The gap between public perception of immigrant criminality and the research consensus on immigrants’ actual rates of criminal participation is persistent and cross-cultural. While the available evidence shows that immigrants worldwide tend to participate in criminal activity at rates slightly lower than the native-born, media and political discourse portraying immigrants as uniquely crime-prone remains a pervasive global phenomenon. This apparent disconnect is rooted in the dynamics of othering, or the tendency to dehumanize and criminalize identifiable out-groups. Given that most migration decisions are motivated by economic factors, othering is commonly used to justify subjecting immigrants to exploitative labor practices, with criminalization often serving as the rationale for excluding immigrants from full participation in the social contract. When considered in the context of social harm, immigrants’ relationship to crime and criminality becomes more complex, especially where migration decisions are forced or made under coercive circumstances involving ethnic cleansing, genocide, or other state crimes; many recent examples of these dynamics have rendered large numbers of migrants effectively stateless. Experiencing the direct or collateral effects of state crimes can, in turn, affect immigrants’ participation in a wide range of crime types, from status crimes such as prostitution or survival theft to terrorism and organized criminal activity such as drug trafficking or human trafficking. While there is no available research evidence indicating that immigrants participate in any given crime type at higher rates than the native-born, the dynamics of transnational criminal activity—reliant on multinational social networks, multilingual communication, and transportation across borders—favor immigrant participation, though such crimes are often facilitated by multinational corporations.
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Immigrants and Crime
Daniel L. Stageman
Article
Immigration and Crime
Frances Bernat
In the context of crime, victimization, and immigration in the United States, research shows that people are afraid of immigrants because they think immigrants are a threat to their safety and engage in many violent and property crimes. However, quantitative research has consistently shown that being foreign born is negatively associated with crime overall and is not significantly associated with committing either violent or property crime. If an undocumented immigrant is arrested for a criminal offense, it tends to be for a misdemeanor. Researchers suggest that undocumented immigrants may be less likely to engage in serious criminal offending behavior because they seek to earn money and not to draw attention to themselves. Additionally, immigrants who have access to social services are less likely to engage in crime than those who live in communities where such access is not available. Some emerging research has shown that communities with concentrated immigrant populations have less crime because these communities become revitalized. In regard to victimization, foreign-born victims of crime may not report their victimization because of fears that they will experience negative consequences if they contact the police or seek to avoid legal mechanisms to resolve disputes. Recently, concern about immigration and victimization has turned to refugees who are at risk of harm from traffickers, who warehouse them, threaten them, and abuse them physically with impunity. More research is needed on the relationship among immigration, offending, and victimization. The United States and other nations that focus on border security may be misplacing their efforts during global crises that result in forced migrations. Poverty and war, among other social conditions that would encourage a person to leave their homeland in search of a better life, should be addressed by governments when enforcing immigration laws and policy.
Article
Indigenous Courts
Valmaine Toki
In many jurisdictions, including Australia, New Zealand, Canada, United States and across the Pacific, offending rates for Indigenous peoples continue to be disproportionate to population size. For example, in New Zealand, Māori comprise over half the male prison population yet constitute only 15% of the national population. In Canada and the United States, where Indigenous people constitute 3.6 and 1.7% of the population, respectively, imprisonment rates are also disproportionate.
Notwithstanding attempts to address these statistics, the overrepresentation of Indigenous peoples in prisons continues. However, Te Kooti Rangatahi, a marae-based (traditional-setting) “Indigenous court” for youths, has demonstrated some initial success as a unique initiative. This “court” integrates tikanga Māori (Māori culture) into the judicial process, with the aim of facilitating the reconnection of young people with their culture and involving the wider community. Te Kooti Matariki, an Indigenous court for adults, employs tikanga but within a mainstream court. A comparative perspective with the Navajo Common Law and Navajo Nation Tribal Court system demonstrates that the inclusion of Indigenous concepts into Western legal systems is not novel and should not in and of itself prevent the extension of Te Kooti Rangatahi and Te Kooti Matariki’s jurisdictions.
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Indigenous Justice in Oceania and North America
Beverley Jacobs
Indigenous justice has been practiced by Indigenous peoples in Oceania and North America since time immemorial. These practices have been disregarded, disrespected, and displaced by Eurocentric principles of criminal law and procedure—a system that has been forced upon Indigenous peoples without their consent. As a result of colonization, Indigenous peoples have endured a system that not only has used its laws to erase the existence of Indigenous peoples but also has failed to recognize and honor Indigenous peoples’ systems and principles of laws.
At the present time, the colonial systems of laws have begun to recognize Indigenous laws and justice; however, the state has still tried to control how, what, and where Indigenous laws and justice can be utilized. There continues to be a lack of understanding of Indigenous justice, because most education systems are not required to teach it. This is slowly starting to change, but we are nowhere near the actual recognition and practice of Indigenous justice systems. Indigenous peoples continue to practice their laws despite the colonial systems and processes, and in the future, Indigenous justice will be fully recognized with its own jurisdiction and with Indigenous peoples making healthy and respectful decisions about their own peoples.
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Indigenous Peoples and Criminology
Juan Marcellus Tauri
Indigenous criminology has developed since the start of the 21st century as a result of the regeneration of Indigenous epistemologies and reinvigoration of Indigenous critique of the criminal justice practices of settler-colonial states. In stark contrast to Carlen’s call for criminology as a scientific art, Indigenous formulations—political, partisan, and subjective, reflective of the stated aims of activist scholars such as Agozino, Monture-Angus, Victor, Tauri, and Porter—are evangelical by necessity to hold the settler-colonial state accountable for the violence it perpetrates against Indigenous peoples, and to subject western criminologists to critical scrutiny for their historical and contemporary support for the state. This support manifests through the use of theories and research methodologies that silence Indigenous experiences of settler-colonial crime control, and approaches to crime and social harm, and through the discipline of criminology’s continued support for the state’s continued subjugation of Indigenes. The Indigenous critique challenges the Eurocentric nature of much western criminological analysis of Indigenous over-representation in criminal justice, especially in settler-colonial settings, which often lacks a theory of colonialism, reserving analysis for the recalcitrant native and their supposedly criminogenic culture. Also problematic is the tendency of many criminologists to utilise non-engaging methods for researching Indigenous peoples, a process that too often sidelines their experiences of crime control processes. In contrast, Indigenous scholars and their non-Indigenous allies propose an Indigenous variant of the discipline based on core principles that distinguish their activist scholarship from the mainstream, including rejecting the false dichotomy between objectivity and commitment, giving back by speaking truth to power, and making research real for Indigenous peoples.
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Institutional Anomie Theory Across Nation States
Andreas Hövermann and Steven F. Messner
Institutional Anomie Theory (IAT) was originally formulated as a quintessentially macro-level theory of crime focused on the properties of large-scale social systems. The main substantive claim of the theory is that an institutional structure characterized by the dominance of the economy over other, non-economic institutions tends to be conducive to high levels of crime. Such economic dominance in the institutional structure is theorized to be manifested through three primary processes: the norms and values associated with the economy penetrate into other realms of social life; non-economic roles tend to be accommodated to the requirements of economic roles when conflicts emerge; and non-economic functions and roles are devalued relative to economic functions and roles. Economic dominance in the configuration of social institutions is linked with crime via complementary institutional and cultural dynamics. The enfeeblement of non-economic institutions accompanying economic dominance limits their capacity to perform their distinctive social control and socialization functions, and anomie permeates the culture. The defining feature of such anomie is that the egoistic or utilitarian motives associated with the market economy prevail, and technical expediency guides the selection of the means to pursue personal goals.
IAT has informed a growing body of research dedicated to explaining cross-national variation in crime rates. While empirical studies have generated mixed results, the research literature has offered support for some of the key implications of the theory. The most consistent conclusion from these studies is that the scope and generosity of the welfare state are associated with reduced levels of crime, especially lethal criminal violence, either directly or by mitigating the effects of other criminogenic conditions, such as economic inequality or economic insecurity. The precise nature of the effects of the different social institutions on crime, for example whether they exhibit “mediating” or “moderating” relationships, remains uncertain. The cultural dynamics informed by IAT have received less attention, but some efforts to incorporate culture have been promising. Along with the studies conducted exclusively at the level of nation states, an emerging area of research applies IAT in a multilevel framework. The results have been mixed here as well, but these studies have indicated how structural marketization translates into shared values that help explain individual variation in criminality. Moreover, the scope conditions of IAT have been expanded as its theoretical framework has proven to be fruitful for explaining prejudices, such as anti-immigrant attitudes and devaluations of groups purportedly seen as “unprofitable.” Several challenges remain for future research. IAT is cast at a high level of abstraction, which creates ambiguities about the precise nature of any causal structure among variables and the most appropriate procedures for operationalizing the main concepts. Moreover, research indicates that it might be important to focus not only on the strength but also on the content of non-economic institutions as the economy penetrates into non-economic institutions. Another challenge pertains to the role of religion as a non-economic institution, given research revealing that its functioning as a protective non-economic institution deviates from that of other non-economic institutions.
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International and Comparative Legal Perspectives on Victim Participation in Criminal Justice
Marie Manikis
Victim participation in common law has evolved across history and jurisdictions. Historical developments within conceptions of crime, harms, and victims in common law as well as the different victims’ movements provide an understanding of the ways that victim participation has been shaped in more-recent common law criminal justice systems. Victim participation in the criminal legal process has also given rise to various debates, which suggests that providing active forms of engagement to victims remains controversial. The forms of victim participation are also diverse, and the literature has provided typologies of victim participation. Forms of participation also vary across jurisdictions and the different stages of the criminal justice process, including prosecutorial decisions, pretrial and trial proceedings, sentencing, parole, and clemency. Finally, research that focuses on victim participation in legal traditions beyond the common law would provide an additional and important contribution to the field.
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International Courts and Tribunals
Mark Findlay
Despite political interference and jurisdictional partiality, the formal institutions of international criminal justice are positive development for global governance in their existence alone. The unique aims for global justice enunciated in the Preamble to the Rome Statute are a manifesto for how humanity expects to be protected from atrocity, and where responsibility should lie. As the example of rape in war demonstrates, translating these noble aspirations into trial practice and justice outcomes is often sullied by discriminatory externalities common in domestic criminal justice and exacerbated as the degree of victimization escalates. The lasting measure of the courts and tribunals is not successful prosecutions but rather the satisfaction of legitimate victim interests.
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International Criminal Law and International Criminal Justice
Kai Ambos and Alexander Heinze
International Criminal Justice is a controversial concept, and there is a burgeoning body of literature on its exact contours. Understood broadly, the term “international criminal justice” covers a broad category, integrating international criminal law (ICL) within an overarching interdisciplinary enterprise also “incorporating philosophical, historical, political and international relations, sociological, anthropological and criminological perspectives” (Roberts, 2007). International criminal law consists, at its core, of a combination of criminal law and public international law principles. The idea of individual criminal responsibility and the concept of prosecuting an individual for a specific (macrocriminal) act are derived from criminal law, while the classical (Nuremberg) offenses form part of (public) international law and thus the respective conduct is directly punishable under ICL (principle of direct individual criminal responsibility in public international law). The dualistic base of international criminal law is also reflected in the reading of the mandates of the international criminal tribunals; one can either take a “security, peace, and human rights”–oriented approach or a “criminal justice”–oriented approach, either of which may entail a paradoxical goal or purpose ambiguity of international criminal law. In any case, the strong grounding in criminal law, together with the actual enforcement of international criminal law by way of international criminal proceedings and trials, converts international criminal law into criminal law on a supranational level and thus entails the full application of the well-known principles of liberal, post-enlightenment criminal law, in particular the principles of legality, culpability, and fairness. These principles constitute the minimum standard of any criminal justice system based on the rule of law and thus must also apply in an international criminal justice system. The adoption of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 1998 and the effective establishment of the Court in 2002 have led to an institutionalization of international criminal law, turning the page on ad hoc imposition in favor of a treaty-based universal system. In addition, the Rome Statute provides for the first codification of international criminal law, with a potentially universal reach. Therewith, international criminal law was not only united into a single penal system of the international community, but it was also extended beyond its fundamental core areas of substantive and procedural law into other branches of criminal law (law of sanctions, enforcement of sentences, and judicial assistance).
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International Criminology: Concept, History, Developments, and Institutions
Gema Varona and José Luis de la Cuesta
In a broad sense, international criminology can be described as the set of activities related to crime prevention and control, coming from the academia, public and private institutions and agencies, to join efforts to debate and publish and make policies, addressed to a global audience beyond a single country. This process of internationalization of criminology, started since its beginnings as a science, at the end of the 19th century through important congresses and meetings developed in Europe, where public officials and academics met. In the 21st century we can talk of a global or globalized criminology around the world, expressed also via websites on the Internet. Together with international crimes (genocide, crimes against humanity, crimes of war and, to a lesser extent, aggression as crime against peace), transnational crimes (corruption, financial crime, terrorism, organized crime, and its different modalities of illegal trafficking, cyber-attacks, and crimes against the environment), as well as crimes of abuse of (political and economic) power (enforced disappearances, summary executions, torture) are the subject matter of international criminology. However, the concept of international criminology is elastic and welcomes any international approach to other topics, traditionally thought domestically; in any case from the international perspective the social-political dimension of criminality appears as a much more relevant issue than the criminal’s personality (and treatment) and protection of victims and the international community become the focus of interest.
Within the internationalization of criminology there are at least two trends that deserve further analysis. The first one is how to balance the cultural differences among all the countries and the myriad of interests involved in the construction of an international criminology. Some criticism is heard in the sense that international criminology is influenced by American or Anglo-Saxon views. From this perspective it is observed a risk of producing academic, legal, and policy criminological transplants without considering the cultural and socioeconomic context of every country and the voices of their inhabitants, very diversed in themselves. The second trend refers to the role of international criminology in relation with the increasingly diffuse borders between police, intelligence agencies, and military forces; crime control and war; or internal and external security, particularly if cyberspace beyond borders is considered. Even though international crimes have always been a core topic, war and political and economic abuse of power across borders, mainly conceived as state and corporate crime, have been quite forgotten in the agendas of both national and international criminology. Today there are different forms of cooperation among countries in conflict situations, (e.g., terrorism, border controls, and the so-called refugee crisis) where the military, intelligence agencies, police forces, and private corporations of different countries work together, providing international criminology new topics for critical reflection and action.
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International Cultural Criminology
Eleni Dimou
Cultural criminology places crime and its control within the realm of culture. Namely, it sees crime and crime control as social constructs or as cultural products; that is, their meaning is defined by the existing power relations of the social and cultural context of which they are part. As such, cultural criminology focuses on understanding how the meanings of crime, justice, and crime control are constructed, enforced, contested, and resisted within an increasingly globalized socioeconomic and cultural context. This is the context of late modernity where capitalism continues to infiltrate one community after the other, transforming people into consumers and experiences; emotions, life, and nature into consumer products. It is a context of transnational networks of flows of people, capital, goods, and images, where identities, communities, politics, and culture are increasingly constructed through the media and the Internet. There is a growing enmeshment of human communities—signified by the term globalization—in a way that events in one part of the world increasingly affect the other, and which make all the more evident perpetuating inequalities between Global North and South, as well as increasing marginality, exploitation, and exclusion of minorities within Global North and South. Simultaneously it is a world with effervescent potential for creativity, political activism, resistance, transcendence, and recuperation. This is briefly the context of late modernity within which cultural criminology endeavors to understand how perceptions about crime, justice, and crime control come to be constructed, enforced, and contested.
Cultural criminology adopts a triadic framework of analysis whereby it bridges the macro level of power (i.e., capitalism, patriarchy, racism, anthropocentrism, imperialism) to that of the meso level of culture (i.e., art forms, media, subcultures, knowledge, discourse) and the micro level of everyday life and emotions. Through this intertwined exploration of the macro, the meso, and the micro in the globally connected world of late modernity, cultural criminology embraces a highly interdisciplinary and critical stance that grants it a particular international edge, as it is attuned to contemporary issues that affect communities locally and internationally. Cultural criminology’s international edge, for example, is depicted in challenging globally established forms of criminological knowledge production, which are dictated by state definitions of crime and “law and order”-oriented policies. These definitions and their accompanying policies omit harms committed by the powerful or the state itself along with everyday life experiences of and with crime. The call for a cultural criminology is one of resistance to these dominant forms of knowledge that reinforce and legitimize the status quo at local, national, and international levels. It is a call that aims to reorient criminology to contemporary and perpetuating manifestations of power, inequalities, and resistance within the contemporary context of late modernity and globalization. To do so though, cultural criminology should also be more reflexive on its positionality within the realm of knowledge, as it represents largely a Global North perspective. As such, it should extend its attentiveness to forms of knowledge and perspectives stemming from the Global South and should seek to be critiqued from and open a dialogue with Southern and non-Western decolonial perspectives.
Article
International Drug Trafficking: Past, Present, and Prospective Trends
Luca Giommoni, R.V. Gundur, and Erik Cheekes
Since the early 20th century, the illegal drug trade has received increasing focus throughout the world. However, the use of mind-altering substances predates attempts to prohibit or regulate them. Early control efforts date back to the teachings of Mohammed in the Koran, though wider-scale control efforts did not occur until the 18th century. Since that time, both the production of mind-altering substances and their regulation or prohibition has been commonplace throughout the world. Several illicit markets exist in response to the ongoing demand. Four notable products are cocaine, heroin, cannabis, and synthetically produced, mind-altering substances that are sold predominantly to users in North America and Europe.
The production, transportation, and usage of these substances are all impacted by the histories and geographies of the producer, intermediary, and user countries. Shifts in tolerance of certain substances; geopolitical events, such as war; international policy and policing initiatives, such as the implementation of the United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances of 1988 and improved means of detecting illicit payloads at international boarders; and changes in demand for specific products have all influenced how trafficking routes and the organizations that participate in the drug trade form and adapt.
Regardless of these changes, one constant is that no aspect of the drug trade has ever been dominated by a single, monolithic organization; several illicit enterprises have historically come together to form the often supply global chains. In the 2011, the first darknet market, the Silk Road, emerged as a means by which some buyers and sellers could connect, thus potentially reducing the links of the supply chain. Ongoing changes in technology as well as shifts in the regulatory frameworks on controlled substances will impact illicit substances that are sold and how buyers and sellers interact, and will require innovated research strategies to evaluate their evolution.
Article
Justice-System Monitoring Technologies and Victim Welfare
Craig Paterson
The evolution of criminal justice technologies is inextricably linked to the emergence of new modes of electronic and digital governance that have become essential components of a surveillance and crime control culture continually seeking out novel responses to actual and perceived threats. The slow emergence of these technologies in the second part of the 20th century was often theorized through a discourse of order and control that has subsequently evolved in the 21st century to emphasize the protective potential of technologies oriented toward the interests of victims. The potential of criminal justice technologies to improve public safety and address issues of repeat victimization has now been subjected to significant scrutiny from scholars across the globe. While it would be conceptually inaccurate to split offenders and victims into two discrete groups, there has been an increase in analytical focus upon the intersections between victims of crime and technology within the context of criminal justice processes that had traditionally been oriented toward offenders. A more sophisticated understanding of the psychological and behavioral potential of criminal justice technologies has emerged that has permanently adjusted the landscape of crime and disorder management and has had a transformative impact upon the relationship between victims, technology, and criminal justice. Yet, at the same time, the integration of digital technologies into the crime control and criminal justice infrastructure still is at an early stage in its evolution, with future trends and patterns uncertain.
Article
Juvenile Delinquency in an International Context
Katharina Neissl and Simon S. Singer
Juvenile delinquency is a global phenomenon, and interest in comparative studies of juvenile offending and society’s reaction to it has been steadily growing, despite the inherent difficulties of comparing juvenile justice processes across different regions. Both adolescence and the concept of juvenile delinquency are social constructs that vary by time and place. To know what constitutes a juvenile, or a delinquent act, requires detailed knowledge of a jurisdiction’s social, political, cultural, and legal history. International data in the form of officially recorded contact of juveniles with formal institutions are scarce, and they are often limited in their use for direct comparisons, due to divergent definitions and recording practices, or coverage of geographical regions. The United Nations Surveys on Crime Trends and the Operations of Criminal Justice Systems (UN-CTS) have the widest geographical reach, but lack transparency of definitions or verification. The World Prison Brief by the Institute for Policy Research at Birkbeck University of London provides prison trends around the globe, but only offers one indicator of juvenile imprisonment. The Council of Europe Annual Penal Statistics (SPACE) and the European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics collect data on a range of custodial and non-custodial measures, and include detailed notes on national definitions, but are limited to Europe. The largest self-report study of youth is the International Self-Report Delinquency (ISRD) study, which is currently in its third wave that includes 40 countries across the globe.
Since 1990 the United Nations has developed international conventions, rules, and guidelines that govern the rights of children, particularly as they relate to juvenile justice, and these guidelines have shaped, and continue to shape, juvenile justice processes across the globe. Almost all regions in the world have provisions to treat juveniles violating the law differently from adults, but they do so in a multitude of ways. Not all countries have separate systems for juveniles and adults, and in some regions of the world informal reactions to juvenile law-breaking dominate, or coexist with formal juvenile justice institutions. Juvenile justice systems are often categorized according to their founding philosophies, between the poles of a welfare and protection approach on one extreme, and a crime control and justice approach on the other. However, such classifications mask important differences between countries, and can only be seen as broad generalizations. In order to capture the intricacies of existing systems, and compare them between jurisdictions, a localized approach to juvenile justice is needed. It is not sufficient to describe which legal orientations or traditions inform a system, but rather it is necessary to examine how these traditions (as well as global trends and pressures) are interpreted by local juvenile justice administrators. Comparative juvenile justice research that can contribute to public debates and to achieving better outcomes for juveniles across the globe needs to be localized, pay special attention to the specific cultural, legal, and historical context of the jurisdiction studied, and differentiate between the law in theory and the law in practice.
Article
Lethal Violence: A Global View on Homicide
Dietrich Oberwittler
As the most serious crime, homicide is both relevant and suitable for cross-national comparisons. The global homicide rate of ca. 6 per 100,000 people is an average of hugely diverging national rates ranging from 0.25 in Singapore to ca. 100 in El Salvador. The validity of global homicide statistics suffers from various differences in definitions as well as reporting and registration processes. Both criminal justice and causes of death statistics are used by the World Health Organization to construct rates, yet these are available only for a minority of countries. An overview on homicide in history and non-state societies shows that violence levels were considerably higher compared to those in today’s developed world and have dropped dramatically in Europe and North America during the early modern period. The rates first increased and then declined between ca.1960 and today in most developed nations in a synchronized manner, hinting at common influences. In recent years, homicide trends have shown a polarizing pattern, with increasing rates in Latin America and decreasing rates in most other world regions, especially East Asia and the Pacific, where rates have fallen below the European average concurrent with rising scores on the Human Development Index. Except in Eastern Europe, the frequency of homicide is strongly linked to the use of firearms, which account for 44% of homicide cases worldwide.
Longitudinal studies have produced robust evidence for the pivotal role of deprivation and inequality in fostering lethal violence and of social welfare policies in reducing it. Although the transition to democratic political systems seems to increase homicide rates temporarily, the legitimacy of state institutions and the suppression of corruption are connected to lower homicide rates. Because of conceptual and methodological problems, questions concerning the generalizability of effects across space and time remain. Nevertheless, the research findings are sufficiently robust to draw important conclusions for violence prevention: reductions in poverty and income inequality, investments in welfare policies and gender equality, and improvements in the legitimacy of state institutions will help to bring homicide rates down.
Article
LGBT People in Prison: Management Strategies, Human Rights Violations, and Political Mobilization
Jason A. Brown and Valerie Jenness
In the 21st century, an unprecedented rise in the visibility of and social acceptance for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people has been accompanied by exponential growth in scholarship on LGBT people generally and their experiences in diverse communities and institutional contexts in the United States and around the globe. A growing body of literature draws on first-person accounts, qualitative analyses, and statistical assessments to understand how and why LGBT people end up in prisons and other types of lock-up facilities, as well as how they experience being imprisoned and the collateral consequences of those experiences.
Scholarship in this body of work focuses on (a) the range of abuses inflicted on LGBT prisoners by other prisoners and state officials alike, including mistreatment now widely recognized as human rights violations; (b) the variety of ways LGBT people are managed by prison officials, in the first instance whether their housing arrangements in prison are integrationist, segregationist, and/or some combination of both, including the temporary and permanent isolation of LGBT prisoners; and (c) the range of types of political mobilization that expose the status quo as unacceptable, define, and document the treatment of LGBT people behind bars as human rights violations, demand change, and advocate new policies and practices related to the carceral state’s treatment of LGBT people in the United States and across the globe.
The study of LGBT people in prisons and other detention facilities is compatible with larger calls for the inclusion of sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression in criminology and criminal justice research by advancing theoretical and empirical understandings of LGBT populations as they interact with the criminal justice system, and by incorporating this knowledge into broader criminological conversations.
Article
Marginalized Women, Domestic and Family Violence Reforms and Their Unintended Consequences
Ellen Reeves and Silke Meyer
In the last 50 years, a wide body of research on domestic and family violence (DFV) has emerged, much of which focuses on the victim-survivor experience with the criminal justice system. DFV is an area of rapid law reform, most notably in Western nations such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia, as legislative bodies attempt to align policies with emerging knowledge and best-practice principles. Policy and law reform, however, have seen a tension between limiting and enhancing victim autonomy in the criminal justice system process. For the most part, policies have focused on the former, reflecting the understanding that DFV is a crime against the state, thus rendering a victim’s ability to choose how they wish to seek protection a secondary priority. For some women, a mandatory criminal justice system intervention may be a useful tool in seeking protection and addresses past limitations of legal responses to DFV, wherein the violence committed by men against women was largely ignored. However, for many other women, engagement in the criminal or civil justice systems may both enhance risks to safety as well as further engrain disadvantage. While DFV policies have been well intended and reflective of the growing shift toward recognizing DFV as a significant public health issue, the same policies have largely ignored the voices of marginalized women and the ways in which “choice” may manifest differently for different women. There are often unintended consequences of DFV reforms relating to justice responses, which disproportionately affect some victims. Thus, a more nuanced approach in police and court responses to DFV is important to minimize adverse effects on victim-survivor voice and help-seeking.
Article
Methodological Issues in the International Study of Victimization
Anna Alvazzi del Frate and Gergely Hideg
Victimization studies, which became popular in the 1970s, are largely based on surveys of the population. As of the late 1980s, the potential for internationally comparable surveys emerged with the first round of the International Crime Victim Survey (ICVS). Starting from early international studies and using the ICVS as a prominent example, an examination of the characteristics of victimization surveys is given, both in terms of content and methodology, their potential and limits, which make them suitable for international use. Multi-country surveys can provide indications from different countries about major crime problems, the most vulnerable population groups at risk of victimization, and perceptions and opinions about fear of crime and the performance of delegated authorities. Victimization surveys initially covered several types of conventional crime directly experienced by respondents and progressively expanded and specialized to measure bribery and corruption, both among individuals and businesses, as well as violence against women through dedicated surveys.
Considering that surveys are an effective tool to measure crime and victims’ perceptions where institutional capacity is weak, the possibility to bridge knowledge gaps and engage developing countries has been identified as a major potential. Despite some methodological challenges, further use and expansion of victimization surveys is in progress (e.g., for measuring some indicators for Sustainable Development Goals [SDG]).
Article
Militarization of Law Enforcement in America
Frederic Lemieux
Police militarization refers to the process by which law enforcement agencies (LEAs) increasingly acquire and use military-grade equipment, tactics, and training in their operations. This includes the use of weapons, vehicles, and tactics that were previously associated with military operations, such as armored vehicles, assault rifles, and Special Weaponry and Tactics teams. Militarization of the police can also refer to adopting a more aggressive and confrontational approach to policing, which emphasizes the use of force and intimidation to maintain order, rather than community engagement and problem solving. This approach can lead to a breakdown of trust between law enforcement officials and the communities they serve, and can exacerbate tensions between police and marginalized communities. The increasing militarization of police forces in the United States can be traced back to the 1980s, when the U.S. Congress passed the Military Cooperation With Law Enforcement Act, which allowed the military to provide local LEAs with surplus military equipment. This program was expanded in the 1990s and 2000s, with the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and the 1033 Program. These policies and strategies directly contributed to the use of aggressive and lethal tactics by LEAs in the United States and abroad.
Article
Moral Panics and Folk Devils
Nachman Ben-Yehuda
Moral panics refer to cultural and social situations where heightened and exaggerated attention is given to a moral issue, accompanied by inflated demands to activate and practice steps to control what is portrayed as the challenging and threatening danger to morality. The nature of the threatening challenge materializes characteristically with the emergence of increased anxiety and fear from the moral threat to the well-being and future of a culture, or part of it. Down-to-earth representatives of such threats are epitomized by folk devils. These folk devils can be drug users, those who supposedly practice witchcraft or Satanism, sex traffickers, drivers involved in hit and run car accidents, muggers, AIDS carriers, terrorists, immigrants, asylum seekers, and—obviously—criminals. The concept of moral panics left its convenient zone in sociology and criminology to become extremely popular. It has been applied to such diverse fields as global warming, child sexual abuse, trafficking in women, soccer hooliganism, 9/11, and more. Many panics are short-lived, but such panics can also linger for longer periods. Moral panics are comprised of five basic building blocks: disproportionality in portraying the moral threat and the requested responses, concern about an issue, consensus regarding the threat, and hostility towards the folk devils. Moral panics do not stand alone and need to be understood within larger cultural and social processes composed of negotiations, struggles, and conflicts focused on moral codes. Indeed, while folk devils are typically vilified, stigmatized, and deviantized, complex cultures also enable folk devils to fight back. Moral panics are thus significant and important occurrences in the social construction of moral boundaries. These panics represent reactions, counter-reactions, and moral challenges—presented by folk devils—to cultural cores, which form central symbolic structures of cultures and societies.
