British Journal of Criminology 55(1)

British Journal of Criminology, January 2015: Volume 55, Issue 1

Editor's Choice: Policing Humanitarian Borderlands: Frontex, Human Rights and the Precariousness of Life
Katja Franko Aas and Helene O. I. Gundhus

The article critically examines the peculiar co-existence of the securitization of the border and the growing presence and prominence of human rights and humanitarian ideals in border policing practices. Concretely, it focuses on Frontex, the agency tasked with management of EU’s external borders. Based on interviews with Frontex officials and border guard officers, and on the analysis of relevant policy documents and official reports, the article explores what may come across as a discrepancy between the organization’s activities and its public self-presentation. The objective is to provide an insight into the complex and volatile relationship between policing and human rights, which marks contemporary migration control as well as mundane forms of professional and personal self-understanding.

Half a Story? Missing Perspectives in the Criminological Accounts of British Muslim Communities, Crime and the Criminal Justice System
Julian Hargreaves

An examination of recent scholarly criminological literature concerning British Muslim reveals dominant discursive themes of victimization, discrimination and demonization and a highly politicized discourse, often rhetorical in nature and seldom supported by empirical evidence. Where such evidence is adduced, criminologists rely predominantly on limited qualitative research designs and small non-representative sample sizes. This article presents analysis of British Crime Survey/Crime Survey of England and Wales data and argues that quantitative findings highlight the need for a more nuanced criminological picture of British Muslim communities. It is argued that criminologists should place renewed focus on household crime, the effects of socio-economic factors, crimes involving non-physical forms of violence and Muslim respondents who report positive attitudes towards the police.

The 2011 England Riots in Recent Historical Perspective
Tim Newburn

The riots of 2011 arguably represent the most significant civil disorder on the British mainland in at least a generation. Over four days, there were five deaths, injuries to dozens of police officers and civilians and damage to property running into the tens of millions of pounds. Commentators writing in the aftermath of the riots have pointed both to what are taken to be unusual aspects of the 2011 disorders—the role of gangs, the nature and extent of looting and use of social media among others—as well as some of the parallels with previous riots. In placing the 2011 riots in their recent historical context, this article outlines a model for structuring comparative analysis of disorder and then moves on to consider some of the similarities between 2011 and riots in the post-war period, concluding by identifying four significant points of departure.

The 2011 English ‘Riots’: Prosecutorial Zeal and Judicial Abandon
Carly Lightowlers and Hannah Quirk

Much attention has focussed on the severity of the sentences imposed following the 2011 ‘summer rioting’ in England. The Court of Appeal confirmed that participation in a collective outbreak of disorder takes offending outside the sentencing guidelines. The position for sentencing riot-related offending in future is unclear, however, as the Court gave no indication of how to calibrate this departure, and the Sentencing Council has made offending during public disorder an aggravating factor only in its burglary guideline. This article explores new empirical evidence regarding the sentences imposed in Manchester, together with national Ministry of Justice data, to demonstrate for the first time how this ‘uplift’ effect was a feature throughout the criminal process, from arrest to sentence.

An Australian Indigenous-focussed Justice Response to Intimate Partner Violence: Offenders’ Perceptions of the Sentencing Process
Elena Marchetti

This article draws on research conducted over the past four years on the use of Indigenous sentencing courts in Australia for sentencing Indigenous offenders of intimate partner violence (IPV). It presents interview findings of offenders’ perceptions of justice of a sentencing process that involves the participation of Elders and Community Representatives, as moral and cultural guides. This study concludes that the vast majority of interview participants found an Indigenous sentencing court process is fairer than a mainstream sentencing court process despite the fact that it is more challenging and confronting facing Elders and Community Representatives when being sentenced for an IPV offence. Their respect for Elders and Community Representatives, and the respect afforded to Elders and Community Representatives by the mainstream criminal justice system created a forum that both ‘shamed’ and supported the offenders in ways that reflected cultural values and norms.

‘So Now I’m the Man’: Intimate Partner Femicide and Its Interconnections With Expressions of Masculinities in South Africa
Shanaaz Mathews, Rachel Jewkes, and Naeemah Abrahams

Intimate femicide, the killing of a woman by an intimate partner, is the leading cause of female murder in South Africa. Research on men who kill in South Africa has highlighted the psychological damage caused by exposure to severe adversity in childhood, but this alone does not explain the gendered context of these murders. This article presents analyses from in-depth interviews with 20 incarcerated men who killed their partners and explores their views on and relationships with women. We show that the men sought to perform exaggerated versions of predominant ideals of masculinity, emphasizing an extreme control of and dominance over women. We show killing as an ultimate means of taking back control in a context where gendered relationships legitimize men’s use of violence to assert power and control. Interventions to prevent intimate femicide need to be highly cognisant of the gendered context.

Craft(y)ness: An Ethnographic Study of Hacking
Kevin F. Steinmetz

The idea of the ‘hacker’ is a contested concept both inside and outside the hacker community, including academia. Addressing such contestation the current study uses ethnographic field research and content analysis to create a grounded understanding of ‘the hacker’. In doing so, hacking is revealed to parallel features found in craftwork, often sharing (1) a particular mentality, (2) an emphasis on skill, (3) a sense of ownership over tools and objects of labour, (4) guild-like social and learning structures, (5) a deep sense of commitment, (6) an emphasis on process over result, (7) a common phenomenological experience, and (8) tendencies towards transgression. The final result is that hacking is identified as a kind of transgressive craft or craft(y).

The Cultural Idiosyncrasy of Penal Populism: The Case of Contemporary China
Enshen Li

This article explores the socio-cultural divergences of penal populism in a Chinese context. It examines whether penal populism has become an influence on shaping China’s punishment after the Maoist era. By tracing the trends in criminal justice and penal policy over the last three decades, it argues that China has developed a relatively weak version of penal populism compared to a commonly understood form of this conception in some western democracies. Although China’s social and cultural conditions seem to be conducive to the rise of penal populism, this penal force can be easily submerged by political will and blocked by bureaucratic power. Penal populism has a limited impact on penal development in contemporary China.

Social Mobility and Crime: Evidence From a Total Birth Cohort
Jukka Savolainen, Mikko Aaltonen, Marko Merikukka, Reija Paananen, and Mika Gissler

This research examined intergenerational educational mobility as an antecedent of criminal offending. Anomie theory and the general theory of crime assume an inverse association between intergenerational mobility and criminal behaviour. In addition, Moffitt’s taxonomic theory and general strain theory expect intergenerational continuity in low educational attainment to be especially criminogenic. We examined the hypothesized associations with total birth cohort data from Finland. The results suggest that neither downward nor upward mobility is an important correlate of crime. For most individuals, the educational background of the family of origin was unrelated to offending net of personal attainment. As an important exception, parents’ educational attainment buffered the strong positive association between offspring educational marginalization and crime. Among those who did not pursue education beyond comprehensive school, having a parent with minimal educational credentials doubled the risk of serious offending compared with those with university-educated parents. Evidence from multivariate analysis suggests that this interaction effect is related to family adversity and psychological risk characteristics.

The Mis-synchronization of Juvenile Reform: Competing Constructions of Temporality and Risk Among Rehabilitation Programs and Young Offenders
Valli Rajah, Ronald Kramer, and Hung-En Sung

In the United States, juvenile rehabilitation programs have moved towards ‘risk-needs’ models, which not only assess risks of recidivism, but also address young peoples’ needs. While laudable for their responsiveness, we argue ‘risk-needs’ models are based on a series of beliefs concerning time and/or temporality that are inconsistent with the social locations and life experiences of young offenders. Based on observations and interview data collected from young male prisoners participating in a cognitive-treatment program, we argue that the temporal lessons that imprisoned youth learn, which are often inapplicable to their post-release lives, may limit the effectiveness of efforts to rehabilitate juvenile offenders. Study implications are discussed.