This article first uses the analytical lenses of crime opportunity, criminal propensity, and rout... more This article first uses the analytical lenses of crime opportunity, criminal propensity, and routine activity theory to evaluate Wendel et al.'s (2016) plausible and compelling ''more drugs, less crime'' hypothesis, the latest attempt to explain the crime decline that began in the 1990s. The authors' present exposition of the hypothesis is beleaguered by methodological problems that jeopardize the validity of its central claims. An alternative media-consumption hypothesis is then briefly outlined, which suggests that changes in media-consumption patterns beginning in the 1980s were a powerful catalyst for reductions in street crime. Because both hypotheses identify mechanisms that reduce both the opportunities and the propensities to commit crime, they stand out from the majority of crime-decline accounts which are presently oriented toward opportunity almost exclusively. Both hypotheses also happen to subvert conventional wisdom in ironic ways.
Most recent analyses of US penality describe and explain the exceptional harshening of punishment... more Most recent analyses of US penality describe and explain the exceptional harshening of punishment over the previous three decades. This article challenges and qualifies these accounts by identifying 10 cultural, moral, and practical drivers of a bipartisan reconsideration of the discourses and policies responsible for mass incarceration. These penal-reform catalysts and drivers include: (1) the crime decline; (2) the Great Recession; (3) the prisoner-reentry movement and attendant changes in the moral status of prisoners; (4) apparent shifts in public attitudes about punishment; (5) ‘punitive saturation’ and the cyclical nature of penal thinking and policy; (6) changing dominant conceptions of the criminal offender; (7) the return of human dignity to US jurisprudence; (8) the ideational influence of Christian reformers who assail the morality of excessive punishment; (9) the conservative ‘Right on Crime’ initiative that promotes a range of reforms formerly associated with the Left; ...
ABSTRACT This article evaluates what Drakeford and Vanstone (2000) have called "doing go... more ABSTRACT This article evaluates what Drakeford and Vanstone (2000) have called "doing good by stealth"—the quiet embrace of progressive penal policies, often twinned with contradictorily punitive rhetoric—in order to critically examine both the motives of policymakers under the pressures exerted by the "penal populism calculus" and the consequences for penal policymaking processes and outcomes. It offers a typological model of penal policymaking strategies and outcomes based on two polar dimensions: covert (quiet) vs. transparent (loud), and fair/effective (high-roading) vs. unfair/ineffective (low-roading). It provides examples of each strategy, examines the arguments for and against each one, and proposes alternative ways to achieve the legitimation goals of penal populism, informed by theories of public deliberation and participatory democracy.
In an effort to better understand the roots of contemporary school punishment practices, this stu... more In an effort to better understand the roots of contemporary school punishment practices, this study compares policy discourse and practice of school punishment and security in the United States and England. American policy discourse is predominantly punitive, harsh punishment strategies are favored, and policy makers have centralized decision-making power outside of the classroom. Contrastingly, English policy discourse about and policy responses to student misbehaviour focus more on reducing social exclusion, improving student behaviour, and returning the locus of control over rule enforcement to teachers. However, despite these substantial differences, suspension and expulsion rates are fairly similar in the US and England. Several hypotheses to explain these findings are offered.
When Children Kill ChildrenPenal Populism and Political Culture, 2008
... On the afternoon of 12 February 1993 in Bootle, Liverpool, two ten-year-old boys, later named... more ... On the afternoon of 12 February 1993 in Bootle, Liverpool, two ten-year-old boys, later named as Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, who were truanting from school, abducted two-year-old James Bulger from the Strand Shopping Centre while his mother was being served ...
ABSTRACT This paper builds a case for more defensible assessments of informed public opinion on c... more ABSTRACT This paper builds a case for more defensible assessments of informed public opinion on crime control and penal policy. Mass-mediated portrayals of what the public want and ubiquitous self-selected opinion polls serve as common surrogates for informed public opinion. These highly suspect assessments have gained a level of credence in policy debates that is difficult to justify. Innovations like the Deliberative Poll show promise in facilitating what has been called ‘public judgment’—a more reliable and refined state of informed public opinion. Less ambitious remedial proposals, including the public education programmes advocated by some experts and recently embraced by the Home Office, are insufficiently bold to make a significant and lasting impact on public knowledge and attitudes.
This article draws on an emerging comparative literature indicating the significant effects that ... more This article draws on an emerging comparative literature indicating the significant effects that political systems can have on the deployment of penal power, and the ways they condition responses to crime and to criminal offenders. It explores two political-cultural mechanisms that help account for variations in levels of punitiveness between countries. These mechanisms-called here as the insulation and autonomy effect and the populism disincentive effect-are embedded in jurisdiction-specific political cultures and the structures that sustain them.
This article first makes the case that optimism in the reform potential of criminal offenders has... more This article first makes the case that optimism in the reform potential of criminal offenders has recently increased among American policymakers, as evidenced by the bipartisan passage of the Second Chance Act of 2007, which encourages prisoner reentry and sets ambitious targets for recidivism reduction. It then sets this apparent renewal of ‘penal optimism’ in historical context by drawing on American evangelical Protestant traditions and examining how these affect contemporary perceptions of the redeemability of criminal offenders. One aim is to acquaint criminologists with the discourse of evangelical Protestantism, a significant and driving force in contemporary penal reform efforts – particularly in the realm of prisoner reentry – by outlining key religious concepts and their implications for penal discourse and policy.
This article considers the implications of cultural values, political-cultural arrangements and t... more This article considers the implications of cultural values, political-cultural arrangements and the changing mediascape for the distinct cultural resources on crime and punishment that we consume as citizens. It first explores what we mean when we talk about punitiveness, making the important, yet often overlooked, distinctions between public attitudes, political rhetoric, public policy and penal practice. Next, the ways in which the media constrain how we perceive problems and the means of solving them are considered, especially the ways these constraints are influenced by different political-cultural styles. ‘Stealth’ penal reforms, in which punitive rhetoric is employed by politicians to divert attention away from more progressive policies pursued quietly on the sly, are criticized because they tend to legitimize and regenerate only punitive ideational resources for public consumption. Finally, implications for future research are offered along with some practical suggestions for...
never quite as they at first seemed in our 'ideological commonplaces', whether those be tradition... more never quite as they at first seemed in our 'ideological commonplaces', whether those be traditional or progressive, radical or conservative, politically correct or incorrect. This Žižek book too, then, includes a wealth of insights (an overabundance, more like). One of the more striking ones (in my opinion at least) is to be found in Žižek's statement about, and indeed plea to 'withdraw'. In an age when both 'subjective' and 'objective' violence and counter-violence abound in vicious spirals, 'doing nothing' might, just might, be the most radical, the most violent thing to do. That would indeed, I believe, very seriously, and very violently, undermine violence. Or would it? Perhaps not …
Crime, Media, Culture: An International Journal, 2008
This article presents the results of a comparative analysis of English and Norwegian newspaper co... more This article presents the results of a comparative analysis of English and Norwegian newspaper coverage of two child-on-child homicides from the 1990s. Domestic coverage of the English case of James Bulger presented it as alarmingly symptomatic of deep-seated moral decline in Britain that only tough, remoralizing strategies could address. Coverage of the Norwegian case of Silje Redergård constructed it as a tragic one-off, requiring expert intervention to facilitate the speedy reintegration of the boys responsible. Four sets of plausible explanations are offered to account for differences in the ways the two cases were constructed. First, different cultural constructions of childhood endure in each country and these condition the responses deemed appropriate for children who commit grave acts. Second, the dominant claims makers were very different in each jurisdiction with consequences for the quality of the discourses readers encountered. Third, while the legitimacy of elite expert...
Abstract Different ways of doing politics, particularly the distinction between majoritarian and ... more Abstract Different ways of doing politics, particularly the distinction between majoritarian and consensus democracy, help account for differences in national appetites for punishment, as a comparison of two child-on-child homicides from the 1990s-the Bulger case in England ...
Objective The aim of this study was to investigate and analyze incidental CT findings of traffic ... more Objective The aim of this study was to investigate and analyze incidental CT findings of traffic injury patients discharged from the ER, and to determine overall notification rates. Methods All traffic injury-related patient records between 01.06.2013-01.03.2013 were obtained from Derince Training and Research Hospital Emergency Service using patient files and the hospital database. Brain, thorax and/or abdominal CT images of 340 patients aged between 0 to 84 years were included in the study. ER observation forms were investigated for the patients who had incidental findings on CT scanning and overall notification rates were recorded. Results Mean age of the 363 cases was 31.2 (SD 17.9, min 0, max 84) and 35.5% of patients were female (n=129) and 64.5% were male (n=234). A total of 537 CT scans were performed on 363 patients. 147, 319 and 71 CT scans were performed on the thorax, brain and abdominal, respectively. 27.3% (n=99) of scan results showed the presence of a coincidental pathology. The most common disease on scans were bone lesions (8%, n=29), followed by sinus abnormalities (7.7%, n=28). Incidental findings ratio in patients aged over 60 was 60.8%, while under 60 was 24.8%. It was found that seven patients (7.1%) were informed about the imaging results. Conclusion Most of the incidental findings were found to be benign; however, 16.5% of them were considered to require in-depth investigation. Further investigations are needed to understand the clinical relevance of these findings and their effects on patients.
This article first uses the analytical lenses of crime opportunity, criminal propensity, and rout... more This article first uses the analytical lenses of crime opportunity, criminal propensity, and routine activity theory to evaluate Wendel et al.'s (2016) plausible and compelling ''more drugs, less crime'' hypothesis, the latest attempt to explain the crime decline that began in the 1990s. The authors' present exposition of the hypothesis is beleaguered by methodological problems that jeopardize the validity of its central claims. An alternative media-consumption hypothesis is then briefly outlined, which suggests that changes in media-consumption patterns beginning in the 1980s were a powerful catalyst for reductions in street crime. Because both hypotheses identify mechanisms that reduce both the opportunities and the propensities to commit crime, they stand out from the majority of crime-decline accounts which are presently oriented toward opportunity almost exclusively. Both hypotheses also happen to subvert conventional wisdom in ironic ways.
Most recent analyses of US penality describe and explain the exceptional harshening of punishment... more Most recent analyses of US penality describe and explain the exceptional harshening of punishment over the previous three decades. This article challenges and qualifies these accounts by identifying 10 cultural, moral, and practical drivers of a bipartisan reconsideration of the discourses and policies responsible for mass incarceration. These penal-reform catalysts and drivers include: (1) the crime decline; (2) the Great Recession; (3) the prisoner-reentry movement and attendant changes in the moral status of prisoners; (4) apparent shifts in public attitudes about punishment; (5) ‘punitive saturation’ and the cyclical nature of penal thinking and policy; (6) changing dominant conceptions of the criminal offender; (7) the return of human dignity to US jurisprudence; (8) the ideational influence of Christian reformers who assail the morality of excessive punishment; (9) the conservative ‘Right on Crime’ initiative that promotes a range of reforms formerly associated with the Left; ...
ABSTRACT This article evaluates what Drakeford and Vanstone (2000) have called "doing go... more ABSTRACT This article evaluates what Drakeford and Vanstone (2000) have called "doing good by stealth"—the quiet embrace of progressive penal policies, often twinned with contradictorily punitive rhetoric—in order to critically examine both the motives of policymakers under the pressures exerted by the "penal populism calculus" and the consequences for penal policymaking processes and outcomes. It offers a typological model of penal policymaking strategies and outcomes based on two polar dimensions: covert (quiet) vs. transparent (loud), and fair/effective (high-roading) vs. unfair/ineffective (low-roading). It provides examples of each strategy, examines the arguments for and against each one, and proposes alternative ways to achieve the legitimation goals of penal populism, informed by theories of public deliberation and participatory democracy.
In an effort to better understand the roots of contemporary school punishment practices, this stu... more In an effort to better understand the roots of contemporary school punishment practices, this study compares policy discourse and practice of school punishment and security in the United States and England. American policy discourse is predominantly punitive, harsh punishment strategies are favored, and policy makers have centralized decision-making power outside of the classroom. Contrastingly, English policy discourse about and policy responses to student misbehaviour focus more on reducing social exclusion, improving student behaviour, and returning the locus of control over rule enforcement to teachers. However, despite these substantial differences, suspension and expulsion rates are fairly similar in the US and England. Several hypotheses to explain these findings are offered.
When Children Kill ChildrenPenal Populism and Political Culture, 2008
... On the afternoon of 12 February 1993 in Bootle, Liverpool, two ten-year-old boys, later named... more ... On the afternoon of 12 February 1993 in Bootle, Liverpool, two ten-year-old boys, later named as Robert Thompson and Jon Venables, who were truanting from school, abducted two-year-old James Bulger from the Strand Shopping Centre while his mother was being served ...
ABSTRACT This paper builds a case for more defensible assessments of informed public opinion on c... more ABSTRACT This paper builds a case for more defensible assessments of informed public opinion on crime control and penal policy. Mass-mediated portrayals of what the public want and ubiquitous self-selected opinion polls serve as common surrogates for informed public opinion. These highly suspect assessments have gained a level of credence in policy debates that is difficult to justify. Innovations like the Deliberative Poll show promise in facilitating what has been called ‘public judgment’—a more reliable and refined state of informed public opinion. Less ambitious remedial proposals, including the public education programmes advocated by some experts and recently embraced by the Home Office, are insufficiently bold to make a significant and lasting impact on public knowledge and attitudes.
This article draws on an emerging comparative literature indicating the significant effects that ... more This article draws on an emerging comparative literature indicating the significant effects that political systems can have on the deployment of penal power, and the ways they condition responses to crime and to criminal offenders. It explores two political-cultural mechanisms that help account for variations in levels of punitiveness between countries. These mechanisms-called here as the insulation and autonomy effect and the populism disincentive effect-are embedded in jurisdiction-specific political cultures and the structures that sustain them.
This article first makes the case that optimism in the reform potential of criminal offenders has... more This article first makes the case that optimism in the reform potential of criminal offenders has recently increased among American policymakers, as evidenced by the bipartisan passage of the Second Chance Act of 2007, which encourages prisoner reentry and sets ambitious targets for recidivism reduction. It then sets this apparent renewal of ‘penal optimism’ in historical context by drawing on American evangelical Protestant traditions and examining how these affect contemporary perceptions of the redeemability of criminal offenders. One aim is to acquaint criminologists with the discourse of evangelical Protestantism, a significant and driving force in contemporary penal reform efforts – particularly in the realm of prisoner reentry – by outlining key religious concepts and their implications for penal discourse and policy.
This article considers the implications of cultural values, political-cultural arrangements and t... more This article considers the implications of cultural values, political-cultural arrangements and the changing mediascape for the distinct cultural resources on crime and punishment that we consume as citizens. It first explores what we mean when we talk about punitiveness, making the important, yet often overlooked, distinctions between public attitudes, political rhetoric, public policy and penal practice. Next, the ways in which the media constrain how we perceive problems and the means of solving them are considered, especially the ways these constraints are influenced by different political-cultural styles. ‘Stealth’ penal reforms, in which punitive rhetoric is employed by politicians to divert attention away from more progressive policies pursued quietly on the sly, are criticized because they tend to legitimize and regenerate only punitive ideational resources for public consumption. Finally, implications for future research are offered along with some practical suggestions for...
never quite as they at first seemed in our 'ideological commonplaces', whether those be tradition... more never quite as they at first seemed in our 'ideological commonplaces', whether those be traditional or progressive, radical or conservative, politically correct or incorrect. This Žižek book too, then, includes a wealth of insights (an overabundance, more like). One of the more striking ones (in my opinion at least) is to be found in Žižek's statement about, and indeed plea to 'withdraw'. In an age when both 'subjective' and 'objective' violence and counter-violence abound in vicious spirals, 'doing nothing' might, just might, be the most radical, the most violent thing to do. That would indeed, I believe, very seriously, and very violently, undermine violence. Or would it? Perhaps not …
Crime, Media, Culture: An International Journal, 2008
This article presents the results of a comparative analysis of English and Norwegian newspaper co... more This article presents the results of a comparative analysis of English and Norwegian newspaper coverage of two child-on-child homicides from the 1990s. Domestic coverage of the English case of James Bulger presented it as alarmingly symptomatic of deep-seated moral decline in Britain that only tough, remoralizing strategies could address. Coverage of the Norwegian case of Silje Redergård constructed it as a tragic one-off, requiring expert intervention to facilitate the speedy reintegration of the boys responsible. Four sets of plausible explanations are offered to account for differences in the ways the two cases were constructed. First, different cultural constructions of childhood endure in each country and these condition the responses deemed appropriate for children who commit grave acts. Second, the dominant claims makers were very different in each jurisdiction with consequences for the quality of the discourses readers encountered. Third, while the legitimacy of elite expert...
Abstract Different ways of doing politics, particularly the distinction between majoritarian and ... more Abstract Different ways of doing politics, particularly the distinction between majoritarian and consensus democracy, help account for differences in national appetites for punishment, as a comparison of two child-on-child homicides from the 1990s-the Bulger case in England ...
Objective The aim of this study was to investigate and analyze incidental CT findings of traffic ... more Objective The aim of this study was to investigate and analyze incidental CT findings of traffic injury patients discharged from the ER, and to determine overall notification rates. Methods All traffic injury-related patient records between 01.06.2013-01.03.2013 were obtained from Derince Training and Research Hospital Emergency Service using patient files and the hospital database. Brain, thorax and/or abdominal CT images of 340 patients aged between 0 to 84 years were included in the study. ER observation forms were investigated for the patients who had incidental findings on CT scanning and overall notification rates were recorded. Results Mean age of the 363 cases was 31.2 (SD 17.9, min 0, max 84) and 35.5% of patients were female (n=129) and 64.5% were male (n=234). A total of 537 CT scans were performed on 363 patients. 147, 319 and 71 CT scans were performed on the thorax, brain and abdominal, respectively. 27.3% (n=99) of scan results showed the presence of a coincidental pathology. The most common disease on scans were bone lesions (8%, n=29), followed by sinus abnormalities (7.7%, n=28). Incidental findings ratio in patients aged over 60 was 60.8%, while under 60 was 24.8%. It was found that seven patients (7.1%) were informed about the imaging results. Conclusion Most of the incidental findings were found to be benign; however, 16.5% of them were considered to require in-depth investigation. Further investigations are needed to understand the clinical relevance of these findings and their effects on patients.
s Second Wounds: Victims' Rights and the Media in the U.S. is a well-written and well-documented ... more s Second Wounds: Victims' Rights and the Media in the U.S. is a well-written and well-documented work of scholarship that draws on a range of novel data sources to analyze the discursive ways in which victims' rights groups of various stripes engage in political work. With the exception of one chapter examining curricular training materials for journalists, Rentschler's focus on the media is mostly secondary-as the means of shaping and facilitating the strategies that victims' rights advocates utilize to campaign for their causes. It's a book that covers a lot of territory skillfully, and it deserves close attention from scholars in a range of disciplines, including cultural studies, criminology, sociology, feminist studies, and media studies. The book unfolds in two sections with a total of six chapters, not including the introduction and conclusion. The first section contains two chapters providing a historical overview of the victims' rights movement from 1964 to the present and discussing the ways in which its discourses have come to be utilized. This includes the "ventriloquism" of crime victims (34) by law-and-order proponents and, in the second chapter, how the law-and-order movement has helped to shape both notions of legitimate victimhood and the scripts that activists use to describe victims. The second part of the book, which includes chapters 3 to 6, focuses on the "second wounds" in the title and the media strategies that national victims' rights organizations use to "reappropriate" the bs_bs_banner 454 Book Reviews
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