The British Journal of Criminology 54(1)

The British Journal of Criminology, January 2014: Volume 54, Issue 1

Hot Pants at the Border: Sorting Sex Work from Trafficking
Sharon Pickering and Julie Ham

The role of borders in managing sex work is a valuable site for analysing the relationship between criminal justice and migration administration functions. For the purposes of this article, we are concerned with how generalized concerns around trafficking manifest in specific interactions between immigration officials and women travellers. To this end, this article contributes to a greater understanding of the micro-politics of border control and the various contradictions at work in the everyday performance of the border. It uses an intersectional analysis of the decision making of immigration officers at the border to understand how social differences become conflated with risk, how different social locations amplify what is read as risky sexuality and how sexuality is constructed in migration. What the interviews in our research have demonstrated is that, while the border is a poor site for identifying cases of trafficking into the sex industry, it is a site of significant social sorting where various intersections of intelligence-led profiling and everyday stereotyping of women, sex work and vulnerability play out.

‘In Exile Imprisonment’ in Russia
Laura Piacentini and Judith Pallot

This article considers the geographical dispersal of prisoners in Russia. The concept of ‘in exile imprisonment’ is developed to delineate an exceptional penal terrain. The authors examine the historical ‘traces’ of exile in Russian penal culture and argue that the persistence of ‘in exile imprisonment’ does not fit easily into official narratives about the development of penality in that country. The culture of ‘in exile imprisonment’ continues to impose limits on prison reform in Russia.

Criminality in Spaces of Death: The Palestinian Case Study
Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian

This study examines how Palestinian dead bodies and spaces of death in occupied East Jerusalem are ‘hot spots’ of criminality. The arguments raised challenge traditional hot-spot theories of crime that build their definition of criminality around official state statistics and information and visible spaces of crime. The paper offers a bottom-up analysis of crimes against the dead and their families in East Jerusalem, examining the manner in which modes of denial, the logic of elimination and accumulation by dispossession shape experiences of death and dying in a colonial context.

Revisiting the Gun Ownership and Violence Link: A Multilevel Analysis of Victimization Survey Data
John N. van Kesteren

The link between gun ownership victimization by violent crime remains one of the most contested issues in criminology. Some authors claim that high gun availability facilitates serious violence. Others claim that gun ownership prevents crime. This article revisits these issues using individual and aggregate data on gun ownership and victimization from the International Crime Victims Survey (ICVS). Analysis at country level shows that the level of handgun ownership is positively related to serious violence but not for less serious violent crimes. Multilevel analyses on the data from 26 developed countries show that owners of a handgun show increased risk for victimization by violent crime. High ownership levels, however, seem to diminish the victimization level for the less serious violent crimes for the non-owners.

Explaining and Controlling Illegal Commercial Fishing: An Application of the CRAVED Theft Model
Gohar A. Petrossian and Ronald V. Clarke

The study explores why certain fish are at risk of being taken illegally by commercial fishers. Fifty-eight illegally caught species were individually matched with 58 controls using a standard classification of fish. Consistently with the CRAVED model of theft, illegally caught species were more Concealable (sold through more ports of convenience), more Removable (caught with longline vessels), more Abundant and Accessible (to known illegal fishing countries), more Valuable (larger), more Enjoyable (more often found in recipes) and more Disposable (highly commercial). Fisheries authorities should: (1) focus on ports of convenience, (2) monitor longliners, (3) exert pressure on known illegal fishing countries and (4) educate consumers about vulnerable species.

The Imagination of Desistance: A Juxtaposition of the Construction of Incarceration as a Turning Point and the Reality of Recidivism
Michaela Soyer

This essay investigates the discrepancy between the negative impact incarceration has on life outcomes and offenders’ subjective perception of incarceration as a positive turning point. Building on three years of fieldwork with 23 juvenile offenders in Boston and Chicago, this essay contends that the institutional structures of juvenile justice encourage the teenagers to frame their incarceration a positive turning point. At the same time, the punitive framework of incarceration restricts the young men’s ability to exercise creative agency in relation to their desired non-deviant identity. Consequently, they are unable to develop viable strategies of action that could sustain desistance after their release.

Agreements in Restorative Justice Conferences: Exploring the Implications of Agreements for Post-Conference Offending Behaviour
Hennessey Hayes, Tara Renae McGee, Helen Punter, and Michael John Cerruto

Agreements are key outcomes in restorative justice conferences. However, there is debate over the effectiveness of such agreements to reduce post-conference offending. Research suggests that many young offenders are satisfied with their agreements and perceive them as fair. We know less about the linkages between young offenders’ experiences with agreements and post-conference offending. Drawing on observation and interview data from 32 young offenders who attended conferences, we found that nearly all young people felt their agreements were satisfactory and fair. However, most offenders felt that the agreement phase of the conferencing process did not have an impact on their post-conference offending behaviour. These findings further inform the debate over agreement requirements and have policy implications for conferencing programmes.

Is the Effect of Perceived Deterrence on Juvenile Offending Contingent on the Level of Self-Control? Results from Three Countries
Helmut Hirtenlehner, Lieven J.R. Pauwels, and Gorazd Mesko

The aim of this paper is to study the interplay of perceived deterrence and level of self-control in explaining individual differences in self-reported offending. Different theories of crime come to different conclusions in this regard. Some postulate independent negative effects of perceived sanction risk on offending (Deterrence Theory), while others assume that low self-control undermines the deterrent effect of legal sanctions (Self-Control Theory) or, conversely, that sanction threats are only relevant for individuals characterized by a lack of self-control (Situational Action Theory). Here, the question of the exact nature of this interplay is addressed from an empirical point of view. Based on three independent surveys of adolescents conducted in three European countries (Austria, Belgium and Slovenia), we examine whether juveniles with low self-control are more, equally or less susceptible to the deterrent effect of legal sanctioning. Our findings consistently support Situational Action Theory’s conceptualization of the linkage between self-control and deterrence. All three studies provide evidence that deterrent effects are greatest among adolescents of low self-control.