Crime Wave Research Articles

“I don’t like guns but having one in Winnipeg right now would feel safer”: Crime, liquor theft, and online fantasies of punishment and control

In 2018–2019, there was a surge of local news media coverage in Winnipeg, Canada about what news media described as “brazen” liquor store theft. Online discussion and social media platforms provided segments of the public with opportunities to assert claims about the causes and consequences of this putative crime wave as well as potential solutions within and outside the penal system. These online fora allowed internet communities to imagine new methods of crime control and vocalize a range of emotions about crime and punishment. Employing a thematic analysis of reader comments across several online and social media platforms, we argue that these online discussions about liquor theft provide an empirical case study of the new digital media logic that facilitates highly volatile and short-lived moral panics or “firestorms.” We draw upon cultural criminology scholarship to highlight the centrality of emotion in online discussions on liquor theft. By making emotion central, online discussions provide a clearer glimpse into the displaced rage that is thought to set moral panics in motion. We argue that online platforms constitute an important medium to understand how people imagine and envision punishment and control, as well as how they construct/conceive of offenders and the purported problems underlying crime.

Immigration in the 2024 US presidential election campaign: policy stalemate, disinformation, and a call for mass deportation

Immigration has been one of the most contentious and defining issues of the 2024 presidential election, rivaled only by economic policy and national security. The Republican candidate, former President Donald Trump, has largely succeeded in setting the terms of the debate – hammering away at his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, with hyperbolic claims that she supports “open borders” and false accusations that the US is experiencing a wave of violent crime committed by migrants. Trump’s immigration rhetoric relies increasingly on lies, misinformation, and racist stereotypes. But his claim that immigration is “out of control” – and his insistence that firm measures are needed to address it – have become central to the Republican platform, and one of Trump’s most frequently repeated campaign promises is that he will deport millions of undocumented immigrants soon after taking office. Why is immigration such a controversial issue in the US? How have the different administrations dealt with it? Is it an overused issue in this campaign?

One crime wave, three hypotheses: using interrupted time series to examine the unintended consequences of criminal justice reform, computer tablet recording of crime and a long-term hot spots policing programme

After sustained reductions in robberies and thefts in 2016, the city of Montevideo, Uruguay, experienced a sudden increase in these crimes in late 2017. Using interrupted time series regressions, and controlling for seasonality using ARIMA models, we investigated three potential explanations for this increase: (1) the failure of a hot spots policing program to maintain crime decreases; (2) improved crime recording by police patrols using tablet computers; and (3) the change from an inquisitorial to an adversarial criminal justice procedure. We found that the hot spots policing program that began in April 2016 continued to be associated with crime reductions during 2017, that the increases observed after November 2017 were strongly associated with the new criminal justice procedure, and that tablets had a positive, albeit negligible, effect. The findings illustrate that criminal justice reforms, desirable as such reforms may be, can have unintended consequences on crime levels.

Social Media English in Nigeria and the New Crime Wave

This study explores the social media English in Nigeria and the new crime wave. Utilizing the theoretical frameworks of systemic functional linguistics and forensic linguistics, the study adopts a qualitative data analysis approach to examine the linguistic devices used in the portrayal of criminal activities. The research delves into the language of crime, reviewing related literature and analyzing selected posts for their use of specific linguistic devices. These devices include slang and code words, metaphors and euphemisms, sensational headlines, and biased language. The study reveals that these linguistic devices play a crucial role in the construction and perception of criminal activities on social media platforms. Slang and code words, for instance, often serve as a form of coded communication among criminals, while metaphors and euphemisms are used to downplay the severity of criminal acts or to disguise illegal activities. Sensational headlines and biased language, on the other hand, can influence public opinion and perpetuate stereotypes about crime and criminals. This study contributes to the understanding of how language is used in the context of crime on social media platforms, offering valuable insights for law enforcement agencies, policy makers, and researchers in the fields of linguistics and criminology. It underscores the need for further research in this area, particularly in the era of digital communication where language plays a pivotal role in shaping societal narratives about crime.

Gibsland, Louisiana’s memoryscape of Bonnie and Clyde: Putting the past in the present

A memoryscape is a place where memories are anchored in space. One cannot travel back in time to when an event occurred, but one can travel in space to where an event occurred. On 23 May 1934, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were ambushed and killed near Gibsland, Louisiana, by a posse of law enforcement officers. There is a monument at the ambush’s location, and since 1993, there has been the Authentic Bonnie and Clyde Festival commemorating the ambush and culminating with its re-enactment. The re-enactment demonstrates putting the past into the present, and while watching it, one feels being taken back in time to when the ambush occurred and experiences living history. The ambush’s re-enactment commemorates not only the end of Bonnie and Clyde’s crime wave but also the beginning of the end of the Public Enemy Era.

Crime and Policing in Africa: Tactical Politics, Authoritarianism, and the Rule of Law

In 2020, Nigerian youths took to the streets to demand the disbanding of the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS), a unit of the Nigerian Police with a long history of extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances, extortion, torture, and other atrocities. The Nigerian government created the division in 1992 following the killing of an army colonel, under the pretense of fighting a crime wave which was sweeping the country. In the “societies of enmity” (Achille Mbembe, “The Society of Enmity” [Radical Philosophy Vol. 200, No. 1], 23–25) we live in today, the growing militarization of law enforcement in the context of the “war on crime” has put even solid democracies in grave danger and continues to justify authoritarianism and military regimes worldwide. The expansion of state powers through the violent exploitation of its growing “margins,” (V. Das and D. Poole, eds., Anthropology at the Margins of the State [School of American Research Press, 2004]) tarnished with the signs of danger, illegality, and precariousness, has shown that bureaucratic power and state violence walk hand in hand in instituting highly unequal but economically viable social orders in postcolonial Africa and elsewhere. Those movements configure an emergent threat coming from a tactical level of political action and show that contemporary political power can indeed emerge from the tip of a machine gun, proving Walter Benjamin’s critique of Hannah Arendt’s famous image (“Critique of Violence” in Deconstruction, a Reader [Routledge, 2017], 62–70).

Bonnie and Clyde’s crime wave: social banditry, social change, and political geography

Bonnie and Clyde’s crime wave: social banditry, social change, and political geography

Crime Waves and Human Rights Violations in Lagos Cityscape in Selected Nigerian Short Stories

this study investigates the normality of crimes and human rights violations in the selected short stories of Jude Dibia, Chika Unigwe and Nnedi Okorafor as representatives of 21st century Nigerian short stories that thematise criminality and desecration of human rights. Specifically, the paper explores various crimes such as armed robbery, hooliganism, bribery, extortion, murder, security agents’ connivance with criminal elements and the resultant human rights violations. Deploying postcolonial urban theory as its launching pad to interrogate the postcolonial realities within Lagos spatiality and crime wave, the paper shows that the police play major role in the escalation of crimes and perpetuation of human rights abuses through collusion with armed robbers and engaging in bribery and corruption, conspiracy theory, brutality, concealment of crimes and criminals and extrajudicial killings. Considering its cosmopolitan nature, Lagos is metaphorised as the microcosm of the nation; thus, realities within Lagos cityscape expose happenings in the nation at large. The socio-economic anomic situations depicted in the stories justify their post-independence disillusionment and jeremiad.

The Past and Present of Crime Research inSocial Forces: How the Sociology of Crime Lost its Roots—And Found Them Again

AbstractThe centennial of Social Forces provides an opportunity to examine change and stability in crime research in one of sociology’s oldest journals. Since the first issue of Social Forces in 1922, crime and punishment have transitioned from marginal topics subsumed under the umbrella of deviance studies to a central research area. This essay traces the intellectual development of crime research as captured in Social Forces’ pages and contrasts it with the growing independence of criminology as an academic field. To do so, I employ two analyses. First, I examine the topical classifications provided by Moody, Edelmann and Light (2022). Second, I expand upon these classifications by using structural topic models (STM) to detect clusters of crime research activity in Social Forces’ abstracts and group them into “eras” of crime research. The analysis reveals a circular development of crime research in Social Forces that reflects broader trends in the sociology of crime. 1 Themes of power, stratification, and punishment oriented early studies on crime. Research attention focused on inequality within the justice system, the effects of juvenile justice contact on criminal labeling and recidivism, and inequalities resulting from justice system contact. However, as crime rates rose throughout the Western world, Social Forces articles sought to explain the causes of crime and evaluate policies designed to cull the crime wave. In recent decades, persistent crime declines combined with growing concern with an oversized prison system have refocused attention on incarceration and its collateral consequences, especially for adolescent well-being and racial and class inequalities. In this way, crime research in Social Forces has returned to core themes of power and stratification that motivated early work in the sociology of crime. It has also distanced itself from individual etiology and policy studies that once dominated the journal’s pages and that continue to appear in specialist outlets.

Contributions of the School in Teaching and Learning of Norms and Values in Nigeria

The paper examined the contributions of the school as an agent of socialization in the teaching and learning of norms and values which are two essential ingredients that can make a society secure and safe. It is revealed in the paper that, the current status of high crime waves as witnessed in society (i.e youth restiveness, examination malpractice, bribery and corruption, human trafficking drug abuse, banditry, kidnappings) among others, could be minimised if not eradicated when the school effectively and efficiently contributes its role. Teaching democratic principles such as: rule of laws, due process, liberty, peaceful coexistence, tolerance, teaching the need to appreciate the virtue of hard work as against the get rich quick syndrome among others, are some of the ways the school contributes to the teaching and learning of norms and values in Nigerian.

Using Affective Domain Components in Tackling Insecurity in Nigeria: Implications for National Development

Cognitive, Psychomotor and Affective domain are the three domains of learning. The paper identified that there is zero implementation of Affective Domain in Nigeria schools. The study discussed the inability of administrators and teachers to include affective domain ratings of students in schools as part of their overall performance. And that this is part of the reasons for increased violence and crime in the country. The study therefore recommends that policy makers and administrators should ensure that ratings and assessment of students in the Affective Domain should constitute part of their overall performance for better performance, reduction in crime wave, and for national development. Keywords: Affective Domain, Tackling, Insecurity DOI: 10.7176/JCSD/68-04 Publication date: November 30 th 2022

The Afterlife of Mass Incarceration, or What Does It Mean to Need a “Brute” in the Twenty-First Century?

The Afterlife of Mass Incarceration, or What Does It Mean to Need a “Brute” in the Twenty-First Century?

“The darkest time in our history”: An analysis of news media constructions of liquor theft in Canada’s settler colonial context

In September 2018, there was a surge of news stories about liquor store theft in Winnipeg, Canada that resulted in public and political calls for action, and ultimately led to the introduction of a range of new security and surveillance measures at government owned liquor stores. This brief news cycle provided opportunities for various social actors, politicians, and authorities to make claims about the nature of crime and society more broadly. This article analyzes recent news media coverage of liquor store theft in Winnipeg, Canada and the social construction of an ostensibly new crime trend in the city: “brazen” liquor store thefts. We employ a qualitative content analysis of news articles about liquor store theft published in local Winnipeg news media between 2018 and 2020 (n = 147). Drawing on the social constructionist paradigm, and Fishman’s conceptualization of “crime waves,” we argue that the framing of liquor theft via news media reflects longstanding cultural tropes and myths about crime, as well as hinting at but never fully confronting, deeply engrained colonial and racialized stereotypes. This paper contributes to our understanding of the ways putative social problems are made intelligible in the media. We demonstrate how “crime waves” are shaped by and shape dominant tropes about crime, safety, and citizenship. We argue that something as mundane as liquor theft reveals much about the historical, colonial and social roots of crime in local and national contexts.

Police and crime control in Urban Jigawa State, Nigeria (2014–2016)

The rise in crime wave in Nigerian urban centres in the wake of the 2015 general elections and 2016 economic recession, undoubtedly accentuated the need for improved security. This study examines the role of the police in controlling crime in urban Jigawa State, Nigeria, from 2014 to 2016. Most previous studies that appraised the role of the police in crime control in Nigeria relied on data from public respondents/participants. However, this study used primary data collected from public and police samples drawn from three purposively selected urban areas of the state. Results indicate that residents are not in the habit of reporting crime to the police. It also reveals that the perception of the effectiveness of the police in crime control in the study area is relatively high as majority of the respondents rated the effectiveness as either good or average. It also found that the crime control capabilities of the police were hampered by inadequate manpower and modern equipment. The study underscores the need for the police as well as the National Orientation Agency to educate the public more on the need to regularly and promptly report criminal activities to the police. It also recommends the prompt charging of cases not resolved in-house at the police level to court, improved police intelligence gathering mechanism and more periodic meetings with different segments of the public to help improve public perception of the police in the study area.

Corruption and Challenges of National Security in North Central Nigeria: An Appraisal

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to find out the major reasons for the existence of corruption in contemporary Nigeria, the existing relationship between corruption and Nigeria's national security and whether corruption has effects on Nigeria's national security. Methodology: The methodology adopted was descriptive survey carried out in North Central States region of Nigeria using primary method of data collection via random sampling technique and data was analyzed with the aid of SPSS software which percentages, mean and standard deviation were computed using one-way ANOVA to test the hypothesis in order to determine the relationship between variables. Results: The study found out that corruption significantly affects Nigerians national security and further revealed that lack of effective institutional checks was one of the major factors that gave rise to corruption, while corruption has impeded development in Nigeria by promoting poverty, inequality, unemployment, rising wave of crime and other social vices. The findings recommended strong institutional checks in the fight against corruption at all levels, depoliticization of anti-graft agencies, election of citizens with proven integrity into positions of authority and aggressive move by government at all levels to improve the welfare of citizens by poverty reduction, education and promoting equal opportunities to social and economic survival. Unique Contribution to Theory and Practice: The study has contributed in adding value to the existing pool of knowledge and policy makers in efforts to win the fight against corruption and insecurity in Nigeria particularly in North Central States which have been badly hit by corruption and insecurity as well as underdeveloped.

Did Egypt’s post-uprising crime wave increase support for authoritarian rule?

Countries transitioning from autocracy to democracy often struggle to maintain law and order. Yet relatively little is known about how increasing crime rates impact public support for authoritarian leadership during a transition. We find an empirical relationship between rising crime and support for authoritarian leadership in Egypt following the 2011 uprisings. Analysis of original crime data from Egypt suggests that electoral districts exposed to larger year-on-year changes in localized patterns of crime were more likely to vote for the ‘strongman’ candidate in Egypt’s first, and only, free and fair presidential election in 2012. We also analyze survey data which shows that Egyptians who were highly concerned about crime were more likely to express support for a ‘strong leader’ as well as for military rule, even after controlling for a broad set of covariates. This research illustrates how instability triggered by political transitions can have negative implications for democratic consolidation.

INVESTIGATING THE CO-CONNECTION BETWEEN URBAN IMAGES AND THE PREVALENCE OF CRIME INCIDENCE IN CALABAR, CROSS RIVER STATE, NIGEIRA

In recent time, urban crime wave have been on the increases in the metropolis of Calabar and environments. The incidence rate is variegated in time and space. The spatial variation or sporadicity dimension is one source of concern as well as the temporal prevalence considering bogus scope of the two parameters the research team settled for the spatial perspectives which informs the choice of the research title “ coconnection between crime prevalence and urban images in Calabar Cross River State” Accordingly, for meaningful and representative coverage the study area was demarcated in city blocks on the paraphenalia of land use/landscape images. From this, urban crime matrix was developed based on filed data collected from the designated locales. A single hypothesis was formulated for data analysis using the technique of chi-square(x2) statistical analysis. The result showed that there was a significant variation in crime wave prevalence inline with urban environmental images in the result therefore was conformal with the geodemograpghic” model of Oluwole and Ojo (2018) which state that similar people with similar characteristics are likely to occupy similar or the same geographic space or locality. This insight lays a solid foundation and urban environmental planning generally.

Rangeland Degradation and Rehabilitation: Indigenous Ecological Knowledge and Perceptions of Pastoralists in the Adamawa High Plateau of Cameroon

Pastoralists’ perceptions and indigenous ecological knowledge of vegetation changes are often ignored despite the debate about their role in rangeland management. Yet, pastoralists are known to have extensive ecological knowledge which could complement scientific knowledge and contribute to improved understanding and sustainable management of savanna Ecosystems. This study was aimed at exploring pastoralists’ perceptions regarding rangeland degradation in the Adamawa highland plateau. More specifically, it was geared to examine their awareness of rangeland degradation, the current status/condition of the rangelands, the drivers and major root causes of degradation, negative consequences, existing management practices, and a methodological framework to make these measures more resilient. The study applied a descriptive statistics method. Focus group discussions, field observations and structured/semi-structured survey questionnaires, were used for data collection, where 240 pastoralists were targeted. The study covered 4 sub-divisions within Faro & Deo District of the plateau based on the intensity of degradation (high, medium and less). The major findings indicate that, the main livelihood activity is cattle rearing and crop cultivation (86.43%) with a certain degree of sedentarization. The major livestock production constraint proved to be insufficient and poor pasture available for cattle (65.71%). A great majority (93.6%) also confirmed that the present rangeland state/condition has become poor and non-conducive for cattle production. This is clearly interpreted in the drastic drop of the ‘cheptel’ (average holdings) and a decline in the quality of pastoral resources/outputs offered to the communities. The major root causes of degradation were overgrazing, bush encroachment, uncontrolled bush fires, soil erosion, population pressure and limited care/attention paid to rangelands. The major socio-economic consequences were poverty, food insecurity, conflicts, loss of cultural heritage, rural exodus and high crime waves. Through their indigenous ecological knowledge pastoralists conserve their rangelands through: mechanical and chemical fight against bush encroachment (Bush clearing and use of selective herbicide respectively), seasonal herd mobility/transhumance, use of paddocking systems, destocking of herds, adoption of improved pastures, and improvement on pastoral hydraulics. Government and NGOs’ supports to rangeland management, proved to be limited in the study area. The degradation of rangelands in the study area is progressing at an alarming rate which gives the impression of difficulty to restore it in the future if proper measures are not taken by stakeholders.

Empathy, solidarity, and the work of law and humanitarianism

Osanloo offers her book as a longitudinal study (p. 29), explaining that she conducted fieldwork and archival research for the project over a full ten years. In many ways, though, the overall thrust of the descriptions and analyses seem less longitudinal or diachronic than synchronic. I say this because the book is light on historical scaffolding relevant to sociocultural and political (as distinct from narrowly legal) developments in the post-Khomeini era. Readers are not provided a clear sense of how Iran’s juridical field as a whole—or the popular sentiments and dispositions bearing on its various features—may have changed in recent decades (or even over the course of her fieldwork) as a consequence of neoliberal globalization or other dynamics, though Osanloo does make clear that the global circulation of rights talk has resulted in a tempering or “seasoning” of some of the more harsh features of Iranian criminal justice and that “[c]alls for compassion and forbearance pervade daily public life” (p. 11). The issues are important both empirically and theoretically because in many parts of the world (e.g., the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Brazil, Chile, Turkey, Egypt, India, China, Malaysia, and the Philippines) processes of neoliberal globalization, like those of democratization and decentralization with which they are sometimes linked, have directly entailed or at least gone hand-in-hand with trends in juridical fields and more encompassing cultural-political (including religious) realms that have been variously characterized as punitive, authoritarian, conservative, and/or illiberal (Pratt et al. 2005; Peletz 2020a, 2020b). One question here concerns the forgiveness work that began to take shape and congeal around the mid-1990s (initially in relation to juvenile offenders), which Osanloo analyzes as unfolding in or comprising a semiautonomous social field in Sally Falk Moore’s (1973) sense. The question is whether developments in these areas, which have many features Foucault (2007) characterized as “pastoral,” constitute a more-or-less quarantined exception either with regard to changes in the more encompassing juridical field or with respect to the relative scope, force, and thrust of “penal populism” (Pratt 2007). (We don’t hear much about fear, anxiety, or panic associated with crime waves, state repression, or the challenges and precarity of everyday life.) Another question, related but analytically distinct, is the extent to which the growth and greater cultural salience of forgiveness work in recent decades may have directly or indirectly informed dynamics in other realms of the juridical field and/or in popular sentiment bearing on the punishment of variously defined transgressions other than murder and rape, especially drug offenses and what are construed as crimes against the state (where forbearance with regard to capital punishment is not an option). This is one area where Bourdieu’s work on social fields, especially juridical fields (Bourdieu 1987), might be more generative than Moore’s notion of the law as a semiautonomous social field, particularly if it is combined with insights gleaned from the literature on “the new punitiveness” (Pratt et al. 2005) and penal populism. More generally, if Iran’s criminal justice system as a whole has become “kinder and gentler”—or at least not significantly more punitive—in recent decades, it would be interesting to hear how and why it has bucked the exceedingly widespread (though not universal) global trends.

Walking While Indian, Walking While Black: Policing in a Colonial City

Abstract This article focuses on policing reforms that took place during the last decades of colonial rule in Guatemala City. Based on an examination of criminal cases and legislation, it argues that these changes prompted a policing wave—rather than a crime wave—at the end of the colonial period. In this critical moment, police placed particular emphasis on arresting nonwhite men for crimes related to vagancia (being unemployed) and carrying weapons. Broadly written bans ensured that all manner of instruments—even work tools—could be construed as instruments of violence. The result of this targeted policing was the creation of a criminal profile inflected by race, gender, and class; criminals, the new policing regulations argued, were nonwhite, laboring men. This article argues that there is a longer history of racialized policing, starting in the late eighteenth century, and methods and mindsets developed then have created a legacy of colonial policing into the present.