The British Journal of Criminology 55(2)

The British Journal of Criminology, March 2015: Volume 55, Issue 2

Editor's choice: Enlisting the Public in the Policing of Immigration
Ana Aliverti

As border policing is no longer circumscribed to external borders and increasingly performed inland, in Britain migration work relies on the assistance of a range of unorthodox partners, including the public. The unearthing of the ‘community’ as a crucial partner to police a myriad of public safety issues, including migration, begs the question of what are the implications of mobilizing citizenship for law enforcement? This paper argues that enlisting the public in migration law enforcement yields important civic by-products: it ‘creates’ citizens and citizenship. It imparts civic training by instilling a sense of civic responsibility in law and order maintenance, and in doing so it intends to recreate social cohesion across a deeply fragmented society.

Foucault’s Punitive Society: Visual Tactics of Marking as a History of the Present
Phil Carney

Applying a form of genealogical method rooted in Nietzsche’s use of history, this article seeks an understanding of ‘marking’ punishments in our own mass-mediated culture. First, Foucault’s analysis of the punitive tactic of marking in his 1973 course, The Punitive Society, will be considered. Second, his concept of ‘virtual marking’ will be extended and applied to the case of the pitture infamanti in the early renaissance. Third, I will use these insights in a genealogical spirit in order to examine the rise of virtual marking in modernity. We will discover that Foucault was mistaken to tether marking punishments so closely to sovereign power. Instead, with certain antecedents in ancient Rome, virtual marking emerged in a largely ‘bourgeois’ society during the early renaissance and re-emerges in our own society of mass, photographic spectacle.

An Examination of the Local Life Circumstances of Female Offenders: Mothering, Illegal Earnings and Drug Use
Carolyn Yule, Paul-Philippe Paré, and Rosemary Gartner

Most women convicted of crime are mothers, yet we know little about whether the daily activity of mothering affects women’s criminal behaviour. If mothering reduces opportunities to engage in crime, strengthens informal controls and increases the costs of crime, it should discourage offending. On the other hand, if children create an imperative for resources that women cannot accommodate legally or exacerbate psychological and emotional strains, women may resort to criminal behaviour. Using data from interviews with 259 incarcerated women in Ontario, Canada, we estimate multi-level models focussing on month-to-month changes in women’s responsibilities for children and their offending. We find that mothering is an important ‘local life circumstance’ for reducing women’s involvement in criminal activities.

Gender, Aging and Drug Use: A Post-structural Approach to the Life Course
Ingrid Lander

This article focuses on the ageing process among drug-using women, proceeded on the basis of a critical post-structural approach to the life course (Holstein and Gubrium 2000; Halberstam 2005; Ahmed 2006; Mattsson 2014). The objective is to provide an alternative perspective on the life course to that which dominates current criminology. This perspective challenges prevailing norms and conceptions regarding the other, and in doing so focuses the analysis on the social mechanisms that lie behind social exclusion, crime and drug use. By means of the retrospective narratives of 4 women, who describe a rambling journey along crooked paths on the margins of the welfare state, the article reveals the nature of prevailing norms and conceptions regarding ageing, gender and drug use.

Neutralization Without Drift: Criminal Commitment Among Persistent Offenders
Bruce A. Jacobs and Heith Copes

Prior research suggests that serious predatory offenders are sufficiently committed to illicit conduct that they must neutralize good behaviour, rather than bad behaviour. Drawing from a sample of offenders who commit carjacking, we question that assumption. Specifically, our data reveal the manner in which such offenders neutralize bad conduct without meaningfully drifting. The notion of ‘neutralization without drift’ represents a theoretical refinement of neutralization theory and an extension of core conceptualization in the interpretation of criminal commitment. Through this concept, we attempt to make sense of how persistent predatory offenders who commit carjacking are able to embrace aggression, explain that it’s not ‘really them’, neutralize bad rather than good conduct, yet retain their status as committed criminals.

Officers and Drug Counsellors: New Occupational Identities in Nordic Prisons
Torsten Kolind, Vibeke A. Frank, Odd Lindberg, and Jouni Tourunen

Increasingly, prison drug treatment is introduced in European prisons. This increase may begin to change the prison as officers and drug counsellors are given new occupational responsibilities. Based on six month of observational studies and qualitative interviews with 104 prison employees in Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Norway in 12 prisons, this article investigates the practices and values of drug counsellors and officers. This shows that increasingly, counsellors integrate the control and disciplinary sanctions of the prison environment into their treatment approach. Simultaneously, officers working in drug treatment wings highlight the importance of the treatment ethos in their control work, adjusting the social representations of their professional identities accordingly. We discuss whether the concepts of treatment and control should be rethought.

Expanding the Community: An Exploratory Analysis of an American Parole Office’s Location and Its Impact on Parolees
Rita Shah

Numerous scholars study the effect of former prisoners’ neighbourhood on reintegration; few discuss how the geographic aspects of a community can impact the relationships within that community. This lack of discussion is particularly interesting for understanding the American parole system, as there seems to be no discussion of how the neighbourhood context of a parole office’s location impacts the relationships within. In this article, I argue the look, feel and location of a parole office may affect the parolee/parole agent relationship, which may in turn affect parole’s role in the reintegration process, and that we need to continue expanding criminological understandings of community and geography beyond where one lives and of how geographic and relational communities are connected.

Transforming ‘Summary Justice’ Through Police-led Prosecution and ‘Virtual Courts’: Is ‘Procedural Due Process’ Being Undermined?
Jenni Ward

The administration of ‘summary’ justice in the lower criminal courts in England and Wales is undergoing significant transformation. Broadly, this sits within the desire to create a modernized and more streamlined system. But, criminal justice scholars state ‘swift justice’ is not necessarily fair justice, and ‘procedural due process’ might be challenged by objectives of economics and speed. This paper centres on two areas of change—the expanded role of the police in prosecutorial decision making and the introduction of ‘virtual courts’ where accused defendants appear via video link from police stations to the criminal courts. It is argued these two alterations call into question fundamental principles of procedural due process.

‘Such Misconducts Don’t Make a Good Ranger’: Examining Law Enforcement Ranger Wrongdoing in Uganda
William D. Moreto, Rod K. Brunson, and Anthony A. Braga

Wildlife crime has been recognized to be an important topic of study by criminologists in recent years. Prior research has highlighted the detrimental impact of corruption on conservation-related issues. Law enforcement rangers are often the primary protectors of protected areas and wildlife. Yet, like other law enforcement agents, they are not immune to misconduct and corruption. The present study offers an in-depth examination of rangers’ experiences with and perceptions of wrongdoing in a specific Ugandan protected area. Findings indicate that ranger wrongdoing is driven by a myriad of factors and manifests in various ways. These findings have implications for the understanding and prevention of ranger misconduct.

On the Correlates of Reporting Assault to the Police in Malawi
Aiden Sidebottom

It is well known that many victims of crime do not notify the police. Research suggests that factors related to the victim, crime event and wider community are all implicated in the decision to report victimization. Few studies have investigated the correlates of victim reporting in developing countries, mainly owing to a lack of relevant data. It is therefore unclear whether the determinants of victim reporting in Western industrialized countries are generalizable to low-income developing settings. This paper explores the factors associated with victims reporting assault to the police in the African context of Malawi, using data from a nationally representative household survey. Results of a multilevel logistic regression indicate some similarities with the Western criminological literature, such as age of the victim and crime seriousness positively correlating with crime reporting. Other results seem to reflect the distinctive characteristics of Malawi, with victims more likely to report being assaulted if they are male, have access to a working phone or live in urban areas. The results illustrate the importance of studying criminological phenomena across a diverse range of settings. Implications of the findings for future research and crime prevention are discussed.

What Makes Long Crime Trips Worth Undertaking? Balancing Costs and Benefits in Burglars’ Journey to Crime
Christophe Vandeviver, Stijn Van Daele, and Tom Vander Beken

This study taps into rational choice theory and scrutinizes the assumption that profit maximization and effort minimization govern decisions related to burglary behaviour and the journey to crime. It treats distance as one of the major costs in the burglary target selection process and uses community characteristics to gain insight into how the anticipation of particular benefits favours the incremental costs of long crime trips. Two thousand three hundred and eighty-seven burglary trips were extracted from police records and analyzed using negative binomial regression analysis. The journey-to-crime distance was found to increase when burglaries were committed in communities containing motorways, dense road networks, and being ethnically heterogeneous. The journey-to-crime distance was found to decrease when densely populated areas and communities with high clearance rates are targeted.