A Crime–Terror Nexus? Thinking on Some of the Links between Terrorism and Criminality 1

Decreasing state sponsorship for terrorism in the post-9/11 environment has pressed terrorist groups to find alternative sources of financial support. Some groups have created their own “in-house” criminal capabilities, for example FARC, the LTTE, and Al Qaeda. Several analysts have argued that this “mutation” in organizational form may lead terrorist groups to ally with organized crime, whereas others have suggested that distinct organizational and ideological differences between the two will preclude cooperation. Drawing on both accounts, it is argued in this article that the degree of a terrorist group's organizational capacity and need are key predictors of the types of crime they will engage in, while ideological (political) distinctiveness will preclude fully symbiotic cooperation between terrorists and organized crime groups.     

Reviews: Editorial commentary

Abstract

Home Truths about Child Sexual Abuse: Influencing Policy and Practice: A reader Catherine Itzin (4) Routledge, London, 2000. ISBN0415 15261 5 (hbk) f55.0O/f18.990415 152623 (pbk) £18.99

Child Sexual Assault: Feminist perspectives Pat Cox, Sheila Kenhaw andJoy Trotter (eds) Palgrave, London. 2000. 248pp. ISBN 0 333 77153 2. (hbk) £45.00

Athletes and Acquaintance Rape Jeffrey R Benedict Sage (Violence Against Women Series). London, 1998. 120pp ISBN 0 7619 0966 4 (hbk) f47.00 / 0 7619 0967 2 (pbk) £19.00

Whistleblowing in the Social Services: Public accountability and professional practice Geoffrey Hunt (ed.), Foreword by Allan Levy, QC Edward Arnold, London, 1998. 278pp. ISBN 0 340 65245 4 (pbk) £18.99     

Introduction: configurations of risk

The purpose of this paper is to conduct a preliminary investigation into the possibilities of utilizing some of the methods and concepts developed under the auspices of ‘govermentality’ in a Chinese context. The way in which the reproductive regularities of the population have emerged as a problem for Chinese governmental reasoning will serve as a point of departure to conduct this investigation. The goverment of reproduction is shown to involve techniques that differ in significant respects from those deployed in liberal government, in particular the reduced role of professional expertise and a reduced emphasis upon the construction of a self-governing subject. This paper also suggests that the development of a concept of the Chinese ‘race’ plays a pivotal role in the way in which the problem of the ‘quality’ of the population is formulated. The paper concludes with some reflections on the implications of this for work on govermentality.     

Governable catastrophes: a comment on Bougen

Bougen's analysis of catastrophe insurance has considerable and damaging implications for the 'risk society' thesis. First, it outlines how insurance 'imaginaries' render even catastrophic and 'incalculable' modernization risks insurable. It also highlights the fact that such insurance has been mobilized and shaped by specific forms of political rationality, something which falls beneath the gaze of grand theory. Finally, the paper indicates that risk and uncertainty - far from being mutually exclusive - are frequently assembled together into governing technologies, and that uncertainty may denote a variable set of technologies through which catastrophes can be and are managed.     

Risk,power and crime prevention

This paper addresses the development of post-disciplinary ‘actuarial’ or risk-based technologies of power. Arguing against models which focus on icreased efficiency as an evolutionary criterion for emerging technologies of power, it suggests that such technologies' place and form are largely dtermined by the nature and fortunes of political programs with which they are aligned. Thus the rise of neo-conservatism and related programs have extensively modified and curtailed programs based on risk models, and expanded those based on punishment and discipline. The paper examines the nature of situational crime prevention in the light of these ideas, and moves on to consider certain broader theoretical implications.     

Indigenous governance

The governmentality literature's focus on mentalities of rule, and its aversion to sociological analysis, tends to produce a programmatic vision of governance. From this perspective, politics appears primarily as a mentality of rule, and resistance appears primarily as a negative – as a source of programme failure. This paper explores aspects of Australian policies of self-determination for Aboriginal peoples, in order to examine ways in which resistance (in the form of indigenous governance) plays a constitutive role in the formation of rule. Government and resistance articulate, mingle and hybridize, so that resistance cannot readily be thought of as external to rule. In this way, liberalism's governmental relations with resisstance are characterized by incorporation of resistant, ‘indigenous’, governances. In turn, this is a source of its innovativeness and flexibility, becoming part of its strategy of government at a distance. However, this incorporation creates tensions and contradictions within the liberal project itself, instabilities which cannot be reduced to the status of external sources of programme failure.     

Schol-age child care and equal opportunities

The work involved in looking after children may be paid or unpaid, at home or in institutions outside the home. The main emphasis of this article is on mothers as unpaid care workers for their own school-age children. It describes the nature of child care in general terms, but looks especially at school children and their specific dependencies. In particular it focuses on one public intervention towards children and the ways in which this affects their mothers: namely, the state requirement that children between certain ages should be educated, together with the provision of schools to meet this requirement. This provides a starting point for a discussion of ways and means of extending care provision for school-age children and releasing mothers from their marginalised position in the labour force.