‘Narcoballads’: The Psychology and Recruitment Process of the ‘Narco’

There have been several studies conducted about racist groups, gangs, cults, terrorist and other criminal organisations, but very little has been written about the psychology and recruitment process of the ‘narcotrafficker’. This is because like most criminal organisations, they tend to be secretive and difficult to penetrate by law enforcement, academics and others who wish to study them. Using an audio‐recorded content analysis of ‘narcocorridos’ — ballads glorifying the activities of the ‘narcos’ and describing their successes' — as well as Social Identity and Group theories, the author describes some of the techniques used to recruit individuals into drug cartels; the labels, stereotypes and images of the in-group versus the out-group and the similarities in the socialisation and recruitment process of other criminal organisations. This study shows the recruitment of individuals into drug cartels follow similar patterns to other criminal organisations including the need for power, belonging, respect, security and pride.     

The NHS Information Revolution: ‘Choice of Control’ to ‘Choice’ and ‘Control’

This paper provides a novel and critical analysis of the necessary and important balance between ‘individual privacy’ and ‘collective transparency’. We suggest that the onset of the Information Revolution has created a dilemma for the National Health Service (NHS) in terms of how it addresses its obligation to use information to improve best practice in healthcare for society (‘collective transparency’) whilst also keeping sensitive personal information confidential (‘individual privacy’). There is clearly a need to consider both whether the NHS is balancing this critically important informational relationship and whether its approach is fit for purpose. We argue that the NHS's ‘proxy-individual’ information guardian role could inadvertently mask individuals' intended roles, effectively circumventing autonomy-based laws by limiting the power of individuals to be autonomous. In this article we have identified three issues – first the prevailing ‘Mindset’ (the ‘M’) of ‘privacy’, which is viewed as individualistic, resulting in an overpowering concept of confidentiality; second, the quality and control of Information (the first ‘I’); and third, the concept of innovation (the second ‘i’), which is being used as a ‘solution’ rather than a vehicle for transparency. Indeed, transparency is our target of ‘best practice,’ and we suggest that individual privacy and collective transparency are best embedded within a complementary privacy framework that offers a better fit than the current split of control between the roles of the NHS and the roles of the individual. It is suggested that when facilitated by transparency, ‘control’ and ‘privacy’ form a continuum, aligning through the desire for choice. Therefore, the choice of control could facilitate control and choice. Together, they could replace the concept of privacy by empowering ‘informed patients’ to support the NHS's ‘No decision about me, without me’ pledge.     

‘Catching’ and ‘Targeting’: Risk‐Based Policing,Local Culture and Gendered Practices

The aim of this article is to explore cultural and practical aspects of the growing use of information and communication technology (ICT) in policing. By using empirical research on policing in Norway, the focus will be on how ICT is used as a crime prevention instrument in everyday police work and culture. The transition, which the new technologies mediate, will be explored by focusing on concepts of risk and materialization of risk‐based policing at the practice level in two cases: 1) a special unit fighting serious and organized crime utilizing proactive policing methods, police informers, crime profiling and databases, and 2) a police station focusing on low‐level crime by using a problem‐oriented policing model, transmitting responsibility for personal security onto identified ‘problem‐owners’.1 ‘Problem‐owner’ is a notion used by the police in the two cases. It is referring to the POP‐model, and whom they identify as important to participate in the risk‐management. According to Wright (: 121): “Partnership refers to a purposeful relationship between the police and the public or between the police and other agencies in the field.” Based on an examination of risk phenomena as contextual, embedded in practice and cultural settings, various stories about risk management will be told. The stories reflect different control strategies in the crime control discourses, and point to how risk‐based technologies are shaped and adapted in occupational culture and practice. The article illuminates the importance of studying the empirical complexity ICT is used in, and looks towards, to paraphrase O'Malley and Palmer (), ‘firewalls of resistance’ in the local occupational culture, that are preventing full integration of risk tools.     

‘Inequality of Goods and Lands’ in Mortgaged Democracies: Paradigms and Effects of Global Comparative Law

Liverpool Law Review - The article reappraises the law’s ‘egalitarian commitment’ in an era of global inequality. It upholds that such an egalitarian predicament scarcely squares...     

The ‘Hybrid Order’: origins and usage

The hospital direction (Hybrid Order) was inserted into the Mental Health Act (MHA) in 1997 (Crime (Sentences) Act, 1997). It enables higher courts to direct hospital admission for offenders, whilst still imposing a prison sentence. The origins of the ‘Hybrid Order’ and its patterns of usage are examined. Comparisons are made with its Scottish equivalent, Section 59A of the Criminal Procedure (Scotland) Act 1995. Both the ‘Hybrid Order’ and Section 59A have been used infrequently. This may reflect the fact that they were strongly resisted on ethical grounds at their point of inception and that they force the psychiatrist into the position of ‘punisher’, rather than ‘treater’. Since the 2007 Amendment of the MHA in England and Wales which expanded the remit of the ‘Hybrid Order’ to include all legal categories of mental disorder, not solely psychopathy, its use has unsurprisingly increased – this article delineates the considerations that need to be given in its recommendation.     

The ‘good’, the ‘bad’ and the ‘Charlie’: the business of cocaine smuggling in Greece

This article examines the social organisation of cocaine smuggling in Greece. Emphasis is placed on the involvement of professionals from the shipping industry and actors from the ‘upper society echelons’ who play a pivotal role in the transportation and importation of cocaine to Western Europe and Greece. After considering empirical evidence from a variety of sources, our findings indicate that the cocaine market in Greece is ‘organised’ by a system of collaborative relationships between state, business and civil society actors. It is suggested that to better understand the nature of this illegal market, further research is required to take a closer look into the economic, socio-cultural and political incentives of these actors.     

The ‘unwanteds’ and ‘non-compliants’: ‘unsupported mothers’ as ‘failures’ and agents in Australia’s migrant Holding Centres*

Abstract

Ideas of assimilated citizenship are inherently gendered and during Australia’s post-World War Two migration boom they were deeply and explicitly invested in marriage, children and domesticity. In this period of social conservatism and economic boom, assimilation rhetoric functioned as a reassuring mirror for the host population, promoting the dream of prosperous family life as the ultimate aspiration for refugees and migrants. The role of immigration Holding Centres within this vision was to provide a context in which migrants and refugees could take their first steps towards accomplishing this dream. These Centres of necessary temporary residence were designed as sites of transition towards autonomous, assimilated family life. However, those families headed by single mothers, often referred to in government records as ‘unsupported mothers’, had limited opportunities to live up to such images of assimilation, or even to comply with the economic imperatives of the migration scheme that had brought them to Australia. Based mainly on Department of Immigration records, this article demonstrates that despite recognising the long-term economic and social prospects their children represented, government agencies viewed many unsupported mothers as system failures. They attempted to remedy the situation by turning these women into live-in domestic workers, at times placing pressure on them to institutionalise their children in order to facilitate this, thereby prioritising their compliance with economic imperatives over support for their parenting. Within the limited scope of their agency, unsupported mothers responded by attempting to negotiate the terms of their compliance or simply refusing to comply. For the latter group, Holding Centres became a more permanent home. This permanence is read here as a gendered form of resistance to a system that struggled to foster their economic self-reliance without compromising their capacity to be mothers.     

‘Connecting Europe’: The Use of ‘New’ Information and Communication Technologies within European Parliament Standing Committees

The EP as the only directly elected EU institution, portrays itself as the forum that is open not only to input by lobby groups but to that of ‘average’ citizens. This paper probes the contribution of the Internet in this quest to connect Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) with citizens and here specifically we examine the role of the EP's Standing Committees. The analysis is rooted within the larger debate of the possible contribution of the Internet to encouraging the development of a European public space. The discussion focuses on the use of new technologies, including interactive and non-interactive communication methods such as email and discussion fora. It attempts to generate a series of topics for further investigation by outlining some initial results from interviews, carried out at the European level.     

‘Women’ Detectives and Perceptions of ‘Oppressive’ Experiences: Exploring Experiential Essentialism and Phenomenology

The purpose of this paper is toexplore whether female Detectives perceptionsof their own work experiences include oppressive experiences because of their sex. It attempts to evaluate these perceptions ofoppressive work experiences or lack thereofvia a feminist viewpoint that embraces variousaspects of phenomenology with regards towomens experiences. More importantly, itrecognizes that experiential essentialistarguments cannot be ignored. The word womanis in quotes because it has been used,historically and presently, as a category toposition females according to mainstreamsocietys standards. The word oppressive isin quotes because even though the researcherdescribed oppressive instances in specificways, there were times, where some subjects didnot identify those experiences asoppressive. The majority of 60 female CanadianDetectives identified oppressive experiences,and an important task of this paper is toexamine experiences that fit the researchersdefinition but were not considered oppressiveby the subjects.     

‘Fear’ and ‘Hope’ in Graphic Fiction: The Schismatic Role of Law in an Australian Dystopian Comic

The rise in popularity in recent times of dystopian fiction (particularly among young adults) is reflective of contemporary anxieties about law: the inhumanity of judicial-coercive machinery; the influence of corporate power; the lack of democratic imagination despite the desperate need for political reform; and the threat of order imposed through violence and victimisation. These dystopian texts often tell fear-inducing stories of law’s failure to protect; or of law’s unsuccessful struggle against unbridled power; or even sometimes of law’s ‘bastardised’ reconstruction. Indeed comics, with their visual and narrative intricacies, thrive on dystopia as a key vehicle for contributing to collective notions of fear and trembling about the future. Yet, at the same time, these texts also contain within them the blueprints for hope—the idea that with transformation, heroic intervention, and/or faith in ‘justice’, the law will ultimately prevail. Law’s ability to be transformed is thus simultaneously portrayed as society’s downfall (when manipulated and disrupted), AND as the key to enlivening humanity (when redeemed and restored). This article attempts to understand this schismatic role of law as presented in the recent dystopian comic book series From Above by Australian creator Craig Bruyn. In this series set in futuristic Melbourne, where law has given way to an unaccountable corporate rule, the social divide is made manifest by the absence of ‘order’, ‘law’ and ‘justice’ in certain segments of society, and yet hope in law’s return is ever-present. The paper will interrogate expectations of law and justice that is mediated through the complex interaction of fear and hope, and contextualise this within current contemporary anxieties.     

The functional nature of police reform: The ‘myth’ of controlling the police

For at least fifty years, major movements attempted to reform police and their institutions through professionalization, policy making, and administrative decentralization. One major goal of these efforts was to subordinate street officer discretion to bureaucratic due process. Some recent evidence suggests that such reforms produced primarily the appearance of change without fundamentally altering the status quo. An alternative hypothesis is proposed: Reformers ignored the functional nature of the police role as community-based, extra-constitutional in peacekeeping situations, and reflective of the values related to the maintenance of order.

It may be that liberal society solves the anomaly of the police function by fostering the myth that police are subordinate to due process constraints, while leaving them relatively free in a practical sense to respond to the need for order maintenance and peacekeeping. Effective handling of disorder may require police autonomy, while attempting to subordinate them to bureaucratic control may impair this ability. Police accountability in liberal society, as well as the many reforms designed to achieve it, remains problematic, especially in light of a recent important study suggesting the possibility that police effectiveness against community disorder may be a casualty of many of these reforms.     

The ‘Heathrow’ Case: Polycentricity,Legislation, and the Standard of Review

The recent Court of Appeal decision in the ‘Heathrow’ case, Plan B Earth v Secretary of State for Transport is an illustration of the challenges of reviewing polycentric and expert decision-making. The issues raised in the case concerning the Planning Act 2008 are an illustration of a court's expository role in such contexts. The Court tackled directly a series of interpretive questions concerning the Planning Act 2008's obligations regarding the consideration of climate change. The Habitats and Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) Directive issues raised in the appeal, in contrast, were presented with the question of the intensity of review foregrounded in legal argument. The Court therefore sought to articulate the ‘standard of review’ and to apply it to the government's decisions. This way of framing the issue unfortunately sidelined the courts’ expository role in relation to intepreting the Habitats and SEA Directives, leaving key provisions under-analysed.     

The Role of Denial in the ‘Theft of Nature’: Comparing Biopiracy and Climate Change

Since its inception, green criminology has highlighted, examined and analysed environmental degradation and destruction. The ‘theft of nature’ is both an example and a driver of illegal and ‘lawful but awful’ acts and omissions that degrade the environment. Even though this theft is widespread and sometimes well known, it persists because powerful actors put forward an influential narrative of denial that obstructs interventions. This paper explores the role of denial in two thefts of nature—biopiracy and climate change—and compares and contrasts the manifestations of denial that contribute to their continuation. We consider the ‘appeal to higher loyalties’ (economic interests over environmental concerns), and discuss the implications if such denial goes unchallenged and remains the central narrative.     

‘Wayward Girls and Wicked Women’: Two Centuries of ‘Semi-Penal’ Control

This paper explores the way in which unruly or `deviant' women have historically been subjected to various strategies and mechanisms of control, designed to regulate and reform them back to the acceptable and appropriate standards of femininity from which they were perceived to have strayed. In particular the way in which `semi-penal' institutions were utilised for this purpose is examined. It is argued that `semi-penal' institutions such as refuges, reformatories and homes, occupied a unique position within the social control continuum, somewhere between the formal regulation of the prison and the informal control of the domestic or communal sphere. What made them particularly unique was the way in which they managed to combine both formal and informal methods of control in order to produce feminising regimes, aimed at reforming recalcitrant women into respectable, gendered subjects. In addition, these institutions had the effect of `widening the net' of control for women, establishing an all-encompassing system of surveillance which was at once punitive and reformative. To facilitate this analysis, five groups of women have been identified; prostitutes, criminals, the `wayward', inebriates and the `feeble-minded'. The specific methods utilised to control and reform each of these groups will be discussed along with the themes of continuity which serve to synthesize the history of the treatment of such women. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Insularity and Law: Diversity and Changeability of Islands’ Statuses—The Example of French Outermost Regions in French and EU Law Systems

This article deals with the interactions between national and European legal corpuses about insular territories. French outermost regions (ORs) were first called “départements d’outre-mer” (overseas departments) at the dawn of the French Fourth Republic; they are distinct from other overseas entities. This denomination is used again in the initial EEC treaty in which French overseas departments and overseas countries and territories (OCTs) are distinct. Together with Spanish and Portuguese outermost regions, French overseas departments manage to change EU law in favour of ORs even if the legal differentiation has limits. Moreover, some recent amendments to the French Constitution allow for status variations and even mutations, which can also be found nowadays in EU law.

     

Legal Imaginaries and the Anthropocene: ‘Of’ and ‘For’

Law and Critique - This reflection contrasts the dominant imaginary underlying ‘law of the Anthropocene’ with an imaginary reaching towards ‘law/s for the Anthropocene’. It...     

The ‘Strasbourg Effect’ on data protection in light of the ‘Brussels Effect’: Logic,mechanics and prospects

This article considers various factors that will shape the potential effect of the Council of Europe's modernised Convention on data protection (Convention 108+) on non-European states’ regulatory policy. It does so by elucidating the logic and mechanics of this effect in light of the ‘Brussels Effect’ that is commonly attributed, in part, to EU data protection law. The central arguments advanced in the article are that the impact of Convention 108+ beyond Europe will rest primarily on the Council of Europe's ideational power tempered by processes of acculturation, and secondarily on the degree to which the EU is willing to use the ‘Brussels Effect’ as a vehicle for promoting non-European states’ accession to the Convention.