Reinforcing or Challenging Stigma? The Risks and Benefits of ‘Dignity Talk’ in Sex Work Discourse

The concept of ‘human dignity’ sits at the heart of international human rights law and a growing number of national constitutions and yet its meaning is heavily contested and contingent. I aim to supplement the theoretical literature on dignity by providing an empirical study of how the concept is used in the specific context of legal discourse on sex work. I will analyse jurisprudence in which commercial sex was declared as incompatible with human dignity, focussing on the South African Constitutional Court case of S v Jordan and the Indian Supreme Court case of Budhadev Karmaskar v State of West Bengal. I will consider how these courts conceptualise dignity and argue that their conclusions on the undignified nature of sex work are predicated on particular sexual norms that privilege emotional and relational intimacy. In light of the stigma faced by sex workers I will explore how a discourse, proclaiming sex work as beneath human dignity, may impact on the way that sex workers are perceived and represented culturally, arguing that it reinforces stigma. I will go on to examine how sex workers subvert the notion that commercial sex is undignified, and resist stigma, by campaigning for the right to sell sex with dignity. I will demonstrate that an alternative legal approach to dignity and sex work is possible, where the two are not considered as inherently incompatible, concluding with thoughts on the risks and benefits of using ‘dignity talk’ in activism and campaigns for sex work law reform.     

A Case Study of Semiotic Distinctiveness in Brand Names

Brand names constitute a form of value for commercial products, because they suppose a savings of search costs for the consumer. The law, as a consequence, has the obligation to protect brand names. But the number of attractive brand names is not infinite and sometimes companies seek brand names which are reminiscent of others. In this article a conflict between two companies for the distinctiveness of two brand names is addressed: one Spanish company used the English common noun doughnut for a product similar to the American pastry, while the other company had already registered donut as a brand name, in addition to its variants. This second company sued the first on the grounds that the names were not distinctive. Here we offer the arguments presented to the judge in defense of the distinctiveness of doughnut and the judgment.     

Legal Subjectivity and the ‘Right to be Forgotten’: A Rancièrean Analysis of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Google</Emphasis>

This article discusses the right to be forgotten. The landmark Google ruling of the European Court of Justice gave this ambiguous right new weight and raised several urgent questions. This article considers what kind of person is presupposed and constructed when somebody invokes their right to be forgotten. The aim is to engage in an experimental reading of the ruling in the framework of contemporary political theory, namely, the philosophy of Jacques Rancière. The analysis shows that even though the right to be forgotten is a new legal and rhetorical instrument, there are good grounds for being critical of its underlying logic and sceptical of the novelty thereof. The judgment can be understood as a reiteration and consolidation of the same impotent human rights thinking that law often seems forced to contend itself with, no matter how radical our intentions may be.     

On the Social Foundations for Crimmigration: Latino Threat and Support for Expanded Police Powers

Objectives

Because of the merging of immigration control and criminal justice, or “crimmigration,” state and local police increasingly drive interior immigration enforcement through the routine policing of crime. At the same time, growing evidence indicates that immigration is an ethnicity-coded issue that allows for the veiled expression of broader anti-Latino sentiments. Yet little research has examined whether public perceptions of either immigrants or Latinos influence support for police policies and practices that, in the context of crimmigration, may significantly shape immigration enforcement and, more broadly, may contribute to the subordination of Latinos. The current study addresses this research question.

Methods

The study draws on data from a recent nationally representative telephone survey and employs multivariate regression methods to evaluate whether perceptions of Latino economic and political threat are associated with support for granting police greater latitude in stopping, searching, and using force against suspects.

Results

This study provides the first evidence that, at least among Whites, perceived Latino threat is positively associated with support for expanding police investigative powers, especially the power to stop suspects based only on the way they look.

Conclusions

The results suggest that by increasing public support for aggressive policing, or, at minimum, by reducing opposition to discriminatory social controls such as police profiling, Latino threat perceptions may increase the political attractiveness and viability of crimmigration as a “solution” to the “Latino problem.”

     

Using Space–Time Analysis to Evaluate Criminal Justice Programs: An Application to Stop-Question-Frisk Practices

Objectives

Effects of place-based criminal justice interventions extend across both space and time, yet methodological approaches for evaluating these programs often do not accommodate the spatiotemporal dimension of the data. This paper presents an example of a bivariate spatiotemporal Ripley’s K-function, which is increasingly employed in the field of epidemiology to analyze spatiotemporal event data. Advantages of this technique over the adapted Knox test are discussed.

Methods

The study relies on x–y coordinates of the exact locations of stop-question-frisk (SQF) and crime incident events in New York City to assess the deterrent effect of SQFs on crime across space at a daily level.

Results

The findings suggest that SQFs produce a modest reduction in crime, which extends over a three-day period. Diffusion of benefits is observed within 300 feet from the location of the SQF, but these effects decay as distance from the SQF increases.

Conclusions

A bivariate spatiotemporal Ripley’s K-function is a promising approach to evaluating place-based crime prevention interventions, and may serve as a useful tool to guide program development and implementation in criminology.

     

Crime Continuity and Psychological Inertia: Testing the Cognitive Mediation and Additive Postulates with Male Adjudicated Delinquents

Objectives

Crime continuity is one of the best documented and least understood aspects of criminal behavior. Psychological inertia, the notion that cognitive variables mediate the relationship between earlier and later expressions of the same behavior, was tested as a possible explanation for crime continuity.

Methods

The cognitive mediation and additive postulates of the psychological inertia theorem were tested in a path analysis using self-report data from 1170 male delinquent members of the Pathways to Desistance study (Mulvey in Paper presented at the American Society of Criminology Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL, 2012). Wave 1 delinquency served as the independent variable, Wave 3 delinquency served as the dependent variable, Wave 2 outcome expectancies for crime, self-efficacy, general criminal thinking, and social capital served as the mediator variables, and 12 different baseline measures from criminological theory served as control variables in this study.

Results

General criminal thinking and low self-efficacy successfully mediated the relationship between past and future offending after age, race, early behavioral problems, peer criminality, family criminality, parental knowledge and monitoring, parental hostility, routine activities, measured intelligence, and precursors for each of the mediators were controlled. Social capital (cumulative disadvantage), by comparison, failed to mediate crime continuity in this study.

Conclusions

Effective cognitive mediation of the relationship between Wave 1 offending and Wave 3 offending and evidence that the effect may be additive offer preliminary support for the cognitive mediation and additive postulates of the psychological inertia theorem. Practical implications of these results include the need to routinely assess cognitive factors in criminal populations and target these factors for intervention.

     

Toward a Demographic Understanding of Incarceration Disparities: Race,Ethnicity, and Age Structure

Objectives

Non-Hispanic blacks and Hispanics in the United States are more likely to be incarcerated than non-Hispanic whites. The risk of incarceration also varies with age, and there are striking differences in age distributions across racial/ethnic groups. Guided by these trends, the present study examines the extent to which differences in age structure account for incarceration disparities across racial and ethnic groups.

Methods

We apply two techniques commonly employed in the field of demography, age-standardization and decomposition, to data provided by the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the 2010 decennial census to assess the contribution of age structure to racial and ethnic disparities in incarceration.

Findings

The non-Hispanic black and Hispanic incarceration rates in 2010 would have been 13–20 % lower if these groups had age structures identical to that of the non-Hispanic white population. Moreover, age structure accounts for 20 % of the Hispanic/white disparity and 8 % of the black/white disparity.

Conclusion

The comparison of crude incarceration rates across racial/ethnic groups may not be ideal because these groups boast strikingly different age structures. Since the risk of imprisonment is tied to age, criminologists should consider adjusting for age structure when comparing rates of incarceration across groups.

     

The Recurring Victimization of Individuals with Mental Illness: A Comparison of Trajectories for Two Racial Groups

Objective

This study explores whether the trajectories of recurring victimization of Black persons diagnosed with major mental illnesses vary from the trajectories of their White counterparts. Further, the study examines whether the risk factors for recurring victimization among persons with major mental illness vary by race.

Methods

Using data from the MacArthur Violence Risk Assessment Study (MacRisk), two separate hierarchical binomial regression models were estimated to compare the recurring victimization trajectories of Black and White MacRisk participants. Cross-level interaction terms were also estimated to determine if the coefficients for each of the time-varying covariates included in the analyses were significantly different across race.

Results

The findings indicate that the trajectories of recurring victimization for Black persons with serious mental illness are significantly different from those of White persons with serious mental illness. Specifically, Black persons’ trajectories remain relatively stable over time, while the risk of recurring victimization declines for Whites as time since release from the hospital increases. Further, the effects of alcohol abuse on revictimization risk vary by race.

Conclusion

The findings suggest that the life experiences of Black persons with mental illness may be different from their White counterparts, which is likely to contribute to distinct patterns of recurring victimization over time. Future research should continue to explore recurring victimization among diverse samples to identify potential sources of the variation in revictimization trajectories across race.

     

Identifying Classes of Explanations for Crime Drop: Period and Cohort Effects for New York State

Objective

This paper advances current understanding of the contemporary crime drop by focusing on the changes in the age distribution of arrests from 1990 to 2010. Using the New York State Computerized Criminal History (CCH) file, which tracks every arrest in the state, we apply standard demographic methods to examine age-specific arrest rates over time. We test whether the 25 % drop in the felony arrest rate can be best explained by period or cohort effects with special attention to how the phenomenon varies across crime types and regions within the state.

Methods

Following the analytic approach of O’Brien and Stockard (J Quant Criminol 25(1):79–101, 2009), we fit the age–period–cohort (APC) model using the generalized inverse matrix, which creates an estimable model. We partition the model variation into each factor by subtracting the variation of the two-factor model from the variation of the three-factor model to provide a direct comparison of the two different classes of explanations for crime drop: period and cohort.

Results

Our analysis supports a cohort explanation over a period explanation. Controlling for the (substantial) variation due to age, the cohort effect accounts for twice as much of the remaining variation as the period effect. Specifically, the drop in arrest rates is concentrated in more recent birth cohorts across all ages. Although we found statistically significant age–period interaction effects for the younger age group (ages 16–20) in 1990 and 1995, the cohort effect was still a much stronger predictor of felony arrest rates than the period explanation, even with the age–period interaction.

Conclusions

The current study reports that the overall drop in felony arrest rates from 1990 to 2010 is mostly due to decreased arrests among those who were born after 1970 rather than a universal drop across different age groups. We discuss but do not test two potential explanations—the legalization of abortion and the ban on leaded gasoline—for the underlying factors associated with a different criminal propensity among birth cohorts.