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CRIME

CRIME-VIOLENT & NON-VIOLENT-FINANCLIAL-CYBER

Posts in violence and oppression
Women and Petty Violence in Cheltenham and Exeter, 1880-1909

By Grace E. A.Di Meo.

The historiography of female violence has largely centred on women’s experiences as victims or on their perpetration of lethal acts such as murder and infanticide. In the last decade, however, scholars have paid increasing attention to women’s perpetration of non-lethal violent crime. This thesis contributes to recent scholarship by examining female acts of assault in late Victorian and Edwardian England in an understudied region of the country: whilst most historians have focused on the North, South East or Midlands, this study draws attention to the South West of the country and situates women’s acts of minor violence within the context of wider national patterns. Focusing specifically on cases prosecuted at the Exeter and Cheltenham magistrates’ courts in the years 1880-1909, the thesis follows women through different stages of their offending trajectories: the perpetration of their acts; their treatment by magistrates; their portrayal in the media; and, finally, their experiences after facing prosecution.

Using evidence from court records, newspapers and census returns, the study employs both quantitative and qualitative analyses in order to examine patterns in the perpetration and outcome of female non-lethal violence. These examinations reveal that women’s ‘expected’ and ‘actual’ roles – especially those relating to motherhood, wifehood and the neighbourhood – impacted not only the ways in which their assaults were committed but also on their treatment by the justice system and the media. It is also demonstrated that women’s positions could contribute to their propensity to reoffend, an action which sometimes resulted in women’s marginalisation in post-offending life. By following the women’s experiences from the onset to aftermath of their violence, this thesis offers an original and comprehensive contribution to the historiography of female violence in late Victorian and Edwardian England.

Bristol, UK: University of Bristol 2020. 264p.

Measurement Problems in Criminal Justice Research: Workshop Summary

National Research Council.

Most major crime in this country emanates from two major data sources. The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports has collected information on crimes known to the police and arrests from local and state jurisdictions throughout the country. The National Crime Victimization Survey, a general population survey designed to cover the extent, nature, and consequences of criminal victimization, has been conducted annually since the early1970s. This workshop was designed to consider similarities and differences in the methodological problems encountered by the survey and criminal justice research communities and what might be the best focus for the research community. In addition to comparing and contrasting the methodological issues associated with self-report surveys and official records, the workshop explored methods for obtaining accurate self-reports on sensitive questions about crime events, estimating crime and victimization in rural counties and townships and developing unbiased prevalence and incidence rates for rate events among population subgroups.

Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. 2003. 111p.

Cyber-offenders versus traditional offenders

Weulen Kranenbarg, M.

The main goal of this dissertation was to empirically compare cyber-offenders with traditional offenders on four domains in criminology: offending over the life-course, personal and situational risk factors for offending and victimisation, similarity in deviance in the social network, and motivations related to different offence clusters. The focus was on new forms of crime that target IT and in which IT is key in the commission of the crime, so-called cyber-dependent crimes, like malicious hacking, web defacement, illegal control over IT-systems, malware use, and so on. These crimes provide a unique test case for traditional criminological explanations for offending, as these did not exist prior to the rise in the use of ITsystems. The anonymous digital context in which these crimes take place may have changed, for example, the situations in which opportunities for committing crime occur, the skills and personality characteristics that are needed to commit these crimes, the perceptions of the consequences of offending, and the interpersonal dynamics between offenders and victims.

Amsterdam: Free University of Amsterdam, 2018. 230p.

Understanding cybercriminal behaviour among young people: Results from a longitudinal network study among a relatively high-risk sample

By Marleen Weulen Kranenbarg, Yaloe van der Toolen, Frank Weerman.

This report aims to increase our insight into the explanation of cyber-delinquency among juveniles. We examined which individual characteristics and environmental factors are related to different types of cybercrime, with a specific focus on the importance of peer relationships. We used a longitudinal research design (three waves of data collection) among a substantial sample of Dutch youths in secondary or tertiary education (with ages between 12 and 25), who were following ICT programmes, tracks, or courses. These students were chosen because they are considered to be at an elevated risk of committing cybercrime. We used questionnaires to collect self-report data on a large variety of cyber-offences, and on characteristics of both offline and online peers. We distinguished between cyber-dependent offending (i.e. offences requiring the use of online means) and cyber-enabled offending (i.e. offences existing in the offline world, but that can also be conducted online). We also included questions about common traditional types of offending. In addition, we asked the respondents about various individual characteristics and environmental factors and we collected detailed social network data on the respondents’ school friends. Our methods (for details, see Chapter 3) addressed various important limitations in previous research on cyberdelinquency (see Chapter 2).

Amsterdam: VU University Amsterdam/Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement, 2022. 107p.

Reporting crime : effects of social context on the decision of victims to notify the police

By H. Goudriaan.

Victim reports are the main source of information for the police regarding where crimes are committed, and also the basis for most subsequent actions of the criminal justice system. Therefore, the victims' decision to report to the police is crucial. However, much criminal victimization is not reported and, consequently, many offenders are never prosecuted. Why are some crimes reported and others not? Substantial differences in reporting are found across crime locations, neighborhoods and countries. In this book, a socio-ecological model of victims' decision-making is introduced which endeavors to explain these contextual differences in reporting. To empirically test the main hypotheses derived from this model, several data sources are used and different research strategies are employed, with which the effects of crime, victim and contextual factors on victims' reporting behavior are simultaneously analyzed. Factors constituting the context in which crime incidents take place (e.g. whether the location is in the private or public domain), as well as factors composing the neighborhood context (e.g. the neighborhood social cohesion) and – to a lesser extent – the country context in which victims reside, were found to play a role in victims's decision (not) to report.

Leiden: Leiden University, 2006. 213p.

Crime over the Life Span; Trajectories of Criminal Behavior in Dutch Offenders

By A.A.J. Blokland.

How does crime develop over the life course? And how do age, life circumstances, and prior offending affect this development? This thesis seeks to answer these two questions that are central to present day developmental and life course criminology. The research presented is based on the Criminal Career and Life course Study (CCLS), a longitudinal study covering the criminal careers of over 5,000 offenders from early adolescence to late adulthood. Employing a range of statistical techniques especially designed for analyzing longitudinal data, this research gives insight in issues such as the reality of life course persistent offenders, the influence of marriage and parenthood on offending, and the role of prior offending in generating stability and change in offending over time.

Leiden: Leiden University, 2005. 189p.

Certain other countries: homicide, gender, and national identity in late nineteenth-century England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales

By Carolyn Conley.

Even though England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales were under a common Parliament in the nineteenth century, cultural, economic, and historical differences led to very different values and assumptions about crime and punishment. For example, though the Scots were the most likely to convict accused killers, English, Welsh and Irish killers were two and a half times more likely to be executed for their crimes. In Certain Other Countries, Carolyn Conley explores how the concepts of national identity and criminal violence influenced each other in the Victorian-era United Kingdom. It also addresses the differences among the nations as well as the ways that homicide trials illuminate the issues of gender, ethnicity, family, privacy, property, and class. Homicides reflect assumptions about the proper balance of power in various relationships. For example, Englishmen were ten times more likely to kill women they were courting than were men in the Celtic nations.

By combining quantitative techniques in the analysis of over seven thousand cases as well as careful and detailed readings of individual cases, the book exposes trends and patterns that might not have been evident in works using only one method. For instance, by examining all homicide trials rather than concentrating exclusively on a few highly celebrated ones, it becomes clear that most female killers were not viewed with particular horror, but were treated much like their male counterparts.

The conclusions offer challenges and correctives to existing scholarship on gender, ethnicity, class, and violence. The book also demonstrates that the Welsh, Scots, and English remained quite distinct long after their melding as Britons was announced and celebrated. By blending a study of trends in violent behavior with ideas about national identity, Conley brings together rich and hotly debated fields of modern history. This book will be valuable both for scholars of crime and violence as well those studying British history.

Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2007. 255p.

Violence in the Balkans

By Anna-Maria Getoš Kalac.

First Findings from the Balkan Homicide Study.The first volume using original empirical data from the Balkan Homicide study. Performs analysis from 3000 case files from 6 Balkans countries. Addresses prosecution case files as well as judicial case files, enabling methodological and phenomenological investigation into the nature of (lethal) violence in the Balkans.

Cham: Springer, 2021. 124p.

Criminals and Crime

By Robert Anderson.

Some Facts and Suggestions,. “It is to the public therefore that this volume is addressed. For if the public became alive to the fact that all the principal offences against property are the work of small bands of professional criminals, and that the professional criminal is the creature of our punishment of crime system, we should soon have a popular outcry in favour of the reforms here advocated.” (from Preface)

London: James Nisbet & Co., 1907. 204p.

Murder in America: a history

By Roger Lane.

This book is a history of criminal homicide, or murder, in America. Murder is one of the two most common forms of intentional homicide, defined simply as the killing of one human being by another; the other is war. The third, capital punishment, is linked to both; death may be decreed either for failing to kill when a society demands it or for killing when a society forbids it. All three forms are linked in other, sometimes surprising ways. But while war has been a main—perhaps the main— subject of traditional history, historians have only newly turned their attention to criminal homicide.

Columbus, OH: Ohio State University, 1997. 399p.

Defining and Registering Criminal Offences and Measures Standards for a European Comparison

Edited by Jörg-Martin Jehle / Stefan Harrendorf.

The study presented in this book is a direct response to the needs for defining and registering criminal and judicial data on the European level. Based upon work done by the European Sourcebook experts group in creating the European Sourcebook of Crime and Criminal Justice Statistics (ESB), the project intended to improve and complement the standards developed so far for definitions and statistical registration in four fields, in order to contribute to the picture of criminal justice in Europe. It utilized questionnaires filled by an established European network.

Gottingen, GER: Universitätsverlag Göttingen 2010 302p.

Nordic Homicide in Deep Time

By Janne Kivivuori • Mona Rautelin Jeppe Büchert Netterstrøm • Dag Lindström Guðbjörg S. Bergsdóttir • Jónas O. Jónasson Martti Lehti • Sven Granath Mikkel M. Okholm • Petri Karonen.

Lethal Violence in the Early Modern Era and Present Times. Nordic Homicide in Deep Time draws a unique and detailed picture of developments in human interpersonal violence and presents new findings on rates, patterns, and long-term changes in lethal violence in the Nordics. Conducted by an interdisciplinary team of criminologists and historians, the book analyses homicide and lethal violence in northern Europe in two eras – the 17th century and early 21st century. Similar and continuous societal structures, cultural patterns, and legal cultures allow for long-term and comparative homicide research in the Nordic context. Reflecting human universals and stable motives, such as revenge, jealousy, honour, and material conflicts, homicide as a form of human behaviour enables long-duration comparison. By describing the rates and patterns of homicide during these two eras, the authors unveil continuity and change in human violence. Helsinki:

Helsinki University Press, 2022. 378p.

Global Report on Crime and Justice

Edited by Graeme R. Newman

This groundbreaking work reviews the global situation of crime and justice around the world. Volume 1 includes: 1. Data sources;. 2. Experience of crime and justice. 3. Bringing to Justice. 4. Punishment. 5. Resources in criminal justice. 6. Firearm abuse and regulation. 7. Drugs and drug control.

United Nations and Oxford. 1999.

Moral Economies Of Corruption

By Steven Pierce.

State Formation & Political Culture in Nigeria. “The messages are familiar to almost anyone with an e-mail account. During the early 2000s they became an international punch line. Often purporting to come from the relative of a Nigerian government official, they requested the recipient’s help to transfer vast sums of money out of the country. In return for this assistance, the recipient would receive a significant percentage of the funds being transferred. Usually unsaid was that the money had been acquired corruptly and that the sender needed help in avoiding the attention of law enforcement.”

Duke University Press (2016) 305p.

Femicide Across Europe

Edited by: Shalva Weil Consuelo Corradi Marceline Naudi.

Theory, research and prevention. “Femicide is the intentional killing of women and girls because of their gender. Femicides are usually perpetrated by intimate partners (for example, husbands or boyfriends) or family members (for example, fathers, brothers or cousins), who are usually familiar males; on rare occasions the perpetrators can be women, either lesbian partners or kin. A global study of homicides carried out by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in 2012 showed that 79% of all homicide victims were male. The global average male homicide rate was, at 9.7 per 100,000, almost four times the global average female rate.”

Policy Press (2018) 201p.

The Concept And Measurement Of Violence Against Women And Men

By Sylvia Walby, Jude Towers, Susie Balderston, Consuelo Corradi, Brian Francis, Markku Heiskanen, Karin Helweg-Larsen, Lut Mergaert, Philippa Olive, Emma Palmer, Heidi Stöckl and Sofia Strid.

“Lethal violence is enormous. There are nearly half a million (437,000) intentional homicides globally each year. Lethal violence is gendered. Globally, 95% of perpetrators of intentional homicide are male. Every year, intimate partners or family members perpetrate nearly 64,000 intentional homicides; two thirds of victims are female. Half the intentional homicides of women are perpetrated by an intimate partner or other family members, compared to 6% of intentional homicides of men.“

Policy Press (2017) 193 pages.

White-Collar Crime in the Shadow Economy

By Petter Gottschalk and Lars Gunnesdal.

Lack of Detection, Investigation and Conviction Compared to Social Security Fraud . Examines the magnitude, causes of, and reactions to white-collar crime, based on the theories and research of those who have uncovered various forms of white-collar crime. It argues that the offenders who are convicted represent only ‘the tip of the iceberg’ of a much greater problem: because white-collar crime is forced to compete with other kinds of financial crime like social security fraud for police resources and so receives less attention and fewer investigations. Gottschalk and Gunnesdal also offer insights into estimation techniques for the shadow economy, in an attempt to comprehend the size of the problem. Holding broad appeal for academics, practitioners in public administration, and government agencies, this innovative study serves as a timely starting point for examining the lack of investigation, detection, and conviction of powerful white-collar criminals.

Palgrave Macmillan. (2018 ) 151p.

Refining Child Pornography Law

Edited by Carissa Byrne Hessick.

The legal definition of child pornography is, at best, unclear. In part because of this ambiguity and in part because of the nature of the crime itself, the prosecution and sentencing of perpetrators, the protection of and restitution for victims, and the means for preventing repeat offenses are deeply controversial. In Refining Child Pornography Law, experts in law, sociology, and social work examine child pornography law and its consequences in an effort to clarify the questions and begin to formulate answers. Focusing on the roles of language and crime definition, the contributors discuss the increasing visibility child pornography plays in the national conversation about child safety, and present a range of views regarding the punishment of those who produce, distribute, and possess materials that may be considered child pornography.

Michigan University Press. 2016. 200p.

The Wild East

Edited by Barbara Harriss-White and Lucia Michelutti.

Criminal Political Economies in South Asia. The Wild East bridges political economy and anthropology to examine a variety of il/legal economic sectors and businesses such as red sanders, coal, fire, oil, sand, air spectrum, land, water, real estate, procurement and industrial labour. The 11 case studies, based across India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, explore how state regulative law is often ignored and/or selectively manipulated. The emerging collective narrative shows the workings of regulated criminal economic systems where criminal formations, politicians, police, judges and bureaucrats are deeply intertwined.

London. UCL Press. 2019.

A Primer in the Psychology of Crime

By S.
 Giora
 Shoham and Mark
 Seis.

First published back in the 1980s, there's still nothing like this book anywhere. Provides a balanced, innovative account of the psychology of crime, drawing on current and past scientific research and philosophies. CONTENTS: 1. Perspectives, Defining Crime, and Theoretical Evaluation. 2. Psychoanalytic Theory. 3.Trait Perspectives. 4. Behavioral, Situational And Social Learning Perspectives. 5. Cognitive Learning Perspectives. 6. Existential and Phenomenological Perspectives. 7. References. RECOMMENDED: Excellent text for upper division undergraduate classes, or beginning graduate classes. Strongly recommended as a substitute for those expensive, superficial introductory textbooks! As we noted above, there is NO text that covers as carefully as this one does, the psychology of crime literature. It's as relevant today as it was a couple of decades ago.

NY. Harrow and Heston Publishers. 2012.