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At a time when the collective redress landscape is undergoing a period of transformative change, this research focuses on class actions in England and Wales. The author provides an objective analysis of the costs and benefits of these proceedings from an access to justice perspective. Aiming to promote accessibility, this pioneering work separates fact from fiction in an easily digestible way, offering progressive solutions for reform. The book begins with a discussion on England and Wales's need for increasing access to justice, given that the capacity of people to access justice is paramount in a democracy governed by the rule of law. The Competition Appeal Tribunal (legislation introduced in Parliament on 23 January 2014) is considered the only area where class actions are available. The book outlines the historical and comparative context of class actions that have developed since their modern origins in the United States, and offers a deeper look into reforms in England and Wales. It concludes that the current landscape of collective claims-making leaves a major access-to-justice gap that demands reform.

Convict criminology is the study of criminology by those who have first-hand experience of imprisonment. This is the first single-authored account of this unusual perspective. It begins with an overview of the idea that direct experience of incarceration furnishes a criminologist with distinctive resources to analyse and critique ideas about crime, punishment, law and order. The book goes on to critically evaluate the emergence of the perspective within the USA. Key figures, such as Frank Tannenbaum and John Irwin, are identified, and their particular contributions to criminology are discussed before the accounts move across the Atlantic to Europe. The Russian anarchist theorist, Peter Kropotkin, is identified as the first ‘convict criminologist’ on the basis of his 19^th century study of French and Russian prisons that combined his own experiences of incarceration with extensive empirical studies. The author, by drawing on his own experience of imprisonment in the early 1980s, demonstrates how such experience can be developed academically to widen the horizons of criminology. Taking inspiration from feminist intersectional scholarship his account foregrounds gender, race, colonialism and class as central features of men’s penal experience. The reflexive autobiographical style of the book offers methodological insights, creative theoretical synthesis and a compelling narrative.

Welcome to the dead end of the city shadows in Valdemingómez on the outskirts of Madrid: a lawless landscape of drugs and violence where the third world meets the Wild West. Having had three national research proposals rejected, Briggs and Monge entered this area with no institutional support or formal funding. With only patience, some cigarettes and a mobile phone, they slowly gained the trust of those who live and visit one of Europe's most problematic ghettos, and collected images and testimonies from drug addicts, gypsies, residents, police, and harm-reduction staff. The result is this disturbing but moving account of how a forgotten population of people survive in a desolate misery having fallen casualty to various social, political and economic processes, and as a consequence, internalize and reproduce this suffering through destructive forms of drug use which compromises their own health and wellbeing. The text also charts how neoliberal governance and rampant corruption have produced this area of spatial inequality: a place which lacks infrastructure, decent public health and is controlled by oppressive urban social control structures which are charged with intervening on this haven for organised crime, drug dealing, and brutal forms of violence. Briggs and Monge two-year study use the words and photos from these peoples’ personal stymies and their work is testament to what is possible beyond the realms of increasingly bureacratised academic research structures and biased funding calls.

The trade in counterfeit goods is growing. Recent EU studies on Fast Moving Consumer Goods indicate that 6.5% of all sports(wear) goods, 7.8% of cosmetics and 12.7% of luggage/handbags sold in the EU are in some way counterfeit. The WTO has an oft-repeated estimate of 7% of all global commerce as counterfeit. The World Economic Forum goes further, suggesting that counterfeiting and piracy cost the global economy an estimated $1.77 trillion in 2015, which is nearly 10% of the global trade in merchandise. Much work and popular scrutiny has examined flows of counterfeit goods. However, there remains a general lack of information on the financing of the counterfeit trade. Drawing upon cross-disciplinary research, the book offers a unique account into the financing of the trade in counterfeit goods. Focusing on tangible goods, it addresses the ways in which capital is secured to allow counterfeiting businesses to be initiated and sustained, how entrepreneurs and customers settle payments, the costs of conducting business in the counterfeiting trade, and how profits from the business are spent and invested. The book covers the UK context, whilst also considering the distinctly transnational nature of the trade.

This book contextualises, evaluates, and problematises the (lack of) legal and regulatory organisation involved in the many processes of food production, distribution, and consumption. Turning a criminological gaze on the conditions under which food is (un)regulated, this book encompasses a range of discussions on the problematic conditions under which food (dis)connects with humanity and its consequences on public health and well-being, nonhuman animals, and the environment, often simultaneously. Influenced by critical criminology, social harm approach, green criminology, corporate criminology, and victimology, while engaging with legal, rural, geographic, and political sciences, the concept of food crime fuses diverse research by questioning issues of legality, criminality, deviance, harm, social justice, ethics, and morality within food systems. Evident problems range from food safety and food fraud, to illegal agricultural labour and state-corporate food crimes, to obesity and food deserts, to livestock welfare and genetically modified foods, to the role of agriculture in climate change and food waste, to food democracy and corporate co-optation of food movements. Theorising and researching these problems involves questioning the processes of lacking or insufficient regulation, absent or ineffective enforcement, resulting harms, and broader issues of governance, corruption, and justice. Due to the contemporary corporatisation of food and the subsequent distancing of humans from foodstuffs and food systems, not only is it important to think criminologically about food, but the criminological study of food may help make criminology relevant today.

Indigenous Criminology is the first book to explore a distinctly Indigenous approach to criminology. It is based on comparative research across the settler colonial states of Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the United States. The book draws on critical Indigenous and decolonial literature to argue for the importance of prioritising Indigenous knowledge in understanding contemporary Indigenous over-representation in the criminal justice system. Indigenous Criminology sets out the significance of colonialism as a key foundational concept to developing a critical Indigenous criminology. It analyses how colonialism impacts on the current operations of criminal justice. The book explores a number of explicit issues including the policing, sentencing and punishment of Indigenous people. It considers the impact of crime control specifically on Indigenous women and discusses the effects on Indigenous people of globalisation and crime control. The book concludes with a reflection on critical issues in the development of an Indigenous criminology, including the need to take seriously the voices of Indigenous peoples and the rights embedded in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

From a Critical Social Policy perspective and with a Global Development remit, this book addresses a range of key questions regarding international human rights. With human rights constantly under challenge, this collection of chapters represent a comprehensive critique that adds a social policy perspective to recent political and legalistic analysis. Expert contributors draw on local and global examples to review constructs of universal rights and their impact on social policy and human welfare. With thorough analysis of their strengths, weaknesses and enforcement, it sets out their role in domestic and geo-political affairs. For those with an interest in social policy, ethics, development, politics and international relations, this is an honest appraisal of both the concepts of international human rights and their realities.

This important volume steps beyond conventional legal approaches to sustainability to provide fresh insights into perhaps one of the most critical global challenges of our time. Offering analysis of sustainability at land and sea alongside trade, labour and corporate governance perspectives, this book articulates important debates about the role of law. From impacts on local societies to domestic sustainable development policies and major international goals, it considers multiple jurisdictional levels. With original, interdisciplinary research from experts in their legal fields, this is a rounded assessment of the complex interplay of law and sustainability—both as it is now and as it should be in the future.

Legal professionals are thought to have higher levels of mental health issues and lower levels of wellbeing than the general population. Drawing on qualitative data from new research with legal practitioners, this in-depth study of mental health and wellbeing in the UK and Republic of Ireland’s legal sector is a timely contribution to the urgent international debate on these issues. The authors present a comprehensive discussion of the cultural, structural and other causes of legal professionals’ compromised wellbeing. They explore the everyday demands and difficulties of the legal working environment and consider the impacts on individuals, the legal profession and wider society. Making comparisons with systems overseas, this is an invaluable resource that provides evidence-based suggestions for swift and effective organisational and policy-related interventions in the legal sector.

This book helps to reveal what questions need asking in criminology and how to best answer them. Philosophical criminology asks big questions about how we get on with one another and what happens when we do not. This accessible book in the New Horizons in Criminology series is the first to foreground this growing area. Criminology cannot be properly considered without the basic premises and ideas which arise in philosophy. The book is structured around six philosophical ideas concerning our relations with others. The six ideas which are discussed are values, morality, aesthetics, order, rules and respect. Building on the author’s theoretical and empirical research, the book considers the boundaries of criminology and the scope for greater exchange between criminology and philosophy. The book is illustrated using examples from a range of countries, and provides a platform for engaging with important topical issues using philosophical and theoretical insights.

The book applies legal concepts to economic analysis. It explains that modern economies require the existence of a specific legal system to operate. The analysis builds on the prior work of institutional economists such as Douglas North. It brings it forward by integrating what was missing: the legal component. Taking its distance from the economic analysis of law, it provides a legal analysis of economics. It is superior in this regard because real life economic actors must abide by legal rules. Their economic activity is dependent on the existence of rules making it possible, something present economic analyses neglect completely. Without States and the services they provide (protection services, a legal system, property rights, justice, roads, contract enforcement, and so on), economic activity cannot flourish. The book concentrates on the particular importance of property rights. They always played a key role in economic development. They now play a key role in the operation of a global economy because of the surge of multinationals built on the right of property concentrated via corporations. The role of corporate law in the reconfiguration of the power system from a State System to a World Power System is explained. The book is of interest for all social scientists interested in the operation of our present world economy in an era of globalization. It provides new insight on how to address global issues, in particular global climate change, which is a direct consequence of the spreading of a world economy over a divided State System.

This pioneering work offers important insights into peace mediation practice today and the role of third parties in the resolution of armed conflicts. The authors reveal how peace mediation has developed into a complex arena and how multifaced assistance has become an indispensable part of it. Offering unique reflections on the new frameworks set out by the United Nations, the book explores the challenges and the opportunities of third- party involvement in conflict resolution. With its policy focus and real-world examples from across the globe, this collection is essential reading for researchers of peace and conflict studies, and a go-to reference point for advisors involved in peace processes.

Revisiting the ‘Ideal Victim’ is a collection of academic responses to the late Nils Christie’s (1986) seminal piece on the ‘ideal victim’ in which he addressed the socially constructed concept of an idealised form of victim status or identity. Highlighting the complex factors informing the application or rejection of victim status, Christie foregrounded the role of subjective and objective perspectives on personal and societal responses to victimisation. In sum, the ‘ideal victim’ is: “a person or category of individuals, who – when hit by crime – most readily are given the complete and legitimate status of being a victim” (1986: 18, original italics). This concept has become one of the most frequently cited themes of victimological (and, where relevant, criminological) academic scholarship over the past thirty years. In commemoration of his contribution, this volume analyses, evaluates and critiques the current nature and impact of victim identity, experience, policy and practice in light of Christie’s framework. Demonstrating how the very notion of what constitutes a ‘victim’ has undergone significant theorisation, evaluation and reconceptualization in the intervening three decades, the academic contributors in this volume excellently showcase the relevance of this ‘ideal victim’ concept to a range of contemporary victimological issues. In sum, the chapters critically evaluate the salience of Christie’s concept in a modern context while demonstrating its influence over the decades..

What impact have the unprecedented and rapid changes to the structure of education in England had on school governors and policy makers? And what effect has the intensifying media and regulatory focus had on volunteer school governors? Jacqueline Baxter takes the 2014 ‘Trojan Horse’ scandal, in which it was alleged that governors at 25 Birmingham schools were involved in the ‘Islamisation’ of secular state schools, as a focus point to examine the pressures and challenges in the current system. Informed by her twenty years’ experience as a school governor, she considers both media analysis and policy as well as the implications for the future of a democratic system of education in England.

As our interactions with others become ever more mediated by various forms of electronic communication, the relationship between crime and technology is becoming an increasingly important topic for both theoretical and practical studies of criminology. This book analyses digital communications as they play a part in contemporary homicide, drawing on a range of cases from the United Kingdom and elsewhere in the world — cases where killers confessed on social media, for example, or where their actions were traced using their digital communications. Offering a groundbreaking conceptual framework for people studying this issue, the book will be of great value to criminologists, students, and police officers.

This is the first book to provide a critical criminological perspective on sport and the connections between sport and crime. Part of the New Horizons in Criminology series, it draws on the inter-disciplinary nature of criminology and incorporates emerging perspectives like social harm, gender and sexuality, and green criminology. Written from an international perspective, it covers topics including sports scandals and the possibility of crime prevention through sport. American football, boxing, soccer and sumo are all examined. The book considers both Sports Law and the Sociology of Sport and will be essential reading to students and academics in these fields. As well as running an argument about the need for a broad inter-disciplinary criminology and criminologically informed sports policies, it also serves as resource in setting out work from other disciplines that might contribute.

Taking a multi-disciplinary perspective, and one grounded in human rights, this book explores in depth the journeys unaccompanied child migrants take through the UK legal and care systems. Arriving with little agency, the book considers what becomes of these children as they grow and assume new roles and identities, only to risk losing legal protection as they reach eighteen. Through international studies, and crucially of the young migrants themselves, the book examines the narratives they present, and the frameworks of culture and legislation into which they are placed. Challenging existing policy, it questions, from a social justice perspective, what the treatment of this group tells us about our systems and the cultural presuppositions on which they depend. Contributors are researchers and practitioners in film-making, human geography, law, psychology, psychotherapy, social work and sociology,

This book develops an interactionist urban political ecology approach to urban environments across Africa. Individual chapters focus on: analyzing the findings of planners and scholars on Africa’s urban environmental problems; interrogating urban environmental histories; engaging with the physical-material settings and cultural beliefs surrounding them; recovering the political-environmental urban visions of African writers and artists; and building from everyday environmentalism and community activism. The book highlights alternative readings of Africa’s urban environments via case study segments on Nairobi, Lusaka, Zanzibar, Dakar and Cape Town, along with material on a variety of other cities. The primary practical, policy- and planning-oriented argument is that efforts to ‘improve’ urban environments in Africa will fail without engagement with and (re)building from the reality of diverse and complex perspectives on those environments. That leads to a more theoretical argument for radical incrementalism, following the South African urbanist Edgar Pieterse, within an interactionist urban political ecology framework. Despite the diversity of cities and environments, cities in Africa share the hot pot of environmental politics – and that demands a critical, comparative approach. The book argues for greater dialogue with ‘rural’ political ecology, a deeper historical backdrop and recognition that everyday environmentalism takes many forms in the city. In such a manner Africanized and pluralized interactionist urban political ecology could genuinely lead to broader ways for rethinking urban theory on what constitutes a city and a radical re-imagination of possibilities for producing cities around the world that are more just and genuinely socio-environmentally sustainable.

The harm and crime committed by humans does not only affect humans. Victimisation is not isolated to people, but instead encompasses the planet and other beings. Yet apart from fairly recent green criminological scholarship employing an expanded criminological gaze beyond the human, the discipline of criminology has largely confined itself to human victims, ignoring the human-caused suffering and plight of the billions of other individuals with whom we share the Earth. In order to take another step in rectifying criminology’s blindness to the non-human world, we propose a ‘Wildlife Criminology’. Wildlife Criminology is a complimentary project that expands the existing green and critical criminological scholarship even further beyond the human. As the book’s chapters will demonstrate, criminology’s current and future engagement with wildlife issues needs to develop by considering wider notions of crime and harm involving non-human animals and plants. We focus on non-human animals: as property, as food, for sport, reflectors of violence, the link to interpersonal human violence, and rights through exploration of four interconnected themes - commodification and exploitation, violence, rights, and speciesism and othering. We offer directions for the future of criminal justice system, humans’ relationship to the non-human, and for the project of Wildlife Criminology.