Criminological Literature Research Articles

Potting, power and imprisonment: Understanding the use of shit as a form of resistance

Prisons are places of power and resistance. When the staff oppress prisoners, the latter participate in various forms of resistance, such as violence, substance misuse, riots, or protests to communicate a sense of injustice. Many of these struggles have been documented and discussed at length, revealing and communicating the national and local structures that produce them. However, potting remains a taboo on the wings and in criminological literature, where the use of bodily fluids as a means of prisoners rejecting penal power is rarely discussed beyond macro-political contexts. Drawing on symbolic interactionism and phenomenological approaches to knowledge, this paper challenges that taboo and proposes that potting is an embodied expression of oppression, a symbolic representation of prisoners’ defilement and a physical transference of their sense of injustice. Potting is a pervasive and perverse form of resistance.

Increasing Client Fraud Risk Disclosure with Minimization Techniques

SYNOPSIS Auditing standards require auditors to conduct fraud inquiries as part of their risk assessment process. During fraud inquiries, auditors frequently ask client personnel directly about “fraud, alleged fraud, or suspected fraud,” using standard language taken from AS 2110. However, guidance from the Center for Audit Quality (CAQ) suggests that avoiding the word “fraud” results in greater disclosure regarding fraud risk. Although untested, the CAQ’s conjecture is supported by literature in psychology and criminology, which suggests that minimizing the seriousness of the offense (i.e., minimization) increases disclosure. This study examines two minimization strategies. The first involves replacing the word “fraud” with “questionable behavior.” The second employs social comparison to increase the perceived frequency that clients report misconduct to auditors. Experimental results suggest that either strategy increases client reporting intentions relative to a control condition using the language prescribed by AS 2110. Our findings may help auditors conduct more effective fraud inquiries. Data Availability: Data are available from the authors. JEL Classifications: M42; M48.

Dynamics of Rural Crime in South Asia: A Criminological Overview

Rural crime in South Asia involves varied and complex issues influenced by various socio-economic, cultural, and political factors of the region. While there are some common types of crime in the rural areas in south Asia, different regions are prone to different kinds of crime. It is because these regions share some common and some unique characteristics. Similarly, there are some shared and unique approaches for addressing the issues related rural crime and ensuring justice. This study, based on a review of existing criminological literature, explores the dynamics of rural crime in the region from a criminological lens. The outcomes of the study will serve the policymakers, law enforcement agencies, and community leaders to address the rural crime and justice issues in the region.

What Is Informal Social Control? A Concept Consensus Review of Recent Criminological Literature

Is there consensus among criminologists about the meaning of informal social control? Some prominent criminologists say no. We conduct a concept consensus review of all articles using the term in the top 10 journals in criminology from 2010 to 2020 to test their dissensus assertion. We found 597 articles that mention informal social control. Of the 228 articles where the term was important to the study, only 41 attempt to define the concept. We assessed each conceptual definition using four definitional elements: subject, action, object, and reason. One or more elements were missing from most conceptual definitions. Combining the mode of the most specified elements, informal social control may mean “residents intervening with youth/children to reduce crime.” But dissensus is more common than consensus; authors differ on who applied controls, what those controls were, who was controlled, or the reasons for the control. This raises questions about how to proceed with the study of informal social control.

Beyond binaries: a comparative analysis of police reform in Jamaica and Canada

ABSTRACT This article challenges the developed-developing binary when understanding police reform by comparing two cases – Jamaica and Canada. Grounded in critical development studies and criminology literatures, it demonstrates divergences in police organizational structures/mandates and some convergences in police reform efforts, failures, and resistance to systemic change despite vast context variations. Therefore, it creates room for questioning the challenges of police reform in the development discourse as primarily a feature of a nation’s development, or lack thereof, and instead prompts us to rethink how we conceptualize, understand, and address police institutional structures that affect both developing and developed countries alike.

New Criminological Literature in Europe

New Criminological Literature in Europe

Property crime and lottery-related anomalies

In this paper, we explore the association between property crime rate and lottery demand anomalies. Motivated by criminology literature that suggests a positive relation between crime and risk-taking, we conjecture that gambling propensity in the stock market is stronger (weaker) in regions with higher (lower) property crime rate. Consistent with our conjecture, we show that underperformance of lottery stocks, proxied by MAX, is more pronounced in the US regions with higher property crime rates compared to regions with lower property crime rates. Our results are robust to alternative proxies for lottery demand, such as alternative constructions of MAX and skewness measures, and various empirical tests. Our findings suggest variation in crime-induced gambling propensity affects financial market outcomes.

The Crime of Crimes

Genocide is a topic that is almost universally ignored by criminology. While it is frequently referred to as “the crime of crimes,” there is virtually no criminological coverage of genocide. The following analysis is a review of existing criminological literature in genocide studies, situating mainstream criminology’s ignorance of genocide in a socio-historical context in order to determine the reason(s) for this disregard. This analysis proposes that the mainstream criminological ignorance of genocide is a calculated and intentional act. Such willful blindness avoids and deflects from disciplinary accountability because of criminology’s historical complacency in genocide. Most of the existing mainstream criminological literature on genocide is criticized because of its hyperfocus on definitional arguments, the redemptive nature of such academic coverage, and the quantification of such atrocities. Thus, an argument for a critical criminological approach to genocide studies is desperately needed for criminology to interpret genocidal acts adequately.

Assessing the International Criminal Court’s response to genocide: a reference to the case of Al-Bashir

ABSTRACT On the 75th anniversary of the Genocide Convention, the role of the International Criminal Court (ICC), as constituted under the Rome Statute, in responding to genocide is worth evaluating. This article assesses the effectiveness of the ICC in addressing genocide, with a focus on the Al-Bashir Case (case concerning genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in Darfur, Sudan) - the first ICC proceeding against a sitting Head of State charged with genocide. It first singles out the ICC’s role in promoting international solidarity to prevent genocide, break cycles of violence, and enhance the likelihood of prosecution. It also discusses the legal obligation to strengthen international cooperation for the Al-Bashir Case, under the Genocide Convention, and considers the relevant contexts of the International Criminal Tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. The analysis has incorporated legal and criminological literature, alongside scholarship of international relations from voluminous resources. This article emphasises the ongoing necessity for international cooperation within the ICC to effectively implement its mechanisms: investigation, prosecution, principle of complementarity, and deterrence. It suggests that this aim can be attained through encouraging Member States of both the Rome Statute and the Genocide Convention to actively participate in responding to genocide.

Is the Party Really Over? Parties, Partisanship and the Politics of Crime

Abstract Political parties occupy a contradictory position in the criminological literature: at once active participants in the political contestation of crime but virtually absent from contemporary debates concerning the relationship between crime and democratic theory. In this paper, I present a ‘rational reconstruction’ of party and partisanship as distinctive modes of political association that are vital to liberal democratic systems that take seriously (1) the value of political pluralism and (2) the limits of public reason to yield definitive answers to the crime question. Currently, political parties are failing to perform these mediating roles satisfactorily and I conclude that a stronger normative commitment to an ‘ethic of partisanship’ can help to revitalize our representative democracies and foster a better politics of crime.

The influence of biological factors in genesis of mass murders

In this paper, the authors, starting from the established division of mass murders in the criminological literature, analyze the available research results on cases of mass murders, that is, their etiology. Considering that the analysis of all possible factors that can constitute individual criminogenesis would require much more space, in this paper the emphasis is on the biological factors of crime. The authors start from traditional biological understandings in criminology, such as the study of the connection between physical constitution and crime, or the influence of genetic factors, which they complement with more modern approaches, such as the analysis of neurological, endocrinological and other biologically relevant conditions, i.e. abnormalities while simultaneously investigating their influence on the manifestation of aggression in general but also especially in the context of mass murders. The authors expect the work to be the contribution to the better understanding of the etiology of mass murders and generally violent crimes.

Retos de la seguridad pública en España

This issue of the Journal of International Security Studies discusses the current challenges of public security in Spain. It does so from the point of view of threats, but also from the point of view of institutions, particularly the police. Perhaps the main contribution of the monograph is that its contributions, first, look at the European context by offering a comparative perspective and, second, focus on some of the important current debates in the police and criminological literature. Each contribution is signed by renowned scholars in their field of expertise. It is a selection of six articles that start with an initial portrait of what public safety culture is like in Europe. This background overview is followed by contributions on the current challenges posed by three types of complex crime: economically motivated organised crime, terrorism, and cybercrime. These forms of crime are decisive for the immediate future of collective security. The issue concludes with two contributions on the implications of these and other challenges for the legitimacy of the police and, above all, the way in which the police respond to them. Finally, the last contribution analyses the implications for the police from the perspective of their corporate social responsibility.

The personality of the offender

The personality of the criminal is a complex criminological concept, studied by several sciences, which includes the psycho-social notion and the legal-criminal notion of the criminal. This being an essential starting point for the investigation of the case as a result of the commission of an illegal act, because without personality - there is no crime. In both local and foreign criminological literature, the opinions and definitions of the personality of the criminal are very different. Each author has his own vision with reference to the conceptual definition of the personality of the criminal, some generalize it in a definition, others exemplify it in various casuistic situations of judicial practice and define it through a complex notion. Thus, in this research we aim to carry out a detailed analysis of the general notion of the personality of the criminal, liable to commit illegal acts.

Wrong Side of the Track: Crimes in the Railroad Industry in the US, 2000–2017

The extant criminological literature on railroad crimes is scant, and historically focused on crimes against railroads (e.g., train robberies), or safety at railroad crossings, or train stations in relation to the distribution of crimes. To date, studies have not examined the extent of crime committed by railroads, nor how those violations are punishment. This study draws attention to the scope of railroad crimes and their punishment in the US using all reported/known railroad safety violations for the year 2000–2017 ( N = 14,380). During this time period, the railroad industry ranks third for the number of crimes committed by a US business sector. The study begins by examining the early history of railroad accidents and the influence of railroad tycoons and their personal characteristics as factors that have shaped the railroad industry in the US. Relevant railroad regulations are also examined.

Understanding Perceptions of Victimization: A Critical Analysis of Gay and Bisexual Male Grindr Users Negotiations of Safety and Risk

Abstract The victimization of gay and bisexual men has gained significant academic and social attention, with that focus extending to the role of digital victimization. Grindr has dominated the market for online dating apps targeting gay, bisexual, trans and queer people. Drawing on qualitative data collected from men who use Grindr, this paper addresses a gap in criminological literature by exploring the way that men that have sex with men negotiate perceptions of safety when engaging in real-world meetings that have been facilitated by Grindr. It is argued throughout this paper that risk-reduction strategies adopted by interviewees only reduce the perception of risk, rather than the actual risk of experiencing violent victimization. As such, it is claimed exploring digital integration offers a more nuanced reading of the intertwined and fraught relations of risk and safety within digital and physical spaces.

New Criminological Literature in Europe

New Criminological Literature in Europe

Socioeconomic Development Aspects of Democratic Governance across Selected Countries

ABSTRACT There is a need to question the main socioeconomic, political, and cultural aspects of crime rates in a cross-country context. In this context, Dumitrescu and Hurlin’s (2012) Granger causality method, which is not common in the criminological literature, is used – which does not ignore cross-sectional dependence. Moreover, we generate an indicator of “democratic governance” using principal component analysis (PCA) from “government effectiveness” and “voice and accountability.” The key advantage of using PCA is to avoid multicollinearity and make better inferences with dimensionality reduction. The democratic governance contains 93.5% common variance and is equally affected by both governance indicators. The key findings of our study underscore that crime rates are significantly Granger caused by economic growth, democratic governance, unemployment, and urbanization. The intuition drawn from the findings of this paper and the previous researchers’ contribution is that crime can be reduced as a product of good governance. Moreover, the findings revealed that urbanization and democratic governance Granger causes each other. Therefore, urbanization can make countries converge to democratic governance. What the study is unable to say is the dynamic relationship between variables; however, the current evidence offers relevant policy guidelines.

Offender Rehabilitation: The Middle Way of Maimonides to Mental and Social Health.

Traditional religious and spiritual texts offer a surprising wealth of relevant theoretical and practical knowledge about human behavior. This wellspring may contribute significantly to expanding our current body of knowledge in the social sciences, and criminology in particular. In Jewish religious texts, specifically by Maimonides, we can find profound analyses of human traits and guidelines for a normative way of life. Among other things, modern criminological literature attempts to link certain character traits and divergent behaviors. Using the hermeneutic phenomenological approach, this present study analyzed Maimonidean writings, mainly Laws of Human Dispositions, in order to understand Moses ben Maimon (1138-1204) and hisview of character traits. The analysis yielded four themes: (1) Human personality between nature and nurture; (2) The complexity of human personality, imbalance and criminality; (3) Extremism as a way to achieve balance; and (4) The Middle Way, flexibility and common sense. These themes can serve therapeutic purposes, as well as inform a rehabilitation model. Grounded in a theoretical rationale about the nature of humans, this model is designed to direct individuals to balance their traits by self-reflection and constant practice of the Middle Way. The article concludes by proposing that implementing this model may promote normative behavior and thus contribute to rehabilitating offenders.

How do trucking companies respond to announced versus unannounced safety crackdowns? The case of government inspection blitzes

AbstractEnsuring motor carriers comply with safety rules is critical to the efficient workings of supply chains and the safety of the motoring public. However, little is understood regarding how carriers respond to changes in the likelihood of inspection (a.k.a., “crackdowns”) undertaken by the Department of Transportation. Drawing on the regulatory compliance and criminology literature, we extend the rational cheater explanation that undergirds carrier safety research by incorporating principles from attention‐based theory to devise new theoretical predictions regarding how carriers respond to announced versus unannounced inspection crackdowns. To test our theory, we rely on exogenous variation in the probability of inspection from the DOT's use of announced and unannounced inspection “blitzes.” We test predictions using a longitudinal dataset of nearly 10 million truck inspections from 2012 to 2016. We find firms with lower costs of compliance, and higher costs of avoiding inspections improve compliance prior to and during announced blitzes. Small firms with lower costs of avoidance tend to avoid announced blitzes. Unannounced blitzes result in no changes in compliance or avoidance, providing evidence that awareness is driving our results.

New Criminological Literature in Europe

New Criminological Literature in Europe