Theoretical Criminology 14(4)

Traversing sites of confinement: Post-prison survival in Sierra Leone
Andrew M. Jefferson

In February 2006 a group of over 50 former fighters were released from Freetown’s central prison after over six years’ incarceration. This article traces the ways they handled the move from one form of confinement to another and shows how everyday life for former combatant, ex-prisoners is fashioned according to contingent, unpredictable features of the post-war, post-prison landscape. These are mediated through worldviews that developed prior to confinement as well as in response to their particular personal and collective histories of violent conflict, imprisonment and ongoing feelings of dislocation and ontological insecurity. The article contributes to the broadening out of studies of imprisonment effects, focusing on experiences of re-entry while highlighting the importance of pre-prison experience. Based on data from a quite different context (post-conflict Sierra Leone, West Africa) and of a different form (ethnographic rather than interview/survey) the article lends support to the perspective advocated by Jamieson and Grounds that a new paradigm is necessary for thinking about the effects of imprisonment.

Historical criminology and the imprisonment of women in 19th-century Malta
Paul Knepper and Sandra Scicluna

For many criminologists, theory matters more than evidence in historical studies. But can historical criminology really proceed on this basis? In this article, we argue for the importance of primary research, that is, analysis of documents that originate in the period of interest. Using examples from archived documents in a study of women imprisoned in Malta during the 19th century, we address four issues related to history and theory: gaining perspective from unfamiliar places, finding the beginning of historical processes, making discoveries from details, and recovering the significance of forgotten practices. In this, we wish to join a conversation about historical evidence and genealogical accounts in prison history. We will also contribute to the significant, but relatively limited, literature on prisons for women in the 19th century.

Doing and undoing gender in policing
Janet Chan, Sally Doran, and Christina Marel

This article assesses the utility of ‘doing gender’ as a framework for examining gender issues in policing. Drawing on a longitudinal study in an Australian police force, the article seeks to explain the persistence of barriers to the integration of female officers after decades of equal employment laws and policies. The interviews make transparent the agency of male and female actors in sustaining or resisting the status quo. While there are real benefits in opening up the ‘doing gender’ framework to draw attention to contestations and challenges to gender hierarchy as suggested by the notion of ‘undoing gender’, the article demonstrates the complexity of gender practices in policing and rejects the posing of equality and difference as mutually exclusive alternatives.

Policing, urban poverty and insecurity in Latin America: The case of Mexico City and Buenos Aires
Giuseppe Campesi

This article explains how, in the late 20th century, Latin America went through a transition in social-control policy that followed and paralleled the area’s transition from a pervasively authoritarian polity to a democratic one bearing a strong neoliberal imprint. Social-control strategies initially designed to serve a national-security doctrine mainly directed against political opponents morphed into strategies for the repressive government of the advanced marginal groups that for the most part live within economically deprived urban areas. The focus here will be on Buenos Aires and Mexico City. These two cases will be used to exemplify the way in which crime and public security in the Latin American megalopolis have become an important part of the political agenda and how the fears and concerns so amplified have stimulated strong neo-authoritarian pressures that in certain ways have stifled police-democratization processes which had got under way in both Argentina and Mexico in the last decade of the 20th century.

Advancing governmentality studies: Lessons from social constructionism
Randy Lippert and Kevin Stenson

Criminology has been significantly influenced by governmentality studies and the social constructionist perspective on social problems. Despite emerging in distinctive academic networks, this article elaborates how both programmes similarly focus on the simultaneous governance and constitution of problematized—often moralized or criminalized—conduct; imagine plurality, temporality and continuous failure of their subject matters; and presume language is constitutive. These similarities are discussed in order to show how the governmentality project in relation to criminology can learn from the social constructionist perspective on social problems. Using empirical illustrations, it is shown how governmentality studies can benefit from adopting constructionism’s concept of claims-making activities; attention to context; and earlier acceptance of the futility of cutting the cord with ‘the real’.

Nodal wars and network fallacies: A genealogical analysis of global insecurities
Clifford Shearing and Les Johnston

In this article we examine three prominent discourses of security governance and suggest, through a critical review of organizational network theory, that the nodal model can offer theoretical, methodological and ethical benefits over alternative ones. These benefits, we argue, are especially pertinent to the analysis of contemporary global insecurities. The article closes by reflecting on two issues raised in the earlier analysis: how an awareness of discursive contiguity can help inform our understanding of nodal tendencies in global security governance; and how the methodological fallacy of ‘nodal-network equivalence’ plays out under conditions of the ‘war on terror’.

Review Article: Punishment, politics, and levels of analysis
Gray Cavender

Review Article: Rebellious politics and the social control of civil disobedience
Alessandro De Giorgi
 
Theoretical Criminology, November 2010: Volume 14, Issue 4