Crime

The chapter offers a close reading of two cinematic cases, Andrei Zviagintsev’s Elena (2011) and Govorukhin’s Voroshilov Sniper, in order to demonstrate in a reverse engineering move how publically executed punishments of the late 1990s were translated into quiet murders a decade later. This transition from ‘punishments outside the law’ to ‘crimes without punishment’, I suggest, is usually linked in Russian cinema to two important trends. First, the impotence of the existing legal system – the inefficiency of the regulatory functions of the state are often counterbalanced by the increasing prominence of networks of reciprocity and forms of loyalty based on family ties. Second, the privatization of punishment, the appropriation of extrajudicial authority is frequently achieved through the aestheticization of violence. The separation of moral issues from the distribution of force allows us to perceive violence as a “communicative phenomenon,” as Birgit Beumers and Mark Lipovetsky aptly put it (2009, 63), that is to say, as an artistic device, as a structural solution which is called upon to restore  a necessary (narrative) balance.

This article concerns the extent to which corrupt behavior is dependent on the organizational power structure and the resources available for illegal exchange. This qualitative study is based on 42 in-depth interviews with organizational actors in different organizations in Hungary. Four core themes emerged from the analysis of the interviews: (a) isolated corruption at the bottom, (b) the middle level’s own corruption, (c) “technicization” when middle-level professionals and expert groups are used to legalize the corruption of the dominant coalition, and (d) “turning-off controls” when organizational elites intentionally deactivate internal and external controls to avoid detection.

Scholars have long noted the role of the media in the sexualization of children and adolescents. However, with the advent of new media technologies such as the internet and cellular phones, children and adolescents are no longer merely consumers of this sexual ideology, but also creators of digital content that performs this ideology. Such content can range from the relatively tame “girls making out” images found on sites such as collegehumor.com to sexually explicit photographs transmitted through cellular phones within a circle of friends that draws the attention of law enforcement. In this essay, I discuss the practice of adolescent sexting (the practice of sending sexually explicit text messages) by reviewing some of the more prominent cases covered in the media; next, I explore the legal aspects surrounding the practice of sexting; finally, I consider the ethical issues surrounding sexting, exploring the issue of harm to both the individual and society by rooting the practice within a culture that celebrates, yet remains suspicious of, adolescent sexuality.

In Britain, recent years have seen increasing criticism of police ineffectiveness, high-profile incidents of vigilantism and interest in alternatives to traditional policing.  In light of these trends, this article first considers nineteenth-century community “self-policing,” which ordered social relations according to a more diffuse distribution of acceptable violence.  Second, it addresses the expansion of the state monopoly on violence and its accompanying expectation of more elaborate individual self-control, a “policing of the self.” Third, it suggests ways that the civilizing process can, in certain contexts, generate tensions if this “civilizing bargain”—exchanging self-policing for state protection—fails to meet community expectations.

We Americans are sticklers for the rules.  If a rule is broken, the offending party must be reprimanded.  We certainly do a lot of that in the US, incarcerating a greater percentage of our population than any other country in the world.  Nonetheless, we don’t like to talk about heavy things like that, not directly anyway.  So let’s talk about it via our national pastime: baseball. 

"Este estudio analiza la relación entre el gasto en el sector de justicia y la criminalidad en Colombia durante el siglo XX. Con tal propósito, se revisaron los presupuestos de gastos municipales
que se destinaban al departamento de justicia, el registro de los delitos compilados anualmente por los anuarios de estadística de Colombia y los censos nacionales de población de 1918, 1938 y 1948. Entre otros hallazgos, se estableció que la decisión de los concejos municipales sobre el gasto en justicia afectó el desempeño y eficiencia en las instituciones judiciales y en el nivel de crimen."

This paper draws on the work of Michel Foucault in order to analyze the constellation of political strategies and power at the US/Mexico border wall. These strategies, however, are incredibly diverse and often directly antagonistic of one another. Thus, this paper argues that in order to make sense of the seemingly multiple and contradictory political strategies deployed in the operation of the US/Mexico border wall, we have to understand the coexistence and intertwinement of at least three distinct types of power at work there: the sovereign exclusion of illegal life, the disciplinary detention of surveilled life, and the biopolitical circulation of migratory life. By doing so this paper offers an original contribution to two major areas of study: in Foucault studies this paper expands the existing literature on Foucault by analyzing the crossroads of power particular to the US/Mexico border wall, which has not yet been done, and in border studies this Foucauldian approach offers a unique political analysis that goes beyond the critique of sovereignty and toward an analysis of coexisting strategies of power.

Cesar, Gabriel T and Kevin A. Wright. 2013. "That Ain’t the Only Way to Be:  The Reintegration of Dennis “Cutty” Wise From an  Individual-, Community-, and System-Level Perspective" In Peter A. Collins and David C. Brody (Eds.) "Crime and Justice in the City as Seen through The Wire" (pp. 259-278). Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press. 

Significant studies such as William Whyte’s (1943) Street Corner Society, Ned Polsky’s (1971) Hustlers, Beats and Others, Ken Pryce’s (1979) Endless Pressure, Patricia Adler’s (1985) Wheeling and Dealing and Dick Hobbs’ (1989) Doing the Business, (to name just a few), provide valuable insights into the challenges the authors faced in the course of their research on crime and/or deviance. Doing research with criminals or deviants has inspired much academic reflection, particularly in respect of the risks and dangers which researchers (may) face in these contexts, as well as the host of ethical, legal and moral dilemmas they provoke. This is also reflected in the works of Lyng (1990) and Ferrell and Hamm (1998) who suggest that criminologists engage in ‘edgework’ (which involves us experientially immersing ourselves in the risky activities and behaviours of the culture in question). These works mainly focus on research with underprivileged subjects or, to put it more bluntly, those groups perceived as powerless – the underdogs. By contrast, researchers investigating other topics under the remit of criminology, such as those which involve the powerful; institutional mechanisms of control, regulation and surveillance (including prisons, courts, police, social work settings, CCTV rooms and so on), have tended to remain quiet regarding their experiences. It could be posited that adopting a reflexive approach when conducting research in these politically charged settings is more problematic. However, this is precisely why, as criminologists, we must openly acknowledge, reflect upon, and share, our experiences of research in various settings, particularly if, and when, internal or external power dynamics are at play. The aim of Reflexivity in Criminological Research is to contribute to, advance and consolidate discussions of the ranges of methods and approaches in criminology through the presentation of international case studies in which the authors reflect upon their experiences with both powerless and/or powerful individuals/groups

There is ferment in the social sciences. After years of sustained effort to build a science of society modelled on the natural sciences, that project, long treated with suspicion by some, is now openly being rethought. A critical intervention in this period of reflection was Making Social Science Matter (MSSM) by Bent Flyvbjerg, published in 2001. In that book Flyvbjerg challenged the very idea of social science as a science modelled on the natural sciences. Flyvbjerg argued that, as the social sciences study human interactions that involve human consciousness, volition, power and reflexivity, attempts to build generalizable, predictive models such as those for the natural world are misplaced and even futile.