By : M. Richardson, M. Newman, G. Berry, C. Stansfield, A. Coombe & J. Hodgkinson

• Objective

  To identify and map evaluations of interventions on gang violence using innovative systematic review methods to inform future research needs.

  Methods

  A previous iteration of this map (Hodgkinson et al., (2009). “Reducing gang-related crime: A systematic review of ‘comprehensive’ interventions.”) was updated in 2021/22 with inclusion of evaluations since the original searches in 2006. Innovative automatic searching and screening was used concurrently with a ‘conventional’ strategy that utilised 58 databases and other online resources. Data were presented in an online interactive evidence gap map.

  Results

  Two hundred and forty-eight evaluations were described, including 114 controlled studies, characterised as comprehensive interventions, encompassing more than one distinct type of intervention.

  Conclusion

  This suggests a substantial body of previously unidentified robust evidence on interventions that could be synthesised to inform policy and practice decision-making. Further research is needed to investigate the extent to which using automated methodologies can improve the efficiency and quality of systematic reviews.

•  J Exp Criminol 20, 1125–1146 (2024).

By Kondakov, Alexander Sasha

Violent Affections uncovers techniques of power that work to translate emotions into violence against queer people. Based on an analysis of over 300 criminal cases of anti-queer violence in Russia before and after the introduction of the ‘gay propaganda’ law, the book shows how violent acts are framed in emotional language by perpetrators during their criminal trials. It then utilizes an original methodology of studying ‘legal memes’ and argues that these individual affective states are directly connected to the political violence aimed at queer lives more generally. The main aim of Violent Affections is to explore the social mechanisms and techniques that impact anti-queer violence evidenced in the reviewed cases. Alexander Sasha Kondakov expands upon two sets of interdisciplinary literature – queer theory and affect theory – in order to conceptualize what is referred to as neo-disciplinary power. Taking the empirical observations from Russia as a starting point, he develops an original explanation of how contemporary power relations are changing from those of late modernity as envisioned by Foucault’s Panopticon to neo-disciplinary power relations of a much more fragmented, fluid, and unstructured kind – the Memeticon. The book traces how exactly affections circulate from body to body as a kind of virus and eventually invade the body and respond with violence. This analytic effort draws on the arguments from memetics – the theory of how pieces of information pass on from one body to another as they thrive to survive by continuing to resonate. This work makes the argument truly interdisciplinary.

London: UCL Press, 2022.