The British Journal of Criminology 54(2)

The British Journal of Criminology, March 2014: Volume 54, Issue 2

Victim Attributes in Hate Crime Law: Difference and the Politics of Justice
Gail Mason

This article considers whether the targeted victimization of adults who sexually assault children should be recognized as a form of hate crime under the criminal law. Two recent Australian cases where the courts applied hate crime provisions to paedophiles raise important questions about which forms of social differentiation are protected under hate crime statutes. The article builds on recent proposals for more inclusive victim protection criteria, particularly around notions of vulnerability and difference, and argues that these characteristics must be tethered to a politics of justice that limits attributes to forms of difference that have a justifiable claim to affirmation, equality and respect for the attribute that makes them different.

Deconstructing Victim and offender Identites in Discourses on Child Sexual Abuse: Hierarchies, Blame and the Good/Evil Dialectic
Anne-Marie McAlinden

Contemporary social and political constructions of victimhood and offending behaviour lie at the heart of regulatory policies on child sexual abuse. Legislation is named after specific child victims of high-profile cases, and a burgeoning range of pre-emptive measures are enacted to protect an amorphous class of ‘all potential victims’ from the risk sex offenders are seen as posing. Such policies are also heavily premised on the omnipresent predatory stranger. These constructed identities, however, are at odds with the actual identities of victims and offenders of such crimes. Drawing on a range of literatures, the core task of this article is to confront some of the complexities and tensions surrounding constructions of the victim/offender dyad within the specific context of sexual offending against children. In particular, the article argues that discourses on ‘blame’—and the polarized notions of ‘innocence’ and ‘guilt’—inform respective hierarchies of victimhood and offending concerning ‘legitimate’ victim and offender status. Based on these insights, the article argues for the need to move beyond such monochromatic understandings of victims and offenders of sexual crime and to reframe the politics of risk accordingly.

Rolling Back Prices and Raising Crime Rates? The Walmart Effect on Crime in the United States
Scott E. Wolfe and David C. Pyrooz

Wal-Mart is not an ordinary retail store—communities are impacted in significant ways by its entrance. Using various data sources and propensity-weighted multilevel modelling, this paper explores the ‘Wal-Mart effect’ on crime. Concentrating on the 1990s, results reveal that Wal-Mart is located in United States counties with higher crime rates, net of robust macro-level correlates of crime. Wal-Mart selected into counties primed for the 1990s crime decline, but, after accounting for endogeneity, growth of the company stunted crime declines when compared to matched counties. A Wal-Mart–crime relationship exists. If Wal-Mart did not build in a county, property crime rates fell by an additional 17 units per capita from the 1990s to the 2000s. A marginally statistically significant, yet stable, effect for violent crime was also observed, falling by two units per capita. These findings provide important theoretical implications regarding the influence of specific economic forces on aggregate crime trends and offer important implications for local governments faced with the prospect of Wal-Mart entering their communities.

Ripping up the Map: Criminology and Cartography Reconsidered
Theo Kindynis

Criminologists have long been interested in mapping crime, yet their use and understanding of maps remain superficial and uncritical. This article traces crime mapping’s historical development before considering the emergence of ‘critical cartography’ and exploring its implications for criminology. Criminologists are urged to interrogate conventional crime maps, and to investigate the criminological implications of emergent digital mapping technologies. Maps and map making afford a host of innovative methodologies that criminologists have yet to take advantage of, and some tentative suggestions are made as to how criminologists might utilize cartographic methods in order to generate unique empirical insights. Finally, the article considers how criminologists might harness maps’ communicative power to better engage with the public and to promote social justice.

The Labyrinth of Jewish Security Arrangements in Johannesburg: Thinking through a Paradox about Security
Jonny Steinberg and Monique Marks

After more than a century of providing other sorts of communal services, organized Jewry in Johannesburg, South Africa began to provide security in the uncertain period after the end of apartheid. In documenting the short but eventful history of these initiatives, we stumble upon a paradox. In the very process of taking charge of its own security, and thus raising a drawbridge between itself and the society around it, organized Jewry felt the tug of a broader South African citizenship. We argue that this paradox, expressed in the simultaneous desire to protect one’s own and to reach out to others, illuminates important aspects of security itself. Security, we argue, triggers feelings of extreme discomfort when it is traded for money or when it is hoarded by an exclusive group, and is thus, ironically, a resource in the construction of feelings of patriotism and national identity.

Marketization, Knowledge Work and Visibility in ‘Users Pay’ Policing in Canada
Randy K. Lippert and Kevin Walby

This article explores central themes in policing and security scholarship by examining a ‘users pay’ form of police moonlighting in Ontario called ‘pay duty’. Drawing on interviews with police personnel and service users, as well as analysis of ‘pay duty’ data and policies from four municipal police services, we raise questions about this form of policing in relation to police marketization, knowledge work and visibility. Our analysis of pay duty casts doubt on assumptions about the pervasiveness of police marketization and knowledge work. We also explore dimensions of police visibility overlooked in existing literature and make connections to issues of legitimacy. We demonstrate how police marketization, work type and visibility represent a key conceptual trifecta useful in examining this pervasive form of police moonlighting, and in policing and security studies more broadly.

Risk, Welfare and the Treatment of Adolescent Cannabis Users in England
Simon Flacks

Incorporating analysis of data collected from a small sample of interviews within drug-treatment settings, the aim of this article is to critically consider the purpose and scope of adolescent drug treatment with a particular focus on the drugs–crime nexus. A central question is whether treatment can be understood according to the ‘rise of risk’ in advanced liberal democracies, and whether this corresponds to the proposed rupture with ‘welfarist’ approaches to youth justice policy. The findings suggest, in line with other research, that any such rupture may have been overstated. They also suggest that some drug-treatment research has tended towards sweeping accounts of policy changes, when the specificities of age, drug type and history demand more nuanced explanation, as some authors have already argued. Finally, the analysis suggests there should be concern about the extent of ‘net-widening’ within the youth drug-treatment system.

Ordinary Business: Impacts on Commercial and Residential Burglary
Sung-suk Violet Yu and Michael G. Maxfield

Research on land use and burglary has focused on the presence of drinking places and other undesirable businesses. The current study examines how a variety of ordinary businesses are associated with commercial and residential burglary. We identify three characteristics of ordinary businesses: services locations (on-site or off-site), volume of transactions (higher to lower) and clientele (neighbourhood or beyond). Businesses providing services or products on-site, used frequently and serving neighbourhood residents displayed strong associations with increased risks of victimization. Findings demonstrate the importance of recognizing how ordinary businesses influence crime patterns.

Reconceptualizing Penality: Towards a Multidimensional Measure of Punitiveness
Claire Hamilton

Despite the proliferation of work on the ‘punitive turn’, issues concerning its definition and measurement remain largely under-examined in the mainstream literature. This article seeks to refocus attention on the best ways in which to measure punitiveness and to argue that a more accurate characterization of what we mean by the concept forms an important part of advancing our understanding in this area. To illustrate this point, punitiveness in three countries is measured according to a unidimensional measure, a broader test proposed by Tonry and a fully multidimensional test. It is contended that the very different results produced by these tests suggest the need for greater social-scientific attention to the measurement of the punitiveness concept itself.

Media use and the Process-Based Model for Police Cooperation: An Integrative Approach towards Explaining Adolescents’ Intentions to Cooperate with the Police
Astrid Dirikx and Jan Van den Bulck

Public cooperation with the police is essential for successful crime control. Police can particularly benefit strongly from adolescent cooperation, since young people have a disproportionally high chance of police contact. The current study examines how media use relates to adolescents’ willingness to assist police. Using survey data collected from a sample of 1,968 Flemish adolescents, we test an integrative model which combines Tyler’s process-based model of police cooperation with assumptions from media effects theories. We find that crime show exposure directly and indirectly predicts adolescents’ willingness to cooperate with police. Our findings highlight the importance of media use as an antecedent of police cooperation net of the influence of adolescents’ direct police contacts, age, gender, ethnicity or educational level.