In the explanation of crime, although each social science has a primary focus of theoretical development, there are a number of areas where disciplines unwittingly parallel one another. Such parallel development promotes unnecessary competition among theories and prevents them from progressing knowledge. Additionally, theorists often discard related concepts presented by other disciplines, if they considered at all, which is indicative of an imbalance in the disciplinary frame of reference (e.g., psychology over sociology). Such imbalance and lack of cross-referencing impedes the ability of theories to adequately explain and understand criminality. This paper revisits how the theorizing of crime may benefit from such cross-referencing through what we refer to as a reciprocating perspective. Drawing on interdisciplinary literature, we present a conceptual approach that can aid in strengthening theoretical development. Aiming to create an interdisciplinary bridge, we address key pitfalls in criminological theory development through four main elements: (1) concept formalization, (2) multi-level conceptualization, (3) causality, and (4) application. We also outline problems caused by such imbalance, and the progress made possible by the approach.
This study examines seasonal patterns of crime in two Nigerian cities with varying weather conditions. Using residents’ perception of crime data, break-ins are perceived to occur more frequently in the low quality neighbourhoods in Benin City, whereas in Minna, it is perceived to occur regularly in the high quality neighbourhoods. Overall results show that Minna, with warmer climate has higher levels and seasonal variations for violent crime (assaults) while Benin City, with colder climates has higher levels and seasonal variations for property crimes (break-ins). It is apparent from this study that seasonal patterns of crime in one place may not translate effectively into another. Hence, continuous researches into seasonal analysis of crimes are justifiable in the security planning efforts to ensure an environment that is suitable for living, working and recreating.
When immigrants arrive in a new country, they often discover that being an immigrant does not allow them to integrate easily into the new society. Immigrant offenders are more likely to engage in criminal behaviors due to inequities in social determinants of health factors as a source of strain. This study was focused on utilizing the personal experiences of immigrant offenders to discover the various circumstances that contributed to their criminal behavior. General Strain Theory has been shown to be a useable theoretical model in explaining the relationship between race/ethnicity and criminal behavior. The participants in this study were adult immigrant ex-offenders in the province of Alberta, Canada. The results of the study indicated a consensus among ex-offenders that there are social determinants of health factors such as stress, income problem, education issues, employment issue, and health risk behaviors that have led them to commit crime. The recommendations presented below are divided into three groups. Recommendations include: (a) future research in federal, provincial and territorial correctional systems, (b) identification of multiple risk factors that lead an individual to commit crime, (c) crime prevention strategies that help prevent criminal behavior for immigrants.
This study examines the relationship between the adversarial legal system and wrongful convictions. Understanding the shortcomings of legal procedure as a contest, (especially in cases involving marginalized defendants), can be illuminated through a critical agonal analysis that reveals power imbalances and rule breaking. The paper addresses the trial of William Mullins-Johnson, a Canadian aboriginal man who spent 12 years incarcerated for a crime that never took place. The court is examined as an agonal space of contestation where victory in the adversarial trial is equated with factual, actionable truth. The analysis invokes the critical theory of agonism prefigured in Foucault’s under-explored theory of power as a ‘clash between forces.’ Although the adversarial system is premised on the value of fair play, the winner-loser structure can invite rule-breaking and violations of due-process to the gross disadvantage of the accused thereby reproducing forms of systemic discrimination and horrific miscarriages of justice. The aim of the study is not to provide a full synopsis of the Mullins-Johnson case but to suggest that agonistic theory can make critical contributions to understanding of the relation between adversarial legal contests and wrongful convictions.
Our main goal is to propose a prototype for amodel in order toqualitatively vet uncontrolled behavior, foremost criminal recidivism, and we put forward the following research question (RQ): how mig ...
The role of police in US society remains a topic of ongoing controversy and discussion in both field literature and popular media. The multiple roles of police officers span from coercive instruments of social control (backed by state-sanctioned powers to use force), to suppressors of crime and disorder, to agents of social service and community assistance. Police culture and identity is discussed here as functions of persistent myths and archetypes as filtered through Graves, Beck and Cowan’s Spiral Dynamics theory of development. In addition, Wilber’s Integral meta-theory and elements of narrative psychology serve as appropriate theoretical mechanisms to organize and examine the roots and characteristics of police identity and culture.
The transition of campus security services to outsourced services, occasioned by 2005 Nigeria’s national policy on public service reform, created problems about its form, content and context. Previous studies on Security Services Outsourcing (SSO) concentrated more on the Information Communications Technology aspect without commensurate attention on the socio-economic costs of human security services. This study examined the socio-economic costs of SSO in the Federal Tertiary Educational Institutions (FTEIs) in Ogun State, Nigeria. The conflict perspective was adopted as the framework while the design was survey. Multistage sampling method, which consisted of purposive, stratified and random sampling techniques, was used. The Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta; Federal Polytechnic, Ilaro and; Federal College of Education, Abeokuta were utilised for the study. Questionnaires were administered on 783 respondents selected through stratified and random sampling methods. Eight Key Informant Interviews and eight In-Depth Interviews were conducted with the management and stakeholders in each of the FTEIs. The socio-economic costs of SSO included engagement of police personnel during examinations, recruitment of non-professional security personnel and divided loyalty. The security services of the FTEIs were constrained by the manifest and latent socio-economic costs. The study recommended that the outsourcing policy be comprehensively reviewed.
The overarching aim of this article is to explore criminal recidivism. Criminal recidivism is one of the largest problems for correctional institutions and thus ambition in Western countries. In pa ...
The doctrine of spousal privileged communication existed in the common law and the Canadian law for centuries until it was abruptly abrogated in the year 2015 by the previous conservative government in light of the victims’ rights movement, without much debate or discussion in the parliament. Communications between spouses (and now partners) were privileged on the ground that they were so closely identified with each other than an aura of bias would surround any testimonial evidence they may present before a court against their partner, due to an inherent or vested interest in the trial. Until 2015, the reason this privileged communication was protected, with some limitations, was due to the preservation of marital harmony. Why was the preservation of marital harmony no more a social value in Canada? I argue that this unfounded and abrupt abrogation was unwarranted and since the same was done without any research, it will have long term implications in criminology. Therefore, this paper has three key aims, firstly, to explore the concept, meaning and the origin of spousal privileged communication in Canada and the commonwealth including the reasons behind safeguarding and fostering spousal relationships over other relationships. Secondly, the applicability and scope of spousal privileged communication in Canada pre and post 2015, i.e. Bill C-32 that abrogated spousal privileged communication in Canada. Chapter 2 will also address some key points that contradicts the intention of the legislature behind abrogating spousal privileged communication. Thirdly, the paper argues that the spousal privileged communication should have been retained, and draws upon evidence from criminological, sociological and legal realms to define four key reasons why this is so. This paper essentially calls for further understanding of the causal mechanisms that flow from the abrogation of this spousal privilege and for monitoring future outcomes through longitudinal studies.
Crime hot spot prediction is a challenging task in present time. Effective models are needed which are capable of dealing with large amount of crime dataset and prediction of future crime location. Spatio-temporal data mining are very much useful for dealing with the geographical crime data. In this paper sparse matrix analysis based spatial clustering technique for serial crime prediction model is used. Firstly, crime data are preprocessed through various distribution techniques and then sparse matrix analysis based spatial clustering technique are applied on a four years time series data from 2010 to 2014 for the major cities of India like Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai to find out the hotspot location for next year, after that three clustering techniques are used to grouping similar crime incident, at last cluster results obtained by original and proposed dataset are compared. The main objective of this research is applying crime prediction technique, forecast and detect the future crime location and its probability.
The following paper outlines the latest incarnation of Owen’s (2014) evolving, meta-theoretical, Genetic-Social framework, and the intention is to illustrate the explanatory potential of the sensitizing device, in particular meta-constructs such as the biological variable (the evidence from behavioural genetics for an, at least in part, biological influence upon human behaviour), psychobiography (the unique, asocial, inherited aspects of the person such as disposition), and neuro-agency (a new term which acknowledges the influence of neurons upon human ‘free-will’), in the task of conceptualising cyber violence. In what follows, cyber violence is reconceptualised, moving the definition beyond the usual notion of gendered online violence towards a broader conception which incorporates hate trolling, cyber-terrorism, predatory online sexual ‘grooming’ and so on. It is the contention here that the synthesis ‘applied’ to cyber violence via flexible causal prediction may be of use to criminological theorists, social policy-makers and practitioners working in the field of the criminal justice in the task of constructing predictive models of cyber violence.
Youth offenders are finding chain snatching lucrative them ever before because of quick returns. Now even the time of the day does not matter to offenders, when it comes to chain snatching. A single stolen gold chain could fetch anywhere between Rs. 5,000 to 50,000. Chain snatchers have fixed ‘agents’ in the market who buy the stolen gold from them for a good sum. This paper addresses the different techniques and reasons for chain snatching. The study involved 325 cases of chain snatching which were reported in print media in five years. The data was analysed by using content analysis method. The result shows that the mainly motorbike riders youth were the offenders of chain snatching. Preventive measures and effective solutions to social problems are easy to find where the root causes of such problems are established.
The overarching aim of this article is to explore the recidivism sequence as one of the largest problems for correctional ambitions in Western countries. Criminals are identified by a qualitative m ...
Unnever and Cullen (2010) argue that there is a “culturally universal” relationship between racial/ethnic/immigrant animus and general punitiveness. Because this thesis seems ill-fitting to Canada’s multicultural society, we re-examine the connection in Canada between punitiveness and intolerance associated with new immigrants. We do this by expanding their multivariate analyses of the Canadian case to consider additional data sources spanning the first decade of this century, and by testing directly their thesis that the relationship is mediated by citizens imputing criminal activity to negatively-viewed outgroups. We show that the relationship between immigrant intolerance and punitiveness reported in their original research for the year 2000 remains strong in 2004, 2008 and 2011 and resists explanation in terms of potentially relevant third variables. Our supplementary study examining the capacity of a criminal immigrant mindset variable to mediate this association shows that mediation is partial only. We conclude (1) that outgroup animus and general punitiveness are indeed related in the Canadian case, (2) that there is modest support for the Unnever/Cullen account of that relationship, but (3) that most of the original relationship remains unexplained.
Deprivation and importation theories propose that the experience and adjustment of inmates to prison life is dependent on the restrictive prison milieu and their pre-prison experiences and orientation. This implies that prison’s sub-culture mediate the relationship between demographic characteristics and adjustment to prison life. Although this core assumption underlies both theories, few researchers have attempted to test its validity, while those that does have largely focused on male offenders. Guided by an integration of the two theories, this current study explored the specific gender-related challenges that female inmates of Nigerian prisons are confronted with and the adjustment measures adopted by female prisoners. Qualitative, in-depth oral interviews were employed to gather information from 32 purposively selected female inmates and six prison officials of Ijebu-Ode and Old Abeokuta prisons. There are evidential supports for the integrative/alliance theory as key findings of this study confirm determinants of adjustability of the inmates to prison life as including age, level of religious commitment, years of incarceration, prison history, and pre-prison experience like socioeconomic, marital (especially those with children) and educational status. Various strategies used to adjust to prison life by the inmates included self-withdrawal, indulgence and some level of social reclusion (asceticism); forging cordial relationships with fellow inmates and staff; and participating very actively in the religious programmes within the prisons. The study suggests that both government and nongovernmental organisations should intervene and develop social supports that recognise the biogenic peculiarities of female inmates in order for the prisons to meet the two objectives of rehabilitating and reforming the female offenders.
Life course theorists argue that key transitions such as marriage and employment heavily influence criminal desistance in adulthood among those who committed delinquent acts during their adolescence. Although much research supports this notion, race has generally been left out of the discourse. Very few researchers have examined whether and how race plays a role within life course theory. This is surprising insofar as race is an important correlate of crime, marriage, employment, and other life course transitions that are associated with criminal desistance. Data from Waves 1, 2 and 4 of Add Health are used to examine differences in the effect of marriage and employment on desistance among 3,479 Black, Hispanic, and White men. Results show mixed support for the life course perspective in that classic life theory applies to Whites, but less so to Blacks and Hispanics.
This research attempts to bridge the gap between the old and modern fashion of keeping and storing criminal data by investigating the level and spatial analysis of crime occurrence in Akure, Nigeria with a view to promoting security in the city. The responses obtained from the administered copies of the questionnaire were coded and entered into Microsoft Excel 2013 for generating spatial database and exported to Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 17 for statistical analysis. The crime data were analyzed using spatial analysis technique in ArcGIS 10, Global Mapper 13 and CrimeStat III. Overlays operations were carried out to evolve crime maps. GPS Garmin 76 was employed to obtain co-ordinates of major landmarks in the area, which comprise police stations, banks, markets, liquor stores, and places of worship among others. These were subsequently registered on the base map. The information extracted from the analyzed responses from the questionnaire and crime data were geocoded to the administered points using ArcGIS 10 for better and advanced spatial analysis, and also for hotspot and black spot analysis using Geostatistical Analyst. The study found that the main road network that traverses Akure Metropolis, provides easy access and exit to criminals, and constitutes a dominant axis of crime events as facilities located along the road usually experience armed robbery attack or burglary. Again, crime hotspots are more prevalent in the city core. In view of the efficacy of GIS technique as a tool for detecting crime pattern, occurrence and prediction, the study advocates the development of all inclusive crime database system and training of security agents in the use of information technology to improve intelligence gathering capabilities in a bid to combat crimes in Akure metropolis in particular and Nigeria in general.
The sociology of racism is marked by a wealth of studies devoted to explicating the consequences of racism for individuals, organizations, institutions, and even the fundamental processes by which societies come to be constituted. Some of this work has informed concrete efforts to improve the life chances of subordinate racialized groups. In contrast, however, less research has examined, specifically and systematically, the ideational and material conditions that facilitate the reproduction of racism. Given this analytical deficit, the aim of this article is to illustrate—theoretically, conceptually and empirically—how racism is reproduced by dominant systems of belief; capitalist structural arrangements that foster scarcities while fettering redistributive measures; and key decisions and non-decisions of power elites. Scholars of racism, many of whom are concerned with the practical implications of their work, can enhance their contributions to progressive praxis by granting greater attention to questions regarding the reproducibility of racism—how it keeps going along—in addition to longstanding foci on racism’s effects and cognate areas of inquiry.
Happy like Profilers: Gordon Burn, modernity and serial killing Haggerty (2009) has outlined the ways, in which, “serial killers” can be seen as a product of modernity. In particular, he highlights the ways, in which, a symbiotic relationship has developed between the media and “serial killers”. A significant feature in this new firmament is the psychological profiler. From Cracker onwards, the psychological profiler has become a key feature of the TV crime drama. As Dowleer et al ( 2006) note the line between reporting crime and crime as entertainment is a very blurred one. The viewer is just as likely to come across a “psychological profile” on a “news” programme such as Crimewatch as in a TV drama.Trevor Hardy was convicted of the brutal murder of three young women Janet Stewart (15), Wanda Skalia (18) and Sharon Mosoph (17) in 1977. He has been given a whole life tariff so will never be released. Despite this, Wilson et al (2010) highlight the fact that the case is not that well-known and consider the reasons for this. This paper argues that this approach is an extension of the medical- psychological discourse, which concentrates on generating a comforting taxonomy of serial killers. It goes on to argue that this approach marginalises the suffering of the victims and the cataclysmic impact that these events have on the lives of their loved ones. The novelist, Gordon Burn, has explored the nature of modern celebrity. He has also examined in extensive details the environments that produced Peter Sutcliffe (Somebody’s Husband, Somebody’s Son) and the Wests (Happy like Murderers). As an alternative to the profiler approach, which focuses on the perpetrator and marignalises victims and their families, the work of Burn – in particular his novel Alma Cogan is examined in depth. This disturbing novel challenges the ways, in which, celebrity is constructed. By so doing, it forces the reader to confront not only the full brutality of sexual violence but also their own complicity in the “serial killing industry”.
The phenomenon of serial killing although a rare farm of homicide, has attracted on increased degree interest in the last decades. Elderly are also victims of serial killers. Although persons aged 60 and older generally experience the lowest rate of killing of any age group. The aim of this study is to illustrate the little known but noteworthy cases concerning the serial killings of elderly that occurred across the world. The Internet (e-media) was the main source of the data and the content has been analyzed. Forty cases of serial killers of elderly were found in INTERNET up to the year 2012. The study shows that nearly half (40%) of the serial killings were occurred in United States of America, only 2.5% elderly victims of serial killings were found in India. Study has shown that female serial killers use less violent methods to kill their victims and the preferred methods are poisoning Serial killings was largely based on psychological gratification. The hedonistic serial killers seek pleasure and benefits from killing and derives satisfaction from the killing events. The main motives identified in killings were revenge, profit, terror.
