Echoes of domestic silence: mechanisms of concealment in cases of ‘Family Honour Killings’ in Mandate Palestine

This article deals with the manner in which family and community in Mandate Palestine attempted to keep the criminal justice system from intervening in cases defined as ‘Family Honour Killing’. Drawing on criminal court cases, we argue that the familial, domestic and communal features of this crime and its social, predominantly rural, context were critical for the attempts to keep it within the community and to prevent state intervention by obstructing, concealing and denying evidence. We focus on the mechanisms used by members of the family and community for that purpose. Our case study is in line with previous findings indicating the under-reporting of domestic violence, especially when witnesses were closely related to both the victim and the perpetrator. This domestic and communal alignment was most likely reinforced under colonial rule, though it was not necessarily caused predominantly in opposition to it.     

Is It the What or the How? The Roles of High‐Policing Tactics and Procedural Justice in Predicting Perceptions of Hostile Treatment: The Case of Security Checks at Ben‐Gurion Airport,Israel

What affects perceptions of hostile treatment by police, characterized by feelings such as humiliation and intimidation? Is it what the police do to the citizen, or is it about how they do it? The important effects of procedural justice are well documented in the policing literature. Yet, it is not clear how high‐policing tactics, coupled with procedural justice, affect one's sense of hostile treatment: is it the case that what the police do does not matter as long as they follow the principles of procedural justice, or do some invasive or unpleasant tactics produce negative emotions regardless of the amount of procedural justice displayed by the officer? In the present study we examine this question in the context of security checks at Ben‐Gurion Airport, Israel. Using a survey of 1,970 passengers, we find that the behavioral elements of procedural justice are an important antidote, mitigating the negative effects of four “extra” screening measures on the perceived hostility of the checks. At the same time, two security measures retain an independent and significant effect. We discuss the implications of our findings and hypothesize about the characteristics of policing practices that are less sensitive to procedural justice.     

A wall of treatments: An integrative problem-solving approach to the prevention of stone-throwing in East Jerusalem

Research summary

There is growing evidence that some proactive policing strategies have shown promising results in reducing crime. Most of these strategies are generally applied separately to address specific components of criminal behavior, while the involvement in the crime itself may be caused by different factors. This raises the question of whether an integrative approach that addresses these factors could be an appropriate approach to reduce involvement in the crime. Furthermore, most of these policing strategies have been applied toward regular crime; this leaves us with the question of whether these strategies would show similar results when political offenses are involved as well. Our study focuses on the political offense of stone-throwing in East Jerusalem, usually by Palestinian teenage boys. We applied an integrative approach in one of the Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, which included strategies such as focused deterrence, place-based policing, cognitive behavioral therapy, diversion to nonenforcement tracks, and interventions at the community level. We found a large and significant reduction in the targeted neighborhood compared to similar Palestinian neighborhoods. We have not found evidence of displacement, but rather evidence of significant diffusion of crime-control benefits.

Policy implications

The results of the study suggest that an integrative approach that addresses the risks and needs of minority youth can help reduce their future involvement in political offenses. Furthermore, the implementation of promising strategies in the wider context of policing regular crimes may also be effective in responding to political offenses.     

Policing terrorism and police–community relations: views of the Arab minority in Israel

Police involvement in counterterrorism has special ramifications on minority groups that may be viewed as presenting high risk to homeland security. Our public survey shows that the Jewish respondents in our sample expressed positive attitudes toward police involvement in mission of counterterrorism, while Israeli Arabs expressed more concern with the ramifications of police involvement in counterterrorism on its relations with the Arabs in particular. The results show that both communities recognized the central role that the police may play in dealing with terrorism, and they both expressed high levels of willingness to cooperate with the police to fight against terrorism.     

Rational Choice Rewards and the Jihadist Suicide Bomber

Suicide terrorism is the most violent and horrifying form of terrorism in the world today. This kind of terrorism causes many fatalities and can throw an entire nation into a state of panic. We usually attribute this kind of terrorism to altruistic motivation, assuming that bombers are willing to sacrifice themselves for a higher cause. The current study uses the criminological theory of Rational Choice to analyze the motivation of jihadist suicide terrorism. By reviewing the religious, personal, and social incentives, we demonstrate that even those who kill themselves in suicide attacks, which are seemingly examples of irrational or altruistic behavior, do so while considering future, self-gratifying benefits. Since this self-destructive behavior is mostly driven not by altruistic motivation but by the anticipation of costs and benefits, we find that there is no fundamental difference between the perpetrators’ motivations and those of other criminals; both groups are committed to maximizing self-gratifying, beneficial behavior.     

Going beyond Ascribed Identities: The Importance of Procedural Justice in Airport Security Screening in Israel

Today, passengers at every major Western airport are subjected to heightened levels of security screening that not only are inconvenient, but also raise important questions about the treatment of members of specific groups that are seen as presenting special security risks. Our study examines the importance of ethnic identity in explaining perceptions of legitimacy in airport screening among a random sample of Jewish and Arab passengers in Israel. The main hypothesis of our study is that ethnicity will play a major role in predicting passengers’ attitudes toward the airport security process. In fact, our survey shows that Israeli Arab passengers are, on average, significantly more negative regarding the legitimacy of security checks than Israeli Jewish passengers are. However, using a multivariate model, we find that ethnicity (Arab versus Jew) disappears as a significant predictor of legitimacy when we included factors of procedural justice and controlled for specific characteristics of the security process. The results of our research indicate that differences in legitimacy perceptions are by and large the result of the processes used in airport screening and not a direct result of ethnic identity. In concluding, we argue that profiling strategies aimed at preventing terrorism, which often include embarrassing public procedures, may actually jeopardize passengers’ trust in airport security. Such security is dependent on the cooperation of citizens, and heightened security procedures focused on particular groups may compromise legitimacy evaluations and thus the cooperation of the public.     

Mitigating the consequences of invasive security practices: a quasi-experiment in an international airport

Journal of Experimental Criminology - Invasive security practices create resentment, especially when targeting minority groups. Many studies of homeland security as well as of general policing...