Imperial Metaphors and Native Savagery: Law’s Imagery,Crime and Empire

For all of law’s emphasis on its originary claims, this article argues that modern law has always been heavily dependent on categories and a set of images and metaphors for constituting identities. The presence of a racialised Other in the written, verbal and visual form all reveal striking parallels in the metaphorical forms used in the categorisation of people in temporality. In essence, law’s commitment to principles of universality and equality, is practically sustained only by the reinvented and rationalized exclusions of racial particularity, and hierarchies of otherness, which are variously exotic, dangerous and irredeemable. What is clear from this binary division is that the processes of criminalizing the unruly heathens, the wayward savages and the lower strata in the early nineteenth century, was part of a process of knowledge production which drew heavily upon key images of morality and of pathology. Such a stratum, as in the parallel process in the colonies amongst the criminal savages, was anxiously understood through a proliferation of stereotypes and labels imbued with this threatening menace. This article further explores how this imagery was policed and disciplined, and also opens up the possibility to assess how these images impart the same mythic forces in the ongoing acts of violence and specters of postcolonial imperialism that persist in its new global forms. This article aims, to reveal that legal forms and identities, far from being stable in their construction, are inherently unstable, and remain forever in an ambivalent relationship to the things being constructed and those engaged in the construction.     

Sexual violence against men in countries affected by armed conflict

Sexual violence against men in armed conflict has been documented for thousands of years under the various guises of war, torture and mutilation yet it is often neglected mainly because of overwhelming stigma and shame surrounding it. Based on academic and grey literature on sexual violence against men in conflict, this article discusses the complex reasons for lack of quality data on this important topic. The motivations of sexual violence against men are also explored through applying causal theories that are largely based on female victims of sexual violence. Finally, interventions for the management of sexual violence against men in conflict are discussed. This study concludes that gendered binaries and strict gender roles are primarily responsible in accentuating sexual violence against men in terrorising and humiliating victims, and must be addressed. It also calls for more research and advocacy of male victims of sexual violence in order to fully understand the dynamics of this challenge as well as to offer effective care for male survivors of such violence.     

Imperial Violence: the ‘Ethnic’ as a Component of the ‘Criminal’ Class in Victorian England

This article seeks to identify how, and in what ways, the debate over ethnic identity acquired saliency during the different phases of black settlement in England, especially against the backcloth of the socio-cultural processes and the economics of colonialism. It outlines how the ‘other’ was constituted in different discourses, policies, and practices, and how these constructions were appropriated by the criminal justice agencies. Critically, ethnic identity as subordinate and ‘inferior’ was produced by many of the same mechanisms as was developed with regard to the indigenous ‘criminal’ class in Victorian England. Societal reaction, through criminal and civil statutes, established the identity of the ethnic minorities of early nineteenth century England, not just as subordinate strata, but also by a more complex process, as a variant of the newly emergent ‘criminal’ class. It is argued that, caught in the hub of empire, the ‘ayahs’, the ‘lascars’ and the domestic servants (See R. Visram, The Ayahs, Lascars and The Princes (London: Pluto).) in England’s ports found themselves reconstructed as part of the ‘criminal’ class and subsequently subjected to disciplinary measures of social control and surveillance. The author argues with regard to the indigenous population, conceptions of the threat of the non-Western crystallised around the same popular images of ‘savagery’ and of moral degeneracy, a process reinforced in imperial fiction. A desire to ‘civilise’ and improve the peculiar habits of the non-Western followed directly from indigenous precedent.     

The Impact of Neighborhood Disadvantage and Exposure to Violence on Self-Report of Antisocial Behavior Among Girls in the Juvenile Justice System

The current study extended previous research with adults and boys to girls in the juvenile justice system (N = 122; M = 16.7; SD = 1.3). Using a longitudinal research design, neighborhood disadvantage and exposure to violence (i.e., physical abuse by parents, physical abuse by peers, and witnessing violence) were assessed during incarceration. These risk factors were used to predict violent and delinquent behavior post-release. Furthermore, race specific pathways were examined to determine if the impact of these risk factors varied among Black (n = 69) and White girls (n = 53). Results indicated that Black girls were more likely than White girls to live in disadvantaged neighborhoods, but both reported similar levels of exposure to violence and self-report of antisocial behavior. Physical abuse by parents, time at risk, and age were related to violent behavior, while witnessing violence and time at risk were related to delinquent behavior. Multiple group analyses indicated the existence of race specific pathways. Specifically, physical abuse by parents was related to violent behavior for White girls while witnessing violence was related to violent and delinquent behaviors for Black girls. Results suggest that contextual processes play an important role in predicting antisocial behavior for Black girls.

Race/Ethnic-Specific Homicide Rates in New York City: Evaluating the Impact of Broken Windows Policing and Crack Cocaine Markets

The current study evaluated a range of social influences including misdemeanor arrests, drug arrests, cocaine consumption, alcohol consumption, firearm availability, and incarceration that may be associated with changes in gun-related homicides by racial/ethnic group in New York City (NYC) from 1990 to 1999. Using police precincts as the unit of analysis, we used cross-sectional, time series data to examine changes in Black, White, and Hispanic homicides, separately. Bayesian hierarchical models with a spatial error term indicated that an increase in cocaine consumption was associated with an increase in Black homicides. An increase in firearm availability was associated with an increase in Hispanic homicides. Last, there were no significant predictors for White homicides. Support was found for the crack cocaine hypotheses but not for the broken windows hypothesis. Examining racially/ethnically disaggregated data can shed light on group-sensitive mechanisms that may explain changes in homicide over time.