Howard Journal of Crime and Justice最新文献

The impact of the insular nature of prison environments is usually studied from the perspective of incarcerated persons. This article presents key findings from an ethnographic study in a Belgian telephone pole-style prison, exploring the experiences of prison officers working in single-staffed units and the impact on the occupational culture. Drawing on the emic term ‘islands’ used by prison officers in this study to metaphorically depict both the material and psychological work environment, this article discusses the impact of specific work conditions within this prison setting, such as the detrimental effect of prison officer isolation on staff cohesion, solidarity and functional staff–prisoner relationships. Moreover, the results show that certain factors, such as local prison policy, digital communication and prison layout, may contribute to or reinforce insularity.

This paper reviews what is known about ethnic identity and the processes by which people cease offending. Whilst the past 30 years have seen dramatic growth in what is known about desistance, in many jurisdictions, there is a paucity of research which examines this in terms of ethnicity or ethnic variations. We therefore review what is empirically known about ethnicity and desistance. Whilst this review draws from the global literature, our focus is on what this literature tells us about ethnicity and desistance from a British perspective. We find that the majority of these have been undertaken in the United States (although there are some European and Australasian studies). Few studies, however, have fully unpacked the role of racism (in terms of institutional processes or overt prejudice and hostility) and that there have been very few studies of the roles played by ethnicity in processes of desistance.

Prison regulators across scales hold potential to illuminate harms of imprisonment and influence alternatives, yet criminologists rarely engage with these mechanisms. We analyse prisoners’ participatory roles in the ‘transformative’ Corston Report (2007) and The Corston Report 10 Years On, using actor-network-theory to guide document analysis. Corston called for a radically different, woman-centred approach to criminal justice, but women's voices were often peripheral, or they were constructed as ‘pathetic’. There is unrealised potential for regulatory efforts to network imprisoned women and their families with other regulators, deepening understanding of problems connected to prisons, for broader social benefit.

Police civilianization represents one of the most significant developments in contemporary policing. However, little is known about how marginalized communities, who are routinely subjected to civilian police work, perceive, and experience these actors. Drawing upon interviews with 66 unhoused people who use drugs in Winnipeg (Canada), we compare participants’ perceptions of and experiences with the Winnipeg Police Services’ (WPS) Auxiliary Force Cadets—civilian police with limited legal authorities—and sworn WPS officers. Participants reflected on Cadets’ inferior legal authority to explain their invasive and aggressive policing style, whereas they perceived sworn officers as more passive. They thus modified their behaviours in response to their perceptions of and interactions with these different policing actors. We demonstrate how marginalized persons distinguish between varied policing actors, engaging in what we coin police actor demarcation, and analyze why this distinction matters with respect to how they navigate and interact with policing bodies.

Ex-prisoners with meaningful employment are less likely to return to prison; however, ex-prisoners have the highest unemployment rates of any marginalised group. This article draws on the voices of former prisoners who are seeking employment through government-funded employment agencies in Australia and staff working in these agencies. Revealed themes of employment service providers’ practices, employer attitudes, navigating stigma, ongoing surveillance, and advocacy and support were analysed in the context of theories of integration, resisting re-offending (desistance), discrimination, and stigma. We unpack the way different forms of stigma and discrimination lock marginalised groups of criminalised people into unemployment.

While existing research has examined travel bans as a result of the abuse of migrant workers, here they are analysed in relation to capital punishment. Focusing on female migrant workers travelling to the Middle East from Indonesia, it is argued that, far from indicating an abolitionist stance on the death penalty, these travel ban policies instead reveal paternalistic attitudes towards gendered labour and the need to preserve the ‘dignity’ of the nation. Moreover, these bans are ineffective and fundamentally fail to address the vulnerability of migrant workers to execution overseas.

The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic required police officers in England and Wales to enforce new public health restrictions (e.g., stay-at-home directives, social distancing requirements and mask mandates), as well as navigate the risk that COVID-19 posed to their own health and safety during interactions with the public. From a practical standpoint, these factors changed the nature of the policing task significantly, with previously routine police decision-making (e.g., whether or not to carry out stops, searches, arrests and/or detentions) necessarily responding not only to traditional concerns around suspicion and evidence but also directly to these novel legal and organisational challenges. Findings from interviews carried out in 2020 and 2022 with 18 police officers from 11 different forces in England and Wales suggest that well-established predictors of arrest decisions (e.g., offence severity, evidence and/or the pursuit of culturally orientated objectives) were disrupted due to broader considerations, uniquely related to the COVID-19 pandemic. This article uses Keith Hawkins’ (2002) conceptual framework of criminal justice decision-making—surround, field and frame—as an explanatory device to help us understand arrest and non-arrest decisions of street-level police officers during this period, despite the existence of sufficient evidence to support such action.