British Journal of Criminology 52(4)

British Journal of Criminology, July 2012: Volume 52, Issue 4

The Socio-Legal Construction Of Otherness Under A Neo-Liberal Regime: The Case Of Foreign Workers In The Israeli Criminal Courts
Mimi Ajzenstadt and Assaf Shapira

This paper attempts to reveal the ways in which criminal courts in Israel constructed foreign workers brought to trial as ‘others’. Individual foreign workers were framed as being irrelevant as bearers of rights while, in a parallel process, foreign workers as a group were constructed as symbolically relevant to discussions regarding the state governance of social risk. The study spans the years 1994–2011, when Israel adopted a new neo-liberal regime. The paper shows that the complex penal construction of the ‘other’ was used as a platform to justify and support the fuelling of the country’s globalized neo-liberal economy with cheap migrant workers.

State Crime By Proxy: Australia and the Bougainville Conflict
Kristian Lasslett

For most of the 1990s, the island of Bougainville was the subject of a counterinsurgency campaign administered by the Papua New Guinea state. The denial of humanitarian aid, extra-judicial killings and forced displacement were just some of the egregious tactics employed. Papua New Guinea’s main international benefactor, Australia, publicly remained aloof from the hostilities. However, in reality, the Australian state was covertly sponsoring Papua New Guinea’s counterinsurgency operations. Drawing on interviews with senior Australian and Papua New Guinea state officials, this paper will offer the first scholarly account of Australia’s proxy war. Employing a theoretical framework influenced by classical Marxism and Foucault, particular attention will be paid to the relationships, calculations and strategies that informed Australia’s criminogenic response.

Re-Legalization Or De-Legalization?: Netizens’ Participation in Criminal Justice Practices in China
Xuanyu Huang

In recent years, the rise of online mass protests targeting high-profile criminal cases has become a prominent social phenomenon in China. In this study, I explore how the Chinese Government responds to netizens as well as how public opinion via the internet influences the administration of criminal justice within the Chinese context. By drawing on publicly available data online, I analyze the Deng Yujiao case to demonstrate how online public opinion can affect the judicial decision of a sensational case. I conclude that the rise of public participation promoted by the internet adds democratic elements to the Chinese criminal justice system by providing a means to monitor the exercise of governmental power and protect the rights of the disadvantaged.

Public Confidence In The Police: A Time-Series Analysis
Katy Sindall, Patrick Sturgis, and Will Jennings

Empirical analyses of the causes of public confidence in policing have been based almost entirely on cross-sectional survey data, with a consequent focus on between-group differences in levels of confidence at a single point in time. Our aim here is to introduce a time dimension to this area of investigation. Employing repeated cross-sectional survey data from the British Crime Survey, we apply time-series regression methods to show how confidence in policing changes over time for the aggregate population. Counter to cross-sectional findings, time-series analyses reveal that confidence in the police is not related to aggregate worry about crime and perceptions of social cohesion, nor informal social control, but only to perceptions of crime and the property crime rate.

Middle-Class Offenders: A 35-Year Follow-Up
Keith Soothill, Les Humphreys, and Brian Francis

The long-term outcome for middle-class offenders after conviction is an under-researched area in criminology. This present study considers 317 offenders—with a follow-up of at least 35 years—who are seeking white-collar employment after conviction. On the basis of their previous criminal history, five clusters of offenders can be identified using latent class analysis (LCA): low-rate white-collar, low-rate general, medium-rate acquisitive specialists, medium/high-rate generalists and high-rate generalists. Of the total series, 40 per cent were reconvicted of any standard-list offence, 24 per cent were reconvicted of a white-collar offence and 8 per cent were reconvicted of a sex or violence offence. The study helps to support the notion that middle-class persons are very much part of ‘the crime problem’.

Homicide In The Brazilian Favela: Does Opportunity Make the Killer?
Elenice De Souza and Joel Miller

High rates of homicide in Brazil are heavily concentrated in poor urban shanty towns or ‘favelas’. This paper looks beyond conventional social and economic explanations of homicides, and examines the relationship between situational factors and homicide incidents within a case-study favela in the city of Belo Horizonte. Initial exploratory research identified potential mechanisms linking local situational characteristics with homicide. A matched case–control study then tested hypotheses based on these mechanisms. When the characteristics of 100 addresses of homicide incidents were compared with those of 100 nearby non-homicide addresses, they showed statistical associations with drug areas, bars, alleys, windows onto the street and vehicular traffic, lending general empirical support to theorized situational mechanisms.

Adolescents’ Violent Victimization In The Neighbourhood: Situational and Contextual Determinants
David Maimon and Christopher R. Browning

Although recent research demonstrates the relevance of situational and structural-level processes in determining youth violent victimization, only scant attention has been given to these processes’ potential interactions. Accordingly, we study the interactive effects of unstructured socializing with peers, peer group orientation and neighbourhood social processes on adolescents’ violent victimization experiences in their neighbourhoods. Incorporating hypotheses from the routine activities and collective efficacy theories, we hypothesize that, while unstructured socializing with peers increases adolescents’ violent victimization, this effect is likely to be conditioned by the conventionality of peers and by the neighbourhood social context. We test this idea using data available in the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighbourhoods. Two important findings are reported. First, while unstructured socializing with peers is positively related to youths’ violent victimization in the neighbourhood, neighbourhood collective efficacy is negatively related to this outcome. Second, a significant and negative three-way cross-level interaction suggests that unstructured socializing with conventional peers is associated with violent victimization, but only when such activities occur within low collective efficacy neighbourhoods.