Individual Criminal Research Articles

Cinema and the Republic: Filming on the Margins in Contemporary France

Much was made of the banlieue film in work on French cinema in the early 2000s. The sensationalist La Haine (Mathieu Kassovitz, 1995) attracted considerable attention from politicians, notably Jacques Chirac in his presidential campaign of 1995, and from film scholars, who saw it as a symptom of Chirac's theme of fracture sociale. Film scholars have shifted their focus in recent years, partly because of a growing interest in the films of Maghrebi directors in postcolonial contexts, and partly because of a resurgence of interest in political cinema as exemplified by Martin O'Shaughnessy's The New Face of Political Cinema (New York: Berghahn Books, 2007), in which the Dardenne brothers' films are as important as any broad category such as banlieue cinema. Jonathan Ervine's book frequently references O'Shaughnessy's work (as well as Mireille Rosello's essential study, Postcolonial Hospitality: The Immigrant as Guest (Stanford University Press, 2001)), and is a useful addition to it. Ervine focuses on fiction and non-fiction films since 1995 that deal with the plight of immigrants and banlieusards. Feature films and documentaries are taken as more or less equivalent in terms of what they can tell us about the nature of contemporary France. The mixture of genres, however, sometimes leads to strange bedfellows, such as in Chapter 2, which analyses Samir Abdallah's La Ballade des sans-papiers (1997) alongside Michael Haneke's Code inconnu (2000). Understandably, there is little work here on formal and aesthetic issues, such as the nature of documentary filmmaking. Among the handful of fiction films, apart from Code inconnu, we find, predictably, La Haine and Ma 6-T va crack-er (Jean-François Richet, 1997), but, less predictably, films that others have explored in some detail from very different perspectives, such as L'Esquive (Abdellatif Kechiche, 2004) and Bled Number One (Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche, 2006). The majority of the films discussed are documentaries, many of them relatively unknown (such as On n'est pas des marques de vélos (Jean-Pierre Thorn, 2002)), which makes this book a valuable resource. After the introductory first chapter, four major chapters each deal with a key theme. Chapter 2 rightly foregrounds one of the significant issues of the mid-1990s, the sans-papiers. Chapter 3 focuses on films that defend foreign nationals subject to the double peine. Chapter 4 is concerned with representations of the banlieues. The final chapter, which in many ways is the most interesting, shows how certain films shy away from the sensational in their representations of ordinary life in the banlieues. Ervine references the twists and turns of government policy, such as the Loi Pasqua, which led to the criminalization of hardworking individuals; one particularly striking phrase intentionally echoes Simone de Beauvoir, suggesting that ‘on ne naît pas sans-papiers, on le devient’ (p. 37). Underpinning the whole book is the simple question: what is the relevance of republicanism in an increasingly multicultural society? Ervine points out that the reality of daily life in France has less to do with government rhetoric about republican values and national identity than with participation and an acceptance of hybridity.

Individual Criminal Responsibility Under International Environmental Law

Individual Criminal Responsibility Under International Environmental Law

From Offenders to Scumbags: Changing Understandings of Crime and Criminals in Contemporary Ireland

This article examines the changes in the nature of the popular discourse through which crime is understood and that influence how it is responded to in Ireland. It argues that Irish society has moved from an understanding of the causes of crime as rooted in the poor social circumstances of offenders to one that sees crime as rooted in the evil and ruthless nature of criminals. There has been a change from seeing crimes as the product of social conditions and criminals as the product of poor and neglected social environments to one in which crimes are seen as the product of ‘evil’ and individual criminals as ‘evil people’ or in more common parlance as ‘scumbags’. It looks at the factors that have shaped this new consciousness and the way in which this consciousness has interacted with and shaped other aspects of our response to crime, most notably in drugs policy and in our policies on crime victims. Finally it argues that these responses tend to be self-confirming in that they reaffirm rather than challenge the understandings from which they are drawn, hence reinforcing rather than challenging the notion that all criminals are ‘scumbags’.

Legal Advice Shaul Mofaz Individual Criminal Responsibility for Crimes During Operation Rainbow in Gaza in May 2004

Legal Advice Shaul Mofaz Individual Criminal Responsibility for Crimes During Operation Rainbow in Gaza in May 2004

Gender and white‐collar crime: only four percent female criminals

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to present an empirical study of white‐collar crime to create insights into perceptions of potential offenders with a gender perspective.Design/methodology/approachMedia coverage of individual criminals was used as identification for crime cases, which were then found in court rulings.FindingsThe paper is based on empirical research of convicted white‐collar criminals. Out of 161 convicts presented in newspaper articles, there were 153 male and eight female criminals, i.e. 4 per cent.Research limitations/implicationsIt is indeed hard to believe that Norwegian men commit 25 times more white‐collar crimes when compared to Norwegian women. Therefore, it is a question of whether the detection rate for female white‐collar criminals is lower than for male white‐collar criminals.Practical implicationsMore attention might be paid to characteristics of female white‐collar crime in the future.Originality/valueRather than presenting some cases and anecdotal evidence, the paper presents substantial statistical evidence to conclude on gender differences in white‐collar crime.

Allocating Individual Criminal Responsibility to Peacekeepers for International Crimes and other Wrongful Acts committed during Peace Operations

To delve into the realm of peace operations and the allocation of individual criminal responsibility for international crimes and other wrongful acts committed by peacekeepers is to enter a legal dimension of countless discrepancies and legal vacuums that have impeded a uniform application of even the most basic principles of responsibility. It is yet a system incapable of linking the notions of shared responsibility and commitment to the direct consequences of intensifying multilateral and collective activity in international law. Thus, even when the commission of a crime or wrongful act has been recognized, those injured are regularly unable to hold the perpetrators responsible and due redress to the victims is rarely a common practice. In light of this, we have inquired into the causes of these inconsistencies and the underlining reality and challenges posed by an underdeveloped system of criminal law -be that domestic, military and international- vis-a-vis the sui generis nature of peacekeepers and peace operations’ inherent multidimensional character.

Command Responsibility and Organisationsherrschaft: Ways of Attributing International Crimes to the ‘Most Responsible’

Th e increasing trend to prosecute and punish international crimes and criminals, to fight against the widespread impunity for gross violations of human rights, with the means of (international) criminal law (see para. 4 of the preamble of the ICC Statute) is certainly to be welcomed and has received broad support in the academic literature, including by this author. At the same time, however, one must not lose sight of the fundamental principles of criminal law which are the product of centuries’ long fights for fairness and the rule of law and which must not be ignored by the international criminal tribunals, especially the International Criminal Court (hereinafter ‘ICC’). Indeed, from a national criminal law perspective, rooted in the tradition of enlightenment, there exists a tension between International Criminal Law (hereinafter ICL)/international criminal jurisdiction and national criminal law/domestic jurisdictions at least in two respects. On the one hand, the increasing trend to criminalization, especially in its extreme form promoted by certain NGOs as prosecution and punishment at whatever cost, oft en conflicts with the traditional criminal law principles grounded in the rule of law ( Rechtsstaat ). To a lesser extent, the criminalization efforts at the international level may conflict with decriminalization efforts at the national level, either by a reduction of the substantive criminal law (downgrading criminal offenses to mere administrative infringements of the law) or by procedural means using the well-known techniques of procedural discretion, abbreviations of criminal proceedings or various forms of negotiations (guilty plea, conformidad, pattagamiento, transactie, etc.). On the other hand, the relationship between the system (criminality) and the individual (criminality) is not free from doubt. While it is clear that ICL is concerned with macrocriminality in the sense of Herbert Jagers’ fundamental study and that domestic criminal law is, normally, concerned with ordinary and individual criminality, the boundaries between the system and the individual level are blurred. While criminal law, at whatever level and in whatever form, always goes aft er the individual perpetrator, it is clear that ICL cannot do without investigating and understanding the political, social, economic and cultural framework and background of the crimes (the ‘crime base’) and thus goes well beyond the establishment of mere individual responsibility. Th is is all the more true if we take into account that current practice in ICL concentrates increasingly, as a matter of law or fact, on the top or high-level perpetrators and leaves the mid- or low-level perpetrators to the domestic jurisdictions. Th e focus on the top necessarily leads to an inquiry into the criminal structures they represent. In this sense, it also seems clear that the system and individual level are not mutually exclusive but rather complement each other; a one-sided focus on one or the other would not fully take into account the complexities of macro criminality. For the analysis of individual criminal responsibility, this means that one should focus on the rules of imputation or attribution for the top perpetrators, the intellectual mastermind, the ‘man in the background’, i.e. the people running the criminal organization or enterprise responsible for the atrocities. 6 Th is brings us to the three possible forms of attribution which may be applied alternatively or cumulatively: joint criminal enterprise (‘JCE’); command responsibility; and control/domination of the act by virtue of a hierarchical organization (hereinafter: Organisationsherrschaft or ‘domination by virtue of an organization’). As the fi rst one is the object of another study in this book, by Harmen van de Wilt, I will focus on command responsibility (in section II) and Organisationsherrschaft (section IV) and treat JCE only in relation to the former (section III).

Family psychosocial characteristics influencing criminal behaviour and mortality--possible mediating factors: a longitudinal study of male and female subjects in the Stockholm Birth Cohort.

BackgroundFamily psychosocial characteristics in childhood have been associated with children's development into criminal behaviour and mortality. This study explored these possible relationships and examined alcohol and/or drug use and mental problems as possible mediating factors, highlighting gender-specific patterns.MethodsData from Swedish subjects born in 1953 (n = 14,294) from the Stockholm Birth Cohort study were examined. Several indicators of adverse family factors and individual problems were included in the present study. The information was derived from various data sources, covering different periods. Gender-specific associations with incidence of criminality (1966-1980) and mortality (1981-2009) were analysed using logistic regression. Furthermore, the population attributable fraction (PAF) was calculated for all variables in the fully adjusted models which were positively related to the outcome.ResultsOverall incidence of criminality and mortality was (m/f 32.3/6.6) and (m/f 6.1/3.5), respectively. The results showed that all aspects of family psychosocial and individual problems studied were associated with criminality for both genders. Among males, individual problems seemed to partly mediate these relations, but the associations remained statistically significant. Interestingly, the PAF analysis revealed a reduction in criminality of 17.5% when individual problems with alcohol and/or drug use were considered. Among females, a significant impact of alcohol and/or drug use on the association between family psychosocial characteristics and subsequent criminality was obtained. Inclusion of father's occupational class only somewhat reduced the estimates for the genders. Concerning male mortality, father's alcohol abuse was significantly related to an increased risk. When individual criminality was accounted for, the association was substantially reduced but remained statistically significant. Among females, when adjusting for family psychosocial factors, only the association between parents' mental problems and females' mortality was significant. None of the individual problem variables managed to explain this association.ConclusionsFamily psychosocial characteristics were associated with both subsequent criminal behaviour and mortality. These connections were partly explained by individual risk factors, especially by alcohol and/or drug use. The practical implications of the findings point to the importance of addressing the individual's alcohol and/or drug use in reducing criminal behaviour, which would also lower the mortality rates.

The Highway to Hooliganism? An Evaluation of the Impact of Combat Sport Participation on Individual Criminality

The aim of this research was to evaluate whether combat sport has an impact on participants' criminality, and if so, whether combat sport is appropriate for use in offender treatment programmes and crime reduction strategies. The paper first provides a comprehensive summary review of the existing evidence on the relationship between crime and sports participation in general, and then on crime and combat sports in particular. The paper then presents and discusses findings from new primary research designed to address the issues raised in the review. A semi-structured questionnaire, combining Likert scale items and open questions, was issued to 50 individuals who regularly trained at two different combat sports facilities. The research was designed to assess the relationship between combat sports participants and commonly experienced sociocultural and individual risk factors. Based on the findings, we argue that participation in combat sports can distance individuals from nonstructural risk factors in behavioural, community/social and economic spheres. Detachment from risks in these areas makes combat sport potentially appropriate for use within interventions aimed at: violent offenders; those who offend in groups; emotionally impulsive offenders; and as a moderator of antisocial behaviour. However, further research is required to understand fully the impact of such interventions.

Criminal constitutions

Why do criminals use constitutions? This article argues that constitutions perform three functions in criminal organisations. First, criminal constitutions promote consensus by creating common knowledge among criminals about what the organisation expects of them and what they can expect of the organisation's other members. Second, criminal constitutions regulate behaviours that are privately beneficially to individual criminals but costly to their organisation as a whole. Third, criminal constitutions generate information about member misconduct and coordinate the enforcement of rules that prohibit such behaviour. By performing these functions, constitutions facilitate criminal cooperation and enhance criminals' profit. To examine our hypothesis we examine the constitutions of two criminal organisations: eighteenth-century Caribbean pirates and the contemporary Californian prison gang, La Nuestra Familia.

Editors’ Introduction: Empirical Evidence on the Relevance of Place in Criminology

For most of the last century criminologists have focused their understanding of crime on individuals and communities (Nettler 1978; Sherman 1995; Weisburd et al. 2009). In the case of individuals, criminologists have sought to understand why certain people as opposed to others become criminals (e.g. see Akers 1973; Gottfredson and Hirschi 1990; Hirschi 1969; Raine 1993), or to explain why certain offenders become involved in criminal activity at different stages of the life course or cease involvement at other stages (e.g., see Moffitt 1993; Sampson and Laub 1993). In the case of communities, criminologists have often tried to explain why certain types of crime or different levels of criminality are found in some communities as contrasted with others (e.g., see Agnew 1999; Bursik and Grasmick 1993; Sampson and Groves 1989; Shaw and McKay 1942) or how community-level variables, such as relative deprivation, low socioeconomic status, or lack of economic opportunity may affect individual criminality (e.g. see Agnew 1992; Cloward and Ohlin 1960; Merton 1938; Wolfgang and Ferracuti 1967). In most cases, research on communities has focused on the ‘‘macro’’ level, often studying states (Loftin and Hill 1974), cities (Baumer et al. 1998), and neighborhoods (Sampson 1985; Bursik and Grasmick 1993). While concern with the relationship between crime and place goes back to the founding generations of modern criminology (Guerry 1833; Quetelet 1842), the ‘‘micro’’ approach to places emerged only in the last few decades (e.g. see Brantingham and Brantingham

Demystifying the advance-fee fraud criminal network

Nigeria, a West African state, is famous for its oil wealth. However, this oil wealth has contributed to the country’s infamous and notorious reputation, with anecdotal evidence suggesting that as a result of oil wealth mismanagement, corruption became entrenched in the Nigerian psyche. Consequently the Nigerian state has abdicated its duties, leaving its people to fend for themselves. Such abdication of state functions could have been one of the factors that gave rise to individual criminality in Nigeria. As a result of the collusion of the political elite with foreign companies and individuals to divert the nation’s oil wealth to foreign banks, the genre of crime infamously named ‘419’ developed and has become widespread.

How Much Can We Trust Causal Interpretations of Fixed-Effects Estimators in the Context of Criminality?

Researchers are often interested in estimating the causal effect of some treatment on individual criminality. For example, two recent relatively prominent papers have attempted to estimate the respective direct effects of marriage and gang participation on individual criminal activity. One difficulty to overcome is that the treatment is often largely the product of individual choice. This issue can cloud causal interpretations of correlations between the treatment and criminality since those choosing the treatment (e.g. marriage or gang membership) may have differed in their criminality from those who did not even in the absence of the treatment. To overcome this potential for selection bias researchers have often used various forms of individual fixed-effects estimators. While such fixed-effects estimators may be an improvement on basic cross-sectional methods, they are still quite limited when it comes to uncovering a true causal effect of the treatment on individual criminality because they may fail to account for the possibility of dynamic selection. Using data from the NSLY97, I show that such dynamic selection can potentially be quite large when it comes to criminality, and may even be exacerbated when using more advanced fixed-effects methods such as Inverse Probability of Treatment Weighting (IPTW). Therefore substantial care must be taken when it comes to interpreting the results arising from fixed-effects methods.

The subjects of criminal identification

This article analyses two late 19th-century technologies that sought to identify criminals with scientific accuracy: Alphonse Bertillon's techniques for measuring bodies and Francis Galton's composite portraits of criminal types. It analyzes the regulatory environment in England in which their ideas achieved considerable prominence, emphasizing crucial differences in the visions of `science' embraced by the two men. By highlighting their different claims to science, this article outlines their respective legacies in criminal identification arenas, and isolates unique dangers associated with each. Those dangers variously alert us to the importance of questioning a persistent, if often implicit, sentiment within much criminal justice thinking; namely, by identifying individual criminals, or criminal types, justice systems effectively address the problem of crime. Against this approach, and resonant with a critical criminology in search of less exclusionary ways to govern, the following analysis considers criminal identification not as a discovery but a creation. In so doing, it seeks to re-politicize current practices of criminalization, challenge claims to the purported scientific impartiality of criminal identification and embrace the possibility of justice beyond a dominant reflex to create criminals.

How Much Can We Trust Causal Interpretations of Fixed-Effects Estimators in the Context of Criminality?

Researchers are often interested in estimating the causal effect of some treatment on individual criminality. For example, two recent relatively prominent papers have attempted to estimate the respective direct effects of marriage and gang participation on individual criminal activity. One difficulty to overcome is that the treatment is often largely the product of individual choice. This issue can cloud causal interpretations of correlations between the treatment and criminality since those choosing the treatment (e.g. marriage or gang membership) may have differed in their criminality from those who did not even in the absence of the treatment. To overcome this potential for selection bias researchers have often used various forms of individual fixed-effects estimators. While such fixed-effects estimators may be an improvement on basic cross-sectional methods, they are still quite limited when it comes to uncovering a true causal effect of the treatment on individual criminality because they may fail to account for the possibility of dynamic selection. Using data from the NSLY97, I show that such dynamic selection can potentially be quite large when it comes to criminality, and may even be exacerbated when using more advanced fixed-effects methods such as Inverse Probability of Treatment Weighting (IPTW). Therefore substantial care must be taken when it comes to interpreting the results arising from fixed-effects methods.

How Much Can We Trust Causal Interpretations of Fixed-Effects Estimators in the Context of Criminality?

Researchers are often interested in estimating the causal effect of some on individual criminality. For example, two recent prominent papers in Criminology have attempted to estimate the respective direct effects of marriage and gang participation on individual criminal activity. One difficulty to overcome in such exercises is that the treatment is often largely the product of individual choice. This issue can cloud causal interpretations of correlations between the treatment and criminality since those who get the treatment (e.g. choose to get married or choose to be in a gang) may have differed in their criminality from those who did not even in the absence of the treatment. To overcome this potential for selection bias researchers have often used various forms of individual fixed-effects estimators. I argue that such fixed-effects estimators are still quite limited when it comes to uncovering a true causal effect of the treatment on individual criminality because they may fail to account for the possibility of dynamic selection, or changes in each individual's circumstances or preferences that simultaneously affect his underlying criminal propensity and his likelihood of choosing to obtain the treatment at a given point in time. Using data from the NSLY97, I show that such dynamic selection can potentially be quite large when it comes to criminality, and may even be exacerbated when using more advanced fixed-effects methods such as Inverse Probability of Treatment Weighting (IPTW). Therefore substantial care must be taken when it comes to interpreting the results arising from fixed-effects methods.

“The Jews are Coming”: Vengeance and Revenge in post-Nazi Europe

This paper explores two different modes of revenge practiced by Jewish soldiers and partisans in post-Nazi Europe. The first, revenge proper, involved the targeting and killing of individual war criminals. The second, vengeance, sought in its most extreme form, to repay the German people as a whole. The paper questions the common understanding of these events as spontaneous acts of violence emerging from a universal wish for justice. Vengeance and revenge are better understood as planned and historically bound attempts of modern-national Jews not only to achieve justice but more importantly to form a new Jewish identity based on active resistance rather than passive suffering. The paper concludes by suggesting some broader implications of this history, and offers to see vengeance and revenge as a vantage point from which Zionism and more generally the liberal nationstate and its promise for justice can be assessed.

Low-Quality Employment Concentration and Crime: An Examination of Metropolitan Labor Markets

Over the past two decades, numerous studies have investigated the effects of employment quality on crime. Many of these studies have investigated employment quality with regard to its effect on individual criminality. However, the quality of employment available in a labor market also affects crime at an aggregate level of analysis. Consequently, while the determinants of individual behavior are important, this article seeks to place these behaviors into a larger structural framework. This study contributes to the growing research on the work–crime link by relating differences in the quality of employment, on an aggregate level, to crime rates in metropolitan areas. Metropolitan areas with few quality jobs for less-educated workers have significantly higher rates of both violent and property crime.

The Economics of Business Crime: Theory and Public Policy Implications

The economics of crime has traditionally been concerned with individual deterrence, from a cost-benefit analysis viewpoint. Generally speaking, firms or corporations rather than individual criminals commit business crimes. Thus, agency theory (that is, the principal-agent framework) seems very appealing, and particularly suitable for generating useful insights into business crime. In this paper we give a brief introduction to the economic theory of business crime and enforcement. We discuss corporate criminal liability, implications for business security, and the political economy of business crime.

Globalization's Bastards: Illegitimate Non-State Actors in International Law

The international system has great difficulty in dealing with illegitimate non-state actors such as transnational terrorist groups and organized crime syndicates. This is due to two main factors: the quality and quantity of influence these illegitimate actors have obtained in an era of globalization, and the fact that international law considers only individual criminals and terrorists as subjects, rather than the entire illegitimate enterprise, and does not adequately link individuals, enterprises and states to more nuanced and complex forms of sponsorship of illegal activities. This work offers an outline for tools that should be embedded in the fabric of international law and agreements, to sustain credibility against illegal non-state actors, to hold accountable sponsors of illegality and to reinforce the legitimacy of globalization.