International Journal of Law Crime and Justice最新文献

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 As extant research suggests that the Japanese public considers Japan's Juvenile Law to be outdated, we hypothesized that the notion of symbolic discrimination—which argues that juveniles should not be treated differently from adults—would be related to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.

Policing in England Wales is currently experiencing a large uplift in police recruitment. This has been due to the Government's target to uplift officers by 20,000. As a result, police forces are implementing large scale, sustained recruitment drives. These are accompanied by positive action schemes to address deficits in officer representation. Current statistics now indicate that representation in forces is rising slowly, as these initiatives are employed. There is little literature that examines the impact of positive action on existing police officers' perceptions, despite the initiative's relative proliferation. Procedural Justice theoretical literature is utilised to situate this in the research context.

This study represents 17 theoretically informed, long form, phenomenological interviews conducted with serving officers in a uniform, response policing environment. The interviews were semi-structured, open ended and participant led, allowing the officers to present and explore their own thoughts and feelings about positive action, developed through their lived experience in an active police role. These interviews were conducted in an operational environment, from an insider-outsider perspective with total privacy. Officers openly discussed how they felt about the implementation of such policies and procedures.

The findings indicate that a taboo exists with regards to the discussion of positive action processes in the police workplace. A juxtaposition also exists between the existence of positive action initiatives and the theme of meritocracy amongst the police officers. Officers strongly refuted the need for positive action to remedy issues with representation, but similarly criticised the current representation levels within forces. Theoretically this indicates an informational gap between police implementation of positive action interventions, and the perceived need for them to exist at all amongst rank and file. Implications for the study's findings are explored and possible remedies discussed.

The tension between formality and informality is intrinsic to the implementation of criminal law. Criminal procedures in fact always happen on a continuum between formality and informality, where the different actors involved (police officers and other street-level bureaucrats, prosecutors, judges, experts, defense lawyers, etc.) continuously perform and negotiate (in)formality. This special issue explores these “politics of (in)formality” in different criminal law settings and from different disciplinary perspectives. The different empirical contributions explore the continuum between formality and informality as well as practices of informalization in two different levels of the criminal justice system: police investigations and court proceedings.

Previous studies found a positive relationship between prior violent victimization experience and substance use among adolescents based on general strain theory. However, there is limited knowledge on the link between violent victimization and vaping, which is a relatively new method of substance use. Therefore, the current study applies general strain theory to examine the relationship between violent victimization and vaping. Three types of vaping, nicotine, marijuana, and flavor only, are examined in correlation with violent victimization, utilizing data from the 2019 cohort of the Monitoring the Future study (MTF). The findings suggest that students with violent victimization experience are more likely to engage in vaping. Also, students with stronger negative emotions, weaker social bonds, and more unstructured time with peers are more likely to vape. The current study provides empirical evidence on using general strain theory to explain vaping behavior among students. Applicable policies are also discussed.

A growing number of studies have argued that public participation in criminal justice has become increasingly important in recent years; however, empirical data on the prevalence and determinants of participation in criminal justice are limited. Therefore, this study conducted a preliminary exploration of the prevalence and determinants of criminal justice participation experience and intention using data from 848 Japanese adults. This study defined the concept of criminal justice participation based on the notion of political participation used in political sciences. The results demonstrated that only 10.5% of the respondents had experienced at least one of the nine examined activities (e.g., participating in demonstrations and posting their thoughts on SNS). In addition, the mean of each intention item ranged from 1.46 to 2.04 on a five-point Likert scale. Moreover, experience and intention were not significantly affected by demographic variables, except for gender, with men showing higher experience and intention to participate.