International Journal of Law Crime and Justice最新文献

The European intelligence space is reaching a new level of maturity because of an increasingly consolidated transgovernmental network of intelligence professionals. What explains the change in this key security network, especially given the challenges inherent in intelligence sharing? The overall strengthening of the European transgovernmental intelligence network is a product of both informal, bottom-up networking and formal, top-down policies to enhance intelligence sharing. Yet, it is clear that the informal side is of utmost importance given the difficulties inherent in trusting outsiders with valuable information. It is through informality that the transgovernmental network shares best practices and knowhow, strengthening the backbone of the European intelligence space. At the same time, there is a realm of intelligence sharing that is still subject to deep secrecy, the dynamics of which are very difficult to truly know. As a result, there is a disjuncture between expert-level intelligence sharing and community governance practices.

Over time, justice has been one of humanity's most important affairs the state institutions are mandated to achieve every in civil and criminal proceedings. However, the Nigerian state criminal justice system faces the issue of individuals embracing illegal punishment termed “mob justice” to address public security threats and police neighborhoods. Such punishment tends to violate human rights laws. Hence, this study explored mob justice issues and their intersection with human rights in Nigeria. From 1152 participants recruited in Lagos, Nigeria using simple random and convenience sampling methods, the data was gathered via a structured questionnaire and analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences. The findings indicated that institutional problems and unethical practices in the criminal justice system aggravate public distrust. In conjunction with socioeconomic disparities, the distrust triggers individuals to adopt an unconventional approach (mob justice) against crime suspects for public security's sake. Such an approach violates suspects' rights to life, a fair hearing, justice, and protection from degrading treatments as stipulated in the 1999 Nigerian Constitution and international human rights treaties the country is a signatory to. However, the study advised the Nigerian state and criminal justice stakeholders to address structural and institutional issues that make mob justice an alternative form of justice appealing to the public.

The regulations introduced under the UK's Coronavirus Act 2020 to help curb the spread of COVID-19 caused considerable confusion due to conflation between what was regarded as ‘guidance’ and what was ‘law’. The fast-paced nature of the pandemic meant that restrictions on public liberty and increased police powers to enforce the new ‘rules’ led to accusations of over-zealous enforcement behaviour of some officers, including a record number of Fixed Penalty Notices (FPNs) issued. This paper explores the experiences of police officers in a range of English police forces, using 28 h of qualitative interview data at two research points in time (2020 and 2022). The extracts presented here illustrate some of the challenges that officers faced enforcing the frequently changing rules and regulations during the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK.

In this article the intrinsic relation between the formal and the informal aspects of rape trials in Sweden will be scrutinized and discussed, for two main reasons (that are intertwined). Firstly, rape cases are characterized by a word-against-word situation, with few other forms of evidence, and with a rate of convictions much lower than for other criminal cases. The fact that the parties’ statements are placed at the core of the presentation and assessment of the evidence leaves much scope for argumentation about normality, rationality, logic and common sense. Secondly, rape trials have been subject to a significant amount of critique, in public as well as in legal debate due to gendered stereotypes, assumptions about autonomy, objectivity, ideal victims, real rape etc.

The article aims to explore and shed some light on parts of the continuum of formality and informality in criminal trials in Sweden. By deconstructing rape trials through the lens of the emotion-sociological concept of empathy, the article contributes to deepened knowledge of the work performed by the legal actors in court in general and their work as empathic translators, in particular. We will focus on a specific part of the empathic process, namely emotion management to stage credible testimonies, in the sense that the stories told by the parties and/or witnesses are framed and presented by legal professionals in court as if they have been acting and reacting normal, natural, reasonable and rational.

We present the analysis of the intrinsic relationship between the formal framework and the informal work performed by the legal actors, by exploring how the legal concepts are embodied in stories from everyday life in the trial, framed by the legal actors. The analysis includes a description of the stage at which these trials take place (the objectivity ideals and self-images) and the most important formal aspects and parts of the criminal and procedural regulation of rape trials. The article ends with final conclusions and reflections on the continuum of formality and informality in rape trials.

The material in the study from which this article derives consists of observations of 18 rape cases, including written judgments and interviews with legal professionals in these cases.

Introduction to the special issue, addressing the theory of decentred governance and its relationship to counter-terrorism.

The paper draws upon ideas of decentred security, and governance and security assemblages, to explore the gendered nature of countering violent extremism. The paper focuses on the UK as an example of decentred CVE and concentrates on two areas. First, the paper looks at the evolution of modes of governing Muslim women in CVE initiatives. Second, the paper explores the tensions and frictions involved with the state and civil society using ‘formers’ (men who were previously involved in violent extremism) to engage in countering violent extremism community and de-radicalisation work. The paper finds that a decentred security governance approach to understanding CVE reveals how CVE is productive of MuslimWomen, of Muslim Communities and Violent Extremism. It also reveals CVE to operate not only according to formal documents and programmes but through an assemblage of beliefs, traditions and practices of everyday security.

The increasing involvement of communities in counter-terrorism in the UK and Egypt in the 90s and the early years of the new millennium signals a shift from government to governance in these two countries. This article is an exploration of some of the key governance-related challenges and opportunities in involving mainstream and non-violent extremist Islamic movements in combating jihadist-linked terrorism. We discuss the complexity of engaging communities and moderate and non-violent extremist movements, emphasizing the importance of engaging communities in combating jihadist terrorism. We explore some key Islamist movements from an historical and ideological perspective and look at the involvement of these movements in violence and its prevention. We argue that UK policies in that respect have developed out of ideas of psychological and community resilience. Examples are drawn from the practical involvement of communities, including members of ‘moderate’ and of non-violent ‘extremist’ movements in combating terrorism.

This article presents findings from a qualitative study of criminal cases labelled hate crime in Norway. The author asks what kind of knowledge is being produced through the criminal cases and what does it say about policing? The study captures how the cases become registered in the system. This results in the creation of three main categories of events, namely what the author calls post hoc victim reported incident, post hoc police reported incident and in situ incident. The author finds that the practice-oriented document analysis enables an understanding of how some acts are criminalized and turned into ‘hate crimes.’ In addition, the few cases that are exercised in court, have an impact on policing hate crime, as actors and materiality come together in producing a sense of justice, urgency and need of police attention on future, similar events.

Framed by ongoing debates about both the legitimacy and efficacy of the UK government's Prevent counter-terrorism strategy, this article examines how and why it is resisted and contested in both overt and more nuanced ways. The analysis focuses specifically upon how such contests are manifested in the aftermath of terror events illuminated by two distinct data sources. These are empirical data collected from interviews with policy developers and deliverers, together with material derived from systematic monitoring and assessment of social media following four terror attacks in the UK in 2017. It is suggested that such incidents are singularly important moments because they simultaneously evidence the need for Prevent-type interventions, but also such interventions' apparent failures to stop such violence.

A key theme for the article concerns how, situated in the contemporary information environment, a key strand of Prevent work conducted in the wake of terrorist violence involves managing the potential impacts of rumours, conspiracy theories and other disinformation. The management of public perceptions and reputation thus emerge as vital undertakings. Insights from the data are used to develop a more conceptually oriented argument concerning the logics and rationalities of ‘counter-governance’, positioning it in a wider literature on de-centred governance and regulation.