American skinheads: the criminology and control of hate crime

This article focuses on the roots and ideological sources of the Czechoslovak skinheads. It describes the development of this subculture from the 1980s until the end of the joint Czechoslovak state. It looks at the history of this subculture together with its development trends in the 1990s. The relationship between the skinheads and politics clearly belongs in this account as it was the source of the distinctions between the various groups in the subculture. The themes that were typical of the skinhead subculture are introduced together with an exploration of how they later transformed in line with the political requirements of this part of the youth subculture. This subsequently led to support for nationalist political parties. The article is of a descriptive and analytical nature, and is an attempt to grasp the key processes taking place among the adolescents who identified with the skinhead subculture. Contemporary magazines are the basis of an analysis of the key themes in skinhead subculture in the early 1990s.

The aim of this chapter is to bring some aspects of the recent debate on the transition from ‘Fordism’ to ‘post-Fordism’ to bear on the issues of criminality and crime control. The latter is an area generally ignored by recent debates in social theory about the dynamics of contemporary social change. ‘Fordism’ and Regulation Theory in general derive from studies of the labour process and capital accumulation. Notable attempts to extend the analysis to the level of the state (Jessop 1990, 1994b) have generally focused on welfare and social policy. If it is useful to speak of a transition to the ‘post-Fordist welfare state’ (Burrows and Loader 1994), it may be possible to identify similar dynamics at work in the area of criminal justice and crime control. In what follows I shall firstly elaborate a model of the classic Keynesian Welfare State (KWS) in the context of the expanding post-war economy and explore some of its implications for crime and crime control. Secondly, I shall identify some problems and instabilities in the classic welfare state model in the area of crime and crime control, which might be identified as contradictions to be resolved by any transition to a new form of economy, state, social structure. Finally I shall attempt to examine some of those changes and developments as they are identified by post-Fordism and critically assess their implications for crime and crime control.

Various scholars have noted the priority given to law in the politics of hate violence; violence is the problem and law, more specifically the criminal law, the solution at the ‘heart’ of society. This article seeks to explore some of the gaps and silences in the existing literature and politics that mobilize these ideas and associations. It is the gap sand silences associated with demands for and expectations of criminal justice that will be the particular concern of this article. The demand for law is examined by way of David Garland's recent work on the culture of crime control. His work offers an analysis of the contemporary place of crime control in Anglo-American liberal democracies. A distinctive feature of his analysis is to be found in the way it maps an important paradox of contemporary crime control; its political centrality and an increasing recognition of its limitations. Garland's ‘criminology of the self’ and the ‘criminology of the other’ raise some important challenges for those who advocate resort to crime control. My particular concern is to consider the significance of Garland's work for a contemporary sexual politics that puts violence and criminal justice at the heart of that politics. Feminist, gay and lesbian scholarship first on criminal justice and second, on violence and law will be used to develop a critical dialogue with Garland's analysis and to reflect upon the challenges raised by his insights into contemporary crime control.

Drawing on the research literature on community-based crime control, this article explores the role of extralegal justice as an important complement to more formal legal justice efforts employed by communities to regulate crime. Several structural features and properties of extralegal justice are examined to evaluate its utility as a crime control mechanism. In turn, a number of relevant theoretical approaches are then identified to propose specific avenues to stimulate and guide future analyses of collective crime control and justice at the community level. Specifically, it is argued that extralegal justice is not an isolated and independent mechanism of crime control unconnected to the official legal system. Rather, the authors contend that legal and extralegal justice are both integral to understanding the inner-workings of the relationship between community crime control efforts and the larger social control structure of society.

This article deals with the most violent sub‐group of a variety of contemporary right‐wing extremist organizations ‐ neo‐Nazi skinheads. Specifically, I argue that in order to understand the growth and violent nature of this subculture it is necessary to address the important role played by its main propaganda tool called white power rock and roll. After reviewing the close relationship between this music and the historical development of the present day international neo‐Nazi skinhead network, I examine the main themes found within white power rock and roll by placing them within the context of contemporary right‐wing extremist ideology and noting differences where appropriate. In general, this propaganda seeks to incite violent activity by accentuating perceived threats from a conspiracy of enemies and by constructing a ‘warrior’ subculture that glorifies aggression and sacrifice. Contrary to some predictions, skinheads will continue to present a significant problem in terms of hate crime due to the steady proliferation of producers of this propaganda and profits associated with its distribution.

Teaching and Learning Guide for: Transnational Crime and Transnational Policing

Editors' Introduction The following English translation of Georg Rusche's Arbeitsmarkt und Strafvolzug (1933) appears in print for the first time in Crime and Social Justice. Originally submitted as a research proposal to the Frankfurt Institute of Social Research in 1931, Rusche's article laid the foundation for the book, Punishment and Social Structure, which he later coauthored with Otto Kirchheimer. First published in 1939 by Columbia University Press, the book was reissued in 1968 by Russell and Russell Company. Punishment and Social Structure continues to be neglected by American criminologists. Barnes and Teeters (New Horizons in Criminology, Prentice-Hall, 1943) and Edwin Sutherland (Principles of Criminology, 4th Edition, 1947) are the only two older textbooks that acknowledge its existence. Although Sutherland merely listed the work as suggested reading, Barnes and Teeters at least recognized the importance of the book: a stimulating and provocative work on the subject, Rusche and Kirchheimer have given us a clear idea of how changing social and economic systems fundamentally altered the ways of thinking and acting in relation to crime and punishment. The only American criminologist to employ the thesis developed in Punishment and Social Structure was Thorsten Sellin in Pioneering in Penology (1944) and in his most recent work, Slavery and the Penal System (1976). (See the review essay of Sellin's writings by Greg Shank in Punishment and Penal Discipline, 1980.) Sellin was also familiar with Rusche's Arbeitsmarkt und Strafvollzug (see Sellin's Research Memorandum on Crime in the Depression, Social Science Research Council, Bulletin 27,1937). In a review essay of Punishment and Social Structure in Crime and Social Justice 9 (Spring-Summer 1978), Dario Melossipoints out how Rusche's writings in Chapters II through VIII, which carefully follow the hypothesis laid down in Arbeitsmarkt und Strafvollzug, were reworked by Otto Kirchheimer. Rusche was less than enthusiastic about what had been done to his portion of the book. For this reason, Crime and Social Justice decided to print an English translation of how Rusche originally viewed his plan of research. This English translation is almost a faithful reproduction from the original German. We have, however, modernized the language and idioms without fundamentally altering the original meaning. It is apparent that Rusche was embarking on a radically new kind of analysis and, therefore, his vocabulary and categories of analysis are sometimes unclear and tentative. I. The study of crime and crime control is a fruitful field for sociological research. We are dealing with phenomena here that are determined to a large extent by social forces. Consequently, on the one hand, they practically compel an explanation derived from social relationships; on the other hand, they lend themselves especially well to an illumination of these relationships. The reason for this is that mystification and cover-up, which make the investigation of other social interconnections so very difficult, are to a great extent forced aside by the brutality of these phenomena and by conflicts that must necessarily be fought in the open. Surprisingly, research has made only minimal use of the possibilities offered here. Sociological considerations have been included extensively in the examination of criminological problems. However, they have not been done justice in any way. For, even if the relationship between socioeconomic phenomena and the problems of crime and crime control are obvious to sociologists, there is still a long way to go from the naive recognition of this fact to making use of it in a systematic and scientific fashion. This failure is explained by the fact that, in general, the researchers who devote themselves to criminological problems are not familiar with the fundamental principles of the social sciences, but approach them more from the outside. …

ABSTRACTMinimal studies have investigated individuals’ evaluations of antigay hate crimes and hate crime legislation simultaneously, with most research focusing on one or the other. In a sample of 246 heterosexual undergraduates, the present study found that evaluations of antigay hate crimes and hate crime legislation were unrelated. Higher social dominance orientation (SDO) and crime control orientation scores were associated with more positive evaluations of antigay hate crimes. Positive evaluations of hate crime legislation were associated with more positive attitudes toward gay men and lesbians. We also found that the relationship between SDO and evaluations were mediated by crime control beliefs (for hate crimes evaluations) and antigay attitudes (for hate crime legislation evaluations). The present findings have possible implications for the manner in which organizations advocate for the extension of hate crime legislation to include sexual orientation.

ABSTRACTStudying hate crimes in a country divided along sectarian lines, such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, presents a substantial challenge for researchers. The consequences of hate crimes are multifaceted, and in an environment of institutional crime-control mechanisms that are still developing, these events can negatively affect society at large. Hate crimes often lead to ethnic and religious homogenisation, polarisation, intolerance, overt hatred and violence. This paper provides an overview of research findings relevant to policing hate crimes in post-conflict Bosnia and Herzegovina. Special focus is placed on policing at three levels: government policy (strategies for action at the level of the interior ministries), police policy (the implementation of action strategies in lower organisational units) and police practice (police fieldwork). The study is primarily based on a qualitative approach including interviews, observations and secondary data analyses. The general findings indicate that crime control is inadequate and influenced by an apparent lack of political will to tackle the problem. Our findings also revealed the absence of any systematic approach to deal with hate crimes, which implied numerous problems in policing at all levels. Bosnia and Herzegovina, as a transitional post-conflict country, has a long way ahead in establishing law enforcement institutions that will enable the rule of law, protect human rights and ensure political accountability.

Through the rapid modern growth of private security as a form of “internal” policing, and the preference of many large organizations for handling problems “internally” which might previously have b...

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between social structure and\ncrime in rural counties of the United States. Social structures are assumed to be\nassociated with informal control of crime, and as well, it is assumed that structural\nchanges in rural communities influence changes in the level of informal social control of\ncrime, hence, crime itself. Social disorganization theory provides a useful macro-level\nstudy frame for this study. The county is the study unit. Data from 2,050\nnon-metropolitian counties were collected, using three different sources: the census, the\nFBI Uniform Crime Report, and the USDA Economic Research Service. US Counties\ndata files of the US Bureau of Census provide the demographic and social economic\nvariables for 1990 and 2000.The results show that social structural change in rural\ncommunities reduces social control in rural communities to some extent. The applications\nof findings are discussed in terms of future research on crime in rural communities.

In a world in which media images of crime and deviance proliferate, where every facet of offending is reflected in a 'vast hall of mirrors', Framing Crime: Cultural Criminology and the Image makes sense of the increasingly blurred line between the real and the virtual. Images of crime and crime control have become almost as 'real' as crime and criminal justice itself. The meaning of both crime and crime control now resides, not solely in the essential - and essentially false - factuality of crime rates or arrest records, but also in the contested processes of symbolic display, cultural interpretation, and representational negotiation. It is essential, then, that criminologists are closely attuned to the various ways in which crime is imagined, constructed and framed within modern society. Framing Crime responds to this demand with a collection of papers aimed at helping the reader to understand the ways in which the contemporary 'story of crime' is constructed and promulgated through the image. It also provides the relevant analytical and research tools to unearth the hidden social and ideological concerns that frequently underpin images of crime, violence and transgression. Framing Crime will be of interest to students and academics in the fields of criminology, crime and the media, and sociology.

A large number of studies examine the causes and the consequences of crime control at both the micro and macro levels of analysis. This paper focuses on the macro studies. Most macro research on crime control is loosely organized and weakly linked to theoretical perspectives. Studies are reviewed that relate to one of two general sociological perspectives—structural functionalism and conflict; and these perspectives are contrasted with the economic perspective. Empirical studies are employed both to specify more clearly and to evaluate the causal structures and processes implied by the perspectives.

Recent longitudinal analyses of total police force size, both cross and within jurisdictions, raise serious questions about the explanatory power of the rational choice and conflict theories of crime control. Generally the empirical literature suggests that current levels of police force size are explained well by previous manpower levels and are relatively unresponsive to changes in the social structure of macro social units. This study explores the possibility that the failure to decompose police force size into its component parts may be masking the influence of structural conditions on crime control bureaucracies. We examine changes, over time, in the size of the total and disaggregated (patrol, detective, and civilian) police force in Milwaukee from 1934 to 1987. The findings suggest that police administrators may have more discretion to make adjustments to specific units than to total manpower levels. We discuss the implications of these results for rational choice and conflict theories.

The paper begins with the question: how applicable are European and North American criminological theories to the situation in Asia? It takes a transnational and comparative perspective in relating contemporary and historical trends in crime, crime definition and crime control in a variety of Asian countries that comprise the so-called Confucian sphere. It provides a criminological critique of the ‘Asian values debate’ and, through an analysis of trends in crime, crime definition and crime control in China and Japan, of organised crime across the region, as well as selected examples of state-organised crime, seeks to provide a perspective on the developing criminological discourses of ‘the Orient’. The paper argues that, although cultural aspects are important and interesting in understanding the crime situation in the region, ultimately it is changes in politics and governance, economy and society that are most efficacious in explaining current criminological trends and developments.