In the past decade, the attention to the Calabrian mafia, the ‘ndrangheta, has been rekindled everywhere in the world. On the one hand, Italian attention to the phenomenon has increased; on the other hand, the mobility of the Calabrian clans has been the object of scrutiny in view of the clan’s wealth and ability to commit transnational criminal activities. This has also fed the presumption that (alleged)

Drawing on a study undertaken across eight Association of Southeast Asian Nations countries in 2019, this article focuses on the persistence of investment in criminal justice infrastructure and mechanisms 20 years after the Palermo Protocol came into effect. We examine the enduring challenges and limitations around counter trafficking responses that remain removed from the lived realities of women

Research shows there is variability in factors that cause a person to radicalize to violent extremism. The use of the push/pull distinction has been one way in which scholars have aimed to provide clarity to the process of radicalization and extremist disengagement. However, it remains a conceptually underdeveloped distinction. In this paper, we draw on aspects of criminological theory to better understand

Electronic monitoring has been increasingly used internationally with recent implementation in Australia for those convicted of domestic violence offenses. It is timely and important to gain a better understanding of the physical, psychological, social, and offending-related experiences and impacts of electronic monitoring on this group to inform further implementation. This study describes the experiences

Engaging Muslims in counter-terrorism (CT) has proved challenging for police worldwide. Some research has focussed on the utility of police being procedurally just in their CT strategies to enhance their legitimacy and subsequent cooperation from Muslims. Despite the efficacy of procedural justice, however, some have argued that procedural justice scholarship is too narrowly focussed on how police

A disappointment of responses to the Covid-19 crisis is that governments have not invested massively in public housing. Global crises are opportunities for macro resets of policy settings that might deliver lower crime and better justice. Justice Reinvestment is important, but far from enough, as investment beyond the levels of capital sunk into criminal justice is required to establish a just society

The 40th Anniversary Edition of Taylor, Walton and Young’s New Criminology, published in 2013, opened with these words: ‘The New Criminology was written at a particular time and place, it was a product of 1968 and its aftermath; a world turned upside down’. We are at a similar moment today. Several developments have been, and are turning, our 21st century world upside down. Among the most profound

Across the world, the most marginalised groups of society are overrepresented in prisons and institutions of the criminal justice system. Besides racial and ethnic minorities, prisons worldwide disproportionately house individuals who count among the least educated, most unemployed and poorest groups of society. However, it is one of the paradoxes of penality that whilst it is obvious that criminal

Welcome to the inaugural issue of the Journal of Criminology! The Journal aims to build critically and constructively on the 53-year legacy of the publication as it was previously known (the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology). It does so in order to reflect changes in the nature of the discipline and especially the ways in which criminologists connect, conduct research, and communicate

There is known to be considerable overlap among the victims and perpetrators of crime. However, the extent of this overlap early in life among children and young adolescents is not clear. We examined the sociodemographic profiles of young people who had early contact with police regarding a criminal incident as a person of interest, victim and/or witness, as well as the patterns of multiple police

As part of the first qualitative-based research on the life-course of methamphetamine users in Aotearoa/New Zealand, this paper analyses the life domains of school, friendship and work. Through application of interactional theory, this paper increases understanding of the situational contexts and interpersonal factors that influence drug use trajectories and the transition from one life domain to another

Money justice—defined as money offered and paid to victims in the aftermath of wrongs—permeates society and everyday life. Current mechanisms of money justice are civil justice awards or out-of-court settlements for personal or cultural injury; redress programs or schemes for mass atrocities, political repression, historical injustice, and institutional abuse; and payments for war-related wrongs, terrorism

The trend of deportation of convicted non-citizens to the Pacific has grown over the last decade, due to increasingly harsh deportation punitive measures placed on non-citizens, known as crimmigration. When further parole-like policies and legislation are placed upon the returnee once they have completed their sentence and have been returned to their country of origin, it is known as ‘crimmigration

Public commentary has offered mixed opinion on the likely impact of COVID-19 restrictions on drug-related offending. On the one hand, it is argued that drug users – and the drug markets in which they interact – may have become the incidental targets of law enforcement as police seek to enforce social distancing regulations by focusing their efforts on street-level pedestrian activity or open-air gatherings

Anarchist practices of direct action, decentralization, leaderless resistance, and mutual aid animate many forms of progressive activism that today percolate around the globe. For a new generation of activists, such practices are part of a more general anti-authoritarian reorientation to social life and social change. Here I suggest that this reorientation is worth exploring on its own terms, given

As a palpable legacy of violent colonialism, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (‘Indigenous’) Australians are the most incarcerated peoples in the world. Community policing, which hinges on the development of trusting community–police partnerships, is frequently proposed as a means of reducing this over-representation, but approaches vary and produce divergent outcomes. This article draws on interview

A number of international studies have found that the initial stages of the COVID-19 pandemic were associated with reductions in crime, primarily due to changes in the routine activities of the population. However, to date there has been no targeted exploration of how COVID-19 may have influenced youth offending, which may be more heavily impacted by the changes heralded by COVID-19 containment measures

The purpose of this paper is to foreground the gendered crime consequences of the global pandemic and to raise questions emanating from them for the future(s) of criminology. The paper reviews some of the criminological response to the pandemic offered during 2020. The global pandemic was constituted by some as providing the opportunity for a natural experiment in which criminological theories and

‘Cybercrime’ is an umbrella concept used by criminologists to refer to traditional crimes that are enhanced via the use of networked technologies (i.e. cyber-enabled crimes) and newer forms of crime that would not exist without networked technologies (i.e. cyber-dependent crimes). Cybersecurity is similarly a very broad concept and diverse field of practice. For computer scientists, the term ‘cybersecurity’

The New South Wales (NSW) Law Enforcement (Powers and Responsibilities) Act 2002 gave the NSW Police the power in certain circumstances the power to stop, search and detain a person without warrant. The same legislation gave the police the power to direct a person to move on from a place if they believe on reasonable grounds that the person in question is obstructing traffic or another person; engaging

An Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) Four Corners investigation, screened on free-to-air television on 24 July 2017, revealed a series of improper conducts pertaining to the Murray–Darling Basin river system. The journalistic exposé included allegations of water theft, questionable compliance decisions and collusion between water regulators and irrigation lobbyists. This interdisciplinary study

Prison inmate health surveys consistently show high proportions of prisoners have mental health problems; however, scholarly opinion is divided on the contribution of mental illness to offending. Some contend that mental illness is not a cause of offending and that mental health treatment will not reduce offending. Others maintain mental health treatment can reduce the risk of offending among persons

Although fear of crime is well-researched in urban domains, the predictors of fear of crime in non-urban contexts are less established. Using a sample of 559 people, this study aims to address this gap by evaluating the role of individual and ecological-level predictors on fear of crime in a small Canadian municipality. Key findings of this study include support for the influence of social cohesion

Self-selection policing is an approach whereby serious underlying criminality is detected by an offender’s minor crimes (known as trigger offences). Strategic offences are offences that indicate an increased likelihood that the associated offender will engage in later offending. The purpose of this study was to determine if first-time serious traffic offending in Western Australia indicates previous

This is the last issue under the current journal title. From 2021, the journal will be published as the Journal of Criminology.

Contemporary studies that focus on intimate homicide assume that patterns of policing, prosecution and punishment were uniformly disadvantageous to women before feminist activists intervened in the...

As a candidate and as president, Donald Trump heightened the salience of immigration, portraying those crossing the nation’s Southern border as “bad hombres” and advocating building a wall blocking...

With the introduction of body worn cameras, new data types have emerged, including activation metadata, which is information on the extent of the implementation of body worn cameras, by whom, and u...

The dominant methods of studying police have involved quantitative analyses of surveys and systematic social observations of police behavior or qualitative methods such as ethnographies and intervi...

Late in 2016, Melbourne experienced what was referred to in the media as the Moomba ‘riot’. This event led to a racialised political and media campaign regarding the problem of ‘African gangs’. Des...

For more than 60 years, scholars have often likened chronic and persistent offending to ‘living a criminal way of life’, yet these evocative motifs have not received much empirical scrutiny. In particular, the so-called criminal life-style is often conceptualized as something the chronic young offender opts into as an alternative to other pro-social pathways. Whereas for older offenders, it is something

In feminist criminology, there is a growing body of research exploring gendered pathways into prison. However, this research has focussed predominantly on women. There are few gender comparative studies. Further, most feminist pathways research is western centric having, for the most part, been undertaken in the United States. Utilising categorical principal components analysis alongside descriptive

The Community Correction Order, introduced in Victoria, Australia in 2012, provides a sentencing option that enables eligible offenders to serve their sanction in the community, with access to treatment or other rehabilitative activities. This paper contributes to a scant body of research investigating the specific needs of this group, their barriers to inclusion and the extent to which they experience

Advance fee and non-delivery frauds have become very common with the growing preference for online shopping and the new opportunities this brings for online offenders. This article uses unique access to a volunteer group’s database focused on preventing pet scams to explore this type of crime. Distances, among other factors, make the purchase of pets online common in countries such as the USA, Australia

On 11 March 2020 the World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus outbreak (COVID-19) a global pandemic. At the time of writing, over 16 million cases of COVID-19 had been confirmed worldwide, and more than 650,000 people had died from the virus. A priority amongst governments globally is limiting the spread of the virus. In Australia, this response included mandatory ‘lockdown’ restrictions

Latin America is a violent region where fear of crime is well spread but still not fully understood. Using multilevel methods for a large and subnational representative household survey (N = 271,022), we assess the determinants of fear of crime in Peru, the country with the highest fear of crime and crime victimization in the region. Our results show that body-aimed victimization (physical or sexual

Between 2000 and 2019, the number of inmates in Australian prisons grew from 21,714 in 2000 to 43,028 in 2019, an increase of 98%, or in per capita terms, 48%. Much of this increase occurred between 2012 and 2019. In New South Wales (NSW), for example, the prison population rose by 17% in the 11 years between 2000 and 2011, but then grew a further 39% in the eight years between 2012 and 2019. A similar

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Improving criminal justice responses to domestic and family violence is a key focus within many policy and practice reforms. The efficacy of police and court responses to domestic and family violence is central because of the role of police as first responders and courts in issuing protection orders, imposing sanctions and ensuring perpetrator cooperation and accountability. To promote compliance and

Aboriginal young people from rural areas in Australia are significantly over-represented in the youth justice system, and yet there is little evidence to indicate that current programs are having measurable success on rates of re-offending, suggesting alternative approaches are required. Drawing on new directions in human service policy that emphasise the importance of involving community in program

The involvement in crime of some young Sudanese-born Victorians has received sustained public attention in recent years. The media coverage of these occurrences has been extensive, with some outlets criticised for sensationalist reporting and prejudiced undertones. A range of views were held across the commentariat including, for example, the notion that Sudanese-Victorian criminal involvement has

This essay was completed in early April 2020 and begun during the first week of the official pandemic panic in Canada. The world-wide plague caused by the COVID-19 virus precipitated the first global police event presenting an occasion for researchers and scholars to apply existing theory and empirical understanding to extra-ordinary circumstances. Consideration of the politics of the police during

This article presents the quantitative findings from a mixed-method study of perceptions of crime in inner Sydney. A survey was deployed via Computer-Assisted Telephone Interview on a randomly selected sample of the inner Sydney population (n = 409). We find that less than half of the participants worry about crime but that a sizable minority (13%) indicated that they have some worry about a category

The majority of young people in custody have alcohol and other drug problems and over 90% report past-year experiences of high-risk drinking and illicit drug use. Despite a strong link between drug use and violent offending, there is a dearth of information about how this relationship plays out in sentencing young adult offenders. This study examines themes in the sentencing of drug-using young adults

The question we wish to pose as longstanding observers and contributors to the discipline of criminology (as well as editors of this journal) is this – is there sufficient space and structured opportunity presently within the scholarly practice of criminology for robust engagement with other perspectives within (and even outside of) criminology? Here, ‘sufficient’ refers not just to the chance for

Arts-based prison programs are often viewed as hobbies or as activities that have little impact on prisoner rehabilitation according to conventional understandings of the term. This is despite growing evidence that arts-based programs can assist with learning retention and can improve self-confidence and ways of coping with emotions. Generally, arts practices have been found to assist Aboriginal and

There are claims that the societal appetite for ‘child exploitation material’ is increasing. Yet, Australia’s policy response does not include initiatives to dissuade potential offenders from deliberately viewing child exploitation material for the first time (onset). To critically examine this issue, this paper draws on Situational Crime Prevention theory. It argues that (a) many first-time child

Despite the well-documented under-reporting of sexual violence, to date, no research has considered reporting practices within the specific context of music festivals. Drawing on 16 in-depth interviews with victim-survivors, this article examines survivors’ experiences of (non)reporting sexual violence in festival settings. We argue that while some barriers to reporting are shared across contexts,

Contact with the police, as the first contact with the criminal justice system for young people and children, may signify individuals who are vulnerable to later adverse social and health outcomes. However, little is known about how often children have contact with police or for what reason. In this paper, we provide a demographic profile of the prevalence and reasons for police contact among a representative

Among the many peculiarities of early New South Wales was the absence of a police force to manage a population largely composed of convicted criminals. Instead, the early Governors were forced to employ trusted convicts and ex-convicts to act as watchmen and constables and police their fellows. This article explores the history of these neglected convict police in the context of the contemporary development

Communication assistance is a form of specialist support for witnesses and defendants in justice settings who have been identified as having communication difficulties. This new role in New Zealand is modelled on the role of the intermediary in England and Wales. To date however, there has been no published review or evaluation on how communication assistance is functioning and being viewed by professionals

The goals of this study were to estimate the levels of involvement in gambling and gambling disorders among Polish prisoners and to identify selected psychosocial factors associated with gambling activities. The study was conducted in randomly selected penitentiaries with therapeutic and non-therapeutic programmes. It covered 1219 male prisoners and used a specially designed 75-item questionnaire,

This paper argues that the uncertain public status of victim narratives of sexual abuse has inhibited the information sharing and dialogue necessary for policy reform and transformative change. Through an integration of public sphere theory and relational psychoanalysis, the paper identifies the need for a transitional space for the explication of sexual abuse narratives in order to bridge the gap

Youth justice policies in Australia feature an overall welfare-oriented approach and an emphasis on diverting young people away from the justice system. Nevertheless, some young people, particularly those with complex needs, are incarcerated at a young age and are at greater risk of poor outcomes. This paper explores barriers to the use of diversion options by police through analysis of in-depth interviews

Young men (aged 18–24) represent a quarter of all episodes of police custody detention for adult males in Victoria, Australia. Despite this, little is known about their experience. Using Bacchi’s Foucauldian-influenced “What’s the problem represented to be?” approach and data from interviews with 28 young men with histories of injecting drug use who were detained in police custody prior to adult prison

The overrepresentation of Indigenous Australians in the criminal justice system has been thoroughly documented over a number of decades. However, studies tend to adopt homogenising discourses that fail to acknowledge or deeply examine the diversity of Indigenous Australian experiences of crime, including across geographic and cultural contexts. This has prompted calls for a more thorough investigation

The relationship between Aboriginal communities and police continues to be a pressing issue in contemporary debates about criminal justice reform in Australia. The Australian Law Reform Commission’s recent Pathways to Justice report offers a set of recommendations on how to interrupt the continuing cycle of Aboriginal people’s disproportionate susceptibility to arrest, police custody, and incarceration

cation of the law here reinforces a punitive state which unjustly prosecutes transgender people and does so, not to protect people from coerced sex, but rather in the service of shoring up gender norms and compulsory heterosexuality. Key to this argument is the fact that sexual intimacy in these cases was not coerced but based on desire, and that the “harm” that occurred is linked to the complainants’

Published in February 2019, Randy Lippert and Kevin Walby’s A Criminology of Policing and Security Frontiers aims to highlight forms of security that are rarely discussed in the literature of academic criminology. These include the emergence of community safety officers (CSO), conservation officers, privately funded ambassadors, public corporation security officers, and public police who have been

Sport settings have great potential to influence social change and are therefore important locations to engage in the prevention of violence against women. The following study draws on in-depth interviews with 16 stakeholders who have been involved with the implementation of prevention programmes within competitive/team sport settings. A qualitative thematic analysis of the interviews was undertaken