Criminology & Criminal Justice

At-Risk Units (ARUs) are dedicated facilities established in New Zealand prisons to assist those considered to be ‘at risk’ of self-harm or suicide. Their remit is ostensibly care-based and rights-conscious, with authorities noting that ARUs preserve the ‘right to life’. Drawing upon research within two correctional sites, alongside analysis of recent documents from oversight bodies and courts, this article considers ARU operations. It is argued that, all too often, ARUs have undermined humane practices towards suicidal or ‘at-risk’ prisoners. Four problems are apparent: (1) ARUs are misused and overused in such a way that secure punishment, rather than care, is prioritized; (2) within a context of ‘lesser eligibility’, ARUs operationalize degrading conditions and treatments towards prisoners; (3) humane treatments are further diminished by a correctional approach to prioritize legal or bureaucratic compliance; and (4) authorities avoid institutional sanction for prisoner harms or deaths, particularly through an emphasis on personal responsibilization or blame. The end-result is that ARUs are regularly operationalized in ways that exacerbate risks and diminish rights for prisoners. A question remains about their fundamental use as an appropriate response to those who suffer mental health distress within penal environments.

Youth Justice policy in Scotland, under the ‘Whole System Approach’ (WSA), progressively espouses maximum diversion, minimum intervention and the use of alternatives to custody wherever possible. Yet Scotland still has one of the highest imprisonment rates in Europe. To explore this discrepancy, this qualitative study used individual interviews and focus groups to document the experiences of 14 young males aged 16 and 17 in one Scottish young offenders’ institution on their journeys to custody. Their experiences reveal the significant challenges faced in understanding, navigating and complying with the justice system, and also indicate that the consistent implementation of WSA is problematic. The disconnection between the intentions of the WSA policy and the practical implementation means that these vulnerable young people are not fully benefiting from the WSA. This article therefore highlights important gaps between policy, practice and lived experience in youth justice in Scotland.

This article analyses 10 years (2004–2014) of An Garda Síochána controlled drug data to investigate the impact of economic recession and globalization on the Irish illicit drug market. The limited international literature on recessions and drug markets suggests that economic downturns can increase both drug consumption and dealing. Gardaí data may, however, suggest that the 2008 Great Recession reduced drug use and dealing, yet increased the cultivation and manufacture of drugs: trends which largely conflict with the international literature. Two testable hypotheses are drawn from the data: (1) net consumption and trade of illicit drugs were reduced by emigration triggered by the Great Recession; (2) the Great Recession forced an adaptation in the market which sped up the process towards import substitution of cannabis cultivation. The article concludes by investigating how recent changes highlight the globalized nature of Irish drug markets before proposing avenues for further research.

In the burgeoning criminological literature on security, risk and preventive justice which has followed the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers, ‘contagion’ or the deleterious effect of counterterrorist policies on the ordinary criminal law has been the subject of some discussion, mostly in the context of the threat which such ‘exceptional’ policies pose to mainstream procedural values. This article seeks to build on this literature through an examination of the impact of post 9/11 counterterrorism law and policy on the ordinary criminal justice system in France. Given the extent to which counterterrorist law now encroaches on various aspects of French criminal law, the argument is made for greater criminological attention to be paid to the ‘trickle-down’ effect of extraordinary law on the ordinary business of the criminal justice system.

Police agencies are often seen as reliant on the public to give them the authority and power necessary to carry out their responsibilities, including controlling crime. As many police agencies begin to take on counterterrorism functions, this empowerment of the police is necessary in their fight against terrorism. To our knowledge, no study to date has focused on the empowerment of the police in their counterterrorism role and the factors that influence the willingness of the public to afford the police discretionary authority in terrorism matters. Using a sample of Israeli Jewish adults, we assess the impact of legitimacy-based evaluations, as well as fear of terrorism and political ideologies, on the public’s willingness to empower the police to handle homeland security matters. Police legitimacy and political ideology have a direct impact on police empowerment, while procedural justice, police performance, distributive fairness, and fear of victimization by terrorism also have indirect effects.

This article proposes an understanding of war and criminology through the use of the creative sources offered by literature. These sources, while communicating exemplary meanings and morals, can help describe and comprehend the social and cultural landscapes of war and crime. Stendhal and Tolstoy are chosen as classical major providers of such sources, and an analysis of their respective novels, The Charterhouse of Parma and War and Peace, will offer support to the idea that the inclusion of war in criminological thinking is timely as well as necessary.

This article explores the questions posed for criminology when war and terror are seen through a gendered lens. Following Barberet this lens demands blurring the boundaries between peace-time, war-time and post-conflict situations. These boundaries frame the nomos of criminology and once challenged the connections to be made between the ‘callousness’ of femicide and the ‘callousness’ of environmental destruction are exposed. Using photographs as the vehicle through which such a challenge can be maintained, the gendered analysis that follows poses conceptual and methodological questions for the discipline which ultimately demands a reimagining of the contribution of criminology and victimology to understanding gendered violence(s).

This article explores the relationships between war and representation through the use of visual images, and takes a cue from the French cultural theorist Paul Virilio, who has written extensively on the militarization of vision in ways that have yet to be fully recognized in criminology. It then outlines some of the disputes surrounding documentary photography, not least since one of the main factors driving the development of the medium was the desire to record warfare, before turning to recent efforts to reconfigure the violence of representation by focusing on what has been termed ‘aftermath photography’, where practitioners deliberately adopt an anti-reportage position, slowing down the image-making process and arriving well after the decisive moment. This more contemplative strategy challenges the oversimplification of much photojournalism and the article concludes by reflecting on how military-turned-consumer technologies are structuring our everyday lives in more and more pervasive ways.