“WHENEVER BIG CHANGES COME, BIG TALKS DON’T” – AN EXAMINATION OF THE POLICE EXPERIENCE OF RECRUITMENT AND PROMOTION POSITIVE ACTION PROCESSES

Policing in England Wales is currently experiencing a large uplift in police recruitment. This has been due to the Government’s target to uplift officers by 20,000. As a result, police forces are implementing large scale, sustained recruitment drives. These are accompanied by positive action schemes to address deficits in officer representation. Current statistics now indicate Read More …

THE WORK OF INTERCEPT INTERPRETERS IN LAWFUL COMMUNICATION SURVEILLANCE: A DAILY TRADE-OFF BETWEEN FORMAL REQUIREMENTS AND INFORMAL NEEDS

Intercept interpreters ensure the interlinguistic transfer from oral conversations wiretapped by the police into written evidence that is used in criminal proceedings. So far, this element of the criminal proceedings has received little attention in research, and knowledge on practical implementation of the formal requirements and the related informal practices is scarce. Using Switzerland as Read More …

THE POLITICS OF INFORMALITY IN CRIMINAL PROCEDURES

The tension between formality and informality is intrinsic to the implementation of criminal law. Criminal procedures in fact always happen on a continuum between formality and informality, where the different actors involved (police officers and other street-level bureaucrats, prosecutors, judges, experts, defense lawyers, etc.) continuously perform and negotiate (in)formality. This special issue explores these “politics Read More …

REPRESENTATIONS OF TRAFFICKERS IN OFFICIAL UK DISCOURSE: EXAMINING THE LEAST KNOWN COMPONENT OF THE HUMAN TRAFFICKING EQUATION

Through a framework that combines literature’s observations on traffickers’ policy-based representations with International Relations (IR) theories, this paper explores the representations of traffickers and anti-trafficking government goals in policies of the United Kingdom’s (UK), Scottish and Northern Irish governments. Policies were found to mostly subscribe to a Realist’s viewing of human trafficking, emphasising criminal choices. Read More …

PREDICTIVE POLICING AND NEGOTIATIONS OF (IN)FORMALITY: EXPLORING THE SWISS CASE

Predictive policing, that is, the data-driven deployment of police operations on the ground, has become increasingly important in recent years. While predictive policing instruments serve to formalise the ways in which police think and operate, the human agent remains central to their exploitation and translation into strategic, operational, and tactical decision-making. The introduction of predictive Read More …

INVESTIGATING THE POLICE USE OF STOP AND SEARCH IN ENGLAND AND WALES DURING THE CORONAVIRUS PANDEMIC

In this study we examine the use of the police stop and search tactic for preventing and investigating crime and as a method for maintaining order, during periods of national lockdown in England and Wales during the covid-19 global pandemic. By using time series modelling on data for all recorded stop and search over a Read More …

INFORMALITY IN MAGISTRATES’ COURTS AS A BARRIER TO PARTICIPATION

Magistrates’ courts are the workhorses of English and Welsh criminal process. Efficient processing of high caseloads in these courts depends on a cohesive network of co-operation among the parties. That co-operation depends on a culture of perceived informality among courtroom personnel, whilst proceedings are actually subject to nuanced uses of legal and procedural provisions. Those Read More …

EDUCATION, (RE)TRAINING, AND TRAFFIC STOPS: FELONIOUS LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER DEATHS IN THE UNITED STATES

Traffic stops continue to be the primary contact between law enforcement and the public, yet little priority is given to traffic stop education and training. A systematic review of felonious traffic stop-related law enforcement officer (LEO) deaths from 1990 to June 2021 revealed the average LEO killed during and after traffic stops was male, in Read More …

RESPONDING TO ‘IMAGE-BASED DOMESTIC ABUSE

This paper questions whether the law is equipped to respond to the range of behaviours that characterise domestic abuse, especially those behaviours that are associated with coercion and control and, in particular, the disclosure of private sexual images to this end. A willingness to recognise notions of intimate terrorism and coercive control as an integral Read More …

OUT IN THE COLD? THE EXPERIENCES OF FOREIGN NATIONAL PRISONERS IN ICELAND’S OPEN PRISONS

Foreign national prisoners form a major constituency in prison populations in many Western European countries (for recent a statistical report see Aebi et al. (2019); for the most recent raw data see Space I data collected by the Council of Europe on an annual basis (Council of Europe 2023). Foreign national prisoners have increasingly been Read More …