Pub Date : 2023-11-13DOI: 10.1177/17416590231212441
Michelle Brown
{"title":"In memory: The appeal of crime and Gray Cavender","authors":"Michelle Brown","doi":"10.1177/17416590231212441","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17416590231212441","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46658,"journal":{"name":"Crime Media Culture","volume":"34 11","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136346682","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-11-04DOI: 10.1177/17416590231205901
Andrew Brooks, Astrid Lorange
In this paper, we offer a conjunctural analysis of policing and incarceration, examining their expansion in relation to structural economic conditions over the last 50 years and interrogating how the sudden onset of the Covid-19 pandemic enabled extraordinary growth in policing powers in the Australian jurisdictions of New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria (VIC). We examine how popular support for police-led responses to crisis and fines as a common-sense solution to social problems were sought during the period that the Public Health Orders were in effect in the two states. We argue that the discursive project of naturalizing the police-led response to the pandemic—via official communications from the state governments as well as media coverage of the pandemic—attempts to further entrench a vision of law and order governance in which infrastructures of discipline and punishment are necessary and inevitable. We identify this vision as a direct barrier to abolition and a significant limit on the capacity to imagine alternative frameworks for justice. We end by considering a small archive of tweets from users in NSW and VIC published on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter (now called X) in 2020–21. We argue that this archive registers the way the common-sense status of the fine as an efficient, effective, and equitable punishment gives way to punitive fantasies about police and prisons. We read this archive alongside the broad refusal to pay Covid-related fines and the ongoing legal disputes contesting the legitimacy of their issuance, concluding by proposing that the conjunctural moment of the Covid-19 pandemic has given rise to unresolved contradictions between the naturalized logic of law and order crisis management and the potential for this logic to come undone.
{"title":"“Extraordinary powers for extraordinary times”: A conjunctural analysis of pandemic policing, common sense, and the abolitionist horizon","authors":"Andrew Brooks, Astrid Lorange","doi":"10.1177/17416590231205901","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17416590231205901","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper, we offer a conjunctural analysis of policing and incarceration, examining their expansion in relation to structural economic conditions over the last 50 years and interrogating how the sudden onset of the Covid-19 pandemic enabled extraordinary growth in policing powers in the Australian jurisdictions of New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria (VIC). We examine how popular support for police-led responses to crisis and fines as a common-sense solution to social problems were sought during the period that the Public Health Orders were in effect in the two states. We argue that the discursive project of naturalizing the police-led response to the pandemic—via official communications from the state governments as well as media coverage of the pandemic—attempts to further entrench a vision of law and order governance in which infrastructures of discipline and punishment are necessary and inevitable. We identify this vision as a direct barrier to abolition and a significant limit on the capacity to imagine alternative frameworks for justice. We end by considering a small archive of tweets from users in NSW and VIC published on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter (now called X) in 2020–21. We argue that this archive registers the way the common-sense status of the fine as an efficient, effective, and equitable punishment gives way to punitive fantasies about police and prisons. We read this archive alongside the broad refusal to pay Covid-related fines and the ongoing legal disputes contesting the legitimacy of their issuance, concluding by proposing that the conjunctural moment of the Covid-19 pandemic has given rise to unresolved contradictions between the naturalized logic of law and order crisis management and the potential for this logic to come undone.","PeriodicalId":46658,"journal":{"name":"Crime Media Culture","volume":"10 5","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135774066","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-11-03DOI: 10.1177/17416590231208607
Leon Laidlaw
{"title":"Book Review: The Routledge International Handbook on Decolonizing Justice","authors":"Leon Laidlaw","doi":"10.1177/17416590231208607","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17416590231208607","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46658,"journal":{"name":"Crime Media Culture","volume":"43 20","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135820346","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-10-28DOI: 10.1177/17416590231207672
Samantha O’Donnell
{"title":"Book review: Jordana Silverstein, <i>Cruel Care: A History of Children at our Borders</i>","authors":"Samantha O’Donnell","doi":"10.1177/17416590231207672","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17416590231207672","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46658,"journal":{"name":"Crime Media Culture","volume":"136 12","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136158471","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-10-11DOI: 10.1177/17416590231197202
Erica Åberg, Hanna Tyvelä
Sweden, often cited as an exemplary welfare state, has experienced a significant increase in gang-related gun violence in recent years. In parallel, Finland debates the growing problem of youth violence and street gangs. The media discourse surrounding these issues often focuses on ‘gangsta rap’ and certain artists within the genre. Despite rap music’s popularity and expression of underprivileged and racialised youth globally, it has earlier been subject to policing and criminalisation, now introduced in the Nordic countries. Using Finnish and Swedish media discourse and rap lyrics and videos as data, this article contributes to prior understanding by 1) linking narratives of ‘gangsta rap’ to the dismantling of the Nordic welfare state, 2) highlighting the racist targeting of ethnic minorities through the public discussions of rappers and 3) discussing similarities and differences between Sweden and Finland, adding nuance to understanding how rap and its criminalisation vary across countries.
{"title":"Finnish and Swedish ‘gangsta rap’ as a window on the dismantlement of the Nordic welfare state","authors":"Erica Åberg, Hanna Tyvelä","doi":"10.1177/17416590231197202","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17416590231197202","url":null,"abstract":"Sweden, often cited as an exemplary welfare state, has experienced a significant increase in gang-related gun violence in recent years. In parallel, Finland debates the growing problem of youth violence and street gangs. The media discourse surrounding these issues often focuses on ‘gangsta rap’ and certain artists within the genre. Despite rap music’s popularity and expression of underprivileged and racialised youth globally, it has earlier been subject to policing and criminalisation, now introduced in the Nordic countries. Using Finnish and Swedish media discourse and rap lyrics and videos as data, this article contributes to prior understanding by 1) linking narratives of ‘gangsta rap’ to the dismantling of the Nordic welfare state, 2) highlighting the racist targeting of ethnic minorities through the public discussions of rappers and 3) discussing similarities and differences between Sweden and Finland, adding nuance to understanding how rap and its criminalisation vary across countries.","PeriodicalId":46658,"journal":{"name":"Crime Media Culture","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136209212","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-30DOI: 10.1177/17416590231199816
Daniel Sailofsky
From a zemiological perspective, organizations causing social harm in their pursuit of profit is a form of white-collar deviance. In the case of sport and violence committed by athletes outside of the field of play, the structures of professional sport and the decisions made by organizations can impact not only the athletes involved, but victims, potential victims and society at large. Interviewing National Basketball Association (NBA) and National Football League (NFL) front office members and journalists, I explore how teams in both elite professional sports leagues make player evaluation decisions regarding players who have been accused of criminality and violence against women, to assess sport organizations and leagues’ role in the violence of athletes. Interviewees noted that the talent of the player, their ability to produce value for the organization, and the potential backlash from fans and media play a pre-eminent role in organizational decision-making. Paired with professional sport’s privileging of dominance and aggression by athletes, this talent and production-based sanctioning of players accused of VAW illustrates organizational, league and capitalist sport structures’ complicity in continued acts of violence by athletes. Implications for contemporary conceptualizations of deviant leisure and organizational white-collar crime are also discussed.
{"title":"‘Did the NFL start caring about women a lot more after Ray Rice? Probably not’: White-collar deviance and violence against women in racial capitalist sport","authors":"Daniel Sailofsky","doi":"10.1177/17416590231199816","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17416590231199816","url":null,"abstract":"From a zemiological perspective, organizations causing social harm in their pursuit of profit is a form of white-collar deviance. In the case of sport and violence committed by athletes outside of the field of play, the structures of professional sport and the decisions made by organizations can impact not only the athletes involved, but victims, potential victims and society at large. Interviewing National Basketball Association (NBA) and National Football League (NFL) front office members and journalists, I explore how teams in both elite professional sports leagues make player evaluation decisions regarding players who have been accused of criminality and violence against women, to assess sport organizations and leagues’ role in the violence of athletes. Interviewees noted that the talent of the player, their ability to produce value for the organization, and the potential backlash from fans and media play a pre-eminent role in organizational decision-making. Paired with professional sport’s privileging of dominance and aggression by athletes, this talent and production-based sanctioning of players accused of VAW illustrates organizational, league and capitalist sport structures’ complicity in continued acts of violence by athletes. Implications for contemporary conceptualizations of deviant leisure and organizational white-collar crime are also discussed.","PeriodicalId":46658,"journal":{"name":"Crime Media Culture","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136342601","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-30DOI: 10.1177/17416590231196131
Filipe Santos, Susana Costa
A death that occurs inside a prison cell initiates a distinct set of procedures from those around a death on the outside. When a confined space within a penal institution of total surveillance and control becomes a crime scene, it may reflect the prevailing institutional cultures and the ways in which they react and adapt. This paper analyses the case of Marcos, who was found dead in a Portuguese prison cell which he shared with another individual. From the discovery of the body to the crime scene inspection by the police, and from the autopsy to the trial, the qualitative analysis of the inscriptions produced in this case reveals and highlight the epistemic cultures involved. As each culture is developed from the professional practices and modes of acquiring and using knowledge, the analysis of their logic contributes to an understanding of how forensic evidence is co-produced and appropriated in the Portuguese legal context. We identify five epistemic cultures: institutional defence, hunch, office, bubble, and ‘rubber stamp’. We argue that the apparent neutrality of an inquisitorial criminal justice system enables the development of particular ways of producing, understanding and using scientific knowledge and forensic evidence.
{"title":"Crime in a prison cell: Epistemic cultures and institutional neutrality in an inquisitorial setting","authors":"Filipe Santos, Susana Costa","doi":"10.1177/17416590231196131","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17416590231196131","url":null,"abstract":"A death that occurs inside a prison cell initiates a distinct set of procedures from those around a death on the outside. When a confined space within a penal institution of total surveillance and control becomes a crime scene, it may reflect the prevailing institutional cultures and the ways in which they react and adapt. This paper analyses the case of Marcos, who was found dead in a Portuguese prison cell which he shared with another individual. From the discovery of the body to the crime scene inspection by the police, and from the autopsy to the trial, the qualitative analysis of the inscriptions produced in this case reveals and highlight the epistemic cultures involved. As each culture is developed from the professional practices and modes of acquiring and using knowledge, the analysis of their logic contributes to an understanding of how forensic evidence is co-produced and appropriated in the Portuguese legal context. We identify five epistemic cultures: institutional defence, hunch, office, bubble, and ‘rubber stamp’. We argue that the apparent neutrality of an inquisitorial criminal justice system enables the development of particular ways of producing, understanding and using scientific knowledge and forensic evidence.","PeriodicalId":46658,"journal":{"name":"Crime Media Culture","volume":"28 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136280697","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-28DOI: 10.1177/17416590231199771
Mariana Aldrete, Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol
Femicide is a worldwide problem. Studies of femicide discourses have found embedded discriminatory ideologies that could help to legitimize gender-based violence (GBV) at individual and social levels. This paper aims to contribute to the research on femicide and news frames. Studies of thematic and episodic frames tested their differential effects, but they did not examine the content. We propose a three-level methodology, distinguishing between thematic and episodic frames, conducting an in-depth examination of issue-specific frames, and adding the notion of substantiveness to analyse the results. We created a dataset of 2528 news articles from Mexican mainstream media, coded through qualitative content analysis. The proposal can be applied in many cultural contexts and opens up opportunities for comparative studies of femicide. Our results reveal that thematic pieces are focussed on non-intimate partner violence (IPV) femicides. Episodic pieces are more diverse but with a tendency to individualize the problem and attribute responsibility to the victims.
{"title":"Framing femicide in the news, a paradoxical story: A comprehensive analysis of thematic and episodic frames","authors":"Mariana Aldrete, Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol","doi":"10.1177/17416590231199771","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17416590231199771","url":null,"abstract":"Femicide is a worldwide problem. Studies of femicide discourses have found embedded discriminatory ideologies that could help to legitimize gender-based violence (GBV) at individual and social levels. This paper aims to contribute to the research on femicide and news frames. Studies of thematic and episodic frames tested their differential effects, but they did not examine the content. We propose a three-level methodology, distinguishing between thematic and episodic frames, conducting an in-depth examination of issue-specific frames, and adding the notion of substantiveness to analyse the results. We created a dataset of 2528 news articles from Mexican mainstream media, coded through qualitative content analysis. The proposal can be applied in many cultural contexts and opens up opportunities for comparative studies of femicide. Our results reveal that thematic pieces are focussed on non-intimate partner violence (IPV) femicides. Episodic pieces are more diverse but with a tendency to individualize the problem and attribute responsibility to the victims.","PeriodicalId":46658,"journal":{"name":"Crime Media Culture","volume":"257 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135425371","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-15DOI: 10.1177/17416590231196125
Allysa Czerwinsky
Misogynist incels have been at the fore of academic, professional and mainstream discussions in recent years. Drawing on a systematic review of 47 studies, as well as my own experience with researching current misogynist and exit-curious incels, this paper explores the strengths and weaknesses of the contemporary incel-focused literature. It summarises and critiques the foundational knowledge that underpins our understanding of the current incel community, conceptualised into themes of incels as oppressors, incels as oppressed and incels as threat. Importantly, this paper interrogates the usefulness of our working definition of the term ‘incel’, calling for greater specificity in the language we use to define, theorise and explain the subsets of the incel community under study. In line with a call for more precise language in empirical works, I explore several areas for future research that will help broaden our understanding of the complexities and contradictions within the broader incelosphere.
{"title":"Misogynist incels gone mainstream: A critical review of the current directions in incel-focused research","authors":"Allysa Czerwinsky","doi":"10.1177/17416590231196125","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17416590231196125","url":null,"abstract":"Misogynist incels have been at the fore of academic, professional and mainstream discussions in recent years. Drawing on a systematic review of 47 studies, as well as my own experience with researching current misogynist and exit-curious incels, this paper explores the strengths and weaknesses of the contemporary incel-focused literature. It summarises and critiques the foundational knowledge that underpins our understanding of the current incel community, conceptualised into themes of incels as oppressors, incels as oppressed and incels as threat. Importantly, this paper interrogates the usefulness of our working definition of the term ‘incel’, calling for greater specificity in the language we use to define, theorise and explain the subsets of the incel community under study. In line with a call for more precise language in empirical works, I explore several areas for future research that will help broaden our understanding of the complexities and contradictions within the broader incelosphere.","PeriodicalId":46658,"journal":{"name":"Crime Media Culture","volume":"51 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135397118","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-09-13DOI: 10.1177/17416590231197198
Rosanne Kennedy, Tanya Serisier
In her play Prima Facie, playwright and lawyer Suzie Miller uses theatre to critique legal responses to sexual violence. This article thus offers an analysis of the play as both feminist theatre and feminist advocacy. We examine the rhetorical and performative strategies it deploys, arguing that they are effective because they mobilise long-standing feminist tropes which use a representative figure of the traumatised victim and the repetition of statistics to position the audience as potential victims of violence. Such strategies, however, fail to account for the complexity of sexual violence, intersectional understandings of it, or its relationship to other structural forms of harm that flow from turning to the state, as articulated by Black feminist scholars. These limitations also function in the play’s loop between an indictment of law’s failings and recuperating the law as a privileged site for responding to sexual violence. We read this tension as exemplifying the play’s enactment of a cruelly optimistic relationship to law, which is, we argue, a recurring feature in feminist cultural advocacy around sexual violence. However, we also suggest that reading the play through the words of its protagonist can open visions of justice beyond what Carol Smart has described as the ‘siren call of law’.
{"title":"‘Somewhere. Some time. Somehow. Something has to change’: <i>Prima Facie</i> and the cruel optimism of feminist legal advocacy","authors":"Rosanne Kennedy, Tanya Serisier","doi":"10.1177/17416590231197198","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17416590231197198","url":null,"abstract":"In her play Prima Facie, playwright and lawyer Suzie Miller uses theatre to critique legal responses to sexual violence. This article thus offers an analysis of the play as both feminist theatre and feminist advocacy. We examine the rhetorical and performative strategies it deploys, arguing that they are effective because they mobilise long-standing feminist tropes which use a representative figure of the traumatised victim and the repetition of statistics to position the audience as potential victims of violence. Such strategies, however, fail to account for the complexity of sexual violence, intersectional understandings of it, or its relationship to other structural forms of harm that flow from turning to the state, as articulated by Black feminist scholars. These limitations also function in the play’s loop between an indictment of law’s failings and recuperating the law as a privileged site for responding to sexual violence. We read this tension as exemplifying the play’s enactment of a cruelly optimistic relationship to law, which is, we argue, a recurring feature in feminist cultural advocacy around sexual violence. However, we also suggest that reading the play through the words of its protagonist can open visions of justice beyond what Carol Smart has described as the ‘siren call of law’.","PeriodicalId":46658,"journal":{"name":"Crime Media Culture","volume":"2 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135740187","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}