Death notification

Death notification--informing the deceased's family of an unexpected death--is a singularly stressful task common to medical personnel, clergy, and police. We surveyed by questionnaire a group of 50 Los Angeles Police Department homicide detectives, 21 of whom were subsequently interviewed by telephone. The detectives stated that their initial apprehension stemmed from feeling unprepared. Identification with victims' families was common and compounded the stress. One prevalent worry concerned the possible reactions of the family upon hearing the news, especially the risk of a violent attack on the police officer. Several coping styles were recognized. Our findings suggest that the repetitive performance of this continuously stressful task may be a prominent and underappreciated contribution to occupational burnout.     

Re-imagining crime prevention: controlling corporate crime?

While the discourses and practices of crime prevention are of increasing salience, few criminologists have sought the inclusion of corporate illegalities on such agendas. Relatedly, within criminology, there has been a diminished tendency to think in idealistic, utopian and emancipatory terms. This paper is one small attempt to think in precisely such terms.¹ But it is not an exercise in pure imagination. In particular, the paper makes extended reference to Finland, where recent experience suggests that corporate crime prevention may be feasible, under certain conditions, albeit subject to certain limitations. Thus we consider both the desirability and the feasibility of corporate crime prevention intruding upon the generally narrowly constructed terrain of ‘crime prevention’. We begin with a critique of some of the key aspects of crime prevention discourses – at both theoretical and practical levels – with a particular emphasis upon the extent to which these are both more appropriately and usefully applied to corporate crime prevention, before going on to discuss corporate crime prevention ‘in action’, through a focus upon recent developments in Finland. In a concluding section, we consider various aspects of both the desirability and feasibility of corporate crime prevention.