Cyberfraud and the implications for effective risk-based responses: themes from UK research

The nature of the risk or threat posed by ‘cyberfraud’ - fraud with a cyber dimension – is examined empirically based on data reported by the public and business to Action Fraud. These are used to examine the implications for a more effective risk-based response, both by category of fraud and also responding to cyberfraud generally, not just in the UK. A key characteristics of cyberfraud is that it can be globalised, unless there are major national differences in attractiveness of targets or in the organisation of control. This does not mean that all cyberfraud is international, however: not only do some involve face to face interactions at some stage of the crime cycle, but in online auction selling frauds, it appears to be common for the perpetrators and victims to reside in the same country. After reviewing patterns and costs of victimisation and their implications for control, the paper concludes that any law enforcement response must begin by being strategic: which other public and private sector bodies should be involved to do what; what should be the specific roles and responsibilities of the police and where ‘problem ownership’ should lie; what are we willing to pay for (in money and effort) for greater cybersecurity and how to reduce ‘market failure’ in its supply; and, how that security is going to be organised for and/or by the huge numbers of businesses and people that are (potentially) affected.     

The Police and CMHCs: The Transition from Penal to Therapeutic Control

The deinstitutionalization of chronic mental patients and the establishment of Community Mental Health Centers creates a new role for the police—i.e. agents of therapeutic control. In this new role, police must move beyond their traditional behaviors as agents of penal control, and play an active part in initiating patients to psychiatric treatment. Social scientists and mental health professionals recognize the need for police training in this area. Yet, little research has been devoted to the penal-therapeutic transition per se. This paper examines the social structural factors necessary for such a transition, and it illustrates the methods by which CMHC professionals can manipulate their social control environments so as to fulfill these social structural "requirements". We also discuss some non-structural barriers to police acting as agents of therapeutic control and the prospects for overcoming them.     

Accountability and evidence-based approaches: theory and research for juvenile justice

As part of the ‘accountability movement’ in juvenile justice, policy-makers, funding agencies, and the general public have called for greater accountability from agencies and organizations involved with youthful offenders. Within this context, performance measurement and monitoring, and use of evidence-based programs and practices, have emerged as recommended aspects of juvenile justice system operations nationwide. Little is known empirically, however, about the actual performance of juvenile justice systems or the real changes brought by contemporary reforms, and theory and research on the implementation and sustainability of evidence-based approaches have been slow to emerge. This paper will review the key aspects of the modern accountability movement in juvenile justice, and then discuss a recently proposed theory that may be useful in future examinations of juvenile justice system improvement efforts. A suggested research agenda also is presented.     

Toward a phenomenology of terrorism: implications for research and policy

The central theme of this paper is that the phenomenology of perception can contribute to conceptualizing terrorism, in terms of both a research orientation and policy applications. This means that counter-terrorism needs to be grounded in a holistic perspective that has meaning from the point of view of those engaged in terrorism. A critique of the “war on terror” counter-terrorism practices is followed by a discussion of phenomenology and its implications for a holistic perception of counter-terrorism. Four cases are presented that show how a phenomenological approach can facilitate counter-terrorism study and policy.     

刑罚进化论——从刑事政策角度的批判

刑罚进化论对刑罚制度的线性发展持乐观态度 ,认为越是到现代 ,刑罚越人道和轻缓 ,这种观念影响较大 ,但是很值得质疑。作者通过对近现代刑罚改革思潮进行分析后指出 :所谓的刑罚进化论是不能成立的 ;刑罚的正当性与进化论无关 ,而只与刑事政策的运用 ,以及规范有效性的维持、规范的稳定有联系。坚持刑罚进化论命题 ,在刑事法领域会产生负面效果。一方面 ,刑罚进化论强制人们忍受残酷、多余的刑罚制度 ;另一方面 ,它也会导致阻碍刑罚改革的惰性思维的产生。     

Implications for the prevention of aggressive behavior within psychiatric hospitals drawn from interpersonal communication theory

Although interpersonal style is a defining feature of personality and personality disorder and is commonly identified as an important influence on aggressive behavior, treatment completion, and the development of an effective therapeutic alliance, it is rarely considered in practice guidelines for preventing, engaging, and managing patients at risk of aggression. In this article, the authors consider three potential applications of interpersonal theory to the care and management of patients at risk of aggression during hospitalization: (a) preventing aggression through theoretically grounded limit setting and de-escalation techniques, (b) developing and using interventions to alter problematic interpersonal styles, and (c) understanding therapeutic ruptures and difficulties establishing a therapeutic alliance. Interpersonal theory is proposed to offer a unifying framework that may assist development of intervention and management strategies that can help to reduce the occurrence of aggression in institutional settings.     

Penal Boundaries: Banishment and the Expansion of Punishment

We use this article to argue for greater recognition of legally imposed spatial exclusion—banishment—as a (re)emerging and consequential social control practice. Although the new social control techniques that entail banishment are buttressed by a blend of civil, administrative, and criminal law, they are best understood as punitive in nature. This argument is supported by two empirical findings. First, interviews with the banished indicate that spatial exclusion often has significant negative consequences akin to those identified by Sykes (1958 ) in his seminal account of the pains of imprisonment. Second, court data show that the growing use of civil and administrative banishment has increased the number of criminal cases involving allegations of noncompliance. These findings suggest that analysts of punishment might usefully broaden their focus to include phenomena that combine civil, criminal, and legal authority, and are not defined as punishment by their advocates.     

Transgression and Standard Theories: Contributions Toward Penal Abolition

In this paper I propose a transgression theory and a standard theory toward penal abolition. I argue that given the ubiquity of “crime” in human relationships, to speak of “criminal behavior” as deviant nullifies the concept deviance (abnormal, out of the ordinary, etc.). After demonstrating that empirically the opposite is the case, I argue for a transgression theory (that most human beings regularly act in ways that transgress the norms and laws they establish) and propose a standard theory (that human beings are both maintainers and transgressors of the social orders they establish). My paper challenges the foundational language (constructions) of “criminal justice” logic that ignore the continuity of the past in the present (white supremacy, neocolonialism, racial capitalism, and gendering enslavement), and that fortify discourse and practice from recognizing, eliminating and standing accountable by rectifying centuries of white privilege, heteronormativity, and the oppression of nonwhite bodies.     

Glocal targeted open innovation: challenges,opportunities and implications for theory,policy and practice

In line with the growing number and type of innovation sources and partners, companies’ institutional set up to manage the potential problems of multiple sources and partners for innovation is increasingly challenged to develop and maintain effective and efficient corporate innovation activities. The paper highlights recent developments of open innovation in companies. Findings are based on company case studies involving companies from different industries and company representatives. It shows that open innovation is actually a paradigm long practised but the main efforts are targeted to continuously developing the organization and managerial model of companies to meet the new innovation challenges.     

Biological protective factors of criminal offending: implications for risk assessment research and practice

Despite the recognition of the practical and theoretical contributions of protective factors in risk assessment practice, the field has granted significant attention to psychosocial protective factors to the apparent neglect of biological protective factors. This review found a wealth of evidence which strongly and convincingly indicates that biological factors such as high intelligent quotient, executive functioning, skin conductance, and resting heart rate offer protection against criminal and antisocial behaviors. More importantly, the literature is supportive of the view that both risk and protective factors co-occur in the same variables, thus questioning the practice of classifying a set of variables as strictly risk or protective. Specifically, the risk–protective effect is contingent upon individual’s rating as high or low on the factor in question. It is recommended that researchers, academicians, and practitioners strive in their efforts to canvass other salient factors beyond the psychosocial factors as these factors can significantly and positively impact the risk assessment field, both theoretically and practically.     

Penal harm medicine: state tort remedies for delaying and denying health care to prisoners

In prison and jail subcultures, custodial personnel are committed to the penal harm movement, which seeks to inflict pain on prisoners. Conversely, correctional medical personnel are sworn to the Hippocratic Oath and are committed to alleviating prisoners' suffering. The Hippocratic Oath is violated when correctional medical workers adopt penal harm mandates and inflict pain on prisoners. By analyzing lawsuits filed by prisoners under state tort law, this article shows how the penal harm movement co-opts some correctional medical employees into abandoning their treatment and healing mission, thus causing denial or delay of medical treatment to prisoners. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Penal Excess and Surplus Meaning: Public Torture Lynchings in Twentieth-Century America

The most notorious lynchings that occurred in the United States between 1890 and 1940 involved publicity, crowds, ritual, and abnormal cruelty. Several hundred of these "public torture lynchings" took place, most of them in the Deep South. The author develops an interpretation that takes seriously the specific forms and discourses that lynchers and their supporters used to describe and justify these events—characterizing them as criminal punishments, albeit summary, informal ones that were shaped by a white supremacist culture and a politics of racial domination. An interpretation of the penal context and meanings of these public torture lynchings helps us understand their specific forms and their claims to legitimacy. The penal character of these lynchings increased the probability that they would be tolerated by local (and even national) audiences and thus made them a strategic form of violence in struggles to maintain racial supremacy. The author argues that a consideration of these events should lead us to revise our standard narratives about the evolution of modern punishments.     

The Law‐Before: Legacies and Gaps in Penal Reform

This article introduces the law‐before as an analytic tool for enhancing explanations of legal reform. Based on an integration of neo‐institutional law and organizations studies and punishment studies of local variation in penal policy, I define the law‐before as the past organizational practices and power arrangements that precede law‐on‐the‐books and shape present day implementation. I utilize the law‐before as a heuristic to investigate the legacy effects of variations in local practice on the implementation of the prison downsizing law, AB 109, or “Realignment,” in California. I analyze organizational documents produced by county practitioners in the aftermath of AB 109's enactment in 2011 as empirical windows into how actors shape the meaning of law in local settings. I find that practitioners in counties with divergent historical imprisonment patterns enact four processes (overwriting or underwriting law, selective magnification, and selective siting) to arrive at distinct interpretations of AB 109 as mandating system‐wide decarceration or the relocation of incarceration from state prisons to county jails. Although my data do not speak to the ultimate implementation of AB 109, the processes revealed have practical implications for the reform goal of decarceration by rationalizing distinct resource allocations at an early stage in the implementation process.