The pervasiveness and prominence of mass media are key features of contemporary societies. Nowhere is this more relevant than when we look at the ubiquity of social media. In recent years, anticrime Facebook pages have appeared across all states and territories in Australia, and as our social spaces increasingly shift from the physical to the virtual realm, different forms of online cybervigilantism have emerged. This article explores the ways in which community justice and vigilantism in Australia are exercised through social media in the wider context of the racialized criminalization of Indigenous young people. We also discuss how new forms of media are used to produce and reproduce a racialized narrative of crime, which at the same time has the effect of legitimating violence against young Indigenous Australians. The text draws on a number of anticrime Facebook pages and finds that the very presence of these sites legitimates the beliefs of its members, while providing details about potential targets, most of whom are young people. We contend that the views expressed on these sites mirror, in more prosaic language, sentiments that are expressed in sections of the old media and among a number of ultraright politicians and groups. Further, these sites do little to question the broader ideological and political frameworks that present crime and disorder as being divorced from structural and historical conditions. There is, then, an assumed social consensus around what is being presented on these Facebook sites: namely, that overt racism and calls to vigilante violence are socially and politically acceptable. While there appears to be a direct link between the Facebook groups and incidents of violence in some cases, on a broader level, it is the constant reinforcement of an environment of racist violence that is most troubling.
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Chris Cunneen and Sophie Russell
Article
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
William R. Wood, Masahiro Suzuki, and Hennessey Hayes
Restorative justice is an innovative justice response to crime and offending that takes many forms such as victim-offender meetings, family group conferencing and youth justice conferencing, and sentencing or peacemaking circles. While restorative practices are used in a wide variety of contexts such as schools and workplaces to respond to and resolve conflict, restorative justice practices are predominantly used within criminal and youth justice. Key goals of restorative justice include (a) meeting victim needs of participation in justice processes and redress for harms caused to them, (b) asking wrongdoers to be accountable and actively responsible for making amends to victims and other they have harmed, and (c) involving primary and community stakeholders in restorative practices that repair harms to victims, promote offender reintegration, and enhance community safety and well-being. Existing research shows that restorative justice consistently meets most of these goals better than conventional court practices. However, restorative justice also appears to work better in some cases than in others, and also faces several limitations and challenges within its use in criminal justice systems. Limitations include dependence of restorative justice on state justice apparatuses for definitions of harm, and lack of fact-finding mechanisms that render most uses of restorative justice as diversionary or postadjudicative responses to offending. Challenges include lack of agreement on the aims and goals of restorative justice theoretically and in practice, administrative dilution and co-option of restorative aims and goals within increased institutionalization in criminal justice agencies, and uncertainty about the ability of restorative justice to redress harms situated within social-structural forms of violence and oppression such as gendered violence and systemic racism.
