http://tcr.sagepub.com Theoretical Criminology RSS feed -- recent issues Theoretical Criminology 1362-4806 http://tcr.sagepub.com:80/icons/banner/title.gif http://tcr.sagepub.com http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/13/3/283?rss=1 Studies reveal that some Americans are more willing than others to endorse harsh measures to control crime. We advance this literature by presenting a model that offers an integrated explanation of why some Americans are more punitive than others. Scholars have found that people construct images of offenders that reflect those disseminated by elites, the media, and popular culture. These images can vary across types of crime and can change over time. We posit that individual differences in punitiveness are related to whether people empathize with the images they construct of ‘typical’ stereotyped offenders. We conclude by offering a systematic model that summarizes the proposed theoretical perspective and helps to illuminate both implications for macro-level theories and future avenues of investigation.

]]> 2009-08-14 info:doi/10.1177/1362480609336495 3 13 312 2009-08-01 283 Article http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/13/3/313?rss=1 This article examines comparative homicide rates in the United States and Western Europe in an era of increasingly globalized neo-liberal economics. The main finding of this preliminary analysis is that historical and spatial correlations between distinct forms of political economy and homicide rates are consistent enough to suggest that social democratic regimes are more successful at fostering the socio-cultural conditions necessary for reduced homicide rates. Thus Western Europe and all continents and nations should approach the importation of American neo-liberal economic policies with extreme caution. The article concludes by suggesting that the indirect but crucial causal connection between political economy and homicide rates, prematurely pushed into the background of criminological thought during the ‘cultural turn’, should be returned to the foreground.

]]> 2009-08-14 info:doi/10.1177/1362480609336496 3 13 339 2009-08-01 313 Article http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/13/3/341?rss=1 There has been a growing concern about the lack of policy relevance of criminology in recent years. Two influential responses to this dilemma have been presented. On one hand, it has been argued that academic criminologists should become more active in mobilizing points of consensus about what works, while on the other hand it has been suggested that there should be a division of labour among academics and that the subject be broken down into public, professional, policy and critical criminologies. This article argues that neither of these responses are tenable and instead calls for an approach that links theory, method and intervention with the aim of developing a coherent critical realist approach that is able to go beyond the existing forms of ‘so what?’ criminology.

]]> 2009-08-14 info:doi/10.1177/1362480609336497 3 13 362 2009-08-01 341 Article http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/13/3/363?rss=1 A significant body of thinking around the UK Government’s anti-social behaviour (ASB) policy agenda draws its inspiration from post-Foucauldian governmentality theory. This is an indispensable body of work that has been particularly productive when grounded in empirical research studies which have critically analysed the way governmental rationalities are translated into policy ‘on the ground’. This article argues, however, that there is a need to move beyond ‘the social construction of reality’ thesis prevalent in this approach and direct our attention to ontologically focused questions. It contends that critical realism could effectively complement governmentality perspectives and deepen our understanding of ASB policy by enabling researchers to move beyond a focus on the ‘construction’ of ASB to the ‘reality’ of ASB.

]]> 2009-08-14 info:doi/10.1177/1362480609336501 3 13 381 2009-08-01 363 Article http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/13/3/383?rss=1 2009-08-14 info:doi/10.1177/1362480609336503 3 13 386 2009-08-01 383 Article http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/13/3/386?rss=1 2009-08-14 info:doi/10.1177/13624806090130030602 3 13 390 2009-08-01 386 Article http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/13/3/390?rss=1 2009-08-14 info:doi/10.1177/13624806090130030603 3 13 393 2009-08-01 390 Article http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/13/3/393?rss=1 2009-08-14 info:doi/10.1177/13624806090130030604 3 13 395 2009-08-01 393 Article http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/13/3/396?rss=1 2009-08-14 info:doi/10.1177/13624806090130030605 3 13 397 2009-08-01 396 Article http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/13/3/398?rss=1 2009-08-14 info:doi/10.1177/13624806090130030606 3 13 402 2009-08-01 398 Article http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/13/3/402?rss=1 2009-08-14 info:doi/10.1177/13624806090130030607 3 13 405 2009-08-01 402 Article http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/13/3/405?rss=1 2009-08-14 info:doi/10.1177/13624806090130030608 3 13 408 2009-08-01 405 Article http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/13/3/408?rss=1 2009-08-14 info:doi/10.1177/13624806090130030609 3 13 411 2009-08-01 408 Article http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/13/3/411?rss=1 2009-08-14 info:doi/10.1177/13624806090130030610 3 13 413 2009-08-01 411 Article http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/13/3/413?rss=1 2009-08-14 info:doi/10.1177/13624806090130030611 3 13 416 2009-08-01 413 Article http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/13/2/155?rss=1 Under the rubric of neoliberalism, the governance of populations occurs through new technologies and techniques of social control. Contemporary neoliberal discourses of crime control, in particular, normalize conditions of individual insecurity and responsibility while diverting attention away from root causes of social problems. The phenomenon of identity theft offers a generative case study for theorizing the ramifications of neoliberalism as a mode of crime control. The field is marked by the production of consumer-citizen subjects, who embrace self-discipline to mitigate crime threats; the transformation of mundane criminal acts into national security threats; the development of flexible accumulation skills, on the part of identity thieves, to compensate for the decline in state support for social reproduction; and the maintenance of insecure information infrastructures, which simultaneously increase the profitability of industry and vulnerability of the public.

]]> 2009-04-15 info:doi/10.1177/1362480609102877 2 13 176 2009-05-01 155 Article http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/13/2/177?rss=1 Although criminologists have long used the offender's own story to shed light on crime and its possible causes, they have not plumbed its potential as an explanatory variable. This article considers the way narrative has been conceptualized in criminology and the way that it might be re-conceptualized, following scholarship in other social sciences and in humanities, as a key instigator of action. The concept of narrative is useful for the projects of contemporary criminology because it: (1) applies to both individuals and aggregates; (2) applies to both direct perpetrators and bystanders; (3) anchors the notion of (sub)culture; (4) circumvents the realism to which other theories of criminal behavior are bound; and (5) can be readily collected by researchers, though not without confronting the problematic that is the socially situated production of discourse.

]]> 2009-04-15 info:doi/10.1177/1362480609102878 2 13 200 2009-05-01 177 Article http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/13/2/201?rss=1 The article analyses the accounts of incarcerated females in Israel, examining the extent to which they were active, rational agents making choices regarding their criminality. The theoretical framework underlying this analysis views the criminal decision-making process with the agency/structure nexus. It indicates that the women were actively seeking normative means to satisfy their feelings of belonging, to gain economic benefits and feel safe, and to fulfil normative social expectations. They turned to the major social institutions that are considered the agencies for providing the means to realize these desires. Their discovery of the limited opportunities available to them led them to choose to engage in crime, and to select the location, timing and nature of the offence and the victim of the crime.

]]> 2009-04-15 info:doi/10.1177/1362480609102879 2 13 225 2009-05-01 201 Article http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/13/2/227?rss=1 Criminology has largely ignored the study of crimes against humanity even though the acts involved—genocide, murder, rape, torture, the appropriation or destruction of property and the displacement and enslavement of populations—are criminal under national and international law and more serious than most crimes commonly studied by criminologists. We examine why criminology has neglected these crimes, argue that criminological theorizing will benefit by attending to this substantive area and put forward a theory of crimes against humanity derived from and expanding on existing criminological theory both to offer a basis for new theoretical and empirical work and to illustrate how criminological theories might be modified to provide more powerful accounts of crime. The article draws on a case example of genocidal mass-murder: Jedwabne, Poland, July 1941.

]]> 2009-04-15 info:doi/10.1177/1362480609102880 2 13 255 2009-05-01 227 Article http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/13/2/257?rss=1 2009-04-15 info:doi/10.1177/1362480609102889 2 13 259 2009-05-01 257 Article http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/13/2/259?rss=1 2009-04-15 info:doi/10.1177/13624806090130020502 2 13 262 2009-05-01 259 Article http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/13/2/262?rss=1 2009-04-15 info:doi/10.1177/13624806090130020503 2 13 266 2009-05-01 262 Article http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/13/2/266?rss=1 2009-04-15 info:doi/10.1177/13624806090130020504 2 13 269 2009-05-01 266 Article http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/13/2/269?rss=1 2009-04-15 info:doi/10.1177/13624806090130020505 2 13 271 2009-05-01 269 Article http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/13/2/272?rss=1 2009-04-15 info:doi/10.1177/13624806090130020506 2 13 274 2009-05-01 272 Article http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/13/2/274?rss=1 2009-04-15 info:doi/10.1177/13624806090130020507 2 13 277 2009-05-01 274 Article http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/13/2/277?rss=1 2009-04-15 info:doi/10.1177/13624806090130020508 2 13 280 2009-05-01 277 Article http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/13/1/5?rss=1 2009-02-02 info:doi/10.1177/1362480608100170 1 13 8 2009-02-01 5 Article http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/13/1/9?rss=1 This essay aims to explore the interfaces between Habermas' theory of communicative action (in particular his notion of the `colonisation of the lifeworld'); Duff's penal communication theory and Rex's recent work on reconstructing community penalties. Its central argument is that a critical reading of the desistance research provides empirical support for the need to reconceptualise penal practices as communicative enterprises which can engage with their stakeholders in supporting desistance—both at the level of the individual and in the community. Particular attention is paid to the need to reconsider the relationship between `offender management' services and the communities which they purport to serve.

]]> 2009-02-02 info:doi/10.1177/1362480608100171 1 13 29 2009-02-01 9 Article http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/13/1/31?rss=1 Drawing upon criminological studies in the field of prisoner rehabilitation, this essay explores the relevance of the Demobilisation, Disarmament and Reintegration (DDR) framework to the process of conflict transformation in Northern Ireland. In a similar fashion to the critique of `passivity' offered by, for example, the `strengths based' or `good lives' approach to prisoner resettlement and reintegration more generally, the authors contend that the Northern Ireland peace process offers conspicuous examples of former prisoners and combatants as agents and indeed leaders in the process of conflict transformation. They draw out three broad styles of leadership which have emerged amongst ex-combatants over the course of the Northern Ireland transition from conflict— political, military and communal. They suggest that cumulatively such leadership speaks to the potential of ex-prisoners and ex-combatants as moral agents in conflict transformation around which peacemaking can be constructed rather than as obstacles which must be `managed' out of existence.

]]> 2009-02-02 info:doi/10.1177/1362480608100172 1 13 59 2009-02-01 31 Article http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/13/1/61?rss=1 This paper examines the issue of desistance by considering the relationship between societal constraints and individual choices in the process of moving away from crime. The question of the distribution of those opportunities and resources to support desistance is raised within the context of a specific population—Aboriginal peoples of Canada. The impact of colonization resulting in economic and social marginalization, high rates of incarceration, and the generational transmission of trauma related to the experience of residential schools are factors which are related both to individual choice and external societal constraints. Structure, culture and biography are factors which must be addressed in the case of members of a marginalized population who wish to follow a path of desistance. The opportunity to participate in a community-based program that provides social capital in the form of marketable skills, connections to the wider society and personal healing through the reacquisition cultural traditions is seen as one way to overcome structural constraints while at the same time supporting an individual decision to desist from crime.

]]> 2009-02-02 info:doi/10.1177/1362480608100173 1 13 78 2009-02-01 61 Article http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/13/1/79?rss=1 The body of literature on why people stop offending has advanced tremendously in the past decade. Previously, when the topic was mentioned (if at all), it was an aside to the main focus of study. This situation has now changed dramatically; there are now a number of studies which have treated desistance either as a major part of the investigation or as a core or chief focal point, and debates about how best to understand the processes of desistance and to foster these are now in full swing. This essay will attempt to move the debate on yet further. Most studies of desistance have been undertaken using data derived from or about subjects who lived all or most of their lives in the latter half of the 20th century. The study of desistance is therefore largely the study of desistance in the contemporary age. This temporal bias is due, in part, to the growth of social scientific research in North America and Europe after the 1950s. In this essay we contend that studying previous societal forms and processes can tell us something about how those processes associated with desistance operate, and that studying society over the long durée can tell us something about how and why present-day social formations produce the outcomes they do with regards to desistance from crime.

]]> 2009-02-02 info:doi/10.1177/1362480608100174 1 13 104 2009-02-01 79 Article http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/13/1/105?rss=1 This article reflects upon the ideas of commentators and the experiences of those convicted in the summary courts in the late Victorian and Edwardian period (particularly the recidivist element), locating these with societal reactions to such individuals, especially via the voluntary sector. How did this period construct a concept to present, promote and explain cessation? An exploration of the strategies used to promote desistance in this period provides a range of useful insights for the modern age, removing (as it does) the focus from a formal management of the offender via prison and its associated rehabilitative strategies to the role played by the family and community context of the offender. This is illuminated through the work of those voluntary agencies associated with the criminal justice process, such as the London Police Court Mission. The formal theorisation prevalent in current criminological thinking about desistance is countered with evidence indicating success rates associated with a greater recognition of individual (and so unpredictable) choice, predicated upon the particular societal context of the individual, given impetus by the emphasis on hope as a moral driver in sustaining desistance.

]]> 2009-02-02 info:doi/10.1177/1362480608100175 1 13 128 2009-02-01 105 Article http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/13/1/129?rss=1 The released prisoner was a stock figure in American popular culture throughout the 20th century, and there is an enduring aesthetic associated with such narratives. Despite the artifice of the aesthetic, the best of them attempt to say serious things about the perils and pleasures of `straight time'. This paper explores the way in which a cluster of books and films, dating from the 1990s, has addressed the experiences of released prisoners and notes an emergent focus on the personal agony of redemption. This has a contingent rather than an integral relation to the concern with rehabilitation and control espoused by criminal justice officials, but none the less enables the communication of culturally enriching stories to audiences who might not otherwise be interested in the problems of released prisoners. Academic criminology should take heed of these stories, and make more use of them, pedagogically and politically.

]]> 2009-02-02 info:doi/10.1177/1362480608100176 1 13 146 2009-02-01 129 Article http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/12/4/431?rss=1 In this paper, we examine how compliance with community penalties has been theorized hitherto and seek to develop a new dynamic model of compliance with community penalties. This new model is developed by exploring some of the interfaces between existing criminological and socio-legal work on compliance. The first part of the paper examines the possible definitions and dimensions of compliance with community supervision. Secondly, we examine existing work on explanations of compliance with community penalties, supplementing this by drawing on recent socio-legal scholarship on private individuals' compliance with tax regimes. In the third part of the paper, we propose a dynamic model of compliance, based on the integration of these two related analyses. Finally, we consider some of the implications of our model for policy and practice concerning community penalties, suggesting the need to move beyond approaches which, we argue, suffer from compliance myopia; that is, a short-sighted and narrowly focused view of the issues.

]]> 2008-12-09 info:doi/10.1177/1362480608097151 4 12 449 2008-11-01 431 Article http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/12/4/451?rss=1 Risk has not been regarded positively in most social theory and critical criminology, especially in the light of Beck's `risk society' thesis. This paper argues that such criticism is misplaced. Risk is an extremely variable governmental technology, and many of the targets of criticism are shaped by the contemporary political environment. The same environment has given a similar negative cast to other approaches to security. There are ways of deploying risk, such as drug harm minimization strategies, that offer considerable promise for linking risk to security, and more broadly to issues of social justice. However, abstract calls for harm minimizing security suffer exactly the same problems that confront generalizing about risk-based security. This paper suggests that we could use a governmental analytic to construct a strategic knowledge of risk, both through the analysis of existing approaches (such as harm minimization and restorative justice) and by using this to generate experiments in risk, security and justice.

]]> 2008-12-09 info:doi/10.1177/1362480608097152 4 12 469 2008-11-01 451 Article http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/12/4/471?rss=1 While the novelty of Enron and WorldCom as corporate scandals should not be overstated, these events are distinguished by the sheer volume of media coverage that followed in their wake. Drawing from an analysis of over 300 newspaper and magazine articles, this article argues that while this media coverage varies in its diagnosis of the scandals, it is rooted in a common set of taken-for-granted assumptions as to the nature, form, and operation of financial markets. These various points of complementarity suggest that the coverage of the scandals is less significant as an exercise in collective sense-making than as a re-investment in a particular market discourse, a form of financial intelligibility germane to the scandals themselves and instructive vis-à-vis the future study of corporate and white-collar crime.

]]> 2008-12-09 info:doi/10.1177/1362480608097153 4 12 499 2008-11-01 471 Article http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/12/4/501?rss=1 Robert Merton's (1957) theories of anomie and strain are among the most widely examined theories of criminality. Messner and Rosenfeld's (1994) theory of institutional anomie built on Merton's conception of anomie, delineating how specific institutions lead to conditions of anomie and criminality. Cloward and Ohlin's (1961) theory of differential opportunity built upon Merton's strain theory, underscoring the fact that those involved in illegitimate means of opportunity require a set of learned skills as do those involved in legitimate means. In this tradition, the present paper further expands Merton's theories of anomie and strain, suggesting that Merton's categories of conformist and innovator are not mutually exclusive. In fact, some individuals combine both legitimate and illegitimate means of opportunity in pursuit of the American Dream. The Maximizer, the authors suggest, merges elements of both the conformist and the innovator (i.e. legitimate and illegitimate means). The present paper explores the justification for merging legitimate and illegitimate means of opportunity in pursuit of the American Dream.

]]> 2008-12-09 info:doi/10.1177/1362480608097154 4 12 521 2008-11-01 501 Article http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/12/4/523?rss=1 2008-12-09 info:doi/10.1177/1362480608099771 4 12 527 2008-11-01 523 Article http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/12/4/528?rss=1 2008-12-09 info:doi/10.1177/13624806080120040602 4 12 531 2008-11-01 528 Article http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/12/4/531?rss=1 2008-12-09 info:doi/10.1177/13624806080120040603 4 12 534 2008-11-01 531 Article http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/12/4/534?rss=1 2008-12-09 info:doi/10.1177/13624806080120040604 4 12 539 2008-11-01 534 Article http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/12/4/540?rss=1 2008-12-09 info:doi/10.1177/13624806080120040605 4 12 543 2008-11-01 540 Article http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/12/4/545?rss=1 2008-12-09 info:doi/10.1177/1362480608097155 4 12 548 2008-11-01 545 Article http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/12/4/548?rss=1 2008-12-09 info:doi/10.1177/13624806080120040502 4 12 550 2008-11-01 548 Article http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/12/4/550?rss=1 2008-12-09 info:doi/10.1177/13624806080120040503 4 12 553 2008-11-01 550 Article http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/12/4/553?rss=1 2008-12-09 info:doi/10.1177/13624806080120040504 4 12 555 2008-11-01 553 Article http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/12/4/556?rss=1 2008-12-09 info:doi/10.1177/13624806080120040505 4 12 559 2008-11-01 556 Article http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/12/4/559?rss=1 2008-12-09 info:doi/10.1177/13624806080120040506 4 12 561 2008-11-01 559 Article http://tcr.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/12/4/562?rss=1 2008-12-09 info:doi/10.1177/13624806080120040507 4 12 563 2008-11-01 562 Article