Comparative Criminological and Criminal Justice Research and the Data that Drive Them

Although all good social science research is by its very nature comparative, criminology and criminal justice have only recently embraced cross‐national research as a mainstream activity. This paper presents a brief history of the development of the subfield of empirical comparative criminology and criminal justice, assesses a typology of comparative studies, and identifies sources of comparative data. In addition, the paper discusses the benefits and drawbacks of using various available data sources which support macro‐, micro‐, or mixed‐ level analyses. Finally, the paper discusses the impediments to and the future of comparative crime and criminal justice research.     

A Fine Line Between Pleasure and Pain: Would Decriminalising BDSM Permit Nonconsensual Abuse?

The increasing social visibility of Bondage/Domination, Discipline/submission and Sadism/Masochism (BDSM) within Western society has placed pressure on the criminal law to account for why consensual BDSM activities continue to be criminalised where they involve the infliction of even minor injuries on participants. With moralistic and paternalistic justifications for criminalisation falling out of favour, one key justification that is gaining traction within international commentary on BDSM is the “bogus BDSM argument”. The bogus BDSM argument contends that BDSM activities should be criminalised because otherwise false claims of BDSM will be used by defendants to excuse or minimise their criminal liability for nonconsensual abuse. This article refutes this argument by showing how it relies on premises that are unjustifiable, illogical and irrelevant. This article concludes that the decriminalisation of BDSM would not permit nonconsensual abuse so long as legal officials were equipped with sufficient knowledge about the norms and conventions of BDSM culture.

     

Empirical Evaluation of the Reliability of Photogrammetry Software in the Recovery of Three-Dimensional Footwear Impressions

This paper examines the reliability of Structure from Motion (SfM) photogrammetry as a tool in the capture of forensic footwear marks. This is applicable to photogrammetry freeware DigTrace but is equally relevant to other SfM solutions. SfM simply requires a digital camera, a scale bar, and a selection of oblique photographs of the trace in question taken at the scene. The output is a digital three-dimensional point cloud of the surface and any plastic trace thereon. The first section of this paper examines the reliability of photogrammetry to capture the same data when repeatedly used on one impression, while the second part assesses the impact of varying cameras. Using cloud to cloud comparisons that measure the distance between two-point clouds, we assess the variability between models. The results highlight how little variability is evident and therefore speak to the accuracy and consistency of such techniques in the capture of three-dimensional traces. Using this method, 3D footwear impressions can, in many substrates, be collected with a repeatability of 97% with any variation between models less than ~0.5 mm.     

A comprehensive approach to providing services to survivors of sexual and gender-based violence in Democratic Republic of Congo: addressing more than physical trauma

ABSTRACT

The eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is impacted by a prolonged conflict and humanitarian crisis. Sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) affects an estimated 39.7% of women and 23.6% of men in the region, and is associated with serious medical, psychological, and socio-economic outcomes for survivors and communities. IMA World Health, a faith-based non-profit organisation, implements a USAID-funded project, Ushindi, which is a collaborative effort with three national NGOs and one technical partner in response to SGBV in eastern DRC. The consortium provides a comprehensive package of services to SGBV survivors, focusing on medical, emotional, psychological, legal, and socio-economic needs.     

London as text: Eighteenth‐century women writers and reading the city

Moral convention required that the eighteenth‐century English novelist express disapproval of the opportunities London afforded women for mobility, deception, and independence. Women novelists of the period, however, subverted this code by depicting urbanized heroines who gain forbidden knowledge about male and female sexuality and social roles, and are thus able to manipulate convention rather than merely following it. Examination of five novels of the period — two by men, three by women — demonstrates that male and female novelists, while allegedly working within the same moral framework, generated vastly different moral texts out of the complex semiotic of the London environment. As the novel gained in respectability, women novelists’ use of the London convention became on the surface more conventional, and their heroines’ attitudes toward urban mores more disapproving, but subversive alternative behaviors are still depicted in late eighteenth‐century novels.