Laura Lammasniemi Associate Professor at Warwick School of Law I have spent the past few years researching the history of sexual offences trials. I have read hundreds of court files in various archives and scrolled through countless newspaper reports. Amid all these files and microfilms, there is one charge that rarely features: rape. In this post, I want to explore why rape was so rarely prosecuted in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In the 19th century, rape was a serious charge, for which the death penalty had only been abolished in 1841. Even though sexual offending was considered cultur ..read more

Henrique Carvalho Reader, School of Law, University of Warwick Most contemporary democratic societies, especially those in the ‘West’ such as Britain, are heavily invested in the idea that legal reform can bring about social change. Social problems are often interpreted and framed as legal problems, so that the law is relied upon to provide effective solutions. This is especially the case when such problems can be linked to social behaviour that can be deemed dangerous and harmful, to which criminalisation is usually presented (especially, but by no means exclusively, by public authorities and ..read more

Kate Seear, Suzanne Fraser, Dion Kagan, Emily Lenton, Adrian Farrugia, and Sean Mulcahy, Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health, and Society, La Trobe University kylie valentine, Social Policy Research Centre & Centre for Social Research in Health, University of New South Wales Hepatitis C is a blood-borne virus that is largely acquired through the sharing of needles, syringes, and ancillary injecting equipment. Over time, hepatitis C is potentially life-threatening. The virus primarily affects the liver and, if untreated, can lead to cirrhosis and cancer. Though new drugs for the treat ..read more

Anthony M Triola Criminology, Law & Society University of California, Irvine In the United States, contemporary incidents of police brutality have, through their entry into the realm of public spectacle, brought into relief the importance of addressing issues relating to police violence in particular, and state-sanctioned antiblack violence in general. The materialisation of responses to this set of imperatives has varied in tone and intention, ranging from calls for fundamental change from political activists to the more reformist approaches advocated for in official state responses durin ..read more

Rachel Killean University of Sydney School of Law Introduction Over the past twenty years, the internet and smartphones have become ubiquitous to our everyday activities. The entrenching of the internet into our day to day lives has enabled a wide range of technology assisted harms to develop. These include a range of technology-assisted sexual violence, such as crimes known colloquially as ‘revenge pornography,’ ‘upskirting,’ and ‘cyberflashing.’ While in many senses these crimes represent a new manifestation of sexual crime committed in a different way, they are subject to many of the same i ..read more

Kajsa Dinesson, PhD Candidate, University of Edinburgh In the UK, there are specific terrorism offences (including preparation, encouragement, and possession offences) and ‘ordinary’ criminal offences which may be charged in terrorism cases. A conviction for such an offence has intrusive consequences beyond long sentences. These include the terrorist notification requirement[1], whereby a convicted terrorist is obligated to notify any changes in a range of information including address, premises stayed in, financial information, and travel. Yet there is a concerning lack of clarity as to what ..read more

Kıvanç Atak Research and Teaching Fellow Department of Criminology, Stockholm University Racism finds expression in different forms, contexts and situations. It also continues to inflict harms and gives rise to vulnerabilities. Modern penal regimes in liberal democracies are now more equipped with legal instruments and law enforcement measures in responding to racist victimization. For racial and ethnic minorities, in particular, how the state responds to racism in society means a lot in terms of their sense of recognition and inclusion. My article Racist victimization, legal estrangement and ..read more

Katharine Dunbar Winsor PhD Candidate, Department of Sociology and Anthropology Concordia University, Montréal Feminism has shaped and continues to shape who and what is studied in social science research. In the article I wrote for Social and Legal Studies, I discuss the development, maturation, and divergent focuses within the area of feminist criminology alongside various shifts in feminist thought more broadly. Much criminological research has focused on the professionals that work within the criminal justice system or amongst criminalized people. Lesser attention has been paid to the work ..read more

Silvana Tapia Tapia Assistant Professor, Universidad del Azuay Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, University of Birmingham In my recent article, Beyond Carceral Expansion: Survivors’ Experiences of Using Specialised Courts for Violence Against Women in Ecuador, published in Social and Legal Studies, I addressed the limits of the specialised penal system created in Ecuador — as in many other Latin American countries — to respond to women’s reports of domestic violence. The article demonstrates that very few complaints reach the sentencing stage, as most women “abandon” the trial after obtaining a ..read more

Gail Super Assistant Professor University of Toronto, Department of Sociology (Mississauga), cross-appointed to the Centre for Criminology and Sociolegal Studies Vigilantes have a complex relationship with the state. Although they are breaking the law when they inflict or threaten violence against suspected criminals or alleged norm transgressors, they often claim to be enforcing the law, or assisting the police, in the absence of the state. In my article, Punitive Welfare on the Margins of the State: Narratives of Punishment and (In)Justice in Masiphumelele, published recently in Social and L ..read more