Critical Criminology 23(1)

Critical Criminology, March 2015: Volume 23 Number 1

Lost in Translation: Looking for Transgender Identity in Women’s Prisons and Locating Aggressors in Prisoner Culture
Jennifer Sumner and Lori Sexton

The incarceration of transgender prisoners in men’s prisons is a burgeoning topic of legal challenge, policy development, and social science inquiry. The conspicuous absence of comparable attention to women’s facilities may facilitate a tacit assumption that what is known about transgender prisoners in men’s prisons translates seamlessly to women’s facilities. This paper interrogates this assumption by examining current understandings of what it means to be transgender in a women’s prison. Findings from focus groups with prisoners and staff reveal that gender is understood as both reflected by and constituted through social interaction. Specifically, in attempting to explain the concept of “transgender” in women’s prisons, this work instead reveals a different prevailing concept in prisoner culture: “aggressor.” Unlike transgender, aggressor does not denote gender identity; rather, it implies presentation and performance as reflective of gendered ways of navigating relationships within the context of a sex-segregated setting. These findings simultaneously affirm the extant literature on gender and sexuality in women’s prisons and complicate the translation of the identity-based concept “transgender” from men’s prisons to a women’s prison.

Wrongfully Convicting the Innocent: A State Crime?
Greg Stratton

Although there is evidence of its occurrence in most criminal justice systems, wrongful conviction remains underdeveloped from a criminological perspective. The result of a confluence of factors and actors, wrongful conviction stands as evidence that criminal justice systems are not immune to error. Amongst the different circumstances in individual cases, the state (or those acting on its behalf) is one constant actor implicated in wrongful conviction of the innocent. Recognizing this consistency, wrongful conviction has the potential to be examined through existing understandings of state crime and enter more robust discussions within critical and orthodox criminology. By expanding upon existing arguments relevant to state crime, this article suggests a typology of wrongful conviction by placing it on a continuum of state crime from acts of omission to commission. In doing so, this article further develops a theoretical argument demonstrating the relevance of wrongful conviction within the state crime ‘spectrum’, adding to the understanding of the problem of wrongful conviction.

Critical Criminology in the Life and Work of Eugene Victor Debs
Kenneth D. Tunnell and Edward L. W. Green

The American socialist, Eugene Debs, made a profound impact on American politics during the first half of the twentieth century. Although socialism and the public’s knowledge of Debs have waned since then, we argue, in this paper, that Debs, his writings and his life’s work are relevant to criminology—particularly critical criminology—yet neglected during the formative development of critical criminology. In this paper, we describe Debs’ biography and politics. We document his first-hand experiences with the legal system (including incarceration), his consistent critiques of capitalism and his written and spoken texts that empirically link American-style capitalism and its captains to US politics. Last, we describe Debs’ only published book on prisons and prison life and its unfortunate omission from the criminological canon yet argue that Debs’ life and written and spoken word remain central to social justice.

De-Demonizing the ‘Monstrous’ Drug Addict: A Qualitative Look at Social Reintegration Through Rehabilitation and Employment
Brandon Lutman, Caitlin Lynch and Elizabeth Monk-Turner

Few studies explore how employers perceive the experience of hiring recovering substance abusers. Qualitative, semi-structured interviews were conducted with employers who hire clients from a residential drug treatment facility for adult males in a capital city in the southeastern United States as well as several administrators that work at this facility. The emergent themes uncovered through these interviews shed light on the opinions of those who refuse to abandon a population of individuals who have been neglected by so many others. The research participant insights shed light on the fact that when overcoming drug addiction and abuse, getting sober is only half the battle. These individuals are then left to fight against the labels and stigmatization cast upon them by society. Information gleaned from these interviews may offer employers who may consider hiring ex-offenders, insights into potential benefits and problems they may encounter in working with this population. The findings of this study emphasize the damning effects of labeling on the social reintegration of those desperate for a second chance at being productive members of society.

Breaking Out of Prison and into Print? Rationales and Strategies to Assist Educated Convicts Conduct Scholarly Research and Writing Behind Bars
Jeffrey Ian Ross, Miguel Zaldivar and Richard Tewksbury

Some educated convicts want to conduct scholarly research and have the results of their work appear in academic publications. This provides numerous benefits and challenges to the researcher/writer and the academic world. This article outlines these issues in order to assist convicts, scholars, journal editors, and correctional service personnel understand the opportunities and limitations to scholarly research by convicts behind bars. The authors argue that the best strategy to use for inmates in this situation is a team research approach. The discussion provides definitions and examples of the challenges, opportunities, and means of overcoming these obstacles.

Seeing Like an Orientalist State: The Three Deaths of Neda Agha-Soltan
Justin Turner

On June 20, 2009 one image became a symbol of violence, as well as a rallying cry for a movement that contested the disputed election of hardline Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The image captured the murder of a 26 year old protester named Neda Agha-Soltan, and showed a first-hand account, in bloody detail, of the savagery of state killing. With the help of social media, the video received mass attention from news organizations in the United States by June 22, 2009. Cursory analysis of the New York Times and The Washington Post, representation of Neda’s death, reveals an Iranian government that was unafraid to violently repress a democratic movement. It is my contention here that such a construction was framed by an Orientalist discourse which helped to fabricate three distinct deaths of this murdered protester. First the lasting images of death became a symbol of freedom; Neda’s second death showed a grievable life, one that provided an emotional space for a US audience; and finally her third death which became a means of defining and (re)stabilizing Orientalized perceptions of Iran as violent and barbaric. Ultimately, these three deaths became an instrument that would help justify the call for US intervention on behalf of Western morality and humanitarian aid.

Reverberate, Resonate, Reproduce: A Reconsideration of Ideological Influence in Crime News Production
Nick Chagnon

For decades, scholars have increasingly been concerned with media representations of crime. Content analyses have chronicled pervasive distortions in media representations of crime. Many have argued these issues are particularly troubling in the news, as it supposedly provides an invaluable democratic service, spurring many theories of crime news production. Classic works often conceptualized crime news as either a product of dominant ideologies and top–down power, or journalistic routines and values, coupled with reflexive agency by journalists. More recently scholars have argued for hybrid perspectives. However, such hybridized approaches often brusquely treat the role of ideology in crime news. This article rethinks the role of ideology in crime news production, particularly the ways in which various ideologies interact and mutually strengthen each other.

Ambivalent Sovereigns and Restorative Justice: Exploring Conditions of Possibility and Impossibility for Restorative Justice in a Post-communicative Age
Ronnie Lippens

This contribution hopes to be able to contribute to answering the question: whither restorative justice? The restorative justice (RJ) movement has arrived at an existential crossroads. In this contribution an attempt is made to analyse how some of the origins of the RJ movement could be located in the emergence and crystallization of a new form of life (“control society”) in the wake of the Second World War. At the heart of this form of life one might be able to discern, on the one hand, a desire for and will to radical sovereignty, and, on the other, a resulting awareness of ambivalence. Whilst these aspects of post-war life have formed the backdrop of developments in RJ, and have therefore formed part of its conditions of possibility, one might now wonder if, in a post-communicative age such as ours, those very aspects have now become part of its conditions of impossibility. The argument explored in this contribution however holds that elements in the aforementioned form of life also hold potential for the re-thinking of restorative justice theory and practice.