Policing Australia’s ‘heroin drought’: using an agent-based model to simulate alternative outcomes

Our paper examines how street-level drug markets adapt to a macro-level disruption to the supply of heroin, under three experimental conditions of street-level drug law enforcement: random patrol, hot-spot policing and problem-orientated policing. We utilize an agent-based model to explore the relative impact of abstractions of these three law enforcement strategies after simulating an ‘external shock’ to the supply of heroin to the street-level drug market. We use 3 years of data, which include the period of the ‘heroin drought’ in Melbourne (Australia) that commenced in late 2000 and early 2001, to measure changes in a selected range of crime and harm indicators under the three policing conditions. Our results show that macro-level disruptions to drug supply have a limited impact on street-level market dynamics when there is a ready replacement drug. By contrast, street-level police interventions are shown to vary in their capacity to alter drug market dynamics. Importantly, our laboratory abstraction of problem-orientated policing is shown to be the optimal strategy to disrupt street-level injecting-drug markets, reduce crimes and minimize harm, regardless of the type of drug being supplied to the market.

Talking Heads and Bleeding Hearts: Newsmaking, Emotion and Public Criminology in the Wake of a Sexual Assault

Using our own experiences in attempting to ‘do’ public criminology in the wake of a violent sexual assault on our campus, we offer a critique of the emerging public criminology framework. Focusing specifically on tensions between fact and emotion and representations of expertise in the news media, we argue for a greater respect for emotional responses to crime in moving the public criminology agenda forward. We suggest that if public criminology sets as its goal educating the public about crime with an eye towards injecting a counter/critical discourse into ‘get tough’ crime control policies, then public criminologists need to recognize and take seriously the public’s emotions rather than negate them. Drawing on the work of Ahmed (The cultural politics of emotion. Routledge, London, 2004), we suggest that the role of the expert is not to simply inform citizens of the ‘facts’ about crime, but to establish—through emotions—the relationship between themselves and the imagined criminal Other (Young in Imagining crime: Textual outlaws and criminal conversations. Sage Publications, London, 1996). Thus, alongside trying to convince the public to be more ‘rational’ when it comes to crime, critical criminologists must start to accept people’s fear and anger as legitimate reactions and try to redirect these emotions toward more productive ends.     

Use the Purpose by Which All May Benefit: The Semiotics of ‘Public Use’

This paper applies semiotic analysis to issues arising from the recent Supreme Court decision of Kelo v. City of New London [545 U.S.469] (2005). The author uses the tools of semiotics to explore the evolution of language and speech and their relationship to the terms, “private property” and “public use” as used by the Supreme Court and the general public in the years leading up to the Kelo decision. This paper will first provide an overview of the field of semiotics, describing the prevailing thought and the methods utilized by semioticians to find meaning. Second, the tools of semiotics will be applied to Supreme Court cases, beginning with Bauman v. Ross [167 U.S. 548] (1897) and continuing to Kelo v. City of New London. Utilizing these tools, the author will show how, within the span of approximately 100 years, the speech of the court has affected the language of legal discourse. The signs to which both Bauman and Kelo seek to attach meaning are found in the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution, which provides, in relevant part, “…nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”(emphasis added) (U.S. Const. Amendment 5). This dialectic activity resulted in the development of two different languages. One was used by the layperson, whereas the other was found in relevant legal/political institutions such as the US Supreme Court. This paper will focus on the fundamental change in the meaning of the sign/expression “public use.”     

Hate Crime and the Privatization of Political Responsibility: Protecting Queer Citizens in the United States?

My purpose in this article is to address issues that arise with the emergence of “hate crime” law as a response to violence against historically subordinated groups, with particular reference to gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered (henceforth “GLBT”), and otherwise queer citizens. The specific jurisdictional context of my reflection is the USA but the issues I raise have significance beyond that context. Increasingly in recent years hate crime legislation has been adopted or proposed in the US as well as other jurisdictions as a response to bigotry and violence directed against minority groups in multi-cultural societies. In 2006 in the UK, proposals to outlaw “incitement to religious hatred” were hotly debated. In 2008 demands are being made to extend the ‘incitement laws’ to include incitement to homophobic hatred. In 2007 in the US the Senate and House of Representatives in Washington DC passed an Act, which some described as the Matthew Shepard Act, to promote and enhance the use of the criminal law against perpetrators of crimes motivated by hatred based on perceived sexual orientation and gender identity. Ultimately the Act failed to become law. The debates in the UK and US provide the backdrop against which I want to examine the arguments for and against hate crime legislation, both generally and with specific application to queer citizens. This require us to think again about the relation of queer citizens to the state, the reach of political equality and human rights, and the aims and limits of the criminal law and system of “criminal justice”.

‘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.     

Strain, coping mechanisms, and slavery: a general strain theory application

General strain theory (GST) is a framework for understanding how strain, or psychological adversity, affects individuals, and how these individuals cope with strain. Researchers have generally used the theory to study contemporary crime and deviance. However, GST offers a more general perspective for the study of strain that apply to other contexts. This paper examines applicability of GST to African-American experiences during slavery in order to determine the relevance of the theory to an historical context and to shed light onto that context. Relying on primary and secondary sources from the historical record, I argue that slaves in America experienced the types of strain outlined in GST, showing how these strains affected individuals. Moreover, during the ante-bellum period, African Americans appear to have utilized the same coping strategies and resources found in GST, which helps to illustrate how and why such coping strategies were used. As a result, GST is able to offer insights into a historical context – an application of the theory neither researchers in the criminological, nor the historical literature have explored. Implications for the application of GST in other situations of confinement (e.g., the prison) are discussed.

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From offender to situation: the 'cold' approach to sexual violence prevention?

Many commentators have pointed to the monstrous nature of sexual violence, with its related sense of pollution and disgust. In response, post-release regulation has a ‘hot’ quality: in the USA, sexually violent predator statutes, residency requirements, GPS satellite monitoring, and variations on the theme of community notification all speak of the expressiveness of the response. ‘Hot’ signifies and has embedded within it an ‘individualist’ rather than ‘structural’ account of action, emphasises a dramaturgical reading of the social world, and privileges the political rather than the problem-solving sphere. What has been far less explored, until recently, is research and prevention policy related specifically to the sexual violence itself, or the situation in which the offense occurs. By contrast to the ‘hot’ response, elision from offender to situation appears to betoken a ‘cold’ quality. This paper analyses the conceptual and empirical underpinnings of such a ‘cold’ situational approach, evaluates existing studies across settings, and assesses the implications of this problem-solving process for prevention policy and practice. It concludes by embedding the analysis within a broader precautionary politics of ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ control.     

Fat Cats,Production Networks,and the Right to Fair Pay

Should there be a legal right to fair pay so that anyone might challenge the relative fairness of their pay? International human rights law does not clearly support such a right, partly due to the uncertain meaning of fairness in pay. The article challenges this uncertainty, explaining the marginal relevance of theories of distributive justice. Standards of fairness should be discovered instead in principles of interpersonal justice, particularly the bilateral principle of good faith, and in associational principles of desert by reference to contribution and recognition of persons. These contain an egalitarian impulse providing moral reasons for rejecting market rates of pay and, it is argued, should apply beyond single corporate entities, to corporate groups and networks of companies sharing an integrated production scheme. Finally, appropriate regulations enacting a legal right to fair pay are explored with a view to achieving reflexive yet effective regulation using works councils to fix outer limits to wage dispersal ratios.     

Caremark Compliance for the Next Twenty‐Five Years

One of the most influential cases in corporate governance is In re Caremark International Inc. Derivative Litigation (Caremark). In 1996, Caremark imposed a novel duty on boards of directors to make a good faith attempt to implement and exercise oversight over obligations leading to liability. Breach of this minimal duty has been difficult for plaintiffs to plead and prove, and the case law is littered with dismissed Caremark lawsuits. As Caremark's reign reaches a quarter‐century, however, its duties are primed to evolve. Two cases, Marchand v. Barnhill and In re Clovis Oncology, Inc. Derivative Litigation, took the rare step of allowing Caremark claims to survive motions to dismiss. These cases signal a new understanding of Caremark obligating boards not merely to attempt oversight, but to ensure proactively that such oversight is effective. This subtle but significant change in board duties is one to which the academic literature should respond. This article first reviews the Marchand and Clovis cases and argues that these cases hold significance for the future of Caremark claims. Second, this article studies client advisories from law firms and other sources that evaluate the Clovis and Marchand cases. It finds that while these advisories offer useful tactical responses, they lack strategic advice that would benefit boards over the long term. Filling the gap, this article presents long‐term strategic advice for boards not only to meet Caremark duties but also to thrive as exemplars of good governance and ethical leadership for the next twenty‐five years.     

“This case is about you and your future”: Towards Judgments for Children

A handful of ‘child-friendly’ judgments have emerged in the UK in recent years, attempting to adopt a child-centred approach to the decision-making stage of the legal process. Most notable is Sir Peter Jackson's judgment in Re A: Letter to a Young Person which, in taking the form of a letter to the child, has been applauded as a model of how to achieve ‘child friendly justice’. This article examines how and why the form and presentation of judicial decisions is an important aspect of children's access to justice, considering not just the potential but the duty of judges to enhance children's status and capacities as legal citizens through judgment writing. We identify four potential functions of judgments written for children (communicative, developmental, instructive and legally transformative), and call for a radical reappraisal of the way in which judgments are constructed and conveyed with a view to promoting children's access to justice.     

Environmental policy implications of investor-state arbitration under NAFTA Chapter 11

Chapter 11 of the North American Free Trade Agreement requires governments to treat foreign investors the same as domestic investors, to afford them international standards of due process of law, and to compensate investors for any actions that expropriate their investments or are “tantamount” to expropriation. It allows foreign investors to submit compensation claims to international arbitration. To the alarm of the environmental community, four of the early Chapter 11 claims involved challenges to government measures that were, or appeared to be, environmental protection measures. The first three of the four claimants ultimately received compensation; the fourth claim was denied as being outside the scope of Chapter 11. This paper takes an in-depth look at the circumstances of these four claims to determine whether the claimants had thwarted or avoided bona fide environmental protection measures and to try to assess whether these claims have “chilled” government imposition of new environmental measures. The facts of the cases and developments subsequently indicate that the government actions in the first three cases were not truly environmental protection measures, but were motivated by local political and economic considerations. The fourth claim, which involved a bona fide environmental protection, was rightly rejected. Meanwhile the number of “environmental” claims under Chapter 11 has dwindled. The paper concludes that environmentalists have little ground for alarm, and much reason to be encouraged, about how Chapter 11 has influenced environmental protection.

Developmental Pathways into Social and Sexual Deviance

Path analysis was used to assess the contribution of four exogenous developmental variables (sexual abuse, physical abuse, exposure to violence, exposure to pornography—each occurring prior to age 13) and four personality constructs (“psychopathic and antagonistic attitudes,” “psychosocial deficits,” “pedophilia,” “hostile masculinity”) to the prediction of non-sexual delinquency and number of male child victims in a sample of 256 adolescent males with a history of “hands-on” sexual offending. “Psychosocial deficits” was found to partially mediate the effects of the exogenous variables on both outcomes. Exposure to violence both directly, and indirectly through “psychopathic and antagonistic attitudes,” contributed to the prediction of non-sexual delinquency. Sexual abuse by a male directly, and indirectly through “hostile masculinity” and “pedophila”, contributed to prediction of number of male child victims. Clinical implications of the findings are discussed.     

Commentators on the Cārvākasūtra: A Critical Survey

In spite of the fact that the mūla-text of the Cārvākasūtra is lost, we have some 30 fragments of the commentaries written by no fewer than four commentators, namely, Kambalāśvatara, Purandara, Aviddhakarṇa, and Udbhaṭa. The existence of other commentators too has been suggested, of whom only one name is mentioned: Bhāvivikta. Unfortunately no extract from his work is quoted anywhere. The position of the Cārvākas was nearer the Buddhists (who admitted both perception and inference) than any other philosophical system. But in order to brand the Cārvākas as pramāṇaikavādins they were made to appear as one with Bhartṛhari. Even though the commentators of the Cārvākasūtra had some differences among themselves concerning the interpretation of some aphorisms, they seem to have been unanimous in regard to the number of pramāṇas to be admitted. It was perception and inference based on perception. Only in this sense they were pramāṇaikavādins. Unlike other systems of philosophy, the Cārvāka/Lokāyata did not accord equal value to perception and inference. Inference, they said, must be grounded on perception first, so it was of secondary kind (gauṇa). From the available evidence it is clear that the commentators were unanimous in one point, namely, primacy of perception which includes admittance of such laukika inference as is preceded and hence can be tested by repeated observations. In this respect both Aviddkarṇa and Udbhaṭa were in agreement with Purandara. Bhaṭṭodbhaṭa or Udbhaṭabhaṭṭa was known as a commentator who differed from the traditional Cārvākas and broke new grounds in explaining some of the aphorisms. His commentary is creative in its own way but at the same time unreliable in reconstructing the original Cārvāka position. Udbhaṭa seems to have digressed from the original, monist materialist position by taking a dualist position concerning the body-consciousness relation. Moreover, he seems to verge on the idealist side in his explication of an aphorism. In this sense he was a reformist or revisionist. Aviddhakarṇa, like Udbhaṭa, attempted to interpret the Cārvāka aphorisms from the Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika point of view, perhaps without being converted to the Cārvāka. Since it is not possible at the present state of our knowledge to determine whether they were Cārvākas converted to Nyāya or Naiyāyikas converted to Lokāyata, the suggestion that they simply adopted the Cārvāka position while writing their commentaries without being converted to the Cārvāka, may be taken as a third alternative. In spite of the meagre material available, it is evident that (1) not unlike the other systems, there is a lack of uniformity in the commentary tradition of the Cārvākasūtra, (2) not all commentators were committed monistic materialists; at least one, namely, Udbhaṭa, was a dualist, and (3) in course of time Nyāya-Vaiśeṣika terminology, such as gamya, gamaka, etc., quite foreign to the traditional Cārvāka, has been introduced into the Cārvāka system.     

Text and terrain: mapping sexuality and law

This article is concerned with the intersections of law, texts and sexuality. Drawing on recent work in theoretical cartography, this article seeks to argue that a cartographical reading of law can be usefully brought to bear on the legal analysis of sexuality. This article considers how looking to contemporary theoretical and critical cartography can help to reveal law as a process of mapping; how sexuality is mapped both within and without the law through cultural texts, and how law’s encounters with the terrains mapped out by those texts might be enriched and diversified. This article seeks to consider how legal mappings of the terrains of sexuality might be sufficiently contextualised and located within a wider socio-political context, and how a specifically cartographical interpretation might reveal the potential for the law to accommodate the complexity of gendered and sexualised identities that do not easily conform to singular positionings. In order to navigate the texts and terrains of law and sexuality, we must first learn to become cartographers, and through this process, perhaps open up radical and alternative mappings.

Greening the security council: climate change as an emerging “threat to international peace and security”

Climate change is a security problem that requires global solutions. Despite some important recent advances, current international responses to climate change are inadequate. This paper assesses whether the United Nations Security Council possesses sufficient legal authority to compel states to address the causes and consequences of climate change. While not advocating the immediate adoption of coercive measures, this paper initiates discussion of this issue, with the goal of developing an institutional framework within which to respond to this emerging threat, if necessary. The paper begins with a brief overview of the clear links between climate change and security, and the inadequacy to date of international remedial efforts. This is followed by a detailed analysis of Security Council legal authority, in particular the UN Charter, including a discussion of its evolving invocation in the context of non-traditional threats. Applying this legal framework to the specific issue of climate change demonstrates the substantial authority of the Security Council to take binding decisions relating to this subject, and its wide range of available enforcement measures, recognizing that political will to exercise and support this authority is required for any successful Security Council efforts to address climate change. The paper concludes that the Security Council has the legal authority to address the causes and consequences of climate change, and that its recent counter-terrorism and non-proliferation measures provide an illustrative institutional framework within which to address this emerging ‘threat to international peace and security’.

Pepper v Hart: A Footnote to Professor Vogenauer's Reply to Lord Steyn

This Note is intended to stand as a short supplement to thecompelling article by Stefan Vogenauer entitled, ‘A Retreatfrom Pepper v Hart? A Reply to Lord Steyn’ published inthe Journal at the end of 2005.¹ In his article, Professor Vogenauercalls in question the argument advanced by Lord Steyn in hisarticle in the Journal, entitled ‘Pepper v Hart: A Re-examination’.²In that article, Lord Steyn called for a retreat from the decisionof the House of Lords in Pepper v Hart³ concerning the circumstancesin which reference may be made to Hansard as an aid to statutoryconstruction and for a reinterpretation of the decision in linewith a theory that a Minister speaking in Parliament who givesan explanation of the meaning or effect of a clause in a Billshould be taken to create a binding legitimate expectation thatthe executive will apply the provision, once enacted, in thatsense. In this Note, I express my agreement with Professor Vogenauer’sargument, and seek to support it with some additional pointsunder three heads: (1) the proper interpretation of Pepper vHart and its status as authority; (2) the basis in principlefor adhering to that interpretation; and (3) conceptual difficultiesattached to Lord Steyn’s legitimate expectation thesis.     

Responding to my interlocutors: a subject in the making...

In this response to Ronnie Lippens’ and Erik Claes’ critiques of a paper entitled ‘The Lore of Criminal accusation,’ Pavlich notes the ways in which his work might be compared to, yet differentiated from, abolitionist approaches to crime. Working through Lippens’ comments, he notes a possible way to understand the analysis and politics of crime (through accusation). Pavlich challenges Claes’ optimistic hypostatization of ‘criminal law’, idiosyncratic understandings of deconstruction and refocuses attention on the centrality of accusation to creating criminal subjects.     

Anti-money laundering by international institutions: a preliminary assessment

This paper presents an evaluation of the Anti-Money Laundering and Combating Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) program. It briefly discusses why this can be seen as the birth of a “regime for financial integrity”. We find that some areas of the AML/CFT framework are consistently weaker than others in the area of prevention measures. Specifically, we have two findings: the first, positive one, points to a substantial adequacy of the repressive measures; the second, negative one, points to a substantial failure of countries to adopt adequate preventive measures, and calls for renewed efforts to improve implementation of preventive measures across the board, with specific regard to the activity of financial sector regulatory and supervisory authorities. Also, Eurozone countries outperform all other groups in the sample. Finally, the limited availability of country information and the multiplicity of assessors and methodologies make it difficult to evaluate the performance of the program. Therefore, we suggest greater transparency and availability of detailed countries’ information, and follow up assessments of the weak areas of a country’s AML/CFT framework at higher frequency than the established 5 years.