Crime

This short paper analyses the ongoing public debate on  the state of citizen security in Argentina and underscores the need for improving the quality of public discussions. It presents evidences from comparative research on the levels of crime in Argentina and on the failure of theories that assume that economic growth automatically leads to lower crime rates.

Based on fieldwork involving unobtrusive observations and interview data collected from young male prisoners participating in a cognitive-therapy program, this article explores how consumerism interpolates the treatment setting and the cultural views of racially marginalized adolescents. While recent literature intimates that such men will possess idiosyncratic cultural ‘‘repertoires’’ or ‘‘worldviews,’’ we find that many young prisoners are strongly invested in consumerism. This is evident in the central role that money, commodities, and lifestyles play in their lives. We also find that correctional officers are just as wedded to consumerism, yet castigate the young men for how they make sense of what it means to live in a consumerist world. In our view, this embodies a peculiar form of social injustice that we call ‘‘consumerist entrapment’’: Young men are strongly encouraged to adopt cultural orientations and consumerist behaviors for which they are subsequently penalized.

Research indicates that children are born with aggressive tendencies which they learn to control through early socialization. A small group, however, shows high aggression levels early on which remain stable throughout their life. Physical aggression is an epiphenomenon in a wide variety of antisocial behaviour, which wrecks the life of the individual as well as having large and negative consequences on society. The premise of this article is that physical aggression can be successfully influenced, but that there is a small window of opportunity in which to do this. Five rules about interventions which are more likely to be successful are presented: 1) the need for adequate evaluation, 2) the increased benefits of early prevention rather than later intervention, 3) intervention in multiple domains of the child’s life, 4) the importance of paying attention to treatment fidelity and professional execution, and 5) The current lack of substantive guidelines for specific interventions types. Within this context we review seven types of interventions to prevent physical aggression including: (1) promotion of physical health of mother and child, (2) increase family income, (3) increase access to existing services, (4) home visiting, (5) childcare, (6) preschool programs and (7) improving parenting. We conclude that promoting the physical health of mother and child should be more actively pursued, though additional experimental evidence is needed to clarify the relationship between health and social behaviour. An increase in family income, however, was not found by itself to help prevent the occurrence of physical aggression. An increase in access to existing services does not seem to reduce physical aggression, possibly because of the variable quality of these services. There is strong evidence that nurse home visitation programs, like the Nurse-Family Partnership, as well as some of the more rigorous preschool programs like the High/Scope Perry Preschool program, can be effective in deterring a child’s trajectory into violence, though more research in both these areas is needed and this research should be done by those who are not connected to these programs or past evaluations. Finally, we find that improving parenting through programmes like the Parent-Child Interaction Therapy programme can reduce the likelihood of violent behaviour, though, again, more experimental evidence is necessary. Overall, we argue that more experimental studies are necessary to better guide policy.

"This book constitutes the most comprehensive and authoritative single work on crime and punishment in contemporary Greece. Bringing together empirical and theoretical work, it sheds light on such diverse themes as crime, fear of crime and public punitiveness; media, crime and criminal justice; immigration, crime and criminal justice; youth and crime; corruption; drugs, crime and criminal justice; organised crime and political violence; sex, trafficking and crime policy; honour, violence and crime; the impact of the EU on criminal justice; surveillance; police and policing; youth justice and probation; the adult judicial system; and prisons and parole. Primary chapters are followed by discussant pieces from specialists of jurisdictions elsewhere in Europe and North America, a format designed to highlight the mutual relevance of criminological research on Greece and that addressing other contexts internationally. Contributors (in alphabetical order): Claudia Aradau, Efi Avdela, Margaret E. Beare, Trevor Bennett, Didier Bigo, Paraskevi S. Bouklis, Peter Bratsis, Leonidas K. Cheliotis, Carolyn Côté-Lussier, Monica den Boer, Monica Gerber, Kevin D. Haggerty, Jonathan Jackson, Vassilis Karydis, Roy D. King, Effi Lambropoulou, Rob I. Mawby, Valsamis Mitsilegas, John Muncie, Nicola Padfield, Giannis Panousis, Charis Papacharalambous, Ioannis Papageorgiou, Georgios Papanicolaou, Angelika Pitsela, Robert Reiner, Vincenzo Ruggiero, Minas Samatas, Pieter Spierenburg, Michael Tonry (foreword), Joanna Tsiganou, Sophie Vidali, Sappho Xenakis.


Έγκλημα και ποινή στη σύγχρονη Ελλάδα: διεθνείς συγκριτικές προοπτικές

Το παρόν βιβλίο αποτελεί το πιο περιεκτικό και έγκυρο έργο για το έγκλημα και την ποινή στη σύγχρονη Ελλάδα. Συνδυάζοντας θεωρητική και εμπειρική έρευνα, αναλύει μια ευρεία ποικιλία θεμάτων, από τις ποσοτικές και ποιοτικές τάσεις του εγκλήματος έως τις συμπεριφορές απέναντι στο έγκλημα και την ποινική δικαιοσύνη, καθώς και τις πολιτικές και πρακτικές που υιοθετούνται από την ποινική δικαιοσύνη. Τα κυρίως κεφάλαια ακολουθούνται από σχόλια επιστημόνων που ειδικεύονται σε άλλες χώρες της Ευρώπης και σε χώρες της Βορείου Αμερικής, προκειμένου έτσι να αναδειχθεί η αμοιβαία συνάφεια μεταξύ της εγκληματολογικής έρευνας για την Ελλάδα και της έρευνας που αφορά σε άλλα περιβάλλοντα διεθνώς.



Contents

Michael Tonry
Foreword ix

Sappho Xenakis and Leonidas K. Cheliotis
Introduction xiii

Part I Experiencing Crime xix

Leonidas K. Cheliotis and Sappho Xenakis
Crime, Fear of Crime and Punitiveness 1

Jonathan Jackson, Monica Gerber and
Carolyn Côté-Lussier
Commentary 45

Giannis Panousis
Media, Crime and Criminal Justice 65

Robert Reiner
Commentary 77

Vassilis Karydis
Immigration and Crime 87

Didier Bigo
Commentary 111

Ioannis Papageorgiou
Youth and Crime 123

Leonidas K. Cheliotis
Commentary 151

Part II Topical Crime Issues 169

Effi Lambropoulou
Corruption 171

Peter Bratsis
Commentary 197

Joanna Tsiganou
Drugs, Crime and Criminal Justice 207

Trevor Bennett
Commentary 231

Sappho Xenakis
Organised Crime and Political Violence 241

Vincenzo Ruggiero
Commentary 289

Margaret E. Beare
Commentary 297

Georgios Papanicolaou and Paraskevi S. Bouklis
Sex, Trafficking and Crime Policy 307

Claudia Aradau
Commentary 339

Efi Avdela
Honour, Violence and Crime 353

Pieter Spierenburg
Commentary 375

Part III Reactions to Crime 383

Valsamis Mitsilegas
The Impact of the European Union on the Criminal Justice System 385

Monica den Boer
Commentary 413

Minas Samatas
Surveillance 421

Kevin D. Haggerty
Commentary 443

Sophie Vidali
Police and Policing 453

Rob I. Mawby
Commentary 491

Angelika Pitsela
Youth Justice and Probation 505

John Muncie
Commentary 529

Charis Papacharalambous
The Adult Judicial System 537

Nicola Padfield
Commentary 551

Leonidas K. Cheliotis
Prisons and Parole 557

Roy D. King
Commentary 593

Notes on Contributors 607"

En 1957, l’Aboriginal Welfare Board (l’organisation qui avait la charge des populations aborigènes de l’État des New South Wales) commençait à s’interroger sur le bien-fondé des « mesures législatives restrictives et discriminatoires à l’encontre des Aborigènes », dont il pensait qu’elles pouvaient entrer en contradiction avec sa politique officielle d’assimilation. Il décida donc d’organiser un sondage afin d’obtenir l’opinion de tous ceux qui étaient « étroitement associés au bien-être et à la conduite des Aborigènes », et en particulier la police. Le Board ne demanda pas simplement aux policiers de donner leur avis sur la question, mais aussi de fournir quelques chiffres au sujet de la population aborigène dans leur secteur d’intervention. L’article propose un examen critique de ces statistiques et de ce qu’elles nous apprennent des relations entre les Aborigènes et la police, avant de montrer comment, peu à peu, de nouvelles interprétations des données en question ont émergé dans le débat public, en particulier à travers la montée des revendications des Aborigènes contre les discriminations.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the silence of an assassin was taken as a sign of bitterness, brooding, and anger. In this paper, I want to examine the construction of the McKinley assassination by looking less at the assassin, Leon Czolgosz, and more at how the social and medical sciences at the turn of the century derived meaning out of Czolgosz’s silences, his words, and his body. In particular, I want to understand how the social and medical sciences created a discourse – a set of rules and practices, an articulation of the expectations, representations, and background of danger – out of the assassination that had implications for criminal justice in the twentieth century.

"The goal of this dissertation is to analyze the public safety policy in the state of São Paulo between 1995 and 2006 – respectively, Mario Covas', Geraldo Alckmin's and Cláudio Lembo's administration – under the perspective of the agenda-setting.

It attempted to map the relevant actors in the public security arena, identifying their preferences facing the problems of the area and alternatives of response, and their relative position; the interaction between those actors, identifying the conflicts and cooperation; the results and the learning of the actors, which tend to change the dynamics of interaction in subsequent moments.

The results point, on one hand, to the existence of “three agendas” of Public Security, representing three distinct instances of the Public Security policy, which coincided with the three administrations of that secretary in the period of study. On the other hand, we observed important continuities as well, the learning of actors and an incremental approach of policies.

Other actors were shown to be relevant to determine the outcomes of the policies, notably the state governors, who defined the tone of the policy in a broader manner, and the chiefs of the Civil and the Military police, who act as a connecting link between the political realm (agenda setting) and the bureaucratic realm (its implementation)."

"There is a stark contrast between heightened perceptions of risk associated with drug-facilitated sexual assault (DFSA) and a lack of evidence that this is a widespread threat. Through surveys and interviews with university students in the United Kingdom and United States, we explore knowledge
and beliefs about drink-spiking and the linked threat of sexual assault. University students in both locations are not only widely sensitized to the issue, but substantial segments claim fi rst- or secondhand experience of particular incidents. We explore students ’ understanding of the DFSA threat in
relationship to their attitudes concerning alcohol, binge-drinking, and responsibility for personal safety. We suggest that the drink-spiking narrative has a functional appeal in relation to the contemporary experience of young women’s public drinking."

"Between the mid-nineteenth century and the present, the British police gained and to a large extent maintained a reputation as the 'best in the world', largely due to their ability to maintain order through consent rather than coercion. Much recent research, however, has pointed out that the label 'golden age' is an over-simplification of British policing in this period. This volume reprints a series of the most up-to-date and relevant articles which deal with: the ways that police organisation was structured and reformed; the nature of the policing task in this period; who carried this task out (with particular attention to the arrival of policewomen); and some of the crises and ongoing areas of concern (such as the policing of prostitution) which they faced.



Contents: Introduction; Part I How Police Were Organised: Rotten boroughs: the crisis of urban policing and the decline in municipal independence 1914–64, Chris A. Williams; Some reflections on the report of the Royal Commission on the Police, Jenifer Hart; The independence of Chief Constables, Bryan Keith-Lucas. Part II How Technology Changed Policing: 'Mother, what did policemen do when there weren't any motors?' The law, the police and the regulation of motor traffic in England, 1900–1939, Clive Emsley; Traffic, telephones and police boxes: the deterioration of beat policing in Birmingham, Liverpool and Manchester between the World Wars, Joanne Klein; Policing, planning and the regulation of traffic in post-war Leicester, Shane Ewen; Police surveillance and the emergence of CCTV in the 1960s, Chris A. Williams. Part III What Police Did: The 'ghost squad': undercover policing in London, 1945–49, Mark Roodhouse; Crime does not pay. Thinking again about detectives in the first century of the Metropolitan Police, R.M. Morris; The police and the people: gambling in Salford, 1900–1939, Andrew Davies; Containment: managing street prostitution in London 1918–1959, Stefan Anthony Slater; 'The coffee club menace': policing youth, leisure and sexuality in post-war Manchester, Louise A. Jackson. Part IV Who Police Were: A portrait of a novice constable in the London Metropolitan Police c.1900, Haia Shpayer-Makov; Street, beat and respectability: the culture and self-image of the Victorian and Edwardian urban policeman, Mark Clapson and Clive Emsley; A policewife's lot is not a happy one: police wives in the 1930s and 1940s, Barbara Weinberger; 'Walking the streets in a way no decent woman should': women police in World War I, Philippa Levine; Care or control? The Metropolitan Women Police and child welfare, 1919–1969, Louise A. Jackson. Part V Crises of Policing: Blue-collar job, blue-collar career: policemen's perplexing struggle for a voice in Birmingham, Liverpool, and Manchester,1900–1919, Joanne Klein; Sergeant Goddard: the story of a rotten apple or a diseased orchard?, Clive Emsley; 'A plague on both their houses': fascism, anti-fascism and the police in the 1940s, Graham Macklin; Policing pit closures, 1984–1992, David Waddington and Chas Critcher; The Metropolitan Police: alienation, culture, and relations with London's Caribbean community, (1950–70), James Whitfield; Name index"

Ten years after the publication of Der Vorleser, this article argues that Schlink's work can only be fully understood when viewed in the commercial contexts that currently shape both German and global literatures. By undertaking a comparative analysis of Schlink's debut detective novel, Selbs Justiz (1987) and his international best-seller Der Vorleser (1995), the article explores the problematic tensions generated within these texts by the commercial demands of the literary market-place, and, in a specifically German context, the influence of ‘neue Lesbarkeit’. Special consideration is given to the dynamic between Schlink's works and the reader/consumer, with particular emphasis on the impact of the popular literary codes within the texts. These are explored in conjunction with the reception theory of Wolfgang Iser and Umberto Eco, and through the lens of over two hundred reader responses. The article breaks new ground through its comparative approach, which traces the continuities or ‘narrative patterns’ in Schlink's detective writing and Der Vorleser for the first time. It also offers the first exploration of ‘general’, non-academic reader responses to the works, allowing new insights into the texts’ operations and the tensions these create in relation to the novels’ treatment of the National Socialist past.

"Although the popular myth of Cornish wrecking is well-known within British culture, this book is the first comprehensive,
systematic inquiry to separate out the layers of myth from the
actual practices. Weaving in legal, social and cultural history,
it traces the development of wreck law – the right to salvage
goods washed on shore – and explores the responses of a
coastal populace who found their customary practices increasinglyoutside the law, especially as local individual rights were being curtailed and the role of centralised authority asserted.

This groundbreaking study also considers the myths surrounding wrecking, showing how these developed over time, and how moral attitudes towards wrecking changed. Overall, the picture of evil wreckers deliberately luring ships onto the rocks is dispelled, to be replaced by a detailed picture of a coastal populace – poor and gentry alike – who were involved in a multi-faceted, sophisticated coastal practice and who had their own complex popular beliefs about the harvest and salvage of goods washing ashore from shipwreck."