British Journal of Criminology articles from June 1997

British Journal of Criminology archives from June 1997

Case construction and the goals of criminal process. ('The Case for the Prosecution' by Mike McConville, Andrew Sanders and Roger Leng)
June 22, 1997... Mc Conville, Sanders and Leng (1991) have argued that the police play the dominant role in a process that constructs the suspect population and produces prosecution cases. Whereas the public rhetoric of the law proclaims ideals of fairness...

Descriptive or critical sociology: the choice is yours. (response to article by David J. Smith in this issue, p. 319, on 'The Case for the Prosecution')
June 22, 1997... David Smith's (1997) critique of The Case for the Prosecution (CFP) appears to relate to a very different book from the one that we wrote. Although this is not made clear to the reader, many of his major criticisms relate to his formulations of...

Preaching to the converted? Improving the persuasiveness of criminal justice research.
June 22, 1997... This paper advances an argument about the need to improve the persuasiveness of criminal justice research, through an examination of two qualitative studies on the police and defence lawyers. It is suggested that research which addresses a...

Can critical research influence policy? A response to Max Travers. (article in this issue, p. 359)
June 22, 1997... In this issue McConville et al. have already dealt with the criticisms of The Case for the Prosecution put forward by David Smith, and many of their points also apply to Max Travers' critique of that work. We will therefore confine ourselves...

Some recent approaches to the study of race in criminological research: race as social process.
June 22, 1997... In this paper, recent approaches to the study of race and criminological subjects are reviewed. First, regression analysis is discussed and criticized for its tendency to conceptualize race as a discrete phenomenon, unrelated to the social...

Boys don't cry: masculinities, fear of crime and fearlessness.
June 22, 1997... The gendered stereotypes of 'fearless male/fearful female' are not supported by the reality of complex and multiple identities and the shifting meanings of fear and fearlessness which are brought to and evolve from these identities....

Mad or bad? Child-killers, gender and the courts.
June 22, 1997... This article reports some of the findings of a research project on child-killing by parents or parent-substitutes, drawing on sample of 48 case files from the Director of Public Prosecutions on London from 1984, and a sample of 24 fatal and...

Forecasting recorded property crime using a time-series econometric model.
June 22, 1997... This paper uses a time-series econometric model, previously published by Pyle and Deadman (1994), in order to forecast levels of recorded property for the years 1992-96 inclusive. The model forecasts well for the period 1992-95 inclusive, in...

Weapons and athletic constitution as factors linked to violence among male juveniles: findings from the Swiss self-reported delinquency project.
June 22, 1997... Situational variables have often been shown to influence crime and violence. The present study tries to assess the role of physical fitness and weapons in the genesis of violent behaviour. Using self-report data from a national random sample...

Limited Responsibilities: Social Movements and Criminal Justice.
June 22, 1997... By developing a hermeneutics of the concept of `social control', in terms of its embeddedness in the classical `macro' sociological tradition, Pitch sees the concept implying democratization and cultural diversity, regulation and integration...

God's Just Vengeance: Crime, Violence and the Rhetoric of Salvation.
June 22, 1997... Gorringe presents a historical account of atonement theology and its role in penal debates. The satisfaction theory of the atonement, according to Gorringe, formed a part of a formidable body of legal theoretical rhetoric which served a...

Undercover: Police Surveillance in Comparative Perspective.
June 22, 1997... It is a truism that sociology attempts to look beneath surface phenomena to expose and examine social relationships that are not immediately apparent. This book takes things one step further by throwing light on certain kinds of police...

Imagining Crime: Textual Outlaws and Criminological Conversations.
June 22, 1997... Between reading this book and writing this review, I attended an exhibition and lecture on Hans Hoffman and the New York School of Abstract Expressionism. The questions motivating the event were apparently straightforward: `What was the...

Violence in Canada: Sociopolitical Perspectives.
June 22, 1997... Just over six years ago, in March 1990, the town of Oka, Quebec, suddenly became the focus of world-wide media attention when a fully-armed group of Mohawk warriors set up a roadblock at the entry to their reserve, intent on preventing the...

Reconstructing a Woman's Prison: The Holloway Redevelopment Project, 1968-88.
June 22, 1997... This is a contemporary history of Her Majesty's Prison Holloway, London's notorious prison for women. The period in question comprises the 20 years from 1968, when plans were commenced for a new non-prison-like establishment to replace the...

The Oxford History of the Prison.
June 22, 1997... The encasement of a discipline in an Oxford History is a sure sign of its coming of age. As the Preface to this survey points out, such an enterprise would have been impossible 25 years ago. If prisons as specialized buildings are almost...

Compelled to Crime: The Gender Entrapment of Battered Black Women.
June 22, 1997... These two volumes are part of an ever increasing body of (mainly feminist) literature which tells the stories of offending and imprisoned women, and provides insight into the ways in which individual women give meanings to their law...

Voices from Within: Women Who Have Broken the Law.
June 22, 1997... These two volumes are part of an ever increasing body of (mainly feminist) literature which tells the stories of offending and imprisoned women, and provides insight into the ways in which individual women give meanings to their law...

Criminology: Theory and Context.
June 22, 1997... If you want to buy a good introduction to criminology and criminological theories, either as a student or as an interested reader, there is now a plethora of books to choose from. Donald Shoemaker's Theories of Delinquency (1990) is now in a...

Japanese Corrections: Managing Convicted Offenders in an Orderly Society.
June 22, 1997... In March 1995 the New York-based Human Rights Watch published a detailed assessment of Japanese prisons. It is possible that Elmer Johnson completed his manuscript before the Human Rights Watch report was published and this explains its...

Police Violence: Understanding and Controlling Police Abuse of Force.
June 22, 1997... When George Holliday videotaped LAPD officers beating Rodney King with 53 blows and stomping on him he not only captured an act of barbarism, but also traumatized articulate opinion in the United States. The trauma was exacerbated by the...