Researching the use of force: the background to the international project

This article provides the background to an international project on use of force by the police that was carried out in seven countries. Force is often considered to be the defining characteristic of policing and much research has been conducted on the determinants, prevalence and control of the use of force, particularly in the United States. However, little work has looked at police officers’ own views on the use of force, in particular the way in which they justify it. Using a hypothetical encounter developed for this project, researchers in each country conducted focus groups with police officers in which they were encouraged to talk about the use of force. The results show interesting similarities and differences across countries and demonstrate the value of using this kind of research focus and methodology.

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Arson and the Special Part

This commentary on Michael Cahill’s Grading Arson argues that Cahill’s analysis inevitably leads to three possible conclusions. First, arson does not belong in criminal codes. Second, crimes of manner do not belong in criminal codes. And, third, the special part needs serious reconsideration. Although Cahill is reticent to draw any of these conclusions, this commentary urges Cahill to embrace all three.

Singing the same tune? International continuities and discontinuities in how police talk about using force

This article focuses on a research project conducted in six jurisdictions: England, The Netherlands, Germany, Australia, Venezuela, and Brazil. These societies are very different ethnically, socially, politically, economically, historically and have wildly different levels of crime. Their policing arrangements also differ significantly: how they are organised; how their officers are equipped and trained; what routine operating procedures they employ; whether they are armed; and much else besides. Most relevant for this research, they represent policing systems with wildly different levels of police shootings, Police in the two Latin American countries represented here have a justified reputation for the frequency with which they shoot people, whereas at the other extreme the police in England do not routinely carry firearms and rarely shoot anyone. To probe whether these differences are reflected in the way that officers talk about the use of force, police officers in these different jurisdictions were invited to discuss in focus groups a scenario in which police are thwarted in their attempt to arrest two youths (one of whom is a known local criminal) by the youths driving off with the police in pursuit, and concludes with the youths crashing their car and escaping in apparent possession of a gun, It might be expected that focus groups would prove starkly different, and indeed they were, but not in the way that might be expected. There was little difference in affirmation of normative and legal standards regarding the use of force. It was in how officers in different jurisdictions envisaged the circumstances in which the scenario took place that led Latin American officers to anticipate that they would shoot the suspects, whereas officers in the other jurisdictions had little expectation that they would open fire in the conditions as they imagined them to be.

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Criminal victimization in contemporary China: a review of the evidence and challenges for future research

The rapid economic growth in China over recent decades has been accompanied by higher levels of crime, but there have been few studies of the Chinese experience of criminal victimization. A recent victimization survey of a representative sample of households in Tianjin represents a major effort to fill this gap in the literature. The present paper reviews the research based on the Tianjin survey along with other studies of crime and criminal victimization in China that have been published since 1990. We summarize the major findings, discuss the theoretical perspectives and methodological strategies that have been applied, identify the limitations of the research to date, and offer suggestions for future research.

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Thinking Critically About Rural Gender Relations: Toward a Rural Masculinity Crisis/Male Peer Support Model of Separation/Divorce Sexual Assault

After decades of neglect, a growing number of scholars have turned their attention to issues of crime and criminal justice in the rural context. Despite this improvement, rural crime research is underdeveloped theoretically, and is little informed by critical criminological perspectives. In this article, we introduce the broad tenets of a multi-level theory that links social and economic change to the reinforcement of rural patriarchy and male peer support, and in turn, how they are linked to separation/divorce sexual assault. We begin by addressing a series of misconceptions about what is rural, rural homogeneity and commonly held presumptions about the relationship of rurality, collective efficacy (and related concepts) and crime. We conclude by recommending more focused research, both qualitative and quantitative, to uncover specific link between the rural transformation and violence against women. This paper was presented at the 2006 annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology, Los Angeles, California. Some of the research reported here was supported by National Institute of Justice Grant 2002-WG-BX-0004 and financial assistance provided by the College of Arts and Sciences and the Office of the Vice President for Research at Ohio University. Arguments and findings included in this article are those of the authors and do not represent the official position of the US Department of Justice or Ohio University. Please send all correspondence to Walter S. DeKeseredy, e-mail: walter.dekeseredy@uoit.ca. All of the names of the women who participated in DeKeseredy and colleagues’ rural Ohio study and who are quoted have been changed to maintain confidentiality.

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The impact of the US legislation on company measures of control and prevention

The spectacular business scandals in recent years have led both the legislative and business companies to rethink and redesign their strategies. This article analyzes the worldwide impact of reforms in economic crime legislation emanating from the USA. Empirical data are reported showing that the US regulations are generating a spillover effect spreading beyond its sphere of operation. It is particularly notable that international stock-exchange-listed companies are orienting themselves increasingly toward the legal standards of the USA. Translated from the German by Jonathan Harrow, Bielefeld.

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To Discipline and Publish: Scottsboro and Narratives of Delinquency

With the economics of racism of the 1930s and 1950s American South in mind, our essay explores the relationship between the act of writing and institutional penology. Taking an obscure, but visceral autobiographical account by Paterson and Conrad (Scottsboro Boy, Garden City Doubleday, 1950), we examine how discipline, punishment, and institutional identity emerge out of publishing, or, as Foucault put it, “the power of writing.” Narratives of delinquency born out of a racialized penal economy tend to resist attempts to tame the criminal, making institutional survival a productive discourse, and its articulation, a unique revolutionary act.

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Institutionalized corruption: power overconcentration of the First-in-Command in China

Among various kinds of corruption in China, corruption of the First-in-Command (FIC) is most pernicious, threatening the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party and the stability of the state. This paper examines several specific institutional arrangements under China’s current political structure, including the people’s congress, the ruling party system, and the collective leadership team system, to see how they have contributed to power overconcentration in the hands of FICs. This is done in a two-round process: first through the collective leadership team and then by the gestating decision-making rule. The paper also assesses four institutional innovations designed to prevent FIC corruption.

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Estimating the Number of Crimes Averted by Incapacitation: An Information Theoretic Approach

This paper presents an information theoretic approach for estimating the number of crimes averted by incapacitation. It first develops models of the criminal history accumulation process of a sample of prison releasees using their official recorded arrest histories prior to incarceration. The models yield individual offending trajectories that are then used to compute the number of crimes these releasees could reasonably have been expected to commit had they not been incarcerated—the counterfactual of interest. The models also afford the opportunity to conduct a limited set of policy simulations. The data reveal a fair amount of variation among individuals both in terms of the number of crimes averted by their incarceration and the responsiveness of these estimates to longer incarceration terms. Estimates were found not to vary substantially across demographic groups defined by offender race, gender, or ethnicity; variations across states and offense types were more pronounced. Implications of the findings and promising avenues for future research are discussed.

Measuring corporate environmental crime rates: progress and problems

The problem of corporate crime rates has been the subject of debate, speculation and operationalization for decades, largely stemming from the complexity of measuring this type of crime. Examining corporate environmental crime poses challenges and creates opportunities for advancing the discussion of corporate crime rates, but criminologists are less familiar with environmental data. In the current paper, we review the strengths and weaknesses of existing environmental data that can be used to construct the components of an environmental crime rate. We also present a corporate environmental crime rate derived from data on violations of the Clean Water Act and describe problems with using it in real world data. Implications for theory, practice and future research are discussed.

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Hommage à Gérard Cornu

Sans résumé

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Does illegality breed violence? Drug trafficking and state-sponsored protection rackets

Illegality does not necessarily breed violence. The relationship between illicit markets and violence depends on institutions of protection. When state-sponsored protection rackets form, illicit markets can be peaceful. Conversely, the breakdown of state-sponsored protection rackets, which may result from well-meaning policy reforms intended to improve law enforcement, can lead to violence. The cases of drug trafficking in contemporary Mexico and Burma show how a focus on the emergence and breakdown of state-sponsored protection rackets helps explain variation in levels of violence both within and across illicit markets.

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White-collar,organised and cyber crimes in the media: some contrasts and similarities

This article examines the media reportage of white-collar crimes, organised crimes and cybercrimes, principally in the British but also in the US media. It illustrates the ways in which different newspapers depict crime seriousness and how some defendants adapt to these portrayals. It examines competing explanatory models and suggests that although reportage has an ideological component, ‘news values’ and production pressures as well as ‘action triggers’ such as prosecutions or regulatory interventions are important.

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Conversations with Russian mafiosi

Open interviews and unplanned conversations with criminals are an important part of ethnographic research in criminology. This paper presents an analysis of conversations with members of Russian criminal groups. An attempt is made to explore the value of these informal interviews, the danger of informal contacts with criminals, and the reliability of the information received.

<Emphasis Type="Italic">Dura lex,sed lex</Emphasis>? Insights from the subjective theory of opportunity cost

Seeking a grounding in Buchanan (Cost and choice: an inquiry in economic theory, 1969) subjective theory of opportunity cost, this paper sets out to fix a notional locus of the law in order to determine the cost of law enforcement. The paper also explores the impact of unlawful activities on the economy and analyses the evolution of individual criminal activities in collective criminal organizations such as the mafia.

The entrepreneurial society

This paper explains why and how entrepreneurship has emerged as an engine of economic growth, employment creation and competitiveness in global markets. The entrepreneurial society reflects the emergence as entrepreneurship as an important source of economic growth.

Measuring the Relationship Between Youth Criminal Participation and Household Economic Resources

Using data from the NLSY97, this paper re-examines the empirical relationship between household economic resources and youth criminal participation. Previous estimates of this relationship have often suggested this relationship to be quite weak or even non-existent. However, this analysis suggests that much of the strength of the relationship between household economic resources and youth criminal participation may be obscured due to non-linearities in this relationship, the fact that this relationship is isolated to crimes of a serious nature only, and especially because of measurement error with respect to measuring household economic resources. I show that adjusting for these issues substantially increases the estimated strength of this relationship. Indeed, the results in this paper show that the differences in serious criminal participation between youth from households in the upper parts of the income distribution and youth from households in the lower parts of the income distribution appear to be greater than the difference in serious criminal participation between genders.

An innovation economics agenda for the Obama administration

Seven recommendations are offered for the Obama Administration to ensure that the economy is on a robust growth path over the next decade. These recommendations are intended as first steps towards building the innovation-based public-private partnerships needed to drive economic growth and prosperity.

The lives and crimes of African-American women on death row: a case study

Few criminal justice topics have garnered as much attention as capital punishment. This voluminous literature ranges from constitutional and procedural issues to race issues and gender issues. While the intellectual and legal community has paid a great deal of attention to the role of race in capital punishment, as well as the role of gender in capital punishment, the extant literature is lacking with regard to African-American women and the death penalty. To be clear, the lack of literature is not because there are no African-American women on death row. This article attempts to fill a void in the capital punishment literature through a qualitative analysis that explores the lives and crimes of African-American women on death row.

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