The Gerontological Imagination : Crime Policy and Older Prisoners

The Gerontological Imagination, Crime Policy and Older Prisoners This paper will discuss the needs of a group that more often than not has been ignored by criminologists and gerontologists: older offenders in prison. In relation to the disci-pline of criminology, I want to suggest that the gerontological and criminological ima-gination indeed are creative, resourceful, eclectic and can cross disciplinary boundaries. By drawing on the concept of the sociological imagination “which works between the personal troubles of milieu” and “the public issues of social structure” (Mills, 1959: 8): this paper will draw out the troubles and concerns of an aging prison population from a gerontological and criminological theoretical perspective. As the reader, you may be asking: why integrate the discipline of gerontology and criminology?

A preliminary investigation into the use of testate amoebae for the discrimination of forensic soil samples

We present the results of an initial investigation into the efficacy of using testate amoebae for the discrimination of soils from wet ground and puddles, as little attention has been given to these organisms in forensic science. The preservation of testate amoebae in these sediments is generally good, although test concentrations are low. Statistical analysis suggests that restate amoebae assemblages are somewhat spatially distinct and have potential to be used for soil discrimination. A case study is presented where mineralogical (X-ray diffraction) and restate amoebae analyses are used in conjunction to clarify the scene of crime in a 'cold case' murder enquiry. Testate amoebae were recovered from dried sediment residues on clothing 10 years after the murder. Despite these promising results, further experimental work is crucial to examine the spatial and temporal variation of amoebae assemblages in water films, wet ground and puddles before they can be added to the armoury of methods available to the forensic biologist.

Forensic Geology in Environmental Crime: Illegal Waste Movement Burial in Northern Ireland

The illegal burial of waste often occurs in locations where loose, transferable material is abundant, allowing covert pits to be dug or filled. The transfer of waste material onto suspects and their vehicles during loading, unloading, and burial is common, as is the case during other criminal activities such as the burial of murder victims. We use two case studies to show that the established principles of using geological materials in excluding or linking suspects can be applied to illegal waste disposal. In the first case, the layering of different geological materials on the tailgate of a container used to transport toxic waste demonstrated where the vehicle had been and denied the owner's alibi, associating him with an illegal dumpsite. In the second case, an unusual suite of minerals, recovered from a suspect's trousers, provided the intelligence that led environmental law enforcement officers to an illegal waste burial site.

Early crime writing and the state: Jonathan Wild, Daniel Defoe and Bernard Mandeville in 1720s London

This article argues that the early development of crime writing needs to be understood in relation to the consolidation of the modern state. It demonstrates that London in the 1720s constitutes a significant moment in this early development for three main reasons. First, the period witnessed a crime epidemic which reached its climax in the 1720s and which precipitated a set of particularly aggressive counter-measures by the state; second, it saw the rise and eventual fall of the infamous Jonathan Wild who acted as both thief and surrogate policeman; and third, it was also marked by a surge in interests on the part of writers like Daniel Defoe and Bernard Mandeville in the related matters of crime and punishment. This article explores the ways in which accounts of crime and punishment in this period deployed and in some instances interrogated the rhetoric of social contract theory and writings on statecraft, particularly by Thomas Hobbes and Mandeville. But while the criminal biographies and gallows sermons produced by the Newgate prison’s ‘ordinaries’ provided crude and reductive accounts of the efficacy of the state, the article shows how two accounts of the life of Jonathan Wild (by Defoe and H.D) responded in highly complex ways to the issues of crime and policing and provided a consistently and self-consciously ambivalent reading of the state and state power. To conclude, I suggest that this ambivalence can be read as a critique of the impartial or neutral state and that it constitutes one of the key features of what we would later understand to be crime writing as a dedicated literary genre.