The study of crime’s images is an increasingly important endeavour. In this paper I seek to understand the impact of an image of a criminal child (the outcomes and consequences that have stemmed from its display) by examining its affect (its capacity to engage its viewers). I demonstrate how the image’s meaning emerged from encounters with both the content and the format of the image, as well as from the context in which these encounters occurred. I will demonstrate that the impacts from this image went beyond what was necessary to punish, and propose that an ethics of representation is extended to include images of the condemned. For some population groups, this extension can mitigate the influence of fantasies about criminal ‘others’ that may come into play when pictures of them are viewed.

Māori youth are over-represented within the New Zealand criminal justice system. Māori youth comprise 60 per cent of the total youth apprehensions and represent only 20 per cent of New Zealand’s youth population. This qualitative study focuses on the narratives of six young Māori men and women about their criminal histories, and how their engagement in a re-education initiative – the Youth Guarantee policy – impacted upon their criminal activity. Although the study provided evidence that is congruent with assumptions about the education–crime relationship, the participants’ narratives implied that the impact the Youth Guarantee had on Māori youth offending could be attributed to a number of proxy impacts that they received as a result of their re-engagement in the open-door practices of one provider’s Youth Guarantee–funded programme.

Maori youth are over-represented within the New Zealand criminal justice system. Maori youth comprise 60% of the total youth apprehensions but represent only 20% of New Zealand's youth population. This paper draws on narrative interviews with six young Maori men and women who had been in trouble with the police. The interviews sought to increase understanding of how their engagement in a program funded by a re-education initiative - the Youth Guarantee policy - impacted upon their offending. A set of effective and non-effective practices toward preventing criminal offending among indigenous young people are drawn from the findings.

The display of maternal suffering is powerful, as the bereaved mother's experience represents any parent's deepest fear. When her pain is enmeshed with calls to support changes in our justice systems, it has the potential to bring about unconstitutional effects, for a mother's love has no end and so her life sentence can only be addressed with equal amounts of endless suffering for the said offender (Valier and Lippens, 2004). This paper explores the construction of the bereaved mother figure as a victim-hero within contemporary media enacted crime narratives. It examines two murder cases in the New Zealand context where a bereaved mother's displays of grief can be linked to changes made to the legal code. It will be argued that the character of the bereaved mother as a victim-hero has become a powerful agent of change that has implications for criminal justice system modification. It is argued that critical attention is required of criminology to the role of the good mother in criminal justice discourses, and in particular to the ways in which the good mother is characterised in mediated public discourses.

This paper examines media discourses of women's practices of alcohol use in New Zealand at two intervals over a 13- year period. It identifies six subject positions that young women and socially authoritative discursive agents are encouraged to engage with located within three discursive formations. These positions are: an active consumer, a passive consumer, a bad girl, an ignorant victim, a careless consumer and a risk actor. An examination of the relationships between these subject positions and the limits and the possibilities they entail for those engaging with them can enhance understanding of the ways young women enact drinking practices in contemporary cultures of intoxication, where femininities are said to have become impossible.

This paper argues that a narrative lens is conducive toward a renewed understanding of moral panic. It is proposed that a melodramatic narrative frame that is central to the construction of news stories about crime is significant for conceptualizing what moral panics are and how they work. The paper will propose that moral panics can be seen as enacted melodramas, where the traditional boundaries between newsmakers, interest groups and 'the public' are temporarily dismantled and where everyday citizens experience the role of the suffering victim. This understanding provides insight toward appreciating why only some issues develop into moral panic in particular spaces and times and offers a new framework with which to approach the study of panic.

Māori and Pacific Peoples experience a disproportionate burden of alcohol-related harm relative to other ethnic groups, yet little is known about the context in which this drinking occurs. Few studies have explored how and why young Māori and Pacific women drink. Therefore, this article aims to develop a more nuanced and detailed account of Māori and Pacific young women’s drinking practices. The following article reports on an ethnographic study of young Māori and Pacific women aged 18–30. Five Māori participants and six Pacific participants were selected and asked to become researchers within their social groups. Nine female researchers also became participants in the study, accompanying recruited participants to drinking occasions and events. Participants were each given a ‘drinking diary’ to document drinking occasions, which formed the data-set for the project. Three levels of thematic analysis were undertaken. The first noted broad themes with the second and third levels exploring more nuanced themes and identifying intersections across themes. The study demonstrated that Māori and Pacific young women’s engagement with New Zealand’s culture of intoxication is complex: Māori and Pacific women drink for pleasure or to achieve a ‘buzz’ and to be social. Drinking practices are deeply affected by ethnic and peer group collectives (‘the girls’), traditions and expectations. Harm reduction initiatives need to take account of the many pathways specific to how Māori and Pacific young women engage with alcohol use. Additionally, the wider context in which alcohol-related harm occurs needs to be considered in policy and harm reduction debates.

Much attention has been paid in the last decade to the “cultures of intoxication” of modern Western societies such as Britain, Australia, and New Zealand. This has manifested in an intense focus on the amount of alcohol that young people in particular consume per session and their resultant practices. This article explores young women's drinking cultures and focuses instead on their social motivations for socializing in specific places as well as their emotional connections to these particular spaces. The role of alcohol is reflected on within these motivations and connections in relation to the way it engenders particular practices. Places of risk (as well as pleasure) are identified and considered in terms of harm-reduction interventions. Young women's drinking practices are also positioned within a neoliberal social context, producing tensions in their engagement with, and negotiation of, cultures of intoxication. Harm-reduction initiatives need to speak to these tensions and to avoid producing campaigns based on conservative ideals of femininity and respectability.