International Journal of Law Crime and Justice最新文献

Research generated by Prevent is abundant. The majority of studies focus on the delivery of Prevent as a Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) initiative but rarely question the methodological pretences that underpin its practices. There is mounting pressure from the public sphere and sections of the research community that is casting doubt on Prevent's effectiveness as a policy as well as its potential to cause harm to the vulnerable communities it professes to serve through the pre-criminal space it occupies. This qualitative investigation evaluates the implementation of Prevent and its Statutory Duty at the community level, drawing on the experiences of Local Authority (LA) Prevent managers and their pastoral networks, which are predominantly populated by schools and education providers. It questions the validity of the Prevent manager's evidence base, using the Foucauldian concept of governmentality and the Bourdieusian conception of the educational field to navigate this dynamic.

Predictive policing, that is, the data-driven deployment of police operations on the ground, has become increasingly important in recent years. While predictive policing instruments serve to formalise the ways in which police think and operate, the human agent remains central to their exploitation and translation into strategic, operational, and tactical decision-making. The introduction of predictive policing instruments and methods therefore represents a particularly insightful terrain on which to analyse negotiations of formality and informality. How this plays out in the Swiss context will be addressed in this paper. Based on a review of documents and policies on predictive policing developments and exploratory interviews conducted with police officers and developers, we discuss how institutions and actors engage with predictive policing and what this tells us about the formalisation, respectively informalisation of police work. Our findings point to the challenges related to the federalist organisation of police in Switzerland and the growing importance of cantonal threat management (Bedrohungsmangement) platforms. We also note a general lack of awareness regarding the potentially harmful outcomes of predictive policing instruments, which may be related to a specifically Helvetic narrative that downplays the impact these instruments have on decision-making.

Intercept interpreters ensure the interlinguistic transfer from oral conversations wiretapped by the police into written evidence that is used in criminal proceedings. So far, this element of the criminal proceedings has received little attention in research, and knowledge on practical implementation of the formal requirements and the related informal practices is scarce. Using Switzerland as a case study, this article examines the daily practices of intercept interpreters within the legal framework. Theoretically, this study aligns with Lipsky's (1980/2010) concept of “street-level bureaucracy”. It is based on 24 semi-structured interviews with intercept interpreters and police officers and on an observational study conducted at the intercept interpreters' workplace in a Swiss police department. The major finding of our qualitative content analysis is that the formal framework is felt as a corset by police officers, and that the police and the intercept interpreters are loosening it in their daily cooperation. However, this is not disclosed in the final production of the formal evidence. Furthermore, the findings show that both are aware of the daily trade-offs between formal requirements and the need for informal working processes.

In this study we examine the use of the police stop and search tactic for preventing and investigating crime and as a method for maintaining order, during periods of national lockdown in England and Wales during the covid-19 global pandemic. By using time series modelling on data for all recorded stop and search over a 5-year period, we identify that of the 24 areas we examined, 16 saw the volume of stop and search increase significantly during lockdown periods. Significant findings included a rise in the overall volume of stop and search, and searches for controlled drugs. This is unusual given the reductions in crime and traditional police demand during the pandemic, creating somewhat of a paradox. We discuss this further and suggest that this can be reconciled by considering the possibility that the police have used the tactic of stop and search as a tool to maintain order during the pandemic, and specifically adherence to national lockdowns. This position is supported by the academic literature, an absence in associated recorded crime, correlations in the application of FPNs during the same period, and an increased volume of searches that resulted in no further action.

This study examined Japanese attitudes toward reporting the real names of juvenile offenders, through the lens of symbolic discrimination. This topic has attracted much attention in recent literature. As extant research suggests that the Japanese public considers Japan's Juvenile Law to be outdated, we hypothesized that the notion of symbolic discrimination—which argues that juveniles should not be treated differently from adults—would be related to attitudes toward real-name reportage. After an online survey of 961 Japanese people aged 14 years and older, a multiple regression analysis was conducted to investigate attitudes toward real-name reportage of and symbolic discrimination against juvenile offenders, including appropriate punishment for bad behavior (balance) and adversity experienced by juvenile offenders (adversity). The results showed that, in addition to several of the participants' beliefs about and perceptions of juvenile offenders and crimes, balance was associated with support for real-name reportage, demonstrating that symbolic discrimination was related to support for the same.

Traffic stops continue to be the primary contact between law enforcement and the public, yet little priority is given to traffic stop education and training. A systematic review of felonious traffic stop-related law enforcement officer (LEO) deaths from 1990 to June 2021 revealed the average LEO killed during and after traffic stops was male, in their late 30s, at the rank of officer, with an average tenure of 9.6 years, and killed by a firearm. A synthesis of state and local law enforcement regulations in states with the most officers killed showed the average hours spent in the academy on traffic stop-related training was 20.3 h (3.6%). The overall annual training requirement averaged just 13 h, and only one state required traffic stop-related training, which was once every four years. The lack of education, training, and retraining may precipitate deadly circumstances for a routine law enforcement function.

The United Nations' ‘Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment’, disseminated an extensive ‘Universal protocol’ on interviewing/interrogation styles in summer 2021. Its implementation across the world is likely to be influenced by current practices in various countries (such as the rapport building and empathy employed). The aims of the present study were (i) to examine German police officers' estimates of suspect interviews in four different styles of suspect interviews (‘humane’, dominant’, ‘theme development’ or ‘neutral’); and (ii) to see whether interviewers' level of empathy is associated with their reactions to the interview styles. There were significant effects found in the dominant interviewing style regarding the participants' estimation of (i) interviewer fairness towards suspect, (ii) interviewer's understanding on suspect's thought-process toward the crime, (iii) whether the interviewer was aggressive, or (iv) humane, and (v) whether the interview was conducted well. Officers' empathy level only had an effect for the dominant interviewing style.

Community notifications are released by law enforcement to warn the public of a high-risk offender re-entering the community. Unfortunately, negative media attention generated from community notifications can impact an individual's ability to successfully reintegrate, leading to increased recidivism. This study examines whether modifications to community notifications can change public perceptions of offenders. Participants were presented with community notifications including jargon or simple language, an explanation of release or no explanation, and various sentence lengths served by the justice-involved individual. Notable results included a higher tolerance for justice-involved individuals when legal jargon was used in the explanation of release. Moreover, justice-involved people were perceived to be more likeable when information on sentence length was not provided. These findings contribute to a greater understanding of factors that affect public perceptions of justice-involved individuals. Addressing these factors could decrease recidivism rates by adequately informing the public of risks without negatively impacting offender reintegration.

Social disorganization theory has been tested for several decades in different countries, especially in the United States and Britain. With rapid urbanization, China is facing the similar issue of disruption of neighborhood organization in transitional zones as other countries have experienced. To test the applicability of social disorganization theory in China, this study examined the impact of both neighborhood structural characteristics and organizational characteristics of communities on victimization, utilizing a sample from a small rural-urban town in Zhejiang Province, China. The findings indicated that local dialect competence, residential mobility, and attitude toward the police were significantly associated with individual victimization. Therefore, social disorganization theory is supported based upon the current sample. Limitations and future studies are also discussed.