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Criminal Justice and Political Cultures: National and International Dimension of Crime Control
... The second departure is methodological. If we want to avoid the 'sweeping assertions of either difference or sameness' that once threatened to dominate comparative penality (Newburn and Sparks 2004:7), we require a combination of grounded methods. Showing how this framework can produce fuller and often more compelling accounts of cross-national penality, a brief illustrative comparative sketch of Ireland and Scotlandlooked at here from the 1970-1990sis provided. ...
... These contrasting practices reflect local cultural repertoires that shape what a society finds tolerable and desirable in the deployment of penal power. It is not simply that political institutions mediate the sentiments of the masses, these placespecific beliefs also allow political agents to make sense of what it is they are doing, what it is that needs to be done, and why (Barker 2009;Jones and Newburn 2005;Newburn and Sparks 2004). ...
... It is always governmental work, aspiration, contestation, and negotiation between people that result in penal laws, policies, programmes, practices and regimes (Jones and Newburn 2005;Loader andSparks 2004: 2011). Systems of punishment are simply untenable without these governmental activities, and comparatively, these political dynamics help determine differences we see in cross-national penal patterns (Newburn and Sparks 2004). Yet, as Nelken (2009) has urged comparative researchers, we need to decipher the precise intentions that motivate penal policies within our comparators. ...
In this paper I argue that if we are to make sense of why punishment differs between jurisdictions, then we should focus on the political cultures that shape penal practices. Political culture is conceived of here as a ‘practical consciousness’, made up of implicit and express cultural values and political commitments. Using the comparative case studies of Ireland and Scotland (from 1970–1990s), the paper tries to show that by taking the time to recover and interpret the beliefs and ideas that frame penal policymaking, we will be better able to illuminate and make sense of cross-national penal patterns. And using the leverage of cross-national contrast and analysis, we can also better understand punishment and its place in each society.
... There is pressure on transitional societies to conform to Americanization, which is actually driving the possibility of cooperation between the two apart (Dixon, 1999;Muncie, 2004). This phenomenon is viewed as an increasingly hegemonic influence, with Newburn and Sparks (2004) stressing the major criminological issue as an understanding of the similarities and differences in the pattern of contemporary systems of crime control, as well as the movement and translation of commodities between and within politics and political culture. Brogden (2005) also argues that there is an assumption that transitional or "failed societies" ...
... Reiner (2000) highlights the fragmentation and diffusion of the police function, and many modern police organisations feature as manifesting a new stage of social development, with the 'police' originally a specialised body for safeguarding security, which was then forced to become more universal. Newburn and Sparks (2004) have also noted the tensions between "macro-level concerns of globalization -and its related concepts and processes -and those which are more concerned with the meso and micro-level issues of governance and governmentality" (p. 12). ...
... Therefore, the results from the studies presented in this thesis have important implications for researchers in the TNP domain, especially the "newer wave," as implied in the introductory chapter. A number of researchers have put forward strong arguments that TNPC should no longer be regarded as an ideal concept or activity, and that the need for TNP to cooperate on a more holistic scale is critically required (Bowling & Foster, 2002;Giddens, 2002;Joyce, 2005;Marshall, Robinson & Kwak, 2005;Michalowski & Bitten, 2005;Nadelmann, 1993;Newburn & Sparks, 2004, Nicola, 2005Niemann & Dovidio, 2005;Reiner, 2000). This research contributes to the study of what is needed to facilitate that cooperation and to improve current practice. ...
Crime in the Caribbean consists of drug and human trafficking, weapons smuggling and terrorism, and is fuelled by this region’s physical location as a gateway to the United States (US). Significant challenges to effective policing are transnational (TN), making the region an ideal testing ground to study transnational police cooperation (TNPC). Current cooperation is seen as reactive and hindered by the Caribbean’s topography, cultures, legal systems, nepotism and territorialism. Using a phenomenological perspective, this qualitative study investigates TNPC in the Caribbean region, focusing on Puerto Rico (PR) and the Dominican Republic (DR), assessing how TNPC works within this region, current structures and operations in the Caribbean. Other researchers such as Malcolm Anderson and Ethan Nadelmann have established the theoretical research base upon which this study is built. However, as empirical research is limited around this particular study, this paper primarily draws upon interviews with law enforcement agents in PR working for the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) Program, administered by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. This study investigates stakeholders’ perspectives and the various methods of TNPC with the aim of improving the efficiency and effectiveness of multi-agencies towards a practical model, as embodied by HIDTA. This research is the first of its kind, offering a new direction for theory and research.
... The central question of whether or not this transfer implies policy convergence has been widely discussed in relation to a variety of policy areas. A policy area that is intensely discussed, nationally and internationally, and is a target for broader international trends, is crime control (Ericson, 2006;Newburn & Sparks, 2004;Worrall, 2008). ...
... Though international policy transfer is influential in crime prevention policy, the role of domestic policy and state influence should not be neglected . National policies are located in different political cultures and parts of different national regulatory styles, which causes cultural and institutional path dependency (Newburn & Sparks, 2004;Pfau-Effinger, 2005;cf. Jasanoff, 2005). ...
Every policy problem has inherent value dimensions. It is on the basis of values that a state of affairs is perceived as undesirable, and thus acknowledged as a problem. This makes the process of defining and negotiating the meaning of a problem an essentially political process. Despite this, bureaucracy and expertise have a strong, if not increasing, influence over the formation of policy problems. An objectivist knowledge view predominates within the public managerial realm, which obscures the political dimension of problem formulation, while policy problems tend to be approached as a matter of efficiency.
This thesis provides an account of the mechanisms that shape and constrain the way the policy problem of public unsafety is understood and addressed. It explores the interrelationship between policy and research and between definitions of problems and institutional settings. It does so by analysing how policy actors make sense of the problem of feelings of unsafety, by drawing on different discourses (scientific, institutional, popular or media).
The thesis suggests that to effectively govern complex policy problems there is a need to pay closer attention to how the problem is defined and how its meaning is constrained. It is crucial to make transparent the values inherent in problem definitions as well as research claims. By acknowledging the entwinement of policy and research the policy formation process may become characterized by greater reflexivity, and the possibility of resolving wicked problems may enlarge.
... Savage's (2007) monograph Police Reform: Forces for Change, for example, focuses on a number of key changes to the methods and techniques of UK policing during the 1980s and 1990s, including the introduction of zero-tolerance tactics, the development of community policing and innovations in performance management. More recently, Manning's (2010) monograph Democratic policing in a changing world includes a whole chapter on police reform, focussing on developments in community policing, problem-solving policing, hot-spots policing, and crime mapping. As Manning acknowledges these reforms are essentially 'tactical modifications in resource deployment' (p.155) and do not involve any fundamental reorganization of the police as an institution or its relationships with government. ...
... At least four factors seem to have been relevant here. First, there has been a process of policy transfer (Newburn and Sparks, 2004;Fyfe and Henry, 2012) between the two countries that may have contributed to imitation and adoption of ideas and reform practices from elsewhere. For example, senior officials from the Scottish Government as well as senior police officers visited the Netherlands during the early discussions about police reform and then invited Dutch officials to contribute to an international policing summit in Edinburgh about police reform shortly before the decision to create a national police force in Scotland was announced (Fyfe and Scott, 2013). ...
During 2013 the national governments of both the Netherlands and Scotland have introduced radical reforms which have replaced largely autonomous regional police forces with a national police service. Despite these structural similarities, however, there are important differences in the underlying processes which have shaped these reforms and the broader narratives about policing which have informed public and policy discourses.
The purpose of this paper is to understand the underlying dynamics of these police reforms. Following an overview of concepts drawn from the public policy literature regarding policy change, the paper describes in detail the structural changes to policing that have occurred in both countries. These structural changes relate not just to the spatial re-organization of policing but also to the structure of police governance and accountability. The focus then shifts to disentangling key aspects of the decision-making processes which led to the reforms drawing on Kingdon's analysis of policy change and policy formation. The paper concludes with a broader discussion of the similarities and differences in police reform in the two countries, highlighting important issues regarding the significance of political context, debates around localism and policing, and narratives regarding a normative vision of the police role.
... Political cultures and historical contexts shape crime control policies in India. The legacy of colonial-era laws and the influence of global crime control trends are evident in the ongoing legal reforms (Newburn & Sparks, 2004). ...
This paper explores the intricate relationship between morality and law, emphasizing how ethical norms shape legislative processes, crime control policies, and societal standards. Through a multidimensional lens, it analyzes the mutual reinforcement and occasional conflict between legal codes and moral values, particularly within diverse socio-cultural landscapes like India. It further examines the role of constitutional morality, divine law, educational systems, and media censorship in influencing moral standards and legal frameworks. Drawing upon contemporary global and Indian examples, the study investigates challenges in harmonizing individual rights with collective moral imperatives and advocates for a balanced integration of ethical reasoning in legal governance. The findings underscore the dynamic and evolving nature of the law–morality nexus in promoting justice, social cohesion, and respect for human dignity.
... 344-350). Policy mobilities scholarship highlights that crime control ow is much more than lineal transfer from one scenario to another, where the application of what is being transferred could diverge between them, but also symbols and rhetorics could also be part of that movement (Jones & Newburn, 2019;Newburn & Sparks, 2004;Newburn et al., 2018). ...
This chapter aims to trace how the theoretical frameworks of actuarialism and managerialism have been slowly introduced into the Latin–American scientific debate, focusing on the Argentinian and Chilean examples. With this objective in mind, we explore the journey of these theories in our region focusing on the work. Additionally, we address other academic contributions that highlight “actuarial techniques” of risk as central features to analyze contemporary penalty, policing tactics, or criminal court outcomes and practices (Hannah-Moffat, 2013a, 2013b; Harcourt, 2007; Marutto & Hannah-Moffat, 2006), even overlapping concepts like actuarialism and managerialism (Barker, 2009; Kohler-Hausmann, 2018). Subsequently, we describe the acclimation of these theories in Argentina and Chile, characterized for a limited impact on the scientific debate. We suggest that the main reason for this little impact is the different stages of the criminal justice system between Global North and Global South countries. While in the first one, actuarialism and managerialism were born to explain especially the field of risk analysis, and secondarily, the role of the new public management; in the case of Latin America, managerialism has been observed through the criminal justice system reform developed in the last three decades. This observation has focused especially on some organizational transformations and, for this reason, the analysis about actuarialism and risk assessment have been marginals. We concluded that although the influence of the literature about actuarialism and managerialism from the Global North in Latin–American is real, it is not possible to extrapolate all its elements to the penal systems in the region.
... These effects were hard to counter, as new penal logics, research, and the development of new approaches to deal with crime control and justice had been not permitted in the past, leaving the country with a wide gap in those topics and the normalization of practices such as assigning individual responsibility. And thus, Chile followed the punitive turn described in many other countries from Latin America and the global north (Newburn, Sparks 2004;Dammert, Malone 2006;Pinheiro 2007;Becket, Godoy 2008;Muncie, Goldson, 2012;Chaney 2015). ...
Chilean youth justice went through a drastic reform process during the 2000s, it was the second radical youth justice reform movement in the country since the creation of the Law of Minors in 1928. The decision to reform took place as Chile transitioned and stabilized into democracy after the authoritarian regime of the 1970s and 1980s. Superficially, it seems this is just one more way of embracing democracy and Human Rights. However, after in depth documental analysis of both the reform and the socio-political context, this paper offers a different insight and an explanation for the sudden relevance of youth justice, as a tool used by authoritarian political elites that then filtered into the political elite of the new democracy. In this context, populism played a key role in spreading concerns about youth offending and the need for a new youth justice which worked to strengthen the legitimacy of authoritarian practices in the new Chilean democratic order. It was an elite-driven populism that transformed youth justice into a key social and political concern.
... Modes for dealing with the legal offence of using substances classified as narcotics or, in countries that do not punish use, possession of such substances for personal use, has long varied greatly between European states (EMCDDA, 2005;Derks et al., 1999). This fact reveals the substantial nature of national juridical traditions (EMCDDA, 2009; and more generally Newburn & Sparks, 2004)). However, it is not incompatible with the observation that a number of recent currents, likewise quite diverse but nonetheless comparable, attest to a general tendency to see use as an offence which should no longer be punished by a prison sentence, or at least should only be thus punished as infrequently as possible, with the complementary understanding that treatment and reintegration measures are to be preferred (EMCDDA 2015f). ...
... Modes for dealing with the legal offence of using substances classified as narcotics or, in countries that do not punish use, possession of such substances for personal use, has long varied greatly between European states (EMCDDA, 2005;Derks et al., 1999). This fact reveals the substantial nature of national juridical traditions (EMCDDA, 2009; and more generally Newburn & Sparks, 2004)). However, it is not incompatible with the observation that a number of recent currents, likewise quite diverse but nonetheless comparable, attest to a general tendency to see use as an offence which should no longer be punished by a prison sentence, or at least should only be thus punished as infrequently as possible, with the complementary understanding that treatment and reintegration measures are to be preferred (EMCDDA 2015f). ...
Just as the geography of Europe is disputed, so is its social and cultural identity. Shaped by a dense history, European states share a centuries-old institutional heritage. They have been engaged since the Second World War in a powerful process of political integration. And yet European nations remain diverse, with linguistic and cultural differences so entrenched that it is sometimes said that this very diversity is the first characteristic of “European civilization” (Wintle, 1997). This observation also applies to drug policy.From the creation of European maritime empires which turned many psychoactive substances into global commodities in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Mills & Barton, 2007) to the great historical about-face which precipitated the shift in priorities of Western political elites from the promotion of intoxicants to their partial prohibition, European states share a common history as a drug “distribution engine” (Courtwright, 2001, 53). They then contributed to the establishment of a global drug control regime which they are still unanimously implementing. And they now often speak with one voice when the drug issue is debated in international arenas, especially at the United Nations (UN), most often to champion human rights, prevention and treatment. [first paragraphs]
... Therefore, the EFCC was established to serve as a national coordinator for investigating money laundering and other economic crimes (Obuah, 2010;Pierce, 2016;Umar et al. 2016). Regional policy responses to crime problems are the concerns of international communities (Newburn and Sparks, 2004) and the concerns of international communities in particular played a role in motivating the Nigerian government to set up the EFCC (Obuah, 2010;Umar et al. 2016) and update its laws. Nigeria enacted the 2015 Cybercrime Act to "provide an efficient and unified legal, regulatory and institutional framework for the prohibition, prevention, detection, prosecution and punishment of cybercrime in Nigeria" (Cybercrime Act, 2015). ...
While this article sets out to advance our knowledge about the characteristics of Nigerian cybercriminals (Yahoo-Boys), it is also the first study to explore the narratives of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) officers concerning them. It appraises symbolic interactionist insights to consider the ways in which contextual factors and worldview may help to illuminate officers’ narratives of cybercriminals and the interpretations and implications of such accounts. Semi-structured interviews of forty frontline EFCC officers formed the empirical basis of this study and were subjected to a directed approach of qualitative content analysis. While prior studies, for example, indicated that only a group of cybercriminals deploy spiritual and magical powers to defraud victims (i.e. modus operandi), our data analysis extended this classification into more refined levels involving multiple features. In particular, analysis bifurcates cybercriminals and their operations based on three factors: educational-attainment, modus-operandi, and networks-collaborators. Results also suggest that these cybercriminals and their operations are embedded in “masculinity-and-material-wealth”. These contributions thus have implications for a range of generally accepted viewpoints about these cybercriminals previously taken-for-granted. Since these criminals have victims all over the world, insights from our study may help various local and international agencies [a] to understand the actions/features of these two groups of cybercriminals better and develop more effective response strategies; and [b] to appreciate the vulnerabilities of their victims better and develop more adequate support schemes. We also consider the limitations of social control agents’ narratives on criminals.
... Policy can include reforms to laws, policies and practices; change in the portfolios of ministers; the allocation and withdrawal of staffing and funding resources; doing nothing in response to an issue (maintaining the status quo); deciding who are the priority clients by conducting a needs assessment or the hours of opening of a service. There are also situations where policy statements by politicians or powerful stakeholders, like the police, may symbolise a standpoint, establishing or testing out policy positions or reinforcing political capital and moral authority; these statements may not be backed by any intention to act (Newburn & Sparks 2004). Bacchi (2009) argues, too, that policy discourse is also constitutive of the problem it seeks to address. ...
The City of Melbourne is recognised as a vibrant cultural and intellectual metropolis that is home to a thriving graffiti and street art scene. However, municipal authorities draw a clear distinction between graffiti and street art that result in tensions related to the cultural worth of each art form. Each year a significant number of people come to Melbourne from both domestic and international locations to experience Melbourne’s graffiti and street art culture. Despite the obvious interest in graffiti, Melbourne has taken a solid stance focused on the eradication of graffiti via its graffiti removal program, and by working to prevent graffiti via anti-graffiti education programs and the cultivation of what it terms ‘high quality street art’. There is a contradiction at play here that has the potential to negatively impact the development of young street artists, as the practice of graffiti writing is where many young street artists get their start. Little is known however about the lived experiences of graffiti writers in this climate. Based on qualitative interviews with active Melbourne graffiti writers gathered as part of a larger PhD study, this article presents the lived experiences of graffiti writers arguing that Melbourne takes a myopic policy position on urban art that justifies the promotion of a valued art practice in ‘street art’ while simultaneously criminalising and devaluing graffiti writing.
... According to environmental criminology, crimes are influenced by the socio-economic, demographic and physical environments of the crime-prone area, and concentrated or repeated crimes are not random; rather, they occur in a pattern based on prevailing environmental characteristics ( Newburn and Sparks, 2004). Therefore, crime opportunities in certain areas can be assessed and predicted by analysing the environmental characteristics that influence crimes. ...
Previous crime prediction research focusing on regional characteristics is lacking in terms of the examination of physical characteristics of individual crime scenes. This study, therefore, presents a street crime prediction model by analysing streetscape features within an actual field of vision for a low-rise housing area in South Korea, which serves as a gauge for potential offenders to carry out crime. First, we performed logistic regression to analyse the correlation between street crime opportunities and the elements of streets to derive an equation for predicting street crime using selected variables. Next, we created a crime prediction map based on a geographic information system that contains attribute data on these physical characteristics and presented a street crime prediction model based on the derived prediction equation. Finally, to test the prediction model, we compared actual crime data from the selected area with the results obtained from the prediction model. The test results showed that the prediction model classified 11 out of 29 actual crime spots as crime occurrence; among the 312 non-crime spots, 257 were classified as non-crime occurrence. Based on these test results, we confirm that the occurrence of street crime is affected by the physical characteristics within the actual field of vision and discuss the improvement of the prediction model.
... Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte: 'We exist, as it is said, in a world not of our making, we make our history not just as we please but under circumstances not chosen by ourselves, but encountered and transmitted from the past'. 20 Faced with a style of contemporary literature that does not give importance to 'place' in their descriptions and explanations of what is occurring in the penal field, this implies a commitment to the development of 'more detailed and specific, empirically based' explorations of the ' transformations and continuities' 'in the particular jurisdictions in recent decades'' (Brown 2005: 28; see in the same direction, Newburn and Jones 2005;Newburn and Sparks 2004;O'Malley 2004b;Sparks 2001;Sparks and Loader 2004). ...
In the last two decades, there has been an extraordinary growth in incarceration rates in South America, with some variations across national contexts but generally in line with the same trend. Twenty years ago, incarceration rates were relatively low in most countries in the region; despite that knowledge, it has proved difficult to reconstruct the official data for that period. In 1992, with the exclusion of the small countries with less than one million inhabitants in the Northern region of South America such as Guyana, French Guyana and Surinam, only three countries had 100 prisoners or more per 100,000 inhabitants: Uruguay (100), Venezuela (133) and Chile (154) (see Figure 1). Several other national contexts reflected ?'Scandinavian?' rates, such as Argentina (62), Peru (69), Ecuador (75) and Brazil (74).
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... Early environmental criminology primarily investigated how the social and cultural characteristics of the target area affected crime (Shaw & Mckay, 1969). Analyses of such characteristics have shown that areas in which crime occurs have specific patterns, and crimes are not simply random (Newburn & Sparks, 2004). The present study classified such patterns to assess and predict the possibility of crime in a particular region. ...
Current methods for predicting residential burglaries mostly rely on analyses of crime patterns based on a real information. While this model is valid on an urban scale, it fails to consider street-scale environmental factors as well as offender behaviors in response to those factors. To improve the predictability of crime-simulation studies, this study investigated two influential factors in the occurrence of residential burglary: the physical properties of building elements and offender behaviors in response to those properties. First, a prediction algorithm was designed based on analyses of the factors. Next, a prediction method was established by modeling a virtual 3-D environment and a virtual offender using the algorithm. Lastly, the probability of residential burglary was analyzed via a simulation using the prediction method. A comparison of the simulation results with actual residential burglary data confirmed that the proposed method has statistically significant predictability.
... The third model explores the international mobility of the US prison model, and more particularly its implementation in Colombia. The research combines a criminological approach of the international mobility of criminal and prison models (for instance Newburn andSpark 2004, Wacquant 1999), and an architectural approach questioning the social and political dimensions of the globalization of this type of building (King 2004;Markus 1993). Drawing on ethnographic data gathered in the course of an extensive fieldwork in Colombia and the United States, our research highlights how the US prison model entered into conflict with the embedded practices and representations of the old Colombian prison system (de Dardel, 2010 a, b and c). ...
Dynamics of globalization: mobility, space and regulation Recent research at the Institute of Geography in Neuchâtel emphasises the pivotal status of mobility in the dynamics of globalization. Drawing on work in mobilitystudies, the article presents a basic analytical framework suitable for studying the «mobile constitution of society». It argues more specifically that the relationship between mobility, space and regulation offers a worthwhile analytical focus for exploring current issues of globalization from the viewpoint of mobility. The article presents current research at the Institute that explores this interrelation, focusing on three main fields: «human migration», «urban change» and «power, space and mobility in the information age». It argues that globalization can be seen as a process of constitution of society through mobility, and as such a field of tensions: between fluidity and turbulence, standardisation and diversity, power and resistance.
... "An evidence-based approach requires that the results of rigorous evaluation be rationally integrated into decisions about interventions by policymakers and practitioners alike" (Petrosino, 2000: 635). Evidence-based policing kan verschillende zaken betekenen in verschillende samenlevingen, die elk hun sociale organisatie, intellectuele vorming, politiek klimaat en banden met beleidsnetwerk en de bredere publieke sfeer reflecteren (Newburn & Sparks 2004). ...
... This can be sought after through severe violence and the expression of machismo which are generally respected qualities. Masculinities among young men has been well documented (Newburn and Stanko 1994;Connell 2005) however amongst young men from deprived areas the necessity to gain respect is exacerbated by the fact that legitimate paths to success often may be blocked to them (either in reality or perceived). These legitimate avenues are usually associated with educational attainment, employment and/or career progression (Curry 2004). ...
... The article is based on a research trip undertaken by the researchers to India in Autumn 2005. Newburn and Sparks (2004) comment that criminologists have become increasingly interested in the ways in which crime control policies arise and cross national borders and what happens to them when they travel. In the UK we often look at the examples of Western Europe and the USA and more recently experiences of offenders and prisoners in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. ...
In this article we will be exploring the attitudes of Indian prisoners towards their term of incarceration. The article is based on a research trip undertaken by the researchers to India in Autumn 2005.
Newburn and Sparks (2004) comment that criminologists have become increasingly interested in the ways in which crime control policies arise and cross national borders and what happens to them when they travel. In the UK we often look at the examples of Western Europe and the USA and more recently experiences of offenders and prisoners in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. (Piacentinni 2004, Pakes 2004)
... According to O'Malley (1999), these 'grand narratives' of penal change all tended to overemphasize global processes of socioeconomic change, thus overlooking historical contingencies, geographic specificities, and local countertendencies in the 'volatile and contradictory' field of penal politics. More recent sociologies of punishment effectively reversed this 'cataclysmic' approach to the punitive turn, offering detailed historical reconstructions of the peculiar evolution of American penality (Whitman, 2003;Gottschalk, 2006), broad comparative descriptions of current penal politics across different societies (Newburn and Sparks, 2004;Cavadino and Dignan, 2006), and complex politico-institutional analyses of diverging developments in the contemporary penal landscape (Savelsberg, 1994;Lacey, 2008). This important shift in perspective has led on the one hand to the production of more grounded critiques of penal excess in the United States, and on the other to a broader understanding of the cultural, political and economic factors that might contribute to a possible reversal of the punitive turn. ...
... Using his personal connections to corporate heads and top politicians of both the Left and the Right, his ties to the French police and the American secret services, and his deep masonic bonds, the founder and CEO of Alain Bauer Associates (a leading consulting firm in 'security and crisis management') rose from counsellor to socialist Prime Minister Rocard to head of the French National Crime Commission and countless related governmental bodies (the Strategic Security Mission to the President, the National CCTV Commission, the Commission for the Oversight of Police Data, etc.), to special crime advisor to President Sarkozy (Rudolph and Soullez 2007). Sarkozy then rewarded his exceptional diligence in promoting the catastrophist vision of crime that serves his political agenda by personally nominating Bauer to the first Chair in criminology 8 The national framework adopted by Loader and Sparks appears ill-suited to capturing the transnational travels and travails of penality in an era when criminal justice theories and measures are increasingly borrowed and sold across borders through 'policy transfer' (Jones and Newburn 2006;Wacquant 2011), as Sparks himself stresses elsewhere (Newburn and Sparks 2004). 9 The faculty in charge of this program includes a police commissioner, a senior customs official, a retired prefect, the security director of the telecommunications giant Alcatel, novelists, directors of 'security firms', the CEO of Fichet-Bauche (France's leading lock and armoured-door company), a reporter for the newsweekly Le Point, an infantry officer from Malta and a Colombian journalist. ...
... One way of understanding this process is as penal policy transfer (Dolowitz et al,. 2000;Newburn and Sparks, 2004;Canton, 2006;Jones and Newburn, 2007). Many countries have approached England and Wales for guidance. ...
At a time of extensive international exchange in probation policies and practices, this paper considers the opportunities and challenges of penal policy transfer. Using Ian Hacking's metaphor of an ecological niche, it is proposed that a number of inter-related vectors constitute an environment in which a transfer might thrive (or fail). A preliminary attempt is made to identify some of these influences. It is argued that the success criteria of transfer have been insufficiently discussed. Transfer can fail, but can also become corrupted. It is proposed that the enhancement of human rights is the single most important criterion for evaluating transfer.
... "An evidence-based approach requires that the results of rigorous evaluation be rationally integrated into decisions about interventions by policymakers and practitioners alike" (Petrosino, 2000: 635). Evidence-based policing kan verschillende zaken betekenen in verschillende samenlevingen, die elk hun sociale organisatie, intellectuele vorming, politiek klimaat en banden met beleidsnetwerk en de bredere publieke sfeer reflecteren (Newburn & Sparks 2004). ...
... Como primeiro estudo com dimensão de livro sobre a difusão transnacional da penalidade ao estilo estadunidense no fim do século XX, As prisões da miséria antecipou o florescimento do campo da "transferência de políticas" de polícia e justiça (cf., em particular, NEWBURN & SPARKS, 2004;ANDREAS & NADELMANN, 2006;JONES & NEWBURN, 2006;MUNCIE & GOLDSON, 2006). Como tal, é uma contribuição indireta para a pesquisa sobre a globalização do crime e da justiça do ponto de vista da punição, mas uma contribuição que segue na direção contrária dos estudos da globalização feitos até hoje, uma vez que insiste em que o que parece um movimento cego e benigno rumo à convergência planetária, supostamente fomentado pela unificação tecnológica e cultural da sociedade mundial, é na verdade um processo estratificado de americanização diferencial e difratada, promovido pelas atividades estratégicas de redes hierárquicas de governantes, empreendedores ideológicos e marqueteiros acadêmicos nos Estados Unidos e nos países receptores. ...
This article reflects on the international reception of the book Prisons of Poverty as revelator of penal developments in advanced societies over the past decade. It shows that the global firestorm of "law and order" inspired by the United States that the book detected in 1999 has continued to rage far and wide. Indeed, it has extended from First- to Second-World countries and has altered punishment politics and policies around the globe in ways that no one foresaw and would have thought possible some 15 years ago. It extends the analysis of the role of think tanks (especially the Manhattan Institute) in the diffusion of US-style crime-fighting notions and nostrums in Latin America as one element of the international circulation of pro-market policy packages fostering the punitive management of poverty. It elaborates and revises the original model of the link between neoliberalism and punitive penality, leading to the analysis of state-crafting in the age of social insecurity developed in the book Punishing the Poor.
... The communications revolution hastened the spread and speed of these developments. As the public found out about penal trends elsewhere, people in England, for example, could now demand American style policing like ''zero-tolerance'' and stiff sentencing laws like ''three strikes and you're out'' (Newburn and Sparks 2004). These tougher penal policies made sense to a global consumer who rejected the expertise and professionalism of criminal justice officials in favor of more intuitive and popular penal responses (Baker and Roberts 2005). ...
Globalization has increased the flow of people across Europe, bringing economic expansion and ethnic diversity. Open political borders have enhanced European integration and interdependence, creating a cosmopolitan European Union full of transnational citizens. Alongside this increased mobility, state coercion has been quietly on the rise. Since 1990, nearly every European democracy has increased incarceration, locking up common criminals and those perceived to be outsiders. Foreign nationals are overrepresented in nearly every European prison, making up over 50 percent of the prison population in Greece, 35 percent in Spain and Italy, for example, or 28 percent in Sweden. At the same time, the intensification of border control – the regulation of both territory and group membership – has subjected a growing number of people to detention and expulsion, as immigration itself has become, in part, criminalized. The controversial expulsion of the Roma, EU citizens, from France in the summer of 2010 and the large scale detention of North African migrants in Lampedusa, Italy during the Arab Spring of 2011, among other events, graphically illustrate the rise of state coercion, directed particularly against those perceived to be foreigners and mobile. This article analyzes the current state of the literature that brings us closer to understanding how and why European democracies resort to the criminal law and penal sanctioning to resolve broader conflicts over globalization, national identity, and economic restructuring by excluding others and by desperately trying to control and contain mobility.
... A second key dynamic which has influenced the debate on community restorative justice in Northern Ireland has been the significant prominence of the projects in both local and indeed national (UK) politics. Of course the notion that criminal justice policy is core business in contemporary politics is now a given in contemporary criminology (see eg. Newburn and Sparks 2004). However, as is argued above, the significance of the criminal justice system in general and of policing in particular is given a particular edge in a transition from political conflict. ...
... Yet, as others have noted, ideas converge and diverge across countries (Melossi, 2000). Words do not always mean the same thing everywhere (Karstedt, 2001;Newburn and Sparks, 2004;Tonry, 2007). Nelken (2009: 305) provides an example of the Dutch term gedogen, as a concept 'not readily translatable into English or any other language'. ...
Many years ago, Freda Adler (1983) sought to explain the full variation of crime rates through the notion of synnomie. Although Adler’s research was incomplete and somewhat flawed, it drew attention to low crime societies as the subject of criminological research. In this article I critically revisit Adler’s ideas in order to encourage a more methodologically rigorous approach to researching low crime societies. The main issues this article addresses are the assumption of ‘low’ crime and the meaning this label entails, the implications of ‘norm cohesion’ and the need for an alternative approach when studying ‘low’ crime. I conclude with implications for criminological research in the hope that this will invite future inquiry into matters that lie outside the traditional criminological gaze.
... Studies of governance have become an important feature of political analysis in criminological research as some have found the over-homogenized concept of 'the State' inadequate for the task of capturing the fragmentation of authority in liberal democratic states and the variegated corporatist, plural and, at certain points, authoritarian crime control agendas this enables (Crawford, 1997; Garland, 2001; Hughes, 1998 Hughes, , 2007 Johnston and Shearing, 2003). It is also argued that studies of governance provide concepts for comparative research into different political cultures of control, which recognize the role of policy networks in filtering, resisting and adapting the transfer of crime control policies within and across nation states (Muncie, 2011; Newburn and Sparks, 2004). This is particularly germane to arguments over the purported projection of neo-liberal crime control policies within the USA as well as from the USA to other liberal democracies in Europe (Edwards and Hughes, 2005; Jones and Newburn, 2007). ...
Implicit in the concept of negotiated orders is an understanding of the social productivity of political power; the power to accomplish governing programmes for citizens as much as the power over citizens for the purposes of social control. This distinction is especially pertinent for the role of political analysis in critical criminological thought, where criticism of the authoritarian state has vied with studies of governmentality and governance to explain the exercise of political power beyond the State and with the distinction between politics and administration found in liberal criminology. Outside of criminology, political economists interested in the ‘power to’ govern suggest its analysis in terms of ‘regimes’ of advocacy coalitions that struggle for the capacity to govern complex problems and populations in specific social contexts. Regime formation or failure can differ in character, and in outcomes, as much within nation states as between them and in relation to different kinds of governing problems. The article considers the applicability of regime theory to the negotiation of ‘public safety’, a governing problem which is a particular focus for political analysis within criminology.
... While we are keen to retain the essence of Brodeur's analysis, the concept of high policing nevertheless needs to be decoupled from its traditional state and governmental Br J Criminol (2006) 46 (4): 641-660 at 642 association if it is to have any explanatory potential in the context of an increasingly fragmented and globalized world. Indeed, it is now generally acknowledged that the traditional Weberian conception of the sovereign state as an entity enjoying 'the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory' and the 'source and exclusive location of public authority' (Hall and Biersteker 2002: 3) cannot be sustained in light of the current developments in global governance (Beck 2000;Garland 2001;Giddens 1999;Jessop 1991;Johnston and Shearing 2002;Loader 2000;Newburn and Sparks 2004;Ohmae 1995;Shearing 2004;Sheptycki 1998). We are witnessing the proliferation of new forms of private and non-state authority that are only loosely connected with traditional public and state based sources of public authority (Ohmae 1995;Johnston and Shearing 2002). ...
This paper contests traditional analyses of high policing, suggesting that it needs to be decoupled (in theoretical terms)
from its umbilical linkage to public actors and the preservation and augmentation of state authority. Arguing that conventional
conceptualizations of high policing fail to acknowledge the role of private actors, we adopt the term ‘private high policing’
to more accurately reflect the complexity of this paradigm. In particular, we note a long legacy of protecting dominant interests
within corporate power structures, as well as increased involvement in outsourced security services for Western states. This
has reached its zenith in the recent conflict/reconstruction efforts in Iraq. Eschewing conventional notions of the ‘proxy’
debate, we propose a more complex relationship of obfuscation whereby both public and private high policing actors cross-permeate
and coalesce in the pursuit of symbiotic state and corporate objectives.
... This move from implicit understandings of community to a more explicit stance in which communities are recognised and incorporated into policy debates is deeply significant. Its appearance is likely due to a number of interrelated factors, including: rapid social changes over the last decade or so; the greater prevalence of 'policy transfer' (Newburn and Sparks 2004) when developing policies; the prominence of social partnership in recent Irish social policy debates (particularly in relation to community development issues); the increasingly interventionist criminal justice policies adopted by recent governments (O'Donnell and O'Sullivan 2001); and the impetus that Sinn Féin's electoral successes in deprived urban areas has given to other political parties to develop measures to promote social inclusion. ...
Abstract This report considers the relationship between,policing and social marginalisation in Ireland. It is based on empirical research with residents of deprived areas of Dublin, members of the Travelling community, and representatives of the Garda Síochána and other organisations involved,in addressing ,crime-related issues. The ,research ,found ,that ,while ,some improvements in policing were noted, members of marginalised communities consistently voiced,a strong ,demand ,for greater consultation with the police and ,involvement ,in the policy-making process.
... and the accounts about transnationalization of crime and crime control strategies (Sheptycki, 2000Sheptycki, , 2002 Newburn and Sparks, 2004; Mathiesen, 2005), to name just a few. These perspectives also clearly have much to offer when analysing the contemporary dynamics of global risks. ...
The globalizing world has been described as a `world in motion', permeated by transnational networks and flows of goods, capital, information and cultural symbols, as well as potentially risky individuals and substances. This article examines the implications of the various global mobilities for criminological theory, method and policy. The world of global networks and flows introduces new notions of social ordering and exclusion, as well as challenging the prevailing conceptions of society, community, culture and social belonging, while growing demands for control of global mobilities create a complex dynamics between the nation-state and the emerging `world risk society'.
The chapter utilises Kingdon’s Agendas, alternatives, and public policies to illustrate some of the different influences involved in policy making. An analysis of policy transfer is utilised to explain aspects of agenda setting resulting in gang call-ins. The chapter uses an ethnographic vignette from an observed gang call-into capture the moments when a policy developed in major US cities is applied to local interventions in South Borough, and the reasons why it fails. It is argued that the apparent failings of the call-in were due to a transfer of a “solution” which did not match with local problems. The need for a more democratic, local and holistic understanding of the gang problem emerges as key issues for future development.
Criminology has focused mainly on problems of crime and violence in the large population centres of the Global North to the exclusion of the global countryside, peripheries and antipodes. Southern criminology is an innovative new approach that seeks to correct this bias. This book turns the origin stories of criminology, which simply assumed a global universality, on their head. It draws on a range of case studies to illustrate this point: tracing criminology's long fascination with dangerous masculinities back to Lombroso's theory of atavism, itself based on an orientalist interpretation of men of colour from the Global South; uncovering criminology's colonial legacy, perhaps best exemplified by the over-representation of Indigenous peoples in settler societies drawn into the criminal justice system; analysing the ways in which the sociology of punishment literature has also been based on Northern theories, which assume that forms of penalty roll out from the Global North to the rest of the world; and making the case that the harmful effects of eco-crimes and global warming are impacting more significantly on the Global South. The book also explores how the coloniality of gender shapes patterns of violence in the Global South. Southern criminology is not a new sub-discipline within criminology, but rather a journey toward cognitive justice. It promotes a perspective that aims to invent methods and concepts that bridge global divides and enhance the democratisation of knowledge, more befitting of global criminology in the twenty-first century. © 2019 Kerry Carrington, Russell Hogg, John Scott, Máximo Sozzo and Reece Walters. All Rights Reserved.
Interpretive policy analysis has shown the need for multifactorial accounts of the influences on penal policy and its underlying penal values. To date, it has focused largely on political and administrative decision making. This article argues that judicial decisions interpreting the compliance of penal policies with the constitutional and legal frameworks applicable in a state must also be considered when seeking to discern the nature of approaches to penal policy. The article posits that judicial decisions are important and useful indicators of penal values. To illustrate the point, the article examines the approaches of the European Court of Human Rights and the Supreme Court of the United States to whole life sentencing. By exploring the differences in penal values between Europe and the United States of America through the prism of judicial decisions, the article considers the possibilities and limits offered by examinations of judicial action as sources of understanding of penal values.
In 2011, during and after the revolutionary events in Tunisia, over a third of the total prison population escaped. These widespread jailbreaks could have been a symbol of emancipation from an abusive state power; but in Tunisia they instead came to represent the threat of criminal destabilization, and rumors of conspiracies against the democratic movement. Beyond the anecdotal dimension of these unusual events, this chapter analyzes the changing meanings of mass prison escapes in times of political transition, as they can be interpreted as part of liberatory moves, or reframed in a security-oriented political imaginary fueling more punitive policies.
Der Beitrag untersucht mögliche Schnittstellen und Zusammenhänge zwischen staatlicher Politik, gesellschaftlichen Prozessen und dem epochalen Trend zu einem sicherheitsgesellschaftlichen Kontrollregime. Die Beziehungen zwischen Staat und Sicherheit werden vor dem Hintergrund unterschiedlicher staatlicher Arrangements und Politikstrategien diskutiert.
This eloquent summary of what it is like to advocate for the rights of young people in the policy process was made by a very experienced policy advocate who was a participant in a recent research project that I conducted, examining policy decision-making in the New South Wales (NSW) juvenile justice system (Fishwick 2015). It describes the moments when, constellations of conditions come together and create the opportunity for progressive policy decisions to emerge. And, as the quotation implies, these moments happen less often than those of us involved in advocating for social justice would like. Consequently, I would argue, when they occur, it is important that we make the most of them. As a critical social scientist, who for many years was engaged in policy activism in the third sector, I completely understood where my interviewee was coming from and her words encapsulated the very reason why I was trying to understand how particular policy decisions were taken, in the hope that I could then work out how those advocating for young people’s rights and interests could intervene even more effectively in the policy process. The study covered a specific period in NSW juvenile justice history 1990–2005 during which I was involved in campaigning for reform as both a researcher and advocate in the third sector (known as the non-government or not-for-profit sector in Australia). As I explain later, it was a very frustrating period in youth justice policy since it often felt like that just as we took one step forward in moving towards rights and social justice informed change, we were also being pulled backwards and sideward as we tried to defend the very positions we had just gained.
This volume grows out of two parallel but distinct developments in social science research that affect the way researchers study and seek to have an impact in the areas of crime and criminal justice. These are the increasing acceptance and practice of (some form of) reflexivity in social science research, on the one hand, and, on the other, the changing context of research itself. On the latter point, we note that criminologists working across different jurisdictions are experiencing heightened pressures to render their research relevant and appealing to external audiences. These pressures are linked in part with the fact that governments in Australia, the UK and the USA (along with other countries) are increasingly keen to ensure that their investment in the higher education sector is delivering ‘value for money’. This implies that research and teaching activities that are government-funded must increasingly align with, or at least demonstrate alignment with, what these governments define as the public interest. In Australia, for example, the Australian Research Council, which is responsible for administering public research funding, has identified a list of nine strategic ‘Science and Research Priorities’ to organise funding of ‘support for science and research on the most important challenges facing Australia’ (developed partly from a 2014 white paper ‘Boosting the commercial returns of research’; see ARC 2016). With the possible exception of ‘cybersecurity’, none of these strategic priorities appear to be directly relevant to criminology or indeed, the social sciences. The specified research priorities relate primarily to what are known as ‘STEM’ subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering and Medicine), thereby prioritising an increasingly narrow set of subjects and research methodologies that reflect a pragmatic and in our view myopic governmental understanding of what constitutes societal value.
In the late 2000s, numerous prominent public commentators raised concerns that corruption scandals were harming Britain’s ability to play a leadership role in anti-corruption initiatives abroad. With a view to contributing to critical criminological scholarship on international policy transfer and double standards in criminal justice policy and practice, this article explores the extent to which reputational damage curtailed Britain’s appeal as an anti-corruption mentor in South-East Europe during the 2000s. Challenging the common presumption that stronger states tarnished by corruption scandals will face ‘hypocricy costs’ abroad, this article finds that a range of factors work to insulate stronger states from the potential ramifications of reputational decline.
Spain is one of the Mediterranean countries that belong to the EU. It is the third biggest country in Europe, behind Russia and France, with a surface of 504.782 km2. According to the National Institute of Statistics, there were 43,026,982 inhabitants by January 2004; i.e., the mean population density is of 86 inhabitants/km2. Nevertheless, there is a great inequality in the distribution of the population among regions. Most of the people live in the coastal regions and in big urban agglomerations; i.e., the region of Madrid has 724 inhabitants/km2, while Castilla-La Mancha, an inland region, has 23 inhabitants/km2 only.
Na perspectiva deste ensaio Direito e Justiça são encarados a partir da sua conexão na estrutura básica da sociedade, tendo em vista os variados papéis que desempenham e os modos concretos como se realizam. Só dessa forma podem estimular atuação institucional integrada e contribuir para estabelecer comunidade de sentido – ou seja, aclarando competências, redefinindo normas de comportamento, mostrando como agir e alcançar objetivos do modo mais adequado. Conexão abordada, tendo em vista a problemática em questão, a partir da relação entre a qualidade e o caráter do punível variável conforme a sociedade, e como tais variações podem estar relacionadas a diferenças de natureza social e política. Em outras palavras, o Direito e a Justiça são tratados a partir de relações que permitem comparar, por exemplo, punibilidade ou rigor punitivo no contexto nacional e de regimes socioeconômicos. O que permitiu verificar, entre outras coisas importantes, que o neoliberalismo não é homogêneo nem inevitável, e que seu impacto no campo jurídico é limitado por conta de uma resistência explicada em termos de diferenças entre regimes.
An important theme in recent comparative penology has concerned the apparent convergence of penal policy between 'neo-liberal' Anglophone jurisdictions exemplified by the adoption of a punitive and politicized approach to crime and punishment. At the same time, important divergences from this pattern have been noted in other national contexts, not least in a number of Western European countries. This article returns to these debates in light of the history of the passage of federal and state legislation in the area of sex offender community notification in the United States (Megan's Law) together with campaigns to enact similar legislation in the UK (Sarah's Law). We compare the process of policy change on both sides of the Atlantic and analyse the factors shaping key policy decisions. A central objective is to explore the ways in which broader cross-national influences and distinctive national political institutions and structures work to shape the agendas and actual decisions of key policy actors. The article concludes with some observations about the nature of convergence and divergence in the penal policies of different nations. © The Author(s) 2013 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav.
Résumé A l’occasion des 10 ans de la parution de son ouvrage Les Prisons de la misère , Loïc Wacquant revient dans un exercice d’auto-sociologie sur la réception intellectuelle et militante du livre. Il revient également sur les analyses livrées alors et revisite le modèle d’articulation entre néolibéralisme et État pénal à lumière des développements récents.
Zero tolerance in France
This article analyzes transfers of U.S. public policies, focusing specifically on the influence of the New York Police Department’s “zero tolerance policing ” strategy on French crime control policies. An in-depth analysis of major French national newspapers shows undeniable support for this transfer in the media and in political and expert circles, which have taken it up as a slogan while gradually shifting its original meaning. In actual French crime control policies, however, both at local and national level, this supposed transfer turns out to be illusory, owing to insurmountable disparities between the institutional and professional codes and cultures of the two nations. Zero tolerance is, then, a good illustration of the gap between symbol and substance that may obtain in the transfer of public policies.
The drug courts in the United States exemplify how mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion are mediated by complex cultural constructions of ways in which we may `feel good' rather than mad, bad, sad or sick. I argue that such mechanisms, and public health initiatives which seek to persuade us to choose specific means to enhance our health while eschewing others, are engaging an ethopolitics of moralized pleasures associated with the trope of addiction. Technologies of pleasure associated with current public health initiatives encouraging us to manage our risky neurochemical selves are, in some senses, homologous with the practices of the drug courts in the United States. In both, normalization is anchored in the management of pleasures, while notions of addiction support neo-liberal governance strategies. The rhetoric of salvationary narratives is drawn upon as a device of purification which decontextualizes debate, marginalizing counter-theories
This essay proposes an approach to understanding changes in political responses to crime in England and Wales over the last third of the twentieth century and developments in criminological knowledge over the same period. To explore the association between these in some empirical detail, we argue, would provide a historical-sociological understanding that is currently lacking, notwithstanding Garland's significant intervention in The Culture of Control. We take issue with some aspects of Garland's account, on both methodological and substantive grounds, and delineate certain distinctions between his 'history of the present' and the historically situated hermeneutics that we favour. The latter, we suggest, can be more attentive to particular political and intellectual struggles that have had a formative bearing on the current field and, as such, offer new perspectives on the position of crime and punishment in contemporary political culture.
RESISTINDO À DISPOSIÇÃO de subjetivar o real impacto da globalização, este ensaio argumenta que o contexto transicional, constituído de relações de autoridade e poder que se presumem alicerçadas no concreto, é irretorquivelmente ideológico e condicionado por noções que ocultam mais do que revelam. Particularmente no que concerne o Direito e a Justiça, instituições alvo e decorrência de lutas hegemônicas, estruturas focadas nas tensões entre determinantes macroestruturais e os múltiplos meios pelos quais atores coletivos e individuais são dirigidos, deixam-se governar e aprendem a se auto-regular.
This article explores the enabling pre‐conditions of global mass imprisonment from historical and criminological perspectives. Driven in part by Western first‐world anxieties about weakening economic supremacy, declining safety, declining standard of living, and increasing social isolation in a diaspora of strangers, this article explores the spread of penal populism beyond American shores, with a particular focus on the proliferation of privatized, for‐profit, punishment schemes. The expressive and instrumental functions of actuarial punishment schemes are noted.
This paper considers David Bayley and Clifford Shearing's (1996) argument that policing systems in developed economies are currently undergoing radical change. It is clear that a number of significant shifts have occurred including major reforms in public policing, and a substantial expansion of the private security industry. However, we question the degree to which current developments in policing should be interpreted as a sharp qualitative break with the past. By focusing primarily upon change the risk is that we overlook the significant consistencies and continuities that are equally important in understanding historical trends. We also question the extent to which the developments highlighted within this transformation thesis can be seen as global. We argue that the transformation thesis fails to take sufficient account of important differences between the nature and form of policing in North America, and of that in other countries such as Britain. We conclude by arguing that it is helpful to locate the set of changes within the framework of policing in a wider context. Thus, rather than view current developments as a fragmentation of policing, we see them as part of a long-term process of formalizaton of social control. The key development that appears to have taken place concerns shifts between what we term primary and secondary social control activities.