British Journal of Criminology 54(3)

British Journal of Criminology, May 2014: Volume 54, Issue 3

Recognizing the 2011 United Kingdom Riots as Political Protest: A Theoretical Framework Based on Agency, Habitus and the Preconscious
Sadiya Akram

Drawing on the 2011 United Kingdom riots, this article explores contestation over the meaning of riots. Is rioting criminality and looting, or are there political aspects to the act? For those advocating a political element, there is difficulty in reconciling how an apparently spontaneous act can have political motivations. This article argues that rioting is a distinctly political action, and in order to understand it we must theorize the characteristics of agency that underpin the act. Drawing on Bourdieu’s habitus, but developing it to include a preconscious component, the article develops a novel theoretical framework for understanding the rioter. Habitus is presented as a mechanism that can help better understand how experiences in the past affect the rioter’s present, thereby leading to a coming to the surface of underlying political grievances.

The Life Course of Young Male and Female Offenders: Stability or Change between Different Birth Cohorts?
Olof Bäckman, Felipe Estrada, Anders Nilsson, and David Shannon

Individuals’ life chances are shaped by the times and events that they experience. This emphasizes the need for studies that focus on staggered birth cohorts. The article presents a new longitudinal data set that includes three complete Swedish birth cohorts, born in 1965, 1975 and 1985. Comparisons between the different birth cohorts show how offending distributions among young offenders, as well as their socio-demographic backgrounds and life chances, have developed over time. The analyses of stability and change presented in the study may serve as a point of departure for more informed discussions of the significance of societal changes for the criminality and life chances of male and female offenders.

Crime and the Transition to Marriage: The Role of the Spouse’s Criminal Involvement
Torbjørn Skardhamar, Christian W. Monsbakken, and Torkild H. Lyngstad

Influential perspectives in life course criminology maintain that marriage leads to desistance from crime, and the mechanisms are largely related to spousal social control. Whether and to what degree marriage represents a break from a criminal past might depend on the spouse’s criminal attitude. We study how changes in offending are related to marriage, and how the patterns vary by the wife’s criminal record. We use data from Norwegian administrative registers that cover the total population of all persons who married in Norway between 1997 and 2001 (N = 80,064). We use information on these persons’ criminal records in two five-year periods before and after marriage as well as information on their wives’ criminal records in the same period, to estimate the probability of offending across an 11-year period around the time of marriage. We do so in a way that takes premarital changes in criminal behaviour into account. We find that the desistance process tend to start up to several years before marriage, and that the decline is greater for those who marry a wife with a criminal record.

Exposing ‘Sex’ Offenders: Precarity, Abjection and Violence in the Canadian Federal Prison System
Rosemary Ricciardelli and Dale Spencer

Imprisoned sex offenders face abjection because of their criminality and are the most victimized group of adult male prisoners. Drawing on Judith Butler’s work on gender, abjection and precarity, and scholarship focused on prison masculinities, we examine the experiences of sex offenders while incarcerated and the role of various agents in exposing their convictions to other prisoners and, ultimately, to victimization. Given each prisoner’s convictions are not immediately known when they enter the penitentiary and recognizing that prison is unsafe for sex offenders, we sought to understand how sex offenders attempt to pass among the general prisoner population and the methods through which their convictions become known. Utilizing interviews with 59 formerly incarcerated men, we analyse the modalities that sex offenders employ to ‘pass’ as non-sex offenders and the anxieties associated with awaiting their inevitable exposure. Former prisoners reveal the methods used by staff and prisoners to expose those with sex-related convictions.

Self-efficacy Beliefs and Preferred Gender Role in Policing: An Examination of Policewomen’s Perceptions in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates
Doris C. Chu and Mohammed Murad Abdulla

In Dubai, one of the fastest-growing cities in the world, women are encouraged to pursue higher education and careers in different spheres. Since the first group of 17 women joined the Dubai police force in 1977, the number of women choosing the police profession has risen. Today, more than 1,400 female officers work in Dubai. Using data from surveys conducted with 278 female police officers in Dubai, this study assesses female officers’ attitudes towards women in policing and their preferred gender role at police work. In general, female officers believed that they are effective as patrol officers on the street, and a majority of the sampled policewomen believed that women can be as good as male officers in doing police work. The findings reveal that professional role confidence is significantly associated with positive self-appraisal. In addition, policewomen who are confident about their work and those with longer tenure in the police force are more likely to favour the same assignment as policemen. Female officers with higher education attainment are less likely to endorse gender-restrictive assignments. Suggestions for future research are addressed.

Police Understanding of the Foundations of Their Legitimacy in the Eyes of the Public: The Case of Commanding Officers in the Israel National Police
Tal Jonathan-Zamir and Amikam Harpaz

The dialogic approach to legitimacy postulates that a complete picture of police legitimacy requires considering not only citizens’ views, but also police understanding of their legitimacy and the interaction between the two. This article addresses a particular aspect of police perceptions of their legitimacy in the eyes of the public: the foundations of their external legitimacy. The analysis reveals that, in contrast to the priorities of citizens as reflected in community surveys, Israeli commanding police officers associate their external legitimacy more with their accomplishments in fighting crime than with procedural justice. We consider the implications of these findings for Israeli policing, as well as in relation to the ‘legitimacy as a dialogue’ approach and legitimacy research more generally.