From West Africa to the Balkans: exploring women’s roles in transnational organized crime

There is a lack of reliable data on the role of women in transnational organized crime. So far, the focus of this research has overwhelmingly been on the Italian Mafia. Little is known about women’s roles in other types of organized crime activities. Since there is an ongoing perception that draws on stereotypical imagery of women in organized crime as appendixes to their male counterparts, this article explores whether women are indeed as oppressed in transnational organized crime as they are in other spheres of life. It focuses on the stereotypical constructions of femininity (victims) and masculinity (criminals) and argues that hegemonic gender roles are defined by the dominant European/American culture. The article takes a multicultural feminist approach and studies female criminality in the context of “doing gender,” an approach that assumes that the feminine gender role is something that must be accomplished in the context of specific situations. By studying the roles of women from West Africa and the Balkans in transnational criminal activities, it specifically examines how time and space, as well history and culture, contribute to one’s position in a criminal network.     

``Wanted: Mafia boss' – Essay on the personology of organized crime

Despite an abundance of mafia romaticism both in litarary form and in social science the psychological study of personality of prominent organized crime figures is almost completely absent. Criminological attempts to understand how the mafia kingpin's mind works have failed so far because they are based on the mistaken view that underworld leadership would not require a certain level of skills and knowledge. Thus I have constructed a theoretical portrait of a maffia boss using the Five Factor Personalityy Model thatt is also used for personal selection purposes. I then suggest that personality traits that predict leadership success in the legitimate business world such as extraversion, controlled impulsiveness, a sense of adventure, megalomania, annd Narcissistic Personality Disorder, are all equally suitable triats for a career in organized crime.     

Hybrids: on the crime–terror nexus

Terrorist organisations may complement their military capability with functioning infrastructures and profitable activity in economic ventures as well as in crime. This leads many commentators to focus on the increasing overlap between terrorism and crime, including and particularly organised crime. The present paper is devoted to the analysis of this controversial overlap, and after providing a concise outline of definitions of organised crime and terrorism found in criminology, highlights similarities and differences between the two forms of criminality, along with the ambiguity of the very notion of “crime–terror nexus.”     

The Dragon’s shadow: an introduction to the special issue on ‘Chinese organized crime’

This paper provides an introduction to the articles submitted to the special issue of Trends in Organized Crime bringing forward numerous empirical research findings and theoretical accounts on Chinese organized crime in China and beyond.     

Not biting the dust: using a tripartite model of organized crime to examine India’s Sand Mafia

India’s Sand Mafia, which illegally mines sand for construction, generates approximately USD 17 million per month in revenues. Despite the devastating environmental, physical, and economical harms caused, there is a dearth of criminological research on this organized crime group. This paper develops a tripartite model of organized crime that is used to explore the Sand Mafia’s modus operandi, modus vivendi, and modus coordināti. It conducts document analysis of 75 media and environmental documents published between 2010 and 2015. This group operates as numerous, fragmented structures with transient memberships, and uses violence, political affiliation, and regenerative properties to ensure continued operation. Other factors, such as inadequate manpower, poor enforcement, rapid economic development, and limited acceptance of alternatives to sand, collectively compound the problem of illicit sand mining. Recommendations for alleviating the problem, such as imposing stricter regulations, implementing an independent regulatory body, and empowering local residents, are also examined. Future lines of research inquiry, such as conducting harms analysis via multidisciplinary research, are also offered.     

Apocalypse Now!: From Freud,Through Lacan,to Stiegler’s Psychoanalytic ‘Survival Project

International Journal for the Semiotics of Law - Revue internationale de Sémiotique juridique - The objective of this article is to explore the value of psychoanalysis in the early...     

From ecotypes to sociotypes: Peasant household and state-building in the alps,sixteenth–nineteenth centuries

Ecological arguments have long been used in research to explain the forms of peasant households. In the rich family literature concerning the European Alps they hold a particularly prominent position. Using alpine macro- and microdata, the article shows that the proposed ecological models do not hold up under scrutiny, and that sociopolitical approaches are more effective. An investigation of three regions from different parts of the Alps indicates that accelerated state-building started a process of differentiation in the sixteenth century. Relations between the private and the public domains took on specific forms, and this development affected domestic power relations in peasant households.     

‘From weird to wired’: MPs,the internet and representative politics in the UK

On 14 May 2002, the House of Commons voted on proposals put forward by the Modernisation Select Committee for reform of the departmental select committee system. This article examines the origins of those proposals, and the outcome of the vote, focusing on one particular proposal to create a Committee of Nomination to place MPs onto select committees. This raises questions regarding two competing academic approaches to explaining parliamentary reform, the ‘attitudinal’ approach and the ‘contextual’ approach, and concludes that, of the two, the ‘contextual’ approach is better placed to explain the failure to create a Committee of Nomination.     

Correction to: Fighting impunity in hate crime — history,ethics, and the law: An interview with Harsh Mander

Jindal Global Law Review - The original article was corrected.     

Federal–local partnerships on immigration law enforcement: Are the policies effective in reducing violent victimization?

Research Summary

Our understanding of how immigration enforcement impacts crime has been informed exclusively by data from police crime statistics. This study complements existing research by using longitudinal multilevel data from the National Crime Victimization Survey for 2005–2014 to simultaneously assess the impact of the three predominant immigration policies that have been implemented in local communities. The results indicate that the activation of Secure Communities and 287(g) task force agreements significantly increased violent victimization risk among Latinos, whereas they showed no evident impact on victimization risk among non-Latino Whites and Blacks. The activation of 287(g) jail enforcement agreements and anti-detainer policies had no significant impact on violent victimization risk during the period.

Policy Implications

Contrary to their stated purpose of enhancing public safety, our results show that the Secure Communities program and 287(g) task force agreements did not reduce crime, but instead eroded security in U.S. communities by increasing the likelihood that Latinos experienced violent victimization. These results support the Federal government's ending of 287(g) task force agreements and its more recent move to end the Secure Communities program. Additionally, the results of our study add to the evidence challenging claims that anti-detainer policies pose a threat to violence risk.     

Evaluating the impact of Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN) initiative on violence and gun crime in Tampa: does it work and does it last?

Journal of Experimental Criminology - Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN) is an increasingly popular violence and gun crime prevention program which aims to identify prolific violent offenders, and...     

From “Junkies” to “Soccer Moms”: Newspaper Representations of Overdose, 1988–2014

In the United States, opioid-related mortality has tripled since 2000, leading the Centers for Disease Control to declare a national overdose epidemic in 2016. With overdose an increasing area of mainstream political and popular concern, some commentators have suggested that sympathetic attention has followed changes in the profile of opioid users, as rates of heroin initiation have doubled among white Americans and women. Yet no studies have examined how media framings of overdose have shifted alongside the epidemic’s demographic contours. Focusing upon southwestern Pennsylvania, this study uses qualitative analysis of news items surrounding three surges in heroin overdose deaths in 1988, 2006, and 2014. 178 items reporting on such overdose outbreaks were selected for thematic coding, with attention directed toward opioid user representations, “drug problem” characterizations, and suggested solutions. Results reveal a transformation in the depiction of overdose sufferers over time, with stories increasingly centered around “unexpected” opioid users, whose habits are made legible through biomedical discourses of addiction; such portraits are used to argue the impropriety of punitive responses to drug misuse. At the same time, the role of criminal justice institutions in addressing overdose is not dismissed, but relocated in recent coverage, with the intensified prosecution of drug dealers offered by many.     

Mixed marriage, ‘a grave injury to our church’: An account of the 1957 Fethard-on-Sea Boycott

The family was central to the religious formation and indeed the survival of southern Irish Protestantism in the mid-twentieth century. The largest Protestant denomination in the Republic of Ireland, the Church of Ireland (comprising approximately 5% of the national population in 1950) was challenged by demographic trends of late and low rates of marriage, emigration and the ever-prevalent threat of mixed marriage. Against this backdrop the church emphasised the essentiality of the socialisation of children into the church community. It cautioned against the dangers of inter-church marriage where the enforcement by the Catholic church of the 1908 Ne Temere decree obliged the Protestant partner in a mixed marriage to consent in writing to the upbringing of any children of the union as Catholics. The actions of one woman in the small village of Fethard-on-Sea in county Wexford in 1957 in challenging this dictate led to a sectarian and divisive boycott of Protestant business in the locality. Eileen Cloney, a member of the Church of Ireland, chose to leave her home with her two daughters, against the wishes of her husband Seán, rather than allow her eldest daughter attend the local Catholic school in the village. Her ‘abduction’ of her children was condemned by local and national Catholic clergy culminating in the call for a boycott of Protestant businesses and farms by the local Catholic Curate, Fr. Stafford on 12 May 1957. In this article, original oral history research as well as previously unseen documentary sources will be used in an examination of this divisive boycott and its local and national repercussions. The article will explore contemporary discourse on marriage as well as highlighting the significance of the family in church and state discourse.