Wellbeing,occupational justice and police practice: an ‘affirming environment’?

This paper examines wellbeing and occupational justice within the police profession. The research presented is based on a preliminary study utilising a qualitative methodology in which 14 in-depth interviews were conducted with rank and file police officers in one state of Australia. The data-set reveals that there are many positive aspects to being a police officer, contrary to the ‘dysfunction’ research that exists concerning the police in which corruption and poor performance prevails. The data analysis supports the notion that the practice of the police can be understood through a framework of wellbeing, occupational justice, and positive psychology. Whilst the research yields strong positive aspects in the work police officers engage in, as well as in their working environment, there are challenges within the profession, namely dealing with traumatic events that can hinder wellbeing and occupational justice. This study offers evidence to reflect on current policies and practices in terms of police recruitment, education and training. The study also offers evidence for improving staff retention by building on the principles of wellbeing and occupational justice within police practice.     

Disproportionate minority contact in juvenile justice: today’s,and yesterdays,problems

Disproportionate minority contact (DMC) has been a perplexing problem for the juvenile justice system, and recognized as a national priority since the 1980s. The over-representation of minority youthful offenders throughout juvenile court processing, from arrests to dispositions, has not changed even though significant federal and state efforts have been employed. This paper reviews these racial and ethnic disparity problems, and investigates the history of the juvenile justice system and courts, from the eighteenth century to today’s reformation movement, identifying that DMC is not a recent phenomenon. The history of slavery and the Jim Crow Era greatly impacted the establishment of the juvenile courts and child-centered justice efforts, finding disparities at all historical markers where records are available. When reviewing DMC as we know it today through this context, an argument can be made that limited progress has been made over the past 200 years.     

CLR, ‘rebellious lawyering’, and justice education: A few lessons from Bangladesh

Jindal Global Law Review - Since the mid-1980s, there has been a noticeable movement in legal education, especially in the common law countries, to transform it into justice education. While...     

Victor’s justice or restorative justice: exploring the value of participation for Bangladesh’s future reconciliation process

Participation is a widely accepted process value in restorative justice, but its nature varies from context to context. This study explores the nature of participation in the context of Bangladesh’s future reconciliation process. Case study and qualitative interviews are employed to understand the phenomenon; the deductive and inductive data are analyzed with NVivo 10 software. On the basis of findings from three in-depth qualitative interviews, and examples from Rwanda’s gacaca courts and the Extraordinary Chamber in the Courts of Cambodia, this study argues that engaging and inclusive participation from all stakeholders is essential for a future reconciliation process in Bangladesh. It contends that the involvement of the United Nations would ensure rule of law, due process, and safety and security of the victims and perpetrators. Four inductive themes of participation – engagement, inclusiveness, stakeholders, and safety and security – are particularly highlighted.     

‘She’s White and She’s Hot,So She Can’t Be Guilty’: Female Criminality,Penal Spectatorship,and White Protectionism

Despite mainstream criminology’s burgeoning interest in issues of race, class, and gender, very little scholarship has examined whiteness and its attendant privileges in understanding public discourse on criminal offenders. This paper examines the role of penal spectatorship as a discursive mechanism by which white, female offenders are protected in public spaces by virtue of their racial and gender identity. Using a content analysis of comments posted on the mug shot images of white women on a popular ‘mug shot website,’ we find that these women are viewed as victims of circumstance deserving of empathy and redemption rather than as criminals. We offer ‘white protectionism’ as a means by which whites extend privilege and protection to other whites who transverse the boundaries of whiteness through criminality to guard against ‘deviant’ or ‘criminal’ designations. These findings add to our understandings of penal spectatorship as yet another tool of white supremacy operating in the Post-Civil Rights era of mass incarceration.     

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.     

‘It’s a dead place’: A qualitative exploration of violence survivors’ perceptions of justice architecture

Each year, thousands of victims of violence enter the Canadian criminal justice system and, by extension, justice buildings, such as police stations and courthouses. The architecture and design of these buildings communicate symbolic messages about justice and may influence the emotions, behaviors, and well-being of survivors. This qualitative study explored survivors’ emotional experiences with justice architecture. Findings reveal that survivors experience justice architecture as cold and hard; a facilitator of feelings of insignificance; lacking in privacy and; representative of their raw emotional state. The author discusses implications of these findings for victim engagement in the context of justice spaces.     

Governing aboriginal justice in Canada: Constructing responsible individuals and communities through ‘tradition’

In recent years, Aboriginal justice projects have gained in popularity in such places as Australia, New Zealand, the United States, and Canada. However, these programs have remained relatively insulated from external critique, particularly as it relates to the problem of grafting “traditional” principles onto non-traditional forms of social organization. The purpose of this paper is to discuss this shortcoming in the context of examining the relationship between newly emerging neo-liberal discourses about personal responsibility and the function of “community” as a domain of freedom, in Aboriginal restorative justice programs in Canada. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Market-based mechanism and ‘climate justice’: reframing the debate for a way forward

International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics - The Paris Agreement on climate change recognizes, reluctantly albeit, the importance of ‘climate justice’ in its...     

New Labour’s communitarianism,supporting families and the ‘rationality mistake’: Part II

In Part I of this study, we argued that New Labour is keen to use legislation to promote what it sees as desirable family forms and to discourage other, less-favoured family practices. The codification of this approach in the 1998 Green Paper Supporting Families - and, in particular, the 'New Deal for Lone Parents' - was compared with recent empirical research on how people make decisions about their moral economies. We concluded that the government's approach is subject to a 'rationality mistake' - people do not make decisions in the way the government assumes and hence legislation can be inefficient or even oppressive. Here, we examine this contention further, this time focusing on chapter 4 of the Green Paper, indicatively entitled 'Strengthening marriage'. Using recent empirical research on mothers' views on marriage and cohabitation, we find further evidence of the 'rationality mistake', where the government has misunderstood the ways in which people make decisions about partnering and hence misplaces the role of family law. We conclude that supportive and flexible legislative frameworks are needed that recognize the varying ways in which people take moral economic decisions.     

Abstraction Beyond a ‘Law of Thought’: On Space,Appropriation and Concrete Abstraction

Given that one of the defining elements of capitalist society is the ubiquity of forms of abstraction through which social relations are mediated, it is not surprising that a generalised ‘reproach of abstraction’ has taken on a critical orthodoxy within social theory and the humanities. Many of these attacks against a pervasive culture of abstraction have an obvious resonance with longstanding critiques of the abstractions inherent in law. This article explores the critique of the power of abstraction that is a central theme in Henri Lefebvre’s depiction of the ‘abstract space’ of contemporary capitalism. In doing so, it will be emphasised that Lefebvre’s work is not primarily concerned with the rejection of abstraction per se, but with understanding the relationships between dominant forms of abstraction and concrete social practices. Of particular interest here is Lefebvre’s reformulation of the concept of concrete abstraction which extends his work beyond a polemical dismissal of the violence of abstraction into broader theoretical debates about the role of the abstract in the reproduction of social relations. Building on this aspect of Lefebvre’s work, I will argue that the concept of concrete abstraction can provide a means of understanding the relationships between the concrete and the abstract in existing juridico-political relations.     

Beyond retribution,restoration and procedural justice: the Big Two of communion and agency in victims’ perspectives on justice

Victims’ perspectives on justice in the aftermath of crime are a key victimological topic. The main justice concepts that have received scholarly victimological attention are retributive justice, value restoration and procedural justice. In this paper, we argue that the so-called Big Two framework – agency and communion – can further help us understand victims’ experiences with justice. Agency refers to a person striving for individuality, while communion refers to the participation of the individual in and connection with a group. According to the framework outlined in this paper, we argue that victimization by crime involves an impaired sense of agency and communion, and justice can be viewed as an attempt to repair both these dimensions. Retributive justice is a prominent means to repair agency, but other options to do so are also open to the victim. A similar observation can be made about value restoration with respect to communion. Acknowledging this can be of particular importance in cases where no offender is apprehended. As to procedural justice, the framework emphasizes the need to distinguish process participation as a means to re-establish agency from participation to re-establish communion with representatives of society.     

Species justice for police eagles: analyzing the Dutch ‘flying squad’ and animal-human relations

Dutch national police recently became the world’s first force to train eagles to combat the growing rise of drones within the Netherlands. Partnering with an eagle-training security firm, Guard From Above, both organizations believe using eagles to intercept and retrieve drones is the most effective countermeasure to handle rogue drones in the skies. This paper questions whether such a police operation to increase air security respects the rights of the eagles and ensures the animals’ protection from unreasonable injury, harm and suffering. Such an examination lies at the intersection of green criminological perspectives and critical security studies’ scholarship, an intersection of which I consider more thoroughly. By implementing a qualitative media analysis, this paper examines twenty media reports detailing the facts of the Dutch ‘Flying Squad.’ I contend that police agencies in the West must seriously consider such eagle initiatives as intrusive, harmful practices. The findings suggest that conceptualizing the eagles as exceptional ‘biotechnological’ state agents may increase sky security in Western countries, but such anthropocentric logics of security minimize the concerns for ‘species justice’ and the safeguards for eagles.     

Mapping current issues in administrative justice: austerity and the ‘more bureaucratic rationality’ approach

This article critically reviews recent developments in the administrative justice system; in particular, it considers three key themes: improving initial decisions; administrative review; and the future of tribunals. In each of these areas, some aspects of administrative justice work well, but austerity has presented acute challenges in ensuring the fair and just treatment of people through restrictions upon legal aid; the withdrawal of some appeal rights; and the expansion of administrative review. Consequently, the system is moving away from a ‘legal’ model of administrative justice to the ‘bureaucratic rationality’ model, which focuses upon accurate and efficient implementation. However, the reality does not correspond with the goals of the model. Rather than accurate and efficient implementation of policy, what we find is poor decision-making made by junior officials with insufficient quality controls. Digitising tribunals may have potential benefits in terms of increased accessibility. Nonetheless, the prospects for administrative justice are weak.     

‘The conflict is ours’: community involvement in restorative justice

Restorative justice (RJ) has attracted extended research relating to its potential to reduce crime, achieve fairness, and promote victims’ well-being, but there is only limited discussion about the involvement of the community in RJ processes. This study employs grounded theory approach to analyze 26 documented files handled by a RJ program in Jerusalem, Israel. It proposes a multilayered construction of community involvement in RJ referring to four modes of community involvement: facilitators, community representatives, social networks, and the direct stakeholders. The analysis uncovers the unique characteristics of each entity, their potential contribution in promoting community interests, and the challenges in fulfilling their potential contribution. The Article further offers a responsive definition for community representation. Practical implications for RJ programs are discussed.     

‘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.     

‘Multicolored’ green criminology and climate change’s achromatopsia

While green criminology may be an effective name or label for the sub-field or perspective within criminology that considers a wide range of environmental issues, it is, in reality, a ‘multicolored green’ – a criminology that engages a spectrum of issues, that reflects the interests of some racial groups more than others, that reveals and analyzes environmental harms which disproportionately impact some racial groups more than others, and that can be approached from a number of vantage points or that can be viewed with variously tinted lenses. This article begins with an overview of climate change, including a discussion of its anticipated impacts and indicators of its already-being-felt effects. It then offers some general comments on the disproportionate impact of environmental threats and harms before turning to a discussion of the present and anticipated distributional impacts of climate change. Here, this article argues that climate change is, in effect, achromatopsic – it is color-blind, in that it affects us all regardless of skin color – but that those impacts will be distributed unevenly/unequally and that various groups are and will continue to be in different positions to adapt to climate change. This article concludes by suggesting that while the environmental harms caused by climate change are real – and the risks and threats they pose tangible and serious – climate change presents an exciting challenge for our creative potential as humans. In the process of reducing our consumption of fossil fuels and stabilizing (or, better yet, reducing) our greenhouse gas emissions, we might better assist those geopolitical regions most at risk (i.e. poor, developing countries) to become more resilient – an approach that is necessary for both the physical health of the planet and the prospects for social justice.