This study identifies and compares quality perceptions and initiatives between the Scottish Prison Service (SPS) and the Brazilian Prison Service - Santa Catarina State (BPS-SC). The two organisations have specific approaches towards quality management. The SPS is involved in a formal quality management programme, whereas the BPS-SC quality is determined at a more abstract level. In the case of the SPS the impact of the quality management programme on the job structure (design and satisfaction) in different organisational levels, and in organisational control, is analysed in depth. In the case of the BPS-SC, significant structural aspects that determine quality perceptions and initiatives are identified and discussed. The study also considers the influences of the institutional environments in which each organisation operates in the shaping of quality perceptions and initiatives. Four case studies were conducted: two in Scotland and two in Brazil. The research strategy adopted is mostly qualitative, although some basic quantitative analysis is used. The case studies conducted were exploratory and descriptive. Data was collected by means of open-ended interviews, documentary analysis, informal interviews and participation in training sessions. The analysis of the data was conducted on a qualitative basis, and subjected to triangulation techniques. Clustering analysis techniques were also used in some cases. The results indicate that quality cannot be regarded as an universal concept. Quality definition and initiatives vary among and within organisational groups in the same context, as well as within the same organisational groups in different institutional contexts. In terms of the impact of the introduction of a formal quality programme on the job structure and control process of the SPS, the results demonstrate that quality management can provide a degree of a job enrichment and can also contribute to a re-skilling process. Although this contributes to the increase in job satisfaction, the general work environment is not necessarily improved.

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The premise that where crime has occurred previously, informs where crime is likely to occur in the future has long been used for geographically targeting police and public safety services. Hotspot analysis is the most applied technique that is based on this premise – using crime data to identify areas of crime concentration, and in turn predict where crime is likely to occur. However, the extent to which hotspot analysis can accurately predict spatial patterns of crime has not been comprehensively examined. The current research involves an examination of hotspot analysis techniques, measuring the extent to which these techniques accurately predict spatial patterns of crime. The research includes comparing the prediction performance of hotspot analysis techniques that are commonly used in policing and public safety, such as kernel density estimation, to spatial significance mapping techniques such as the Gi* statistic. The research also considers how different retrospective periods of crime data influence the accuracy of the predictions made by spatial analysis techniques, for different periods of the future. In addition to considering the sole use of recorded crime data for informing spatial predictions of crime, the research examines the use of geographically weighted regression for determining variables that statistically correlate with crime, and how these variables can be used to inform spatial crime prediction. The findings from the research result in introducing the crime prediction framework for aiding spatial crime prediction. The crime prediction framework illustrates the importance of aligning predictions for different periods of the future to different police and prevention response activities, with each future time period informed by different spatial analysis techniques and different retrospective crime data, underpinned with different theoretical explanations for predicting where crime is likely to occur.

This study uses extant court records to investigate the relationships among crime, courts and the larger community during the 1870s. Class, gender experience and control are themes that run through the work, and conclusions are made about how these were represented and reinforced by the criminal justice system. Montgomeryshire was chosen for its dual agricultural and industrial character, as well as its long border with England which had an impact on its cultural characteristics. The structure of the thesis mirrors the way in which a criminal case could journey through the justice system - from first appearance before the magistrates to the higher court of Quarter Sessions or to the Assizes. The input of the community is highlighted, and the county police force - one of the earliest to be established in the country - is studied throughout, with an investigation of its impact on the general public, and on crime figures. The current increasing focus on women's experience of crime and the legal system is reflected in this work, as well as historical geography, and newer studies on the effect of the environment. The thesis answers a call for a study of history 'from below interacting with history from above', and shows how the criminal justice system, status and identity were interlinked.

This thesis explores the lived realities and social meanings attached to the phenomenon of crime and anti-social behaviour in Bryn Mawr, a semi-urban geographical location in Wales. The primary lens through which this study was viewed was the perspective of the body and embodiment, and differing approaches to this theme are interwoven within the data analysis. This research draws primarily on participant observations mainly associated with a preventative activities project run by the Youth Offending Services and Communities First, together with interviews with a number of parents, young people and practitioners in the area. The thesis aims to situate people's understandings and experiences of crime and antisocial behaviour in the context of the immediate social, cultural and spatial interactions within Bryn Mawr, with a particular emphasis on young people. Initially, the thesis explores people's understandings of community and discusses how this might affect their feelings regarding crime and anti-social behaviour. This introduces the particularities of the social geography of the locale. The thesis then describes how crime and anti-social behaviour is defined, and further develops concepts of power, abjection and reflexive embodiment. The next two chapters of the thesis examine crime and anti-social behaviour, via the perspectives of the dramaturgical body and the phenomenological body. The thesis therefore analyses the complex ways in which crime and anti-social behaviour are enacted in Bryn Mawr, and explores the intersections between identity, power and place. This thesis argues for alternative representations of young people involved in anti-social behaviour that question the master narratives of young people as abject others and one that acknowledges the fluid nature of identity construction. The conclusion then calls for a radical (re)discovery of the female body as a starting point for thought, and as a place from which a new ethics of relating can emerge.

This thesis focuses on newcomers in organised crime, employing a case study on the Apulian Sacra Corona Unita (SCU) clan. The thesis tackles the following questions: Do newcomers in a crowded national context adopt their organisational structure in response to predominantly structural or agency factors?; Is the adopted organisational configuration stable or subject to change and fluctuations?; Finally, does this organisational configuration impact upon the success or failure of newcomers in the field of organised crime? In order to respond to these questions, the SCU was selected as a representative example of a newcomer in the Italian national context. A historiographical analytical approach was adopted and the thesis is, therefore, divided into three distinct time periods; the preorganised crime era in Apulia and the emergence of the first native organisation (the SCU); the early years of the SCU and emerging weaknesses at the heart of the organisation; and the era of the state counteroffensive and organisational decline. A structure and agency approach has been applied to the case study in order to address the different ages of the organisation visàvis our research questions. Data, in the form of material from the principal trials, have been analysed to produce a narrative history of the organisation, enabling us to draw conclusions about the factors which may account for organisational success or failure. We focus on Italy as the home of European organised crime, but the SCU represents a distinct case due to its status as a newcomer, its relative anonymity, particularly on a global scale, and its complex and often incongruous history. It is in the interests of researchers and policy makers alike to investigate even the smaller, less successful organised crime syndicates if any cohesive and effective approach to combating the phenomenon is ever to be reached.

In 1965 capital punishment for murder was abolished in the UK. The Mandatory Life Sentence (MLS) replaced it. The MLS is to this day a political sentence. This thesis examines the MLS in terms of law, policy, practice and management, and, considers through the discourse of prisoners and staff how men who murder experience life imprisonment and the concept of release. My research draws on in depth interviews with 18 prisoners who had experience of life in open conditions and 10 professionals. This thesis contributes to our understanding of the impact of long-term imprisonment, indeterminacy and the management of a murderous identity within open conditions and the community. Analysis of the data indicates that prisoners ascription of identities is based on their perceptions of the nature of the offence, risk, guilt and the appropriateness of the MLS. The prisoners through the implementation of spoiled, co-existing and intersecting identities mediated the impact of the MLS. The research also indicates that prisoner experience of life in closed prison did little to prepare them for the reality of open prison and life in the community. As they near the end of the sentence identities produced to cope with imprisonment become redundant. On or near release the challenge for them became how to implement and/or manage co-existing identities. My study considers how the MLS can be perceived as differentiating the prisoner from other indeterminate prisoners historically in terms of policy, in staff and prisoner’s perceptions of practice and the MLS prisoner’s reflections on their own identities. The findings also bring into question current policy and practice within open conditions and the opportunities available for MLS prisoners nearing release.

Following the 1991 Criminal Justice Act a 'dangerous' offender is liable to a longer than normal sentence of imprisonment in order to prevent the commission of future serious violent and sexual crimes. The thesis argues that this new power is similar to, but significantly different from earlier legislative and medical attempts to control dangerous offenders. The new power establishes a system of social defence which proactively punishes offenders and generates a societal reliance on incapacitation through imprisonment. Such a policy arises out of a general failure of belief in modem criminological theories to provide a methodology for reducing all criminality including serious violent and sexual crimes. The liberal state must justify the longer than normal detention of 'dangerous' offenders if it is to use this coercive power in a legitimate way. The thesis argues that the state is limited in its power to punish 'dangerous' offenders for what they might do. The state cannot discriminate against offenders by redistributing benefits which privilege some citizen's liberty over others without putting at risk the state's claim to treat all citizens equally. Neither can the state presume to predict and to judge in advance a rational citizen's future behaviour without seriously violating important moral principles. The situation is different for non-rational 'dangerous' offenders, for whom the use of incapacitation may be permissible, but civil detention must still be imposed in offenders' best interests not in the best interests of others. That the state does violate fundamental liberal principles is made possible by social and cultural changes in which crime avoidance becomes a conscious part of everyday life. A heightened sense of the risk of crime reduces opposition to the incapacitative and disproportionate use of imprisonment and encourages a policy of social defence by governments frustrated at their inability to control crime. Nevertheless, the use of longer than normal imprisonment cannot be justified through the acquiescence of citizens to illiberal governance.