British Journal of Criminology 51(6)

British Journal of Criminology, Volume 51, Issue 6

Untangling the Relationship Between Fear of Crime and Perceptions of Disorder: Evidence from a Longitudinal Study of Young People in England and Wales
Ian Brunton-Smith

Over the last 40 years and more, a growing number of researchers have explored the links between perceptions of disorder and fear of criminal victimization. Many of these studies have posited a causal link from perceptions of disorder to subsequent fear, with disorderly cues in the environment signalling to individuals that an area is in decline and unable to control deviant behaviour. But a growing body of evidence approaches this question from the opposite direction, emphasizing the socially constructed nature of perceived disorder and the potential role that fear may have in giving meaning to ambiguous disorderly cues present in the environment. This conceptual uncertainty stems, in part, from the reliance of existing research on cross-sectional data, making it impossible to say whether it is perceptions of disorder that shape fear or whether fear drives perceived disorder. A cross-lagged panel design is applied to longitudinal data from the Offending Crime and Justice Survey to more carefully explore the causal links between fear and disorder.

The Soldier as Victim: Peering through the Looking Glass
Ross McGarry and Sandra Walklate

Despite a rising criminological interest in the numbers of British veterans in the criminal justice system and the criminogenic context of the Iraq conflict, a concern to understand the experiences of modern soldiers is largely hidden from the criminological and victimological gaze. This paper addresses this issue by presenting data from interviews with British military veterans and considers their ‘unknowable’ experiences of war in a framework of victimological otherness, including experiencing, perpetrating and witnessing conflict. Given the masculine connotations associated with ‘soldiering’ and presumptions of vulnerability conjured by the word ‘victim’, imagining the ‘soldier as victim’ is challenging. Here, we offer an insight into this ‘victimhood’ by analysing the ‘common place’ experiences of British soldiers during the conflict in Iraq.

War Crimes In The 2008 Georgia–Russia Conflict
Christopher W. Mullins

Little has been written within empirically driven criminology about crimes committed during the conduct of warfare. The laws of war are over a century old and the current Geneva Conventions more than 50. This paper addresses this gap by providing a partial account of the nature and distribution of violations of the Geneva Conventions during the August 2008 Georgia–Russia conflict and during the post-conflict occupation period. Drawing on numerous investigations by multiple parties, it establishes that war crimes were committed by all belligerent parties. Yet, not all parties committed the same types or same number of crimes. These distribution factors are examined in light of international transnational controls and the motivations each party brought to the conflict.

Perceived Group Threat and Punitive Attitudes in Russia and The United States
Darren Wheelock, Olga Semukhina, and Nicolai N. Demidov

Extant research has examined the link between the group threat thesis and different forms of social control including the public desire to punish criminals. The group threat thesis posits that crime control, and public support for it, stems from conflict and competition between groups over scarce social resources such as jobs and education. Groups in power utilize crime control to manage and suppress groups that pose a threat to these resources. This perspective has been important in shaping criminological understandings of punishment; however, much of it has focused solely on inter-group conflict in the United States and Western Europe. This study expands the group threat lens by testing whether dynamics of group conflict and threat fuel the desire to punish in Russia. We find that, similarly to the United States and Western Europe, perceived threat is an important predictor of the desire to punish for Russian respondents. The findings draw attention to the need for further investigation of group threat theory in a comparative context.

‘I had a Hard Life’: Exploring Childhood Adversity in the Shaping of Masculinities among Men Who Killed an Intimate Partner in South Africa
Shanaaz Mathews, Rachel Jewkes, and Naeemah Abrahams

South Africa has a female homicide rate six times the global average, with half of murdered women killed by an intimate partner. The gendered nature of such murders indicates the need to explore the masculinities of men who kill an intimate partner. This paper explores the childhoods of 20 men who were incarcerated for such murders and draws on 74 in-depth interviews with these men, family and friends. This study found that traumatic childhood experiences increases emotional vulnerability, resulting in their feeling unloved, insecure and powerless. We argue that they adopt violent forms of masculinities to achieve respect and power. Yet, there is no linear relationship between traumatic childhood experiences and adopting violent masculinities.

Regulating Drug Dependency in China: The 2008 PRC Drug Prohibition Law
Sarah Biddulph and Chuanyu Xie

This paper examines the reforms to powers of Chinese state agencies to deal with drug-dependent people introduced by the PRC Drug Prohibition Law 2008. Whilst professing to take a more humane approach to problems of drug dependency, the law retains a police-centred approach to regulation. The law provides for a set of interconnected police powers that include: registration; imposition of a three year term of community rehabilitation; administrative detention for two years; and the possibility of a further supervised rehabilitation order upon release. In the absence of detailed implementing regulations, this paper examines the different ways local agencies are interpreting and implementing these powers.

Sentencing Guidelines and Judicial Discretion: Evolution of the Duty of Courts to Comply in England and Wales
Julian V. Roberts

Sentencing guideline schemes require courts to sentence within the guidelines—or give reasons why a different sentence is appropriate. Most US schemes require courts to find ‘substantial and compelling’ grounds for departing from the guidelines. The duty of a court with respect to sentencing guidelines in England and Wales changed significantly in 2010 as a result of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009. This article explores the evolution of the duty of courts to comply with the English sentencing guidelines. As will be seen, the language of the duty of a court provision has become more robust: henceforth, courts ‘must follow’ definitive guidelines rather than merely ‘have regard to’ them. At the same time, the government significantly increased the range of sentence within which courts must sentence. The essay provides some international context, drawing upon experiences in the jurisdiction in which guidelines have been longest in existence, and explores the limited compliance statistics collected in England and Wales to date. The consequences of the latest changes for sentencing in England and Wales are discussed.

Juvenile Victims in Restorative Justice: Findings from the Reintegrative Shaming Experiments
Tali Gal and Shomron Moyal

Using a randomized experimental design the Reintegrative Shaming Experiments (RISE) showed that restorative justice (RJ) is significantly more satisfying than court for both victims and offenders. It did not, however, explore the effect of victims’ age and baseline differences in the level of harm caused to victims of different crimes on outcome variables. The current study uses a two-factor ANCOVA to address these questions. Main findings suggest that whereas RJ made adults more satisfied than courts (Cohen's d = 0.50), conference juvenile victims were less satisfied than court juvenile victims (Cohen's d = –0.28). Moreover, more serious harm is associated with decreased process satisfaction for all victims. A complementary qualitative analysis identifies adult domination and insensitivity to youth's special needs as recurring themes.

Mind The Double Gap: Using Multivariate Multilevel Modelling to Investigate Public Perceptions of Crime Trends
John Mohan, Liz Twigg, and Joanna Taylor

This paper uses multivariate multilevel models with data from the British Crime Survey to investigate individual and neighbourhood influences on perceptions of local and national crime trends. In response to debates about the negative consequences of immigration and ethnic diversity, we specifically investigate the influence of ethnic heterogeneity on such perceptions. Results indicate that a person's socio-demographic background and their newspaper readership have the strongest association with perceptions of national trends whilst the strongest association with pessimistic views on localized crime is whether the individual has been a recent crime victim. Results suggest no negative effects for ethnic diversity. Moreover, the findings indicate that living in a mixed neighbourhood is associated with a reduced likelihood of perceiving rising levels of national crime.

Restating the case for the ‘suspect community’: A Reply to Greer
Christina Pantazis and Simon Pemberton

In 2009, in an article for this journal, we argued that UK legal and political developments, following the events of September 2001, had designated Muslims as the ‘enemy within’ and served to construct Muslims as the principal suspect community (Pantazis and Pemberton 2009). This work sought to utilize and extend Hillyard's original (1993) thesis, which postulated that, during the period of Irish political violence during the 1970s and into the 1990s, the whole Irish population had become a ‘suspect community’. In 2010, Steven Greer responded with an uncompromising critique of these combined works. In this reply, we rearticulate our case and demonstrate why Greer's arguments are fundamentally flawed.