British Journal of Criminology 55(5)

British Journal of Criminology, September 2015: Volume 55, Issue 5

Featured: Greening Justice: Examining the Interfaces of Criminal, Social and Ecological Justice

Rob White and Hannah Graham

This article examines the growth of ecological awareness, alongside the emergence of environmental sustainability initiatives, within criminal justice institutions around the world. To date, such developments have received little empirical analysis from criminology scholars. Internationally, this article is among the first to critically analyse the ‘greening’ of policing, courts, prisons, offender supervision and community reintegration. Available literature and examples are reviewed, alongside original research findings. The motivations and ideologies underpinning this nascent green evolution raise deeper questions of ‘why?’ and ‘for whom?’ Innovative examples of sustainable justice architecture and catalysts for penal reform are differentiated from those which claim humanistic intentions and green credentials but, arguably, are based on instrumental fiscal motives that do little to challenge repressive carceral regimes.

Urban Policy, City Control and Social Catharsis: The Attack on Social Frailty as Therapy
Rowland Atkinson

Urban policies have increasingly been ‘criminalised’ as regeneration, public housing management and homelessness programmes have been aligned with the aims of criminal justice and anti-social behaviour measures. In this article, policies that tackle problem places, people and behaviours are interpreted as expressions of social anger and fear that are made tangible via periodic attacks on social marginality. Case examples are offered in which urban policies appear as a kind of social catharsis or exorcizing of fear/anxiety. Such urban policies appear to construct social vulnerability as a threat that thereby helps to trigger interventions that might help realize goals of urban renewal and release from worries about criminality and urban social decline. This model of control and policymaking is developed by drawing on the emotional energies at the heart of cultural criminology and critical perspectives taken from contemporary urban studies.

Why Restorative Justice Will Not Reduce Incarceration

William R. Wood

Restorative justice goals are frequently articulated on micro, meso and macro levels. One macro-level goal frequently made by advocates is that restorative justice may serve as a viable means of reducing incarceration. Focusing on Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States, this article argues that while these countries have seen some of the largest increases in incarceration within western industrialized countries, as well as the most widespread use of restorative justice, there is little evidence that restorative justice has reduced prison populations. It also argues that as currently practiced there is little reason to assume that restorative justice will have a significant impact on incarceration in the near future. Attention is given to the problem of the ‘transformation assumption’ inherent in restorative justice that micro-level changes in offender behaviours or restorative outcomes can significantly affect the larger social structures of punishment and incarceration.

A Case Study Approach to Procedural Justice: Parents’ Views in Two Juvenile Delinquency Courts in the United States
Liana Pennington

The juvenile delinquency court aims to modify children’s behaviour, but little is known about how parents’ experiences in juvenile delinquency courts may be affecting the court’s efforts. Whether parents believe the court system is fair and effective could have important implications for the juvenile justice system. This research uses two case studies of parents in two different courts in the Northeast United States to examine how parents’ views are created and reinforced through experiences in the juvenile court process. Integrating concepts from the sociolegal framework of legal consciousness, this research challenges some of the core concepts of procedural justice and brings to the surface new ideas about negative views of the law and disengagement from the justice system.

Street Codes, Routine Activities, Neighbourhood Context and Victimization

Susan McNeeley and Pamela Wilcox

This study seeks to address the inconsistency in the literature regarding the relationship between the code of the street and victimization by drawing upon overlooked ideas embedded in Anderson’s work that are consistent with lifestyle-routine activities theory. Using Poisson-based multilevel regression models, we found that the effect of the street code on victimization was moderated by public activities: code-related values only contributed to greater risk of victimization for those with more public lifestyles. This interaction between the street code and routine activities was more influential in culturally disorganized neighbourhoods.

The Risks and Rewards of Organized Crime Investments in Real Estate

Marco Dugato, Serena Favarin, and Luca Giommoni

Despite growing interest in organized crime’s infiltration of the legal economy, research to date has paid little attention to the investments of criminal organizations in real estate. Using data on confiscated assets in 8,092 Italian municipalities between 2000 and 2012, this paper aims to remedy this lack of knowledge. Applying a risk–reward approach, based on the rational choice perspective, the analysis highlights what drives Italian mafia groups’ investments in the real estate sector. The results obtained support the validity of the rational choice perspective by showing how criminal organizations weigh risks and rewards in their decisions to invest in real estate.

Taking the Conservative Protestant Thesis Across the Atlantic. A Comparative Analysis of the Relationships Between Violence, Religion and Stimulants Use in Rural Netherlands
Don Weenink

Building upon the Southern culture of violence research tradition, this article inquires the association between rural violence and Conservative Protestantism in the Dutch context. Based on data of 8,106 individuals, it was found that young rural Conservative Protestants living in villages were more likely to report that they had committed violence, as compared to their fellow believers living in urbanized areas. Furthermore, it turned out that the association between alcohol consumption and violence is stronger among this category of religious rural youth. Finally, this study demonstrates that, contrary to the prevailing notion of the idyllic rural, the violence rates between young Dutch rural dwellers and their peers living in the rest of the country are virtually similar.

Shopping for Free? Looting, Consumerism and the 2011 Riots

Tim Newburn, Kerris Cooper, Rachel Deacon, and Rebekah Diski

A number of commentators have suggested that the riots in England in August 2011 were distinctive because of the character and extent of the looting that took place. In doing so, they have argued that the nature of modern consumer capitalism should be placed front and centre of any explanation of the disorder. While concurring with elements of such arguments, we depart from such analyses in three ways. First, we argue that it is important not to overstate the extent to which the 2011 riots were a departure from previous outbreaks of civil disorder—violent consumerism having a quite lengthy history. Second, using testimony from those involved, we argue that a focus on looting risks ignoring both the political character and the violence involved in the riots. Finally, and relatedly, we suggest that the focus on consumption potentially simplifies the nature of the looting itself by underestimating its political and expressive characteristics.

Collating Longitudinal Data on Crime, Victimization and Social Attitudes in England and Wales: A New Resource for Exploring Long-term Trends in Crime

Will Jennings, Emily Gray, Colin Hay, and Stephen Farrall

Exploring long-term trends in crime and criminal justice is a multifaceted exercise. This article introduces the construction and methodological benefits of a series of new data sets that amalgamate approximately 30 years of public data on crime, victimization, fear of crime, social and political attitudes with national socio-economic indicators in England and Wales. The data operate at both an aggregate and individual level and will be available for public use (and modification) from autumn 2015. Here, we outline the contours and contents of the data set and highlight the importance of using longitudinal data in exploring theoretical and empirical questions about crime, victimization and social attitudes.