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.

Policing the Globe: State Sovereignty and the International in the Post-9/11 Crime Novel

Two recent studies of 9/11 literature are dismissive of the contributions that crime and espionage novels have made to ongoing efforts to map the significance of 9/11 and its aftermath. My essay contests the assumption that only literary fiction – which pays sufficient attention to trauma – can “bear witness” to the events of 9/11 and argues that such fiction is, in fact, singularly ill-equipped to illuminate the complex geo-political circumstances that 9/11 entrenched and transformed. By contrast, genre novels by John Le Carré and Don Winslow have responded in imaginative and critical ways to post-9/11 and avowedly trans-national securitization initiatives and hence to efforts to trouble traditional accounts of state sovereignty.

Responsible Participation, Community Engagement and Policing in Transitional Societies: Lessons from a Local Crime Survey in Northern Ireland

The new structures of policing in Northern Ireland have been internationally lauded as a success, but the manner in which police-community relations are unfolding in local settings is less clear. In this article we draw on a local crime survey conducted in a Republican area in Belfast to examine residents’ views of policing and to highlight residents’ concerns about police effectiveness in dealing with crime and disorder. Drawing on Habermas’s concept of ‘responsible participation’, we also consider the role that community organisations can play in helping overcome local scepticism and developing positive forms of engagement with the police. © 2012 The Authors

The overlap between war and crime: unpacking Foucault and Agamben’s studies within the context of the war on terror

This article will consider the current convergence between war and crime by unpacking Foucault’s analysis of power and Agamben’s elaboration on the conjunction between the banning of a life and the constitution of the polity. It will show that these perspectives link together crime and war as mechanisms that contribute to the governance of the population by legitimating authority and their use of force through the military and the police while excluding part of the population. It will expose how these convergences highlight the problem of the political in the constitution of the social order at the global level. In the current contingency, crime and war are strongly implicated in the crucial political function of calling people to share their similarities and differences, and yet are not the best mechanisms for dealing with the sharing of a world in common.

Crime, justice and the legitimacy of military power in the international sphere

This article examines how a discourse of crime and justice is beginning to play a significant role in justifying international military operations. It suggests that although the coupling of war with crime and justice is not a new phenomenon, its present manifestations invite careful consideration of the connection between crime and political theory. It starts by reviewing the notion of sovereignty to look then at the history of the criminalisation of war and the emergence of new norms to constrain sovereign states. In this context, it examines the three ways in which military force has recently been authorised: in Iraq, in Libya and through drones in Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia. It argues the contemporary coupling of military technology with notions of crime and justice allows the reiteration of the perpetration of crimes by the powerful and the representation of violence as pertaining to specific dangerous populations in the space of the international. It further suggests that this authorises new architectures of authority, fundamentally based on military power as a source of social power.

An overview of waste crime, its characteristics, and the vulnerability of the EU waste sector

While waste is increasingly viewed as a resource to be globally traded, increased regulatory control on waste across Europe has created the conditions where waste crime now operates alongside a legitimate waste sector. Waste crime,is an environmental crime and a form of white-collar crime, which exploits the physical characteristics of waste, the complexity of the collection and downstream infrastructure, and the market opportunities for profit. This paper highlights some of the factors which make the waste sector vulnerable to waste crime. These factors include new legislation and its weak regulatory enforcement, the economics of waste treatment, where legal and safe treatment of waste can be more expensive than illegal operations, the complexity of the waste sector and the different actors who can have some involvement, directly or indirectly, in the movement of illegal wastes, and finally that waste can be hidden or disguised and creates an opportunity for illegal businesses to operate alongside legitimate waste operators. The study also considers waste crime from the perspective of particular waste streams that are often associated with illegal shipment or through illegal treatment and disposal. For each, the nature of the crime which occurs is shown to differ, but for each, vulnerabilities to waste crime are evident. The paper also describes some approaches which can be adopted by regulators and those involved in developing new legislation for identifying where opportunities for waste crime occurs and how to prevent it.

Old truths and new politics:Does truth commission 'publicness' impact democratization?

This article analyzes the relationship between truth and politics by asking whether the 'publicness' of a truth commission - defined by whether it has public hearings, releases a public report, and names perpetrators - contributes to democratization. The article reviews scholarship relevant to the potential democratizing effects of truth commissions and derives mechanisms that help explain this relationship. Work from the transitional justice field as well as democratization and political transition more generally is considered. Using a newly-constructed Truth Commission Publicness Dataset (TCPD), the analysis finds that even after statistically controlling for initial levels of democracy, democratic trends in the years prior to a commission, level of wealth, amnesties and/or trials, the influence of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and different cutoff points for measuring democratization across a number of models, more publicness predicts higher levels of democracy years after the commission has finished its work. The more public a truth commission is, the more it will contribute to democratization. The finding that more public truth commissions are associated with higher levels of democratization indicates particular strategies that policymakers, donors, and civil society activists may take to improve prospects for democracy in a country planning a truth commission in the wake of violence and/or government abuse. © The Author(s) 2012.

Globalization and the State in Contemporary Crime Fiction:A World of Crime

Why has crime fiction become a global genre? How do writers use crime fiction to reflect upon the changing nature of crime and policing in our contemporary world? This book argues that the globalization of crime fiction should not be celebrated uncritically. Instead, it looks at the new forms and techniques writers are using to examine the crimes and policing practices that define a rapidly changing world. In doing so, this collection of essays examines how the relationship between global crime, capitalism, and policing produces new configurations of violence in crime fiction – and asks whether the genre can find ways of analyzing and even opposing such violence as part of its necessarily limited search for justice both within and beyond the state.

Blood, Sweat and Cheers: Absurdist Crime Films and Contemporary Society

Within the crime film tradition there is a plethora of sub-genres all of which relate to crime and its consequences. However, directors Joel and Ethan Coen, Quentin Tarantino and David Lynch, all of whom create plots around crime and criminality, have been difficult to pin down and attribute to any given sub-genre. This thesis demonstrates that an absurdist philosophy can be used to effectively examine the content of the previously mentioned filmmakers. Through an analysis of these filmmakers and their better known works compelling evidence is revealed suggesting that these filmmakers may all belong to the emerging crime film sub-genre known as absurdist crime films.

Economic shocks and crime: evidence from the crash of ponzi schemes

In November 2008, Colombian authorities dismantled a network of Ponzi schemes, making hundreds of thousands of investors lose tens of millions of dollars throughout the country. Using original data on the geographical incidence of the Ponzi schemes, this paper estimates the impact of their break down on crime. We find that the crash of Ponzi schemes differentially exacerbated crime in affected districts. Confirming the intuition of the standard economic model of crime, this effect is only present in places with relatively weak judicial and law enforcement institutions, and with little access to consumption smoothing mechanisms such as microcredit. In addition, we show that, with the exception of economically-motivated felonies such as robbery, violent crime is not affected by the negative shock.

Public Art Commission, 1x1 project, Tina O'Connell and Neal White

A significant development in the Washington DC arts and Humanities Commission programme, the 5x5 project represented the first publicly funded arts project of this type in the US Capital. Following an International call a panel selected 20 curators who in turn selected 5 artists. All curators programmes and research were presented and 5 curators projects selected. Research into control issues surrounding the import and export of water from Japan were used to set up a project in which public were invited to put one of one thousand small droplets of this imported water onto Cherry Blossom Trees. Many of the interactions were recorded onto the database that also included documentation of sites which have vested political or national interests in the Earthquake and Fukushima Diaichi disaster in Washington DC itself. Hundreds of participants took part in the project over one week.

No(i)rthern Ireland: Crime fiction and the northern-irish scene. Proposed translation into italian of two short stories from "belfast noir"

The present thesis aims at proving the importance of cultural and literary contexts in the practice of translation: I shall show that, in the case of Northern Irish crime fiction, knowledge of both Northern Irish history and culture as well as of the genre of crime fiction are essential prerequisites for the production of a “responsible” translation. I will therefore offer a brief overview of the history of crime and detective fiction and its main subgenres; some of the most important authors and works will be presented as well, in an analysis that goes from the early years of the genre to the second half of the 20th century. I will then move the focus to Northern Ireland, its culture and its history, and particular attention will be paid to fiction writing in Ireland and Northern Ireland, with a focus on the peculiar phenomenon of “Troubles Trash”. I will tackle the topic of Northern Irish literature and present the contemporary scene of Northern Irish crime fiction; the volume from which the texts for the translation have been taken will be presented, namely Belfast Noir. Subsequently the focus will move on the theoretical framework within which the translations were produced: I will present a literary review of the most significative developments in Translation Studies, with particular attention to the “cultural turn” that has characterised this subject since the 1960s. I will then highlight the phenomenon of “realia” in translation and analyse the approaches of different scholars to the translation of culture-bound references. The final part represents the culmination and practical application of all that was presented in the previous sections: I will discuss the translation of culture-bound references according to the strategies presented in Chapter 4, referring to the proposed translations of two stories. Such analysis aims to show that not only expert linguistic knowledge, but also cultural awareness and a wide literary background are needed in order to make conscious choices in translation.

Addressing Obesity: Fear of Crime, Perceptions of Disorder and Disaparities in Child and Adolescent Use of Public Parks

Abstract The objectives of this study were: 1) To determine factors which inhibit and facilitate child and adolescent use of outdoor spaces for healthy physical activity by race and ethnicity in four Houston communities and 2) To propose guidelines for encouraging and maintaining child and adolescent outdoor physical activity. Using local health data and Houston Police Department crime statistics, four communities were identified for the study that had the highest concentration of crime and the racial/ ethnic groups of interest. The researchers then identified public parks in the communities. At least two parks were observed in each of the four communities from 2010 to 2011 during spring, summer, fall and winter. The parks were observed for use by children and adolescents and to describe the condition of the park spaces. The communities were Alief (Asian), Sunnyside (Black), Eldridge- West Oaks (White) and Northside- Northline (Hispanic). Observations were made at varying hours of both day and night, weekdays and weekends. Photographs were taken and the condition of the spaces noted in detail. One hundred and twenty persons, 18 years and over, using the spaces or otherwise in these communities were conveniently sampled and interviewed about their health and the extent to which they, or any children or adolescents under their care, used the outdoor spaces of interest. Data were analyzed qualitatively and with basic descriptive statistics. The photographs, journal notes and observation notes of all investigators and key personnel were analyzed. Interview data were also coded to identify patterns and themes in the responses. The findings indicate disparities in the quality and quantity of park equipment and the maintenance of the areas. Where perceptions of disorder were described, there was often visible evidence to support the perceptions. In many cases, residents' perceptions of crime were corroborated by police data. While interview reports did not seem to support the expectation that the condition of the parks was a significant deterrent to their use by children and adolescents, the condition of the parks might be said to limit the extent of that use. Specific reports of disorder that inhibited use included hearing gunfire, seeing drug dependent homeless persons and/or suspected prostitutes in an area.

Research on victims of crime : accomplishments, issues, and new directions /

Mode of access: Internet.