British Journal of Criminology 53(1)

British Journal of Criminology, January 2013: Volume 53, Issue 1

Shopocalypse Now Consumer Culture and the English Riots of 2011
James Treadwell, Daniel Briggs, Simon Winlow, and Steve Hall

This article is an initial analysis and theorization of original ethnographic data gathered from young men who participated in the English riots of August 2011. The data consistently suggest that consumer culture supplied these young men with a compelling motivation to join the rioting after the initial localized response to the original incident had died down. The data are analysed in a way that builds a theory of the rioting as a product of objectless dissatisfaction. Drawing upon the resources of contemporary cultural and critical criminological theory, it argues that, in the current post-political vacuum, the rioters could not locate or articulate the objective structural and processual causes of their marginalization. Neither could they clearly recognize or ethically censure their structural antagonists. Thus, in the entire absence of truthful, comprehensible and unifying political symbolism, they had nowhere to go but the shops.

Transgression, Affect and Performance Choreographing a Politics of Urban Space
Elaine Campbell

Cultural criminological scholarship has impressively theorized and explored the cultural complexities, negotiated meanings and experiential immediacy of urban crime and its spatializing effects. Nonetheless, this important work tends to gloss over the political dynamics of spatial contestation, and assumes an urban politics which is relatively fixed and static and is locked into a dichotomy of control and resistance. This paper opens up to scrutiny the heterogeneity of political relationalities at the interstices of crime and ‘the urban’. Core cultural criminological concepts of resistance, transgression, affect and performance are critically reappraised and put to work in a critical case study that centres on an offence of ‘outraging public decency’ at the Blackpool Cenotaph, UK. This provides the empirical ground for delineating some of the myriad ways in which crime continually reconfigures the political coordinates of ‘the urban’.

Private Security and Armed Conflict A Case Study of the Scorpions during the Mass Killings in Former Yugoslavia
Samuel Tanner and Massimiliano Mulone

Based on a case study on the metamorphosis of a private security company responsible for the protection of oil wells during the Yugoslav Serbo–Croat conflict that became an armed band—the Scorpions—we show that this type of organization crystallizes mutually beneficial games that play out between a central power and those involved in local crime of low intensity. These organizations constitute the central players in a politicization of civilian crime and a privatization of political crime—genocide and crimes against humanity constituting the extreme forms. The involvement of private actors such as the Scorpions in armed conflict is considered in the fusion of instrumental and normative logic—a common element in all forms of mercenarism.

Allah’s Outlaws The Jamaat al Muslimeen of Trinidad and Tobago
Cynthia Mahabir

‘Sacred violence’, the long-standing relationship between religion and violence, takes unique forms shaped by local cultures. While the conditions that produce phantom revolutionary groups vary widely, those groups that invoke altruistic declarations for radical social change drawn from religious texts often resort to violence to attain their goals. In this article, it is argued that, although the social conditions conducive to the formation and initial religious revolutionary appeal of the Muslimeen of Trinidad and Tobago were economic and cultural, the subsequent gangsterism in which it engaged alienated the group from the mass support required for an effective revolutionary movement.

The Transformation of Policing From Ratios to Rationalities
Adam White and Martin Gill

A prominent feature of academic and popular writing about policing is the ‘transformation’ thesis: the contention that, as the ratio of private security to police actors increases in a policing system, the orientation of the system shifts from the public good to the market. The purpose of this article is to critique this thesis. Instead of analysing transformation using the ratio heuristic, it focuses on the everyday rationalities guiding policing actors. Applying this perspective to the British case, it argues that, rather than witnessing a marked shift towards the market, we are in fact seeing a complex blurring of identities, with both private security and police actors drawing upon a mix of public good and market rationalities to inform their actions.

Thinking Independence Calling the Police to Account through the Independent Investigation of Police Complaints
Stephen P. Savage

Over the last 15 years, a number of agencies have been established in the British and Irish islands that enable the independent investigation of police complaints and misconduct. This paper, based on over 100 interviews with practitioners from three such bodies, examines the independent investigation of police complaints by asking two central questions. First, how do those charged with the delivery of independence in investigations articulate ‘independence’ as a working philosophy and presentational tool? Second, what constraints or obstacles do practitioners perceive as inhibitors in the delivery of independence? On this basis, the paper presents a picture of independent investigation of police complaints as a constant interaction between the aspirations of independence and the ever-present challenges of regulatory capture.

Used and Abused The Problematic Usage of Gang Terminology in the United Kingdom and Its Implications for Ethnic Minority Youth
Hannah Smithson, Rob Ralphs, and Patrick Williams

This paper draws primarily on research undertaken in the north of England. The research focused on assessing the current situation in relation to the extent, and nature, of violent gang activity in three predominately Asian (Pakistani and Bangladeshi) areas. Empirical evidence is provided of the problematic way that the term ‘gang’ is being used and, argued, abused in the United Kingdom. The uncritical acceptance of the term gang into UK policy and policing practices and the policy transfer that has ensued has the potential to further marginalize and isolate some ethnic minority communities. The focus here centres upon the increased surveillance and policing of Asian communities, specifically young Pakistani and Bangladeshi males as a consequence of the application of gang labels that elevates the perceived level of risk they pose.

Crime and The Transition to Parenthood The Role of Sex and Relationship Context
Christian Weisæth Monsbakken, Torkild Hovde Lyngstad, and Torbjørn Skardhamar

Research on desistance from crime has given little attention to the transition to parenthood as a ‘turning point.’ Parenthood might have different implications for men and women, as well as for individuals in different relationship contexts. Using a within-individual design and Norwegian register data on men and women who became parents in 1997–2001, we provide detailed descriptions of offending patterns. The results imply that, for men and women, the relative likelihood of offending declines before the birth. In the post-birth period, women’s offending resumes at a lower likelihood than before the birth, while men’s stabilizes at a low level. For men with no relationship to the other parent, the likelihood of offending continues to decline after the birth.

Beyond ‘Facts’ and ‘Values’ Rethinking Some Recent Debates about the Public Role of Criminology
Elizabeth Turner

A growing number of criminologists are reflecting upon the actual and potential public role of their field. This article argues that recent literature on criminology’s public role has been unsatisfactory, failing to deal adequately with both the extant characteristics of the field and contemporary socio-political circumstances. Drawing inspiration from Weber’s classic texts on the duties of the social scientist, and from Latour’s notion of the ‘diplomat’ this article suggests that a democratic public criminology must go beyond the modern distinction between ‘facts’ and ‘values’.