British Journal of Criminology 50(5)

Simulated Justice: Risk, Money and Telemetric Policing
Pat O'Malley

New forms of ‘simulated’ justice and policing are emerging at the convergence of telemetric regulation with two linked trends: the monetization of justice and the development of risk-based technologies of governance. A definitive example is the traffic fine, where, increasingly, the offence is electronically monitored, calibrated, monetized into a fine, the fine issued and expiated in simulated space—that point at which the real and the virtual converge. While all of this is very ‘real’ (real money is primarily electronic and digitized), binary codes rather than liberal individuals are focal. Key forms of simulated justice operate beyond the reach of ‘individual rights’ as liberal individuals are fragmented into simulated ‘dividuals’ and commodified privileges rather than rights become critical to everyday life.

Are We Living in a More Violent Society?: A Socio-Historical Analysis of Interpersonal Violence in France, 1970s–Present
Laurent Mucchielli

This text suggests a general sociological model to interpret the development of violent behaviours in interpersonal relationships, based on the French case. An original synthesis of various types of data is used: police and judicial statistics, victimization and self-reported surveys, demographic and socio-economic data. The model links together five processes at work in French society: a societal process of pacification, a political and legal process of criminalization, a process of judiciarization of everyday life conflicts, a socio-economic process of competition for consumer goods, and a process of economic, social and spatial segregation. This model also attempts to link many theoretical contributions that have shaped the history of sociology and criminology.

A Case of Mixed Motives?: Formal and Informal Functions of Administrative Immigration Detention
Arjen Leerkes and Dennis Broeders

In most EU countries and the United States, immigration detention is defined as an administrative, non-punitive measure to facilitate expulsion. This paper argues that immigration detention in the Netherlands serves three informal functions in addition to its formal function as an instrument of expulsion: (1) deterring illegal residence, (2) controlling pauperism and (3) managing popular anxiety by symbolically asserting state control. These informal functions indicate that society has not found a definitive solution for the presence of migrants who are not admitted but are also difficult to expel. The analysis, which is placed against the background of the functions of penal detention, is based on policy documents, survey data, administrative data and fieldwork in a Dutch immigration detention centre.

Beyond Social Capital: Triad Organized Crime in Hong Kong and China
T. Wing Lo

In view of the smuggling out of democratic leaders after the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989 and China's resumption of sovereignty of Hong Kong in 1997, China applied a ‘united front’ tactic to recruit Hong Kong triad societies to the Communist camp. Consequently, triad leaders were able to set foot in China and bridge up with officials and state enterprises. Against this backdrop, this paper argues that when political dynamics is involved, both the traditional structural and social network approaches are insufficient to explain triad-organized crime. Therefore, social capital perspective is proposed. Using two case studies, it was discovered that the triad leaders converted the social capital they developed in mainland China into economic capital through illegitimate means in the stock market. The paper concludes by highlighting the similarities and differences between this triad-organized crime and other forms of Chinese organized crime.

Constructing Crime, Enacting Morality: Emotion, Crime and Anti-Social Behaviour in an Inner-City Community
John Cromby, Steven D. Brown, Harriet Gross, Abigail Locke, and Anne E. Patterson

Research into emotion, crime and anti-social behaviour has lacked psychological input and rarely considered the multi-directional associations between emotion, crime and morality. We present a study analysing audio recordings of two community groups meeting in a deprived inner-city area with high rates of crime, using conversation analytic and discursive psychological techniques to conduct an affective–textual analysis that draws out aspects of participants’ moral reasoning and identifies its emotional dimensions. Moral reasoning around crime and anti-social behaviour took three forms (invoking moral categories, developing moral hierarchies, invoking vulnerable others) and was bound up with a wide range of emotional enactments and emotion displays. Findings are discussed in relation to contemporary government policy and possible future research.

Self-Governance or Professionalized Paternalism?: The Police, Contractual Injunctions and the Differential Management of Deviant Populations
Daniel J. McCarthy

Contractual injunctions have emerged as key instruments of social control. They provide agencies such as the police with unique powers to manage deviant persons by forcing the recipients, via the threat of criminal sanction on breach of the injunction, to engage in self-control of their behaviour. This article develops understandings of how contractual injunctions are actually used in practice by the police. Analyses of the different ways contractual injunctions are directed at certain social groups are developed in relation to police occupational cultures that place limits and possibilities on their application. It concludes by locating the broader social effects of contractual injunctions with issues of urban marginality and growing powers to criminalize social predicaments.

Policing's New Visibility
Andrew John Goldsmith

This paper applies the concept of ‘new visibility’ (Thompson 2005) to recent developments around policing, particularly the prevalence of mobile phone cameras in the wider community and the capacity via video-sharing platforms such as YouTube, and social networking sites like Facebook, to share images of apparent police misconduct with mass audiences and to mobilize groups into taking action of some kind. Two case studies, the Ian Tomlinson case in London in April 2009 and the Robert Dziekanski case in Vancouver in October 2007, are used to illustrate the unprecedented power of this new capability and the challenges that it poses for police image management. The implications for police legitimacy and accountability of these developments are explored.

Post-Lawrence Policing in England and Wales: Guilt, Innocence and the Defence of Organizational Ego
Michael Shiner

One of the many reforms to have emerged from the Stephen Lawrence inquiry is that requiring the police to make a record of all stops (Recommendation 61). What might have been accepted as a fairly routine extension of the existing regulatory framework was widely resented by officers who considered it part of an ‘attack’ on the police service spearheaded by allegations of institutional racism. This ‘attack’, it is argued here, has been experienced as a form of collective trauma, giving rise to a series of defence mechanisms and allied forms of resistance that have distanced the new recording requirement from its intended purpose. Such defences, it is concluded, should be anticipated and addressed as part of the process of reform.

Stop and Search in England: A Reformed Tactic or Business as Usual?
Joel Miller

In 1999, the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry heavily criticized ethnic disparities in stop and search (‘disproportionality’), triggering a national reform effort to make the tactic fairer and more effective. Analyses of searches under core powers using up to 12 years of annual data from 38 police force areas in England indicate that aggregate disparities showed no improvement following the reforms. However, this overall finding is heavily influenced by London and, to a lesser extent, Greater Manchester and West Midlands, which are out of step with most of the rest of the country. The average force showed reductions in disproportionality associated with the reforms, although did not see improvements in arrest rates of searches. Theoretical implications of the results are discussed.

British Journal of Criminology, September 2010: Volume 50, Issue 5