British Journal of Criminology 50(6)

What Can We Learn From The Portuguese Decriminalization of Illicit Drugs?
Caitlin Elizabeth Hughes and Alex Stevens

The issue of decriminalizing illicit drugs is hotly debated, but is rarely subject to evidence-based analysis. This paper examines the case of Portugal, a nation that decriminalized the use and possession of all illicit drugs on 1 July 2001. Drawing upon independent evaluations and interviews conducted with 13 key stakeholders in 2007 and 2009, it critically analyses the criminal justice and health impacts against trends from neighbouring Spain and Italy. It concludes that contrary to predictions, the Portuguese decriminalization did not lead to major increases in drug use. Indeed, evidence indicates reductions in problematic use, drug-related harms and criminal justice overcrowding. The article discusses these developments in the context of drug law debates and criminological discussions on late modern governance.

Preventing Suicide in French Prisons
Gaetan Cliquennois

This paper shows that preventing ‘suicide risks’ in French prison regulations is thwarted in two prisons by professional criteria regarding credibility and solidarity, as well as by the balance of power between prisoners and guards, in addition to the realization, on the part of the judges responsible for sentencing, of the risks posed by recidivists. The results of this study should provoke a re-evaluation of suicide prevention programmes when considered in the light of the numerous mediations and transcriptions between these programmes and their subsequent concretization in the culture and practices of prison employees.

We Predict a Riot?: Public Order Policing, New Media Environments and the Rise of the Citizen Journalist
Chris Greer and Eugene McLaughlin

This article explores the rise of ‘citizen journalism’ and considers its implications for the policing and news media reporting of public protests in the twenty-first century. Our research focuses on the use and impact of multi-media technologies during the 2009 G20 Summit Protests in London and evaluates their role in shaping the subsequent representation of ‘protest as news’. The classic concepts of ‘inferential structure’ (Lang and Lang 1955) and ‘hierarchy of credibility’ (Becker 1967) are re-situated within the context of the 24–7 news mediasphere to analyse the transition in news media focus at G20 from ‘protester violence’ to ‘police violence’. This transition is understood in terms of three key issues: the capacity of technologically empowered citizen journalists to produce information that challenges the ‘official’ version of events; the inclination of professional and citizen journalists to actively seek out and use that information; and the existence of an information-communications marketplace that sustains the commodification and mass consumption of adversarial, anti-establishment news.

Chibnall Revisited: Crime Reporters, the Police and ‘Law-and-Order News’
Rob C. Mawby

The relationship between the police and the news media is an integral part of how police forces communicate into the public sphere. Using, as a benchmark, Chibnall's influential account of English crime reporting, Law-and-Order News, and drawing on Habermas's concept of the public sphere, this paper examines the contemporary police–media relationship. It analyses the rise of police corporate communications against the apparent decline of specialist crime reporting drawing on interviews with crime reporters, police communications managers and a survey of police forces in England, Wales and Scotland. The paper concludes that ‘law-and-order news’ currently remains contested but the relationship is increasingly asymmetrical in favour of the police.

Women and the Provision of Criminal Justice Advice: Lessons from England and Wales 1944–1964
Anne Logan

This article provides an analysis of the role of the Advisory Council on the Treatment of Offenders in the provision of policy advice to the government in the years after the Second World War and highlights the role of its women members, who mainly owed their appointment as advisors to their expertise gained in the voluntary role of Justice of the Peace. The article first contrasts the voluntary workers’ supposedly ‘amateur’ status with the mainly ‘professional’ credentials of the Council's other members and the relevance of the conventional distinctions made between the two types of experience is questioned. There follows an evaluation of the Council's impact on criminal justice policy in the period 1944–64. The article concludes that the clearest case for the Council's effectiveness can be made with regard to its early years but that the replacement of ‘amateur’ policy advice by criminological research in the post-1945 era was by no means a sudden process, and certainly not one that was completed by the 1960s. It suggests that in the light of the formation of Britain's first peace-time coalition government in nearly 80 years, the time might be ripe for a reconsideration of the role of voluntary sector representatives in the provision of policy advice.

Jailhouse Frocks: Locating the Public Interest in Policing Counterfeit Luxury Fashion Goods
David S. Wall and Joanna Large

Counterfeiting raises some interesting intellectual questions for criminologists, policy makers and brand owners, not least that it differs from the types of offending that traditionally form the crime diet of the criminal justice system. Whilst it is growing in prevalence due to the enormous returns on investment, it is unlikely that the public purse will fund major anti-counterfeiting initiatives in a climate of public sector cut-backs, emphasizing the need to allocate resources effectively. This article seeks to locate the public interest in policing counterfeit luxury fashion goods by separating it out from the broader debate over safety-critical counterfeits such as aircraft parts. It then maps out what is, in effect, the criminology of desire for counterfeit goods, before outlining the market incentives for counterfeiting and related criminal activity.

The Prüm Regime: Situated Dis/Empowerment in Transnational DNA Profile Exchange
Barbara Prainsack and Victor Toom

This paper takes critique of surveillance studies scholars of the shortcomings of the panoptic model for analysing contemporary systems of surveillance as a starting point. We argue that core conceptual tools, in conjunction with an under-conceptualization of agency, privilege a focus on the oppressive elements of surveillance. This often yields unsatisfying insights to why surveillance works, for whom, and at whose costs. We discuss the so-called Prüm regime, pertaining to transnational data exchange for forensic and police use in the EU, to illustrate how—by articulating instances of what we call ‘situated dis/empowerment’—agency can be better conceptualized, sharpening our gaze for the large extent to which the empowering and disempowering effects of surveillance depend on each other.

Crime Control and Due Process in Confidence-Building Strategies: A Governmentality Perspective
Daniel Gilling

This article employs a governmentality framework to make sense of approaches to building public confidence, based upon a performance management regime that includes the British Crime Survey and a range of communicative technologies intended to raise public confidence. Whilst there are two discursive threads running throughout that broadly correspond with models of crime control and due process, priority has been afforded at the level of governmental ‘talk’ to the crime control model. Reflecting upon the strengths and limitations of the governmentality framework, the article questions the likelihood of the crime control discourse being enacted in practice, as well as the appropriateness of such a policy emphasis.

Community Service Versus Electronic Monitoring—What Works Better?: Results of a Randomized Trial
Martin Killias, Gwladys Gilliéron, Izumi Kissling, and Patrice Villettaz

The present study is based on a controlled experiment in Switzerland with 240 subjects randomly assigned either to community service or to electronic monitoring. Measures of outcome include reconvictions, self-reported delinquency and several measures of social integration such as marriage, income and debts. The findings, based on subjects who successfully completed their sanction, suggest, with marginal significance (p < 0.10), that those assigned to electronic monitoring reoffended less than those assigned to community service, that they were more often married and lived under more favourable financial circumstances. Electronic monitoring may be an alternative to non-custodial sanctions. With increasing demands for non-custodial sanctions, it is crucial having more alternatives available.

Anti-Terrorist Laws and the United Kingdom's ‘Suspect Muslim Community’: A Reply to Pantazis and Pemberton
Steven Greer

In an article in a recent issue of this journal, Pantazis and Pemberton claim that anti-terrorist laws passed in the United Kingdom in the context of a post-9/11 official political discourse have turned Muslims into a ‘suspect community’ (Pantazis and Pemberton 2009). Regrettably, this thesis is built on a series of analytical, methodological, conceptual, logical, empirical, evidential and interpretive errors. There is no evidence to support it and a great deal that points in the opposite direction. This reply argues that the ‘suspect community’ thesis should, therefore, be rejected by social science, public policy and progressive politics in favour of a much more nuanced, multidimensional, accurate and productive account of the relationship between Muslims and the United Kingdom's anti-terrorist laws.

British Journal of Criminology, November 2010: Volume 50, Issue 6