Crime,criminology and human rights: Towards an understanding of state criminality

This paper explores issues related to the analysis of a type of criminality frequently ignored in criminological literature: crimes of the state. It explores the potential of critical criminology to deal with state criminality via investigation of such issues as state interventions, overlapping activities of criminal versus non-criminal organizations and the distinction between individual and state actors. The paper specifically examines state criminality via analysis of the activities of the CIA and FBI in the United States. These activities include methods of surveillance, wiretapping, mail tampering, and the use of agents provocateurs. It also examines issues related to relativity in the definition of terrorism and the use of terrorism by the state. It is argued that, unless criminologists begin to address these issues, criminologists may find themselves in the awkward position of aiding the criminalization of non-criminal peoples around the world.     

A commentary on the United Kingdom's leading food retailers' resilience plans in the face of climate change

In September 2019, the U.K. House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee warned that the United Kingdom's food supply was vulnerable to climate change. Within the U.K. food retailing is highly concentrated with the four leading food retailers accounting for almost 70% of all food sales. In the face of the threat of climate change to food supplies, a focus on resilience might be seen to have much to offer retailers. However, little work has been published in the academic literature on if, and how, retailers are employing the concept of resilience in their business plans. With these thoughts in mind, this commentary paper provides an exploratory review of how the United Kingdom's four leading food retailers, namely Tesco, Sainsbury's, Asda, and Morrisons, have publicly acknowledged the importance of resilience in the face of climate change. The paper outlines definitions of resilience and retail resilience, draws out four general themes within the U.K. food retailers' resilience plans, and offers some wider reflections on the retailers' resilience plans in the face of climate change.     

A commentary on rewilding in Europe

As relationships between people and nature are being reassessed, not least as concerns about climate change gather increasing momentum, so a range of environmental and conservation themes are moving up public and political agendas. Rewilding, simply defined as increasing the role of natural processes within landscapes, is one such theme. This commentary paper outlines the variety of definitions and origins of the concept of rewilding, illustrates some of the elements of rewilding within Europe, and offers some general reflections on the rewilding process. The paper suggests that although many benefits have been claimed for moves to increase the role of natural processes within landscapes and environments, rewilding faces several challenges, in that it means different things to different people, public perceptions of rewilding can generate unease, hostility, and concern and it has only limited scientific support. At the same time, there is no clear statutory policies to guide the rewilding process. As such, rewilding organisations may increasingly look to communication and public relations to garner public and financial support for their cause.     

The Prospective Impact of Family Functioning and Parenting Practices on Court-Involved Youth’s Substance Use and Delinquent Behavior

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Court-involved youth exhibit high rates of psychiatric symptoms, substance use, and delinquency, yet little is known about the contributing roles of caregiver and...     

An analysis of changes in stakeholder accountability among Canadian WCBs: 1998–2008

Abstract: Many essential public services in Canada have been delegated to agencies. The semi-autonomous nature of these agencies, often operating at arm's-length from government, leads to difficulties in holding them sufficiently accountable. Of the many public-sector agencies in Canada, workers' compensation boards (WCBs) are arguably the most autonomous in comparison to other government agencies such as health care and social services. In their article, derived from an earlier background paper written in 1998, Therese Jennissen, Michael Prince and Saul Schwartz (2000) called for increased WCB accountability to elected officials. The aim of the current article is, first, to conduct a document review to determine the extent to which the recommendations made by Jennissen and her colleagues have been adopted at the national level and, secondly, through a case study, to examine the implications of these changes at the Newfoundland Workplace Health, Safety and Compensation Commission, where many of the recommendations have been implemented.     

Connolly and the never-ending critiques of liberal peace: from the privilege of difference to vorarephilia

Over the last decade, a dominant critique of international interventions underlines the problem that interventionary strategies have denied the political, societal and cultural heterogeneity of conflict-affected societies, excluding the interests of the majority of their population. A deeper engagement with the everyday life of these societies is understood to expose the errors of international missions and animate an alternative way of thinking about peace: ‘hybrid peace’, which is formed contextually and from below. Engaging with William Connolly’s work on pluralism, this article clarifies the nature of this critique, which rests securely on the assumption that local alterity cannot be fully understood, respected or treated sensitively by international governance approaches. However, as much as this assumption enables the thinking of an emancipatory hybrid peace, it is in turn the source of its critique, as hybrid peace is also seen as reproducing binary schemas and thus considered incapable of caring for the societies intervened in. At the conclusion, the metaphor of vorarephilia—paraphilia where sexual arousal occurs in the idea of being eaten or eating another person—will be used to warn against the tragic direction that critiques seem to be travelling to: critical scholars would be increasingly tempted to welcome the inevitable failures of international interventions.     

A simple checklist,that is all it takes: a cluster randomized controlled field trial on improving the treatment of suspected terrorists by the police

Journal of Experimental Criminology - When it comes to interviewing suspected terrorists, global evidence points to harsh interrogation procedures, despite the likelihood of false positives. How...