Following the armed conflict in the former Yugoslavia, a new criminology of war developed, producing fresh insights and opening up original research streams. The incorporation of war within the remit of criminological analysis, advocated by classical as well as critical criminology, rapidly gained new momentum. The focus on asymmetrical conflicts and invasions unveiled the massive killing of civilians, bringing war into the arena of victimology. Moreover, the examination of the material forces that drive international conflicts situated such conflicts among the violent predatory offences that concern most criminological theories. The study of ‘war crimes’, ultimately, led some authors to shift attention towards ‘war as crime’. After briefly summarising the developments that shaped a criminology of war, this paper attempts further analytical steps towards the formulation of a criminology against war. A critique of the concept of ‘just wars’ is followed by the examination of the ambiguities that cloud the notions of jus ad bellum and jus in bello. Current legal provisions regulating international conflict are described as blank norms, while principles of peacebuilding are finally pinpointed.
This article synthesises literature on the evolution of domestic abuse (DA) refuges, with particular attention to the development of two models: the conventional or ‘underground’ refuge (UR) and the open or ‘Dutch’ refuge. The article will detail what the available evidence says about the benefits and drawbacks of these models and explore their implications for the DA sector in England, with reference to extending women’s space for action and meeting the needs of underserved victim-survivors.
The article argues that multiple models of provision are needed to meet the intersecting, complex and at times competing needs of different victim-survivors, and that available evidence provides preliminary support for the viability of the open model as part of a wider suite of responses to DA. Further research is needed to extend the evidence base on the open model, and to develop a whole system approach which can meet the needs of a wider range of victim-survivors.
The cultural and creative industries are the fastest growing industries in the UK (). Stakeholder engagement, media reporting, anecdotal evidence and emerging research suggests that there are endemic levels of sexual harassment and sexualised violence within the music industry that can be described as widespread, systemic and normalised. This article reviews the literature on sexual harassment and sexualised violence in the music industry, examining gender stratifications and inequalities within the music industry with a focus on UK, Australian and US studies. The music industry is not a singular entity but instead, is an agglomeration of many different sub-sectors predominantly consisting of three interconnected spheres of music recording and distribution, music publishing and licensing, and live performance. This paper references Kelly’s (; ; ) theorisations on conducive contexts and the continuum of violence to argue that historical and entrenched misogyny and sexism along with the lack of regulation, process and governing frameworks create conditions for both the maintenance of gender inequality and the perpetuation of sexual harassment and sexualised violence within the music industry. Consequently, both the cultural context and the practice of misogyny (in this case sexual harassment and sexualised violence) within the music industry are mutually supporting and reinforcing.
Since its founding, Convict Criminology (CC) has evolved into an international approach, group, organisation, and network with a relatively coherent set of objectives. Although little thought was put into CC’s development beyond the US, the original intent of CC was primarily to develop a network of individuals who were united around its core ideas. Due to both the constraints of international travel for ex-convicts and the financial burden for people to travel, originally it made best sense for people interested in the CC perspective to meet at the local level. Over time, because of advances in telecommunication platforms like Facetime, Skype, and Zoom, members of the CC network realised that meeting face-to-face on a regular basis was not necessary. Thus, the importance of local or even national approaches to CC were not necessary. This paper briefly examines the international components of CC and the authors’ views that, while individual country groups of CC members may have been advantageous in the early stages of CC, it is no longer necessary, if not counterproductive.
The involvement of men in efforts to challenge men’s violence is a crucial component for eradicating gender-based violence (GBV) and for disrupting the continued responsibilisation of women and survivors for addressing the problem at various scales. But as men’s participation in the field has evolved and become increasingly professionalised, so tensions have emerged regarding what happens when men enter women-majority professional and movement anti-violence spaces. Via a feminist discourse analysis, this article explores how men active in the violence against women and girls (VAWG) sector and movement conceptualise and negotiate the challenges associated with the reproduction of patriarchal privilege in the context of their work or activism. Analysis points to how gender inequalities and masculine norms are both instrumentalised as well as entrenched, even when men ‘allies’ seek to challenge them. Moreover, findings indicate how men’s often elevated status in anti-violence practice and movement spaces can be used to resource a type of ‘entrepreneurial masculinity’ which obstructs structural change as regards gendered norms and expectations. This article offers an empirical and theoretical contribution to the expanding literature on men’s role(s) in the prevention of men’s violence against women and minoritised genders, and the ways in which gendered privilege operates therein.
Works of historical criminology do not have to be disinterested studies of past crime-related phenomena. Instead, they can represent practical attempts to intervene in the politics of crime and justice in the present. This article takes this claim to a critical conclusion; historical research in criminology can function as a weapon in contemporary political struggles and a way of injecting radical politics into criminological studies. To demonstrate this point, the article scrutinises the ways in which early critical criminologists in the US engaged in historical research as a way of doing politics and activism. To such criminologists, doing historical research was a form of praxis. Focusing on the works produced at the Berkeley School of Criminology in the 1970s, the article shows that the nurture of a historical interest was deemed to be a vital step in the development of a critical paradigm within American criminology.
This article explores the process of ‘identity erasure’ that is a feature of domestic violence and abuse. Data are taken from semi-structured narrative-style interviews with 14 women who had experienced abuse from a male partner.
I draw on Erving Goffman’s () work on ‘total institutions’. Goffman uses the term ‘mortification’ in describing the attacks on identity and self that occur in ‘total institutions’ such as psychiatric hospitals, prisons and concentration camps. These attacks take the form of: loss of contact with the outside world, ritual degradation, the removal of possessions, and lack of control. Their effect is to erase the inmate’s prior identity, and render them compliant.
For the women who participated in this study, their abusers attempted to achieve compliance by adopting many of the tactics that Goffman describes. Drawing on participants’ words, I discuss some of the behaviours adopted by their abusive partners: isolation from support networks, surveillance, deprivation of privacy, and dispossession. I argue that, for women, the home/abusive relationship becomes a total institution. Understanding the abusive household as a ‘total institution’ can help friends, family and professionals to more fully appreciate, and therefore provide women with more appropriate help to overcome, the barriers to leaving.
This article presents empirical findings from a British Academy funded project concerned to explore victim-survivor experiences of domestic violence disclosure schemes (DVDS) in the UK. In so doing it draws on the concept of responsibilisation as one way of making sense of the experiences reported. It goes on to suggest a note of caution for the development of these schemes in other jurisdictions, since the failure to take account of victim-survivor voices in relation to DVDS in the UK has contributed to such schemes rendering victim-survivors responsible.
