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 ‘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.     

‘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.     

Between the ‘Home’ and ‘Institutional’ Worlds: Tensions and Contradictions in the Practice of House Arrest

In this paper we argue that the theoretical work of Goffman (1961) on “total institutions,” Foucault’s (1977) insights into the workings of disciplinary power, and an account of contemporary forms of punishment and social control in postmodern society (Staples 2000) help us better understand the experiences of those individuals sentenced to house arrest. Based on face-to-face interviews with twenty-three people being electronically monitored in a Midwestern metropolitan area, our analysis identifies three themes that illustrate the ways in which electronic monitoring is experienced as a complex amalgam of what Goffman (1961, p. 13) saw as the distinct “home world” and the “institutional world”. These themes include (1) “Home is Where the Machine Is,” (2) “Producing Docile Bodies,” and (3) “Threat of Sanctions”. We reassert our claim (Staples 1994, 2000) that contemporary forms of social control such as electronic monitoring reflect an ongoing struggle to deal with problems and issues set in motion with the birth of modernity.     

Constitutive Criminology and the ‘War on Terror’

This article presents a constitutive criminological perspective of the ‘war on terror’. The article will first deconstruct the ‘war on terror’; showing how constitutive criminology provides a framework in which foreign policy, the UK state; the police, and society can be systematically analyzed in relation to one another. Second, the article explores how constitutive criminology enables a critical analysis of the dominant state-centric ‘war on terror’ discourse. The article through discussing the multifaceted ‘war on terror’ demonstrates the relevance of constitutive criminology, as a non state centric approach to critical perspectives in criminology.     

MEPs and the building of a ‘parliamentary Europe’

The European Parliament (EP) has become significantly more important in the last ten to 15 years. Little attention has thus far been paid, however, to one crucial element in this story: the consistent support of the majority of EP members (MEPs) for a strategy of parliamentary assertiveness. This note investigates the factors influencing MEPs’ behaviour in a series of key parliamentary divisions, where issues concerning the assertiveness of the parliament were at question. Contrary to much speculation, more experienced MEPs do not appear to become socialised into more hard‐line attitudes. Rather, factors relating to members’ partisan status and nationality are the major determinants of support for enhancing the status of the EP. The findings are argued to suggest important implications for both the EP and the European Union as a whole.     

E-participation and e-participants: solving the patent ‘crisis’

One of the major planks of some visions for E-Gov is that there is a willing participatory group who are more than happy to be involved in new forms of democracy and will be active and useful suppliers of input to e-consultation or e-participation processes. This group is different from that which goes online to the government website and signs a petition asking the prime minister to resign. It is becoming clear, though, that the commitment to e-participation may well be there in theory, but difficult to access in practice. Further, the participation that is most welcome can frequently require training and expertise that is not widely available or there may be differences in opinion as to the point of participation. In this paper I will look to the attempts to encourage participation in the patent system. The UK has initiated a trial system utilising New York Law School's Peer-To-Patent project, but has also attempted to involve participants in previous consultation exercises. I will use these as demonstrations of the sorts of problems that e-participation has met, and consider whether this new form of E-Gov is perhaps being oversold. The interesting question is whether participation is a growing tool that can ensure better public services from the State. My conclusion is that consultation and participatory projects can demonstrate involvement and are certainly educative, but e-participatory projects are most likely incapable of achieving the goals set by their more optimistic advocates. The paper emphasises the patents field, but the lessons from it can – I suggest – be viewed as indicators having wider governance relevance. The primary point being made is that the technocratic view is always over-optimistic.     

Racist Offenders and the Politics of ‘Hate Crime’

In the UK and USA ‘Hate crime’ has become a topic of public controversy and social mobilization around issues of violence and harassment. This has largely but not exclusively addressed racism, homophobia and gender based violence. This article has three objectives. First, to situate hate crime legislation within a broad theory of modernity;secondly to examine the politics of its emergence as a public issue; thirdly to use data from the authors' recent research in Greater Manchester to illuminate the complexity of the concept of ‘hate crime’. The centrality of ‘hate crime’ to current debates derives from the importance of rights-based regulation of complex societies and the juridical management of emotional life. Hatred and violence have become problematic behaviour thrown into relief by a long term civilizing process. Hate crimes have thus acquired powerful rhetorical focus for mobilization of victim and identity politics. With reference to racist violence in Oldham and elsewhere in Greater Manchester, we argue that in its application and construction, however, ‘hate crime’ is a complex phenomenon that might dramatize rather than regulate the problems it seeks to address. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Between the ‘Bank Screw’ and ‘Affording Assistance’. Rules,Standards, and the Bank Charter Act of 1844

This article explores a dilemma at the centre of the monetary order: how to counter inflation eroding the value of money and simultaneously allow bank-created credit to meet the needs of an expanding economy. Building on recent scholarship on the history of money, the article analyses the Bank Charter Act of 1844 and the financial crisis of 1847 to reveal a response to this dilemma which continues to shape the modern context. That response relies on ex ante restrictive measures in a bid to limit the discretion of the monetary authorities and cultivate financially prudent behaviour. Yet the history of the mid-nineteenth century exposes the challenges faced by those who enforce such rules, challenges which tie the mid-nineteenth century to the post 2008 reforms in both the US and the Eurozone, and reveal the ongoing force of the dilemma: that simultaneous desire for both expansive credit and sound money.     

Gustav Shpet and the Semiotics of ‘Living Discourse’

Semioticians traditionally honor Russian linguistics of the early 20th century, and study Jakobson, Vinogradov, Vinokur or the early Trubetzkoy. They do, however, seldom consider Russian philosophers of the same period. Gustav Shpet is an important representative of Russian philosophers in discussion with Hegel, Neo-Kantian thinkers and contemporaries in Russia and abroad, among them Edmund Husserl, originator of transcendental phenomenology. Shpet introduced Husserl’s phenomenology in Russia and expanded those ideas in his 1914 Appearance and Sense. A triangle “Hegel—Husserl—semiotics” emerged where Shpet emphasized the concept of discourse in phenomenology: a philosophical challenge to modern semiotics. Significant portions of the material in this paper were originally prepared for publication in a chapter contributed to the volume A History of Russian Philosophy, 1830–1930, ed. Gary Hamburg and Randall Poole (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming), and are used here in a different context with the kind permission of that publisher.

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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.     

The good,the bad,and the ‘vulnerable older adult’

Recent declarations by the Court of Appeal indicate that the inherent jurisdiction has survived the implementation of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 for adults considered ‘vulnerable’ and whose decision-making is threatened by reasons other than mental impairment – such occasions may include instances of elder abuse. In this paper I argue, however, that the post-Mental Capacity Act courts have adopted a confused and outmoded concept of the vulnerable older adult, in particular where decision-making is threatened by abusive interpersonal relationships experienced by an older individual. This has particular implications in terms of the types of remedies imposed by the courts on older adults in such circumstances. In this article I suggest that by being more cognisant of recent more nuanced understandings of vulnerability, the courts may be better suited to identifying, and responding to perceived sources of vulnerability in a way that is more empowering for the older adult.     

Social network analysis and small group ‘dark’ networks: an analysis of the London bombers and the problem of ‘fuzzy’ boundaries

Social network analysis (SNA) is believed to be capable of revealing significant insights into crime and terror groups, including identifying important individuals and unique approaches to disruption. However, SNA has a number of theoretical and practical limitations, particularly when applied to ‘dark’ networks. While most analysts certainly acknowledge at least some of these limitations, we need to know more about their potential impact in a crime intelligence context. This article aims to go some way towards that end by placing greater scrutiny on the problem of ‘fuzzy boundaries’ when applied to small group networks. SNA is applied to the groups responsible for the 7 July 2005 London bombings and the 21 July 2005 attempted London bombings. The article concludes that while SNA is a valuable tool for understanding crime and terror groups, the age-old problem of fuzzy boundaries can have a profound impact on the analysis of small dynamic networks.     

Japan’s Reformed Prosecution Review Commission: Changes,Challenges, and Lessons

This article evaluates how Japan’s Prosecution Review Commission (PRC) has performed since it was reformed in 2009 to allow panels of 11 citizens to override the non-charge decisions of professional prosecutors. In the first eight cases of “mandatory prosecution” that have occurred since 2009, the conviction rate is 20%—far lower than Japan’s usual conviction rate, which exceeds 99%. In the ninth case of mandatory prosecution, three former executives of the Tokyo Electric Power Company have been subject to mandatory prosecution for “professional negligence resulting in death and injury,” for failing to prevent the nuclear meltdowns at Fukushima that were precipitated by the earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011, which killed 18,500 people and caused 200,000 more to flee their homes. As of 2018, the trial of the Tepco executives is still in progress. This evaluation study of prosecutorial reform in one Asian nation suggests that, in principle, prosecutors’ non-charge decisions can be checked and controlled. In practice, however, Japan’s PRC reform has done little to alter the standard operating procedures of professional prosecutors. Further reform of the PRC may be necessary.

     

‘Endemic to the species’: ordering the ‘other’ via organised crime

The United States has been the prime mover in the establishment of both the concept of organised crime and the use of the concept in its attempt to establish global hegemony, in which law enforcement became a little more than a front for a government-backed central casting agency, stereotyping both heroes and villains. This article offers an account of how the ‘Other’ has been used as prism for the construction of organised crime primarily in the United States and how this construction, as a franchise, has been exported on the international level and on heterogeneous criminal landscapes.     

Truancy and the Prosecution of Parents: An Unfair Burden on Mothers?

This article considers the development and use of the law regulating the prosecution of parents under section 444 of the Education Act 1996, in the broader context of legislation and policy initiatives concerned with the governance of parental responsibility. It explores the ways in which the power to prosecute parents has been used by local educational authorities (LEAs) and interpreted by the courts. The article critically analyses the manner in which the powers emphasise punishment and retribution in the context of the social moralisation of ‘flawed’ parents; pay insufficient regard to the effects of parental responsibility laws on low‐income, single parent families; represent an attempt to impose a simple solution on to a complex socio‐economic problem; and amplify the scope for mothers to be made the subject of criminal justice interventions. It is argued that the prosecution of parents imposes an unfair burden on mothers and, in particular, single parent mothers.