Critical Criminology 23(3)

Critical Criminology, September 2015: Volume 23, Issue 3

Death Matters: Victimization by Particle Matter from Coal Fired Power Plants in the US, a Green Criminological View
Michael J. Lynch & Kimberly L. Barrett

The present study examines deaths and diseases associated with pollution from coal fired power plants (CFPPs) and compares the volume of those deaths and diseases to deaths and injuries associated with street crimes. This comparison illustrates that the single form of pollution studied here—CFPP small particle pollution—causes more deaths in the US than homicides and deserves additional criminological attention. We frame our examination of CFPP deaths and injuries in the corporate crime and green criminological literatures, and explore CFPP pollution as an example of corporate environmental violence. The widespread nature of CFPP violence justifies focusing greater criminological attention on this issue, including the development of policies for remedying pollution, which is now a ubiquitous problem with severe health consequences.

The Anarchy Police: Militant Anti-Fascism as Alternative Policing Practice

Stanislav Vysotsky

Anarchist criminology has produced a strong critique of the system of criminal law, but has only recently started to theorize practical alternatives. The alternatives that it offers have been largely rooted in pacifism through the practice of restorative justice and deescalation of conflict. These models are generally effective so long as the individuals involved are committed to the process being applied. Ethnographic study of the anti-fascist movement in the United States demonstrates a potential model of anarchist response to threats of community and public safety in prefigurative subcultural spaces. The confrontational and violent tactics employed by militant anti-fascists serve as a form of policing based on anarchist principles of spontaneity, direct democracy, and direct action; and can serve as a starting point for theorizing proactive anarchist actions against individuals who threaten public safety and order.

War, Crime and Military Victimhood
Ross McGarry

Within this article the lived realities of violent crimes relating to the British military are explored taking influence from left realist criminology to develop Bryant’s (Khaki-collar crime: deviant behavior in the military context. The Free Press, New York, 1979) notion of Khaki-Collar Crime. Situated within the context of victimology, our attention is drawn to the ways in which two British military personnel have been perceived as victims and offenders of violent crime within public and legal domains. Using these events as a touchstone for critical analysis it is suggested that several key concerns relating to the ‘unification’ of war and criminal justice are illuminated by employing the concept of ‘military victimhood’: it enhances the perception of soldiers’ vulnerabilities; provides sympathetic conditions to understand military offending; subjugates the position of ‘Others’ within the justice system; and has been appropriated to further domestic counter-terrorism policy in the UK. In making this argument a platform is presented to reengage with khaki-collar crime and help rethink criminological left realism.

Moving Full-Speed Ahead in the Wrong Direction? A Critical Examination of US Sex-Offender Policy from a Positive Sexuality Model
D. J. Williams, Jeremy N. Thomas & Emily E. Prior

Despite an extensive research literature on sexual offending, much of current sexual offender policy within the United States runs counter to such literature, and instead, is based on common, pervasive myths about sexual offenders. Not surprisingly, recent studies on sex offender policy effectiveness suggest that current approaches are both costly and largely ineffective. In this paper, we suggest that a longstanding socio-cultural climate of sex-negativity fuels common fears and misconceptions about sexual offending and about policy related to treatment and supervision. We present a positive sexuality model and consider how the effectiveness of dealing with sexual offending issues could be improved through using a positive sexuality approach to guide policy.

Defining Post-release ‘Success’: Using Assemblage and Phenomenography to Reveal Difference and Complexity in Post-prison Conceptions

Diana F. Johns

The complexity of men’s experience of prison release is frequently reduced to singular narratives about reoffending risks or reintegration challenges. This paper seeks to enlarge this conventional view by highlighting the heterogeneous ways in which prison release may be experienced and understood. Analysis of men’s experience of release from prison in Victoria, Australia, shows how the concept of assemblage and a phenomenographic methodology can work together to capture and convey this heterogeneity. By assembling the ways ex-prisoners understand and experience release together with the conceptions of post-release support workers this approach highlights conflict and convergence between different ways of experiencing the post-release terrain, specifically around conflicting notions of post-release ‘success’. The innovative combination of assemblage and phenomenography thus contributes a deeper, more nuanced understanding of the challenges of release from prison and of supporting ex-prisoners’ so-called ‘reintegration’.

Asbestos: Not Just an Exhibit at the Smithsonian

Patrick M. Gerkin & Jacquelynn Doyon-Martin

The Smithsonian Institution operates the largest museum and research complex in the world. In the past 25 years, the Smithsonian Institution has both acted and failed to act in a way that demonstrates a disregard for worker safety in their many facilities. This research examines actions and inactions of the Smithsonian Institution regarding workplace exposure to asbestos. Through a secondary analysis of congressional testimony, citations issued by the Occupational Health and Safety Administration, private reports, and various media accounts of the events, this research seeks to examine the perpetrators’ actions as a crime of omission and offer a theoretical explanation. The explanation attempts to situate the individuals within the micro-, meso-, and macro-level forces that shape motivations and create opportunities for individuals to disregard worker safety and jeopardize human life.

Criminalizing the Political in a Digital Age
Judith Bessant

There is an emergent interest by criminologists in theorising problems that arise when states breach conventional legal norms. This article considers the criminalisation of ‘whistleblowing’ by Manning, Assange and Snowden that revealed illegal actions by the state and major breaches of US and western security intelligence operations. The article asks what such developments mean for the conceptual and normative status of politics and crime constituted in the western liberal frame? It is about criminologists who rely on that paradigm and the need to counter neo-conservative agendas. The article analyzes liberal constitutional democracies with an emphasis on the US. It draws on the work of German theorists Schmitt and Benjamin who stand outside the liberal tradition to highlight how modern states frequently suspends the rule of law and relies on their own sovereign power to declare ‘states of emergency’ to render their own criminal conduct lawful.

Evaluating U.S. Counterterrorism Policy: Failure, Fraud, or Fruitful Spectacle?

Willem de Lint & Wondwossen Kassa

Counterterrorism plays a pivotal role in the projection of U.S. government interests and objectives nationally and globally. A large segment of the strategies, programs and operations of U.S. government agencies and their authorized private counterparts under the auspices of the Department of Homeland Security form a counterterrorism policy (CTP) that may be evaluated as more or less meeting those interests and objectives. Building on the work of Mueller and Stewart, Van Dongen, and McConnell, we evaluate U.S. CTP against both an objective and explicit deterrence agenda (reducing terrorism) and a constructivist and implicit objective (consolidating support for governments and their unifying ideologies). The paper supports the conclusion that CTP is a failure if the criterion is restricted to an evaluation of its efficiency in reducing terrorist events. However, CTP is also evaluated against its utility in pushing forward harmonized “ordering” across national and international boundaries and its ability to garner widespread public support of governments in security policy, and here it may be viewed as a success. Against deterrence measures, such success may be a kind of fraud. Against the political imperative, it is a fruitful spectacle. The paper argues that the blurring or blending of these two sets of criteria may not be a deliberate fraud, but enables the maintenance and growth of CTP and the national security infrastructure.