arose: Who is doing policing? What are the different ways of doing it? In whose interests is it being done? What are the implications of this for policing policy? How can policing provision be effectively governed given its prolific diversity? How are developments like globalization and technological advances impacting the challenges faced by policing providers? And which providers are best placed to meet which of these challenges? And finally, is policing just about addressing human threats to safety and security ? What about threats to safety and security arising from natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods, tsunamis, and droughts, or other manifestations of climate change such as global warming? Or from pandemics and the like? Or from the development of artificial intelligence? In short, what do “policing” and policing provision mean in the 21st century? And how will we understand and think about them in the future? Certainly not as we understood them in the middle of the 20th century.
Article
Global Security Surveillance
Keith Guzik and Gary T. Marx
Recent literature at the intersections of surveillance, security, and globalization trace the contours of global security surveillance (GSS), a distinct form of social control that combines traditional and technical means to extract or create personal or group data transcending national boundaries to detect and respond to criminal and national threats to the social order. In contrast to much domestic state surveillance (DSS), GSS involves coordination between public and private law enforcement, security providers, and intelligence services across national borders to counteract threats to collectively valued dimensions of the global order as defined by surveillance agents. While GSS builds upon past forms of state monitoring, sophisticated technologies, the preeminence of neoliberalism, and the uncertainty of post–Cold War politics lend it a distinctive quality. GSS promises better social control against both novel and traditional threats, but it also risks weakening individual civil liberties and increasing social inequalities.
Article
Green Criminology in International Perspectives
Ekaterina Gladkova, Alison Hutchinson, and Tanya Wyatt
Green criminology is now an established subfield of criminology. Having emerged in the 1990s, green criminology has rapidly grown, particularly in the last 10 years. Scholarship remains rooted in the critical and radical traditions that inspired its creation and challenge the orthodoxy of most criminological scholarship. This means that research in green criminology does not stick within the confines of only what is deemed criminal by the state but also uncovers harmful and injurious behaviors, particularly of the powerful, such as states and corporations. These once-hidden harms are approached from an environmental justice perspective that exposes the injury and suffering of marginalized people and also to the environment itself (ecological justice) and to nonhumans (species justice). More recent iterations of green criminology feature culture in addition to political economic explanations of crimes and harms against the environment and other species. Both theories of green crimes criticize capitalist societies and the ongoing problems of commodification and excessive consumption. In addition, new contributions, particularly from the Global South, are challenging the hegemony of Western criminological and environmental discourses, offering new (to the West) insights into relationships with nature and with other people. These studies have the potential to shape new prevention strategies and intervention mechanisms to disrupt green crimes and harms. This is urgent as the magnitude of environmental degradation is increasing—ranging from the threat of climate change, the possible extinction of a million species in the near future, and the ubiquity of plastic pollution, to name just a few forms of environmental destruction that humans have been, and are, perpetrating against the Earth.
Article
Habitat Loss
Mònica Pons-Hernández
Habitat loss refers to the disappearance of natural environments that house specific plant and animal species. Habitat loss encompass three main types: habitat destruction, degradation, and fragmentation. Habitat destruction involves extensive devastation of natural environments, habitat degradation results from the depletion of vital resources like water and food, and habitat fragmentation refers to the conversion of large wild areas into smaller ones. All forms of habitat loss are endangering species’ survival. Primarily driven by human activities, the loss of habitat adversely affects terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. Land conversion for agriculture, mining, and urban development leads to the loss of forests and other habitats. Aquatic environments also suffer habitat loss caused by dredging, pollution, or waste. Moreover, climate change, a consequence of global warming, further intensifies habitat loss. Droughts, floods, wildfires, and changing water conditions impact both terrestrial and aquatic habitats.
Although the link between habitat destruction and criminology may not be immediately apparent, its harmful effects make it of interest to criminologists. Green criminology’s focus on harms, along with crimes and the impacts of these harms toward all species and environments, makes habitat loss of key interest for criminology. Habitat loss falls under the scope of green criminology because of its effects on ecosystems, humans, and nonhuman species. It is important to note that habitat and biodiversity loss are deeply intertwined. The case of the European eel illustrates the (slow) violence linked to habitat loss and its effects on biodiversity. European eels face multiple threats due to habitat destruction, fragmentation, and degradation. The construction of weirs and dams is one of the major factors that negatively impacts eels. It restricts their movement and blocks both upstream and downstream migration routes, destroying and fragmenting their habitat. As a migratory species, freedom of movement is crucial for their survival, making the presence of these barriers a significant concern. Additionally, global warming and ocean modifications further degrade eels’ habitats, affecting the survival of larvae during their drift and silver (adult) eels during their spawning migration. Furthermore, the introduction of nonnative species and the increasing contamination levels in eel habitats also contribute to their degradation, posing another danger to the species’ survival. Overall, European eels are a landmark opportunity to highlight the diverse range of causes of habitat loss and the (slow) violence ingrained in it.
Article
The Harms and Crimes Against Plant Species
Esteban Morelle-Hungría and Pablo Serra-Palao
In the 21st century, the socio-environmental crisis is not limited to the quantitative analysis of the biophysical conditions on a global or sub-global scale. Individual species are directly affected by the “dynamics of the Anthropocene”: climate change, extreme weather events, deforestation, the acidification of the oceans, pollution, the use of pesticides, and many other anthropogenic pressures. All of these pressures have serious implications for individual species. Among all these affected species, this entry focuses on plant species. The Anthropocene dynamics and their associated impacts on individual plant species can be perceived at a number of different levels and with varying degrees of intensity and severity. In green criminology, the conceptual complexity of the distinction between environmental damage and crime has been widely debated, mainly due to their different politico-legal responses. For this reason, it is essential to provide an overview of environmental harms and crimes that affect plant species. To achieve this, the analysis begins with a theoretical foundation of green criminology, outlining its origins, multiple definitions and perspectives, ethical foundations, and justice frameworks. From this green criminological perspective, the scientific literature on a selected list of harms and crimes against plant species is reviewed using a holistic and interdisciplinary approach.
Article
The Harms and Crimes of Mining
Yuliya Zabyelina
The world characterized by scarcity of natural resources and the growing demand for metals and minerals has provided strong incentives for illegal mining. Mining-related crimes have become a desirable illegal business for organized criminal groups, rebel forces, terrorist organizations, and private mining companies due to the low risks involved and the frequently limited ability or willingness of authorities to monitor mining areas and supply chains of metals and minerals. Illegal mining has devastated and displaced communities, contaminated clean water sources, and ravaged ecosystems and biodiversity. The problem commands both individual responses from the countries directly impacted by illegal mining as well as responses from the entire international community.
Article
The Harms and Crimes of Waste
Lieselot Bisschop and Karin van Wingerde
The increasing volume and toxicity of waste generated globally has been one of the most significant environmental issues since the 1980s. Following several disasters across the world, waste was more strictly regulated, and the waste industry became a massive industrial complex. Waste is inherently tied to consumption and production processes and therefore goes hand in hand with societal developments like industrialization, urbanization, and globalization, which have all impacted the scale and hazardousness of waste. Although many cases of illegal waste trade have been documented and even prosecuted, the harms and crimes of waste relate to much more than the illegal transport and disposal of it across borders. Waste crimes and harms occur in everyday production and consumption processes and often remain hidden or only become known after a considerable amount of time. Moreover, most of the harms caused by waste follow from regulated industrial processes or consumer behaviors. Not only has waste been a long-time societal challenge, but it also remains a key focus of criminological inquiry. Waste continues to be a paramount example of the ambiguities that come with globalization and the regulation of harmful business and societal practices. Based on a review of the available academic literature and using several case studies as examples, this article provides a broad introduction into the topic of the harms and crimes of waste. It focuses on household and industrial waste, on (global) waste streams, on waste production, and on treatment and disposal of waste, and it illustrates the criminogenic characteristics of waste. Moreover, this article discusses both the causes (industrial processes) and the effects (harms) of waste production and disposal.
Article
Hate Crimes in a Cross-Cultural Context
Keller G. Sheppard, Nathaniel L. Lawshe, and Jack McDevitt
Hate crimes are criminal offenses that involve elements of bias based on some individual characteristics of the victim, including race, gender, disability, sexual orientation, and religion. The passage of laws criminalizing or enhancing the punishment for crimes featuring bias motivations has been met with intense controversy. In addressing criticism of such legislation, proponents of these laws highlight the considerable harms caused by hate crime. These incidents are considered especially heinous as they not only violate the civil and human rights of the immediate victim but also send a message of fear to the entirety of that victim’s community or social group. Prior scholarship on these offenses have employed numerous theoretical frameworks—psychological, historical, sociological, and economic theories—to describe why perpetrators target victims based on perceived group identity. Other work has provided insight into the causes of hate crime by considering factors distinguishing bias-motivated offenders from other criminal offenders. Conflicting legal definitions of hate crime add to the complexity of its conceptualization. At the international level, hate crime statutes are strongly influenced by the different social, cultural, and historical contexts across nations. Hate crime laws differ markedly across countries with respect to the specification of protected groups’ identities, treatment of hate speech, legal standards for establishing bias motivation, and utilization of hate crime statutes for criminal prosecutions. These differences, coupled with nationally distinct methodologies for recording bias-motivated incidents, have stymied attempts to engage in cross-national comparisons of the quality and extent of hate crime.
Article
Human Rights and Penal Policy
Joachim J. Savelsberg and Suzy McElrath
Structural and cultural changes in the modernization process, combined with contingent historical events, gave rise to a human rights regime. It is codified in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, promulgated after World War II and the Holocaust. Yet, only the gravest of human rights violations have been criminalized. First steps were taken beginning in the 19th century with The Hague and Geneva Conventions, constituting the Laws of Armed Conflict. They were followed by the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948), the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1984), and eventually the Rome Statute (1998) on which the first permanent International Criminal Court is based. Some scholars even observe a justice cascade. Enforcement of the norms entailed in the above legal documents benefits from opportunities such as increases in international interdependencies, the buildup of international organizations, and the proliferation of nongovernmental organizations in the human rights realm. Challenges arise from partially competing principles such as conflict settlement and survival of suffering populations as cultivated by social fields such as humanitarianism and diplomacy and from a lack of law enforcement. While international institutions play a crucial role, much international law is implemented through domestic courts. International penal law pertaining to human rights has affected domestic policymaking in the human rights realm but also nation-level policies pertaining to the punishment of common crimes. Finally, debates continue to rage regarding the effects of the criminalization of grave human rights violations. Proponents have thus far focused on potential deterrent effects, but a new line of thought has begun to take cultural effects seriously. Its representatives identify a redefinition of those responsible for mass violence as criminal perpetrators and substantial representational power of international criminal law against those who bear responsibility for the gravest of human rights violations.
Article
Human Trafficking: Women, Children, and Victim-Offender Overlap
Alexis A. Aronowitz and Mounia Chmaitilly
Human trafficking involves exploitation in prostitution and other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labor, domestic service, and for the purpose of organ removal. The dominant narrative in human trafficking discourse on victims is that of “a young woman and naïve innocent lured or deceived into a life of lurid horror from which escape is nearly impossible,” according to Jo Doezema. This conflicts with the reality of victims who may have exercised agency and been voluntarily involved in the initial stages of the process or those agreeing to work in prostitution. Identifying victims of human trafficking is complex when their very existence in a country as undocumented migrants or their forced participation in activities deemed illegal (prostitution, participation in armed conflict or child soldiering, or criminal offenses) results in their being criminalized rather than protected.
The existence of prior victims becoming traffickers, particularly in the sexual exploitation of other women, has been documented by numerous researchers. Here, and in other situations where victims are forced to participate in criminal activities, the victim-offender overlap becomes blurred.
This presents a number of ethical and operational problems, in terms of how we recognize victims of human trafficking and how we discern them from offenders. Based upon a number of case studies involving women and children forced into prostitution, participation in armed conflict and terrorism, and criminal activities, the reader begins to understand the complexities of the victim-offender overlap and what measures are available to identify and protect victims of human trafficking from criminal prosecution.
Article
Hyperincarceration and Indigeneity
Thalia Anthony and Harry Blagg
Indigenous people have been subject to policies that disproportionately incarcerate them since the genesis of colonization of their lands. Incarceration is one node of a field of colonial oppression for Indigenous people. Colonial practices have sought to reduce Indigenous people to “bare life,” to use Agamben’s term, where their humanity is denied the basic rights and expression in the pursuit of sovereign extinguishment. Across the settler colonies of Australia, Aotearoa/New Zealand, Canada, and the United States, the colonial drive to conquer land and eliminate Indigenous peoples has left deep scars on Indigenous communities and compromised bonds to kin, culture, and country. Indigenous people have been made refugees in their own countries.
Contemporary manifestations of penal incarceration for Indigenous people are a continuation of colonial strategies rather than a distinct phase. The concept of “hyperincarceration” draws attention to the problem of incarceration and its discriminatory targets. It also turns our attention to the turnstile of incarceration in Western postmodernity. However, the prison is but one form of exclusion for Indigenous people in a constellation of eliminatory and assimilatory practices, policies, and regimes imposed by colonial governance. Rather than overemphasizing the prison, there needs to be a broader conceptualization of colonial governance through “the camp,” again in the words of Agamben. The colonial institutionalization of Indigenous people, including in out-of-home care, psychiatric care, and corrective programs, is akin to a camp where Indigenous people are relegated to the margins of society. We eschew a narrow notion of hyperincarceration and instead posit a structural analysis of colonial relations underpinning the camp.
