Peter Squires

Peter Squires
University of Brighton · School of Applied Social Science

PhD (Bristol) 1985

About

164
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885
Citations

Publications

Publications (164)
Chapter
This final chapter, a brief conclusion, draws together the core themes of the book, reiterating the main themes and reinforcing the ways in which the separate chapters contribute to the overriding themes of the work. The conclusion closes by suggesting a number of ‘pathways for future research’.
Chapter
This chapter addresses two related aspects of the imperial legacy in the global South: the weaponization of frontiers and territories and the imposition of ‘asymmetric’, alien and oppressive policing systems upon these same regions. The question as to whether all policing systems are asymmetric and ‘force reliant’ remains implicit. A particular foc...
Chapter
This chapter considers the violent legacies of empire, for imperialism (in its colonial and postcolonial forms) has been central to the political construction of ‘Southern-ness’. Military domination of Southern lands is frequently associated with a brutal violence exercised against Indigenous peoples, while in more recent times the task of domestic...
Chapter
The chapter introduces the volume, sketches the broad outlines of the 16 substantive chapters which follow and sets out the issues and concerns which underpin the approach taken by the collection. The discussion engages, albeit briefly, with the work of a range of Southern and postcolonial commentators who have drawn attention to Southern differenc...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Public Mass shootings shock, disturb and provoke enormous and controversial debate, often causing significant public and media resonance/reaction, becoming the subject of intense discussion in political culture (Böckler et al, 2013). At times they provide an impetus for legislative amendments to European frameworks and policies (Duquet, 2016; Hurka...
Article
These four books published recently reflect, in their different ways, how criminology is coming to grapple with questions of firearms and violence. These are timely topics; at home, in Europe and across the wider world, gun violence has seldom been out of the news. In the United Kingdom, following the recent Inquest verdict and the coroner’s report...
Article
Across 18 specially commissioned chapters this book draws together several emerging academic, theoretical and research-inspired concerns relating to ‘Southern perspectives’ in criminology and existing scholarship on colonialism and the decolonization of the criminological imagination. There are chapters on Southern and imperial legacies regarding p...
Chapter
Introduction We’re God knows where, out in the desert, in the middle of fucking nowhere … rattling around in the back of our Warrior as the RPGs and machine gun fire rattle in. (Wood, 2019: 3) Discussing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Derek Gregory (2004: 11) assesses the imperial legacy they embody. He suggests that the ‘War on Terror’ marks ‘a...
Chapter
Southern perspectives in criminology: an agenda Several chapters that make up a large part of this book began life as papers presented at a ‘Southern Perspectives’ one-day research seminar at the University of Brighton in the early summer of 2019. The purpose of the day was to draw together several academic/theoretical research and network connecti...
Chapter
Introduction Discussing the development of law and order in a global context, Comaroff and Comaroff (2012) have argued that our understanding of the nature and development of policing would be better informed by more fully incorporating perspectives on the operation of policing systems in the ‘global South’. They make this argument in marked contra...
Chapter
The struggles of our contemporary moment, the deepening of social inequalities around the world, the rise of authoritarian governments, the routine violence of corporations, state institutions and state agents, as well as the contestation of these circumstances by grassroots groups and social movements – all inspired our initial symposium at the Un...
Article
The family has many connections with the criminal justice system, but few are quite so notoriously conveyed than in Margaret Thatcher’s response to the riots of 1981. ‘I blame the parents’ she told a gathering of journalists and broadcasters, thereby simultaneously nailing the themes explored by Amanda Holt in the first two chapters of her remarkab...
Chapter
Societies often preoccupy over the use of weapons in reaction to spikes in ‘gun crime’ or ‘knife crime.’ Globally, criminal justice statistics suggest that firearms are the most common instrument used in homicides, followed by knives and other sharp objects. In spite of the common use of these weapons to perpetrate serious forms of crime, defining...
Chapter
In an earlier work, Shooting to Kill? Police, Firearms and Armed Response, a series of controversial police shooting cases in the UK were analysed. In a number of these cases, fundamental issues had arisen which, in our view, provoked unnecessary confrontational situations which often put suspects, the public and police officers themselves in harm’...
Chapter
The moral panic concerning young people and knives reached a peak in 2007 and 2008 as news media reported a spike in child knife homicides. The culmination of public pressure and politicisation set the scene for a significant expansion of police powers and related enforcement activity, a renewed commitment to stop and search, a major roll-out of Ta...
Chapter
Drawing upon the critical conjunctural analysis in Policing the Crisis (Hall et al., Policing the crisis: Mugging, the state, and law and order, Macmillan, 1978) this chapter considers the context in which a distinct mobilisation towards ‘knife crime’ (following ‘mugging’ as the new ‘black crime’) occurred, before the label was publicly defined. Co...
Chapter
While this book is focused upon the British ‘knife crime crisis’, there is wider global context and a longer historical perspective to the British story that we discuss in this chapter. The significance of knives in history and culture is an aspect of how we make sense of ‘knife crime’, one that is often overlooked. In order to bring this more glob...
Chapter
Our conclusion seeks to draw together the central themes of the book, returning to the key questions which prompted the original research into the ‘new knife crime’ phenomenon. We review the arguments of each chapter, noting the ways in which a new crime category was created which, over time, like ‘mugging’ and ‘gang-related’ offending before it, a...
Chapter
Knife violence has become a topic of great urgency in British society, politics and culture. Hardly a day goes by without further news of brutal stabbings and tragic violence. Yet despite the current preoccupation with ‘knife crime’, stretching back some two decades, a peak in knife violence around 2007, and a resurgence in the problem ten years la...
Chapter
Knife crime became a priority issue in criminal justice practice and youth policy from 2009 onwards and directed funding supported an increasing amount of targeted knife crime prevention work and organisations dedicated to knife crime intervention. Since then, there has been a great deal of innovation in the sector and it is now possible to find co...
Chapter
Through analysing the history, meaning and context of ‘knife crime’ we can challenge certain misunderstandings, ambiguities and fabrications wrapped up in the concept. However, working beneath the political discourses and the pronouncements of policy makers (and the ‘knife crime industry’) there are professionals who confront the complex realities...
Chapter
The introduction of the ‘knife-enabled’ feature code in 2001 fundamentally changed the way knife-enabled crimes were categorised and reported. This ultimately led to a problematic public definition of ‘knife crime’ as we understand it today. This chapter retraces the earliest public uses of the term ‘knife crime’ in news reports from 2002 onwards a...
Chapter
With ‘knife crime’ returning to the headlines from 2015 onwards the limitations of existing enforcement-led interventions of recent years became profoundly exposed. More than this, the impact of proactive policing upon youth and communities, especially BAME communities, with periodic roll-outs of stop and search policy, appeared to further alienate...
Chapter
In this chapter, Carl Walker, Peter Squires and Carlie Goldsmith explore how the everyday lives of young people intersect with the instrumentalised, commercial imperatives of for-profit financial institutions. The chapter presents an analysis of recent UK financial education tools produced by financial institutions for young people. In so doing, th...
Article
Small books can sometimes pose the biggest of questions, and this is undoubtedly one of them. The question of the privatization of criminal justice sector activities has given rise to a wide range of empirical research and plenty of critical analyses (with good reason, bearing in mind the disastrous recent experience of the probation service), yet...
Chapter
The aim of this chapter is to discuss the security challenges associated with firearm possession (legal and illegal), weapon trafficking, and firearm misuse in Europe and then to explore how these challenges might be most effectively addressed. A concern also includes the trafficking of firearms for illegal purposes into the UK. To do this, two sep...
Book
This critical textbook looks beyond the data on knife crime to try and make sense of this global phenomenon. It explores why the UK in particular has become so preoccupied by this form of interpersonal, often youthful, violence. It lays out knife crime in its global and historical context and examines crime patterns including the 'second wave' of k...
Article
This article examines the implications of advanced manufacturing technology, more commonly known as three dimensional (3D) printing, for policing and crime, notably the dissemination of digital design files and the use of 3D printers to produce illicit firearms. The application and rapid evolution of 3D printing technology has created new challenge...
Article
Full-text available
Even before the handgun ban introduced in 1998 following the school shooting at Dunblane, Scotland, the UK had one of the world's stricter firearms control regimes. Partly as a consequence, rates of firearm ownership in England, Wales and Scotland were low, even by European standards. More recently, however, with increasing concerns about gang invo...
Chapter
The mass shooting phenomenon, rather more than underlying levels of “ordinary” gun crime, has brought new urgency to the global gun debate, leading to renewed international efforts at gun control even as, in many societies, those who can, acquire firearms for their own personal defense, lacking confidence in the authorities' ability to protect them...
Book
This title was first published in 2000: Effective service provisions for young people are often said to be the key to Community Safety planning yet research frequently shows young people as over-controlled yet under-protected. Taking up this dilemma, this work draws upon a large survey of young people's attitudes towards the opportunities facing th...
Chapter
Peter Squires and Carlie Goldsmith examine social exclusion of youth and the conservative the ideology of the ‘broken society.’ They address young people’s hardship and marginality through a critical analysis of neo-liberal political ideology. They that young adult ‘quality of life’ has diminished as a result of ‘tough justice’ and punitive welfare...
Chapter
Introduction Central to our analysis is a critical reinterpretation of the pervasive conservative ‘common sense’ regarding inequality and the social exclusion of substantial sections of contemporary working-class youth, and concerning crime and disorder. We begin by engaging with three core components structuring and sustaining this social exclusio...
Article
The book critically engages with neo-liberal policies and media representations of youth austerity as a constructed social crisis but remaining the mechanism used by both government and media to exert control over young adults; It explores the diversity of intersections relating to youth marginality across social class, gender and racial boundaries...
Chapter
Beginning with a discussion of recent cases of gratuitous ‘trophy hunting’, this chapter considers live animal shooting as a ‘country sport’ and the attitudes and practices associated with it. It explores the cultural and historical changes which shaping the development of shooting and changing sensibilities towards it. The discussion challenges so...
Article
Full-text available
Following the collapse of a number of 'gang-related' prosecutions in England and Wales from the late 1990s, the police and Crown Prosecution Service revived a practice of 'joint enterprise' prosecution. Joint enterprise was a historic common law principle holding co-defendants equally responsible for offences which appeared to evince a common colle...
Chapter
Introduction A lot can happen in five years: the Conservative Party manifesto for the 2010 general election insisted that ‘Britain needs change’, and went on to claim that our ‘communities are shattered by crime and abuse’ (Conservative Party, 2010, p vii). Given such an urgent clarion call in 2010, it is fascinating how far explicit discussion of...
Chapter
This chapter notes that in five years of the coalition government law, order and criminal justice apparently slipped from the front page to a back burner. It draws attention to some striking parallels between the Conservative Thatcher government and the coalition (such as being confronted by significant popular discontent and disorder), but also so...
Article
This book examines the social policies of the coalition government from 2010 to 2015, and outlines the incoming Conservative government’s approach during its first 100 days in office. Drawing on contributions on cross-cutting themes such as public expenditure and the governance of social policy, and on key service areas, including education, health...
Article
James J. Chriss (2013), Social Control: An Introduction, 2nd edn.Cambridge: Polity Press. £18.99, 258 pp., pbk. - Volume 44 Issue 4 - PETER SQUIRES
Book
Every year around three-quarters of a million people die (directly or indirectly) as a result of gun violence, with most deaths occurring in the poorest, yet also most highly weaponized parts of the world. Firearm proliferation -- 875 million global firearms -- is a direct contributor to both regional conflicts and to crime. This book attempts to u...
Article
An article criticising government failure to increase firearms licensing charges in England and Wales in order to establish a more robust system of oversight for private gun ownership while recognising a consistent pattern of misuse of licensed firearms.
Chapter
In most contemporary accounts, and especially in anti-social behaviour (ASB) performance management publications, anti-social behaviour is often regarded as if it were a discrete and recognizable class of behaviours occurring in society. It is frequently seen as a particular attribute of the poorest and youngest: the self-evidently ‘undisciplined’...
Article
Full-text available
In this edition of cjm we examine precarious living in modern conditions. Guy Standing's work on The Precariat provides a reference point in relation to this theme. Standing's book is subtitled ‘the new dangerous class’: this immediately pitches the idea into a maelstrom of inter-disciplinary concerns. Historically, notions of the ‘dangerous class’...
Article
As criminal justice agencies draft protocols to limit research opportunities around their own interests and priorities – on grounds of ethics, risk or governance – universities have also become increasingly complicit in a process of selective research retrenchment, embracing ethical codes that marginalise critical and qualitative research tradition...
Article
Anti-social behaviour has become a major political preoccupation of government and combating it is now a major plank of criminal justice policy. Yet anti-social behaviour as a concept has been little studied, and the notion has often been accepted uncritically. This book aims to meet this need, providing a critique of the government's use of the co...
Chapter
Peter Squires emphasises a longer and more subtle evolution of welfare as ‘workfare’ and social discipline in the UK than appears in Wacquant's analysis but also introduces a key theme of resistance and disorder: on the one hand the Hobbesian ‘war of all against all’ but also the violences that obstructs development and the violences of the state w...
Book
This book represents the first full-length critical and interdisciplinary assessment of Loïc Wacquant's work in English. Wacquant's challenging critique of the neo-liberal government of crime and the punitive culture to which this is related has shaken criminology to its foundations. In a bold political analysis he describes how the US-led revoluti...
Chapter
Introduction The aim of this chapter is to critically reflect on the analytical themes and issues reflected in two of Loïc Wacquant's major works (Urban outcasts, 2008a, and Punishing the poor, 2009). Despite the essential similarities of their respective subject matters, the books are quite different in content, style, tone and methodological orie...
Chapter
Written by criminologists and policy analysts, Criminalisation and Advanced Marginality offers a constructive but critical application of Wacquant's ideas.
Article
Full-text available
There is currently concern in the UK that injuries and deaths caused by firearms are increasing. This is supported by small local studies but not by wider research to inform targeted prevention programmes. A retrospective analysis was performed of firearm injuries from the Trauma Audit and Research Network (TARN) database (1998-2007), the largest n...
Chapter
IntroductionDecivilising ContextsFrom Bullets to Blades?Violent Intent, Human Tragedy and DangerThe Weaponisation of Youth Violence?Contexts for Violence and Policy FailureConclusion Lessons for Policy and PracticeReferences
Chapter
How children and young people behave in and around schools is an issue of enduring public and policy interest. Most people are likely to have a view on the matter, including a view about whether the behaviour of young people is changing (Hayden, 2010). Educationalists and criminologists have a different, but overlapping, concern in this respect. Fo...
Article
Unfashionable as it is to claim, there are parallels between policing and medicine. Professional practice in medicine has been built upon foundations laid down in universities, led by practitioner-academics. In medicine, we owe a debt to Sir William Osler, who in the face of few effective treatments and great uncertainty about 'what works' demanded...
Article
Shooting to Kill? Policing, Firearms and Armed Response explores the dilemma of armed response policing in the UK, and policing in a gun culture. Offers the first critical exploration of the ACPO code of guidance on Police Use of Firearms and other tactical manuals. Includes interviews with senior police firearms managers and critical case studies...
Chapter
The Shooting of James Ashley in Hastings, 1998The Shooting of Harry Stanley, 1999The Shooting of Andrew Kernan, 2001Caution at Highmoor Cross, 2004Ambush at Chandler's Ford, 2007
Chapter
Hanging, Shooting and Opinion PollingClick by Click?The ‘Greatest British Defeat since Dunkirk’New Frontiers and Supply Side QuestionsThe Most Important Decision for the Future of British Policing – Since Last YearWar and Order: The New Continuum of ForceThe Dunblane Primary School Massacre and its Aftermath

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