Theoretical Criminology 18(3)

Theoretical Criminology, August 2014: Volume 18, Issue 3

Private security regimes: Conceptualizing the forces that shape the private delivery of security
Benoit Dupont

There is as much diversity within the private security industry as there are differences between public and private security providers. Whereas comparisons of the two modes of delivery have kept criminologists and economists fairly busy over the years, internal variations have not attracted the same level of interest. In the current environment, binary classifications such as the public/private security dichotomy might be too generic to capture the broad spectrum of unique security arrangements being adopted by various organizations. The aim of this article is therefore to offer an alternative conceptual framework that can account for the broad range of mechanisms responsible for the diversity of private security arrangements observed in late modern societies. The term ‘security regime’ defines the convergence of internal forces and environmental constraints that determine the conditions under which security is produced and exchanged by an organization. The four key dimensions (focus, risks, utility and constraints) that characterize a specific security regime were identified from interviews conducted with more than 50 security managers. The security regime approach should expand our knowledge of the various causes that facilitate, empower or hinder public–private relationships.

Policing ‘sexting’: Responsibilization, respectability and sexual subjectivity in child protection/crime prevention responses to teenagers’ digital sexual expression
Lara Karaian

This article examines the motivations, techniques and potential consequences of the governance of teenage sexting. I examine the over-representation of white, middle-class, heterosexual, female sexters, and abstinence from sexting discourses in the ‘Respect Yourself’ child protection/crime prevention initiative. This campaign, I suggest, exploits slut shaming in an effort to responsibilize teenage girls for preventing the purported harms that may flow from sexting—including humiliation, sexual violations and criminalization—for both themselves and their peers. I examine this responsibilization effort through the lens of critical whiteness, queer, girlhood/young feminist and porn studies’ theorizations of the politics of sexual respectability and sexual subjectification and argue that this campaign simultaneously: reveals anxieties about the decline of the moral authority of the white, middle-class, heterosexual nuclear family; constitutes certain teenage girls’ unintelligibility as sexual subjects; and, undermines teenage girls’ ability to challenge a normative sexual order in which they are often blamed extra/legally for their sexual victimization.

Green crime and victimization: Tensions between social and environmental justice
Pamela Ann Davies

In 2011, Rio Tinto Alcan, one of the world’s largest producers of aluminium, announced the closure of the smelter at Lynemouth, Northumberland, north-east England. The plant, a major local employer, finally closed in March 2013. This article examines global concerns about environmental emission standards and the costs of compliance. This plant’s closure is a success in green terms. However, where closure is officially considered a compliance option, costs to deprived communities are high. From a (green) victimological perspective, the article contemplates the hidden costs of closure on already deprived local and regional communities. The discussion focuses on how green crime and green compliance creates victimization and reflects on the moral and ethical challenges this presents for a green criminology.

The quantitative–qualitative divide in criminology: A theory of ideas’ importance, attractiveness, and publication
Scott Jacques

Qualitative research is published in criminology journals at a frequency far smaller than that of quantitative research. The question is ‘Why?’ After reviewing existing theories of the discrepancy, this article draws on the paradigm of Blackian sociology, Jacques and colleagues’ theory of method, and Black’s theory of ideas to propose a new theory: compared to quantitative research-based ideas, qualitative ones are evaluated as less important—and therefore published less often in journals—because they place the subject closer in cultural distance to the source and audience, though for that same reason they are also evaluated as being more attractive. Implications for criminology are discussed.

States, subjects and sovereign power: Lessons from global gun cultures
Jennifer D Carlson

This article examines demand for guns for personal protection in the USA, South Africa, and India. To make sense of pro-gun sentiment across these different contexts, I argue that gun owners and carriers who arm themselves for personal protection represent a particular kind of ‘responsibilized’ subject. Drawing on Foucault’s analysis of sovereign power and governmentality, I develop a theory of the ‘sovereign subject’. This is a political rationality marked by private individuals’ capacity and desire to perform sovereign functions that the state has typically monopolized, specifically the exercise of legitimate, lethal violence. I conclude the article by suggesting four characteristics (historically precarious state monopoly on sovereign power; legality of civilian use of guns; preponderance of criminal guns; and US influence) that may encourage demand for guns in high-crime societies.

Advancing emotionally intelligent justice within public life and popular culture
Nick Flynn

Based on the understanding that traditional forms of justice are characterized by ‘affective authoritarianism’, Lawrence W Sherman has argued that a new system of emotionally intelligent justice is needed to nurture the expression of positive, beneficial emotions; and to control negative, detrimental ones. The policy approach advocated to advance this progressive agenda of penal reform involves critical theory, institutional innovation and empirical research focused primarily on the alternative paradigm of restorative justice. Irrespective of the ‘truth’ or ‘fairness’ of emotionally intelligent justice, this article argues that, because emotions are constructed through socio-cultural circumstances and are integral to ethical judgements which legitimize traditional forms of justice in contemporary public life, managing emotions in criminal justice settings requires reform that is not only critical and experimental, but also public and popular.

Workplace violence: Extending the boundaries of criminology
Emily Schindeler

There is a growing body of research concerned with the prevalence, antecedents and impacts of interpersonal workplace violence which causes significant psycho-social injuries. Contributions have been made by sociologists, psychologists, organizational behaviourists and management functionalists. However there has been a paucity of attention by criminological theorists or empiricists despite the well-documented costs for victims, bystanders, employers and the public purse. Drawing from key themes within existing literature, this article applies constructive criminology principles and normalization theory to extend the understanding of interpersonal violence within the workplace and challenges to prevention. This is not an argument for greater application of criminal law but rather an argument that such violence and consequent psycho-social injuries be recognized as a source of victimization and a matter of justice.