Home | Databases | WorldLII | Search | Feedback International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy

Carrington, Kerry --- "Chief Editors' Introduction" [2015] IntJlCrimJustSocDem 35; (2015) 4(4) International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy 1

Chief Editors’ Introduction

Professor Kerry Carrington, Professor John Scott

Queensland University of Technology, Australia

This general edition of the journal includes articles from across the globe. The first article is by Walter DeKeseredy who received the Career Achievement Award from the American Society of Criminology (Division on Victimology) at its annual in Washington in November this year. The award recognises Walter’s long list of achievements in producing high quality impact research about violence against women. His article in this edition advances critical criminological understanding of the racist and violent nature of contemporary adult pornography.

The next article is co-authored by a team of scholars from the USA and Slovenia: Staci Strobl, Nickie Philips, Emmanuel Banutai and Danielle Reynolds. It is an innovative piece based on the qualitative study of a post-conflict restoration process between Roma and police in a Solvenian Roma village through the making of the film Shanghai Gypsy (2012). Their research explored how the film production enabled the two groups formerly in conflict to re-engage in ‘new modes of communication, improved interpersonal relationships’, with this aiding mutual understanding. They established that the film was regarded by participants as ‘a powerful means of generating Roma cultural awareness’. There may be some broader lessons here for restorative justice through art and media in other contexts.

Based on an observational study of more than 30 inter-agency meetings, 15 interviews and two focus groups with diverse local workers, Garner Clancy from the Institute of Criminology, University of Sydney, sought to understand how local community workers conceptualise crime causation and prevention. His research findings point to the resilience of penal-welfarism in Australia and the dominance of social-welfare approaches to crime prevention. How to prevent crime is a topic of significant interest to a wide range of readers in criminal justice policy. This article adds to our knowledge about the effectiveness or otherwise of crime prevention programs.

Australia is currently in the grip of a Royal Commission into Institutionalise Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which is daily revealing the shocking extent of the hidden violation of vulnerable children in Australian churches, schools, sports clubs, orphanages, detention centres and scouts clubs for boys. Prior to this, in 2012, the Australian state of Victoria established an Inquiry into the Handling of Child Abuse by Religious and Other Organisations. Michael Andre Guerzoni, a doctoral candidate from the University of Tasmania, and Hannah Graham from the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research, University of Stirling, Scotland, conducted an extensive piece of original analysis on almost 1400 pages of transcript from that earlier inquiry. This is important analysis which illustrates how the Catholic Church has used techniques of neutralisation and denial to mitigate their accountability in cases of child sexual assault by clergy and or by religious personal in institutional church settings. Their paper raises concerns about ‘Church secrecy, clerical defences of the confessional in justification of inaction, and the Melbourne Response compensation scheme’. Their findings urge greater transparency, mandatory reporting, law reform and other institutional reforms such as changes to the ritual of confession. Volume 4(2) of this journal produced a special edition on Child Sexual Abuse for readers looking for more analysis and information.

Tim Goddard, Randolph Myers and Kaitlyn J Robison, a team of researchers from the USA, consider ‘possible partnerships between progressive criminology and social justice organizations struggling to transform the criminal justice system’. This piece is of relevance to criminal justice practitioners, grass roots organisations and criminologists in both the northern and southern hemispheres, as it seems young people from poor and disadvantaged communities everywhere are disproportionately drawn into the orbit of the justice system. This fact is true of Australia, Asia, Europe, the United States, South Africa and South America. The authors are upbeat about the ‘possibilities for change at this very moment’ and conclude that ‘progressive criminological ideas have never been more important’. This is a must read for policy makers, activists, community minded people and, of course, criminologists wanting to make a positive difference to the experience of criminal justice through partnerships.

This volume of the journal is honoured to have a piece by Vincenzo Ruggiero from Middlesex University, UK, an internationally acclaimed and distinguished scholar and reformer as well as a prisons’ rights and human rights activist. His piece in the journal is based on a project funded by the European Commission on the social harm and vagaries of financial regulation in the UK, post the 2008 global financial crisis (GFC). The paper argues that both illicit and licit harmful behaviour of financial actors during the GFC caused harms and victimisation, many of which went unpunished. The piece concludes that, ‘despite recent regulatory efforts, large loopholes are still present which allow forms of financial crime to thrive.’ This is an important piece of critical analysis for regulators in the UK and elsewhere in the world where the environment for financial fraud still flourishes.

‘Rethinking the Criminology of Crimes of States: Monumental, Mundane, Mislabeled and Miscalculated Crimes’, by David O Friedrichs from University of Scranton, USA, has contributed significantly to the theorising of state crime over several decades. The article is not the standard academic piece but rather a reflexive account on the ‘criminological engagement with crimes of states, with special attention to the case of Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, and Berlin and Germany today’. It concludes by identifying ‘some issues that might be included in an agenda for a criminology of crimes of states, going forward’. This is a beautifully crafted piece of reflection from an internationally acclaimed and highly respected author which we encourage you to read.

‘What is Racism? Othering, Prejudice and Hate-motivated Violence’ is contributed by Tony Jefferson, an Emeritus Professor from Keele University and adjunct professor with us at QUT, and an internationally distinguished scholar who left an indelible mark on criminological theory through his initial research in the heady days of radical criminology. In this no doubt controversial piece Tony Jefferson plays the devil’s advocate in suggesting that the term racism might be abolished and that theory could be more usefully informed by ‘returning to thinking about hatred, prejudice and “othering” separately’. He makes this theoretically novel argument drawing on interviews with fifteen people who had variously acquired the racist label for their activities or views in England, even though most did not think of themselves as racist. This conundrum is explored drawing on insights from pscyho-social criminology, a perspective which Tony Jefferson is credited for pioneering.

The last article is by Gunnar Vold Hansen from Oestfold University College, Norway. It assesses the effectiveness of a pilot-integrated service response to the ‘wicked problem’ of rehabilitation and re-integration of convicted persons who also have substance abuse problems. He describes this innovative justice program as a type of positive criminology (as distinct from positivist criminology). The article is based on an original qualitative study with 16 convicted persons, seven correctional service employees and three local authority employees. The article concludes by outlining some proposals for how the challenges encountered in the pilot program might be better addressed in the future.

It has been a great year for the journal: our most successful ever. This edition marks three years of publication of the International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy. In 2015 the journal was selected for inclusion into Scopus and Web of Science data bases. This is a terrific success story and testimony to the high quality of the articles, the editorship, the reviewing and the international readership of the journal. We are grateful as ever to our distinguished International Editorial Board and all our reviewers who are anonymous to readers and authors due to the norms of blind peer reviewing. We also thank the out-going foundational co-editor-in-chief Reece Walters for his efforts in making this journal the success it is. The journal has now surpassed 150,000 abstract views and 100,000 full PDF downloads. This journal is one of only a few in the world of criminology to support fully on-line free-to-download articles, and to promote creative commons copyright: that is, authors’ rights to reproduce their own material. We support the democratisation of knowledge and are delighted to be leaders in high quality international journal publishing.

Correspondence: Professor Kerry Carrington, Head, School of Justice, Faculty of Law, Queensland University of Technology, 2 George Street, Brisbane QLD 4000, Australia. Email: kerry.carrington@qut.edu.au

Please cite this as:

Carrington K and Scott J (2015) Chief Editors’ Introduction Vol 4(4). International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy 4(4): 1-3. DOI: 10.5204/ijcjsd.v3i2.274.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Licence. As an open access journal, articles are free to use, with proper attribution, in educational and other non-commercial settings. ISSN: 2202-8005