The past decade has seen heightened attention towards the potentially harmful consequences of intellectual property crime. In particular, there are concerns about the damage to industry and the global economy, alongside increasing recognition of links with organised crime and terrorism. As a result, a plethora of policy initiatives have sought to reduce the problem of counterfeiting and piracy, of which the underlying principle is consumer responsibility. However, this thesis argues that this approach is based on a number of assumptions. These are prominent when the specific example of fashion counterfeiting is examined. Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to explore consumers' perceptions about fashion counterfeiting and how they relate to their fashion purchasing and assumptions underpinning anti-counterfeiting policy. The research seeks to contextualise fashion counterfeiting within the broader literature about consumption and fashion and add to criminological literature. This is achieved by taking an interdisciplinary consumer-based approach which involved the completion of 801 questionnaires and conducting 27 semi-structured interviews and 2 focus groups. The findings support recent existing research findings that consumers of counterfeit fashion goods cannot be distinguished by their demographic characteristics. Instead, consumers' preferences about fashion, as well as the situation, context and availability are major factors related to the propensity to purchase fashion counterfeits. Techniques of neutralisation and notably the denial of harm can be clearly identified in consumer justifications for purchasing counterfeits. This has clear consequences for consumer perceptions about whether counterfeiting is a 'real crime' and inevitably, responses to counterfeiting. In particular, the notion that consumers will change their behaviour through being educated about the 'dangers of buying fakes' is problematic, as is the suggestion that criminalising the consumption of counterfeits could be a solution. Therefore, these findings demonstrate fundamental concerns about current assumptions underpinning anti-counterfeiting policy.

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Without witnesses there can be no effective criminal justice system. Yet despite this clear fact, many obstacles have stood in the way of these witnesses and of achieving the best evidence they can provide, particularly with vulnerable and intimidated witnesses. In recent decades, some jurisdictions have taken legislative and regulatory steps to lower or remove these barriers, but in other countries little or nothing has been done. This thesis examines one example of the former proactive jurisdictions (England & Wales), and one jurisdiction that has yet to take any significant steps towards protecting or helping witnesses (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia). The principal theme of my argument relates to how Saudi courts can learn from the experiences of courts in England and Wales in terms of protecting witnesses and, specifically, (i) whether there exist fundamental justifications for the implementation of special measures for witnesses from English law into Saudi courts, and (ii) whether the Saudi government can transplant the special measures for witnesses seen in English laws in order to influence further developments in Saudi law. In determining whether such justifications exist, the thesis will seek to identify the obstacles that prevent witnesses from testifying in criminal cases in Saudi Arabia, including the testimony of women and children, and will therein attempt to find in English law a cure for these problems. In pursuance of these key research questions, the thesis will: (1) examine the special measures available for witnesses in the courts of English and Wales, (2) outline the particular challenges that witnesses face during adversarial criminal proceedings in Saudi courts, and (3) try to determine whether Saudi courts can benefit from the implementation of special measures for witnesses. The thesis concludes by arguing that the maslaha principle is a legitimate and appropriate means through which to consider the transfer of special measures for the protection of vulnerable and intimidated witnesses in Saudi law. With regard to the possibility of transferring specific special measures from England and Wales to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, I also propose a set of scholarly criteria which could be used for the systematic evaluation of the appropriateness of this transfer.

The recent use in criminological and political discourse of concepts such as ‘social capital’, ‘collective efficacy’, ‘trust’ and ‘community’ is problematic. As well as their definitional and operational difficulties, they may not be politically neutral. The inadequacy of these concepts is in part connected with the lack of a systematic approach to the measurement of community dynamics and processes. These current theoretical frameworks desperately require critical assessment. A central concern of the Edinburgh Neighbourhood Study, situated within the Edinburgh Study on Youth Transitions and Crime, is to develop a set of measurements that through systematic application will allow community dynamics to be better understood. The Edinburgh Neighbourhood Study has used a large-scale survey administered across Edinburgh and a case study of three neighbourhoods, in order to explore the key theoretical concepts within contemporary discourse on neighbourhood and crime. This has shown that concepts traditionally regarded as desirable, such as internal networks, may have mixed implications for crime and the neighbourhood. This thesis puts forward a model of neighbourhood dynamics, in the form of three dimensions of neighbourhood, and their relationships to social and economic deprivation, including structural resources, and also to crime and disorder.

This thesis examines the ways in which 'medical' concepts have been used in penal discourse since the middle of the nineteenth century. By doing this I have tried to contribute to our understanding of modern methods of penal control and modern penal rationalities. The thesis contains two case studies. The first study examines the uses which have been made of the terms 'inebriety' and 'alcoholism' within penal discourse and also examines what is meant by the term 'treatment' when it is used in the context of 'the "treatment" of inebriates'. The second study looks at various ways in which the terms 'moral insanity', 'moral imbecility' and 'psychopathy' have been employed in penal discourses.

The objective of this dissertation is to demonstrate that victimisation is not punishment. Although this thesis statement sounds simplistic enough, there is a need to demonstrate its validity because the theory and practice of punishment focus exclusively on 'the punishment of offenders' as if anyone who is 'punished' is necessarily an offender. A review of the philosophy and theory of punishment reveals that the punishment of the innocent is conceptualised as a logical impossibility or contradiction because punishment is conventionally construed to presuppose an offence. The present dissertation argues that the punishment of the innocent is not always a mistake or a miscarriage of justice but also an inherent feature of the adversarial nature of criminal justice which assumes formal equality between parties who are substantively unequal in class, race and gender relations. This dissertation is guided by the assumption that the more central punishment is to any theory or practice of criminal justice the greater the tendency for that theory or practice to conceal or truncate relatively autonomous issues that are routinely packaged, with, and thereby colonised by, the conceptual empire of punishment. The historical materialist theory of the articulation of race, class and gender relations is applied here to show how poor black women in particular, poor black people and poor women in general, are uniquely vulnerable to victimization-as-punishment and victimization-in-punishment and how they struggle against these. The former refers to the 'punishment' of innocent people sometimes because they are close to targeted individuals and sometimes because they are framed and made to appear guilty. The latter refers to punishment which is unusual or out of proportion in relation to the nature of the offence. The concept of colonialism is employed in this thesis to underscore the close links between the law-and-order politics of today and the imperial traditions of the past and to emphasise the colonisation of relatively autonomous institutions and processes by the criminal justice system.

This thesis is concerned with the relationship between young people and policing. It draws upon the resources of contemporary social and political theory, and interviews with young people (aged 15-23) and police officers in Edinburgh, in order to explicate the possibility of democratic communication between youth and the police, and analyse the consequences of its absence. Theoretically, it delineates an applied reformulation of Jurgen Habermas' theory of communicative action that can expedite a grounded investigation of the relationship between youth, crime and policing. In this regard, Habermas' work (i) shapes the elucidation of a prefigurative methodological approach to the relevant substantive issues, and (ii) serves as a standpoint from which to review the existing sociological literature on both youth culture and policing. In this latter context, it specifically informs the generation - through a reconstruction of subcultural theory - of an original theoretical framework within which to make sense of the accounts constructed in interviews with young people and police officers. Using this framework, the substantive research explores the ways in which young people and police officers communicate their respective experiences and dispositions. In particular, it moves beyond the conventional criminological focus on juvenile delinquency, and expounds the various ways in which young people experience and apprehend crime in public places. Conversely, it assesses how police officers understand and relate to youth social practices (whether in terms of pedagogic promotion or control). In both cases, the analysis is further solicitous to the impact that different post-school economic trajectories have upon youth practices and the policing of them. Finally, the substantive enquiry examines both the possibilities of communication between young people and police officers, and some of the obstacles that stand in its way.

Previous research concerning criminal victimisation is characterised by adherence to the positivist paradigm. This thesis will seek to show how this contributes to a limited understanding of the experience of crime. This study represents a shift from the positivistic nature of previous research through an emphasis upon the construction of crime. This shift may be viewed as contributing to an increased understanding of the experience of crime. The first half of the thesis seeks to show how the experience of crime has been constructed in academic debate and by agencies with an interest in victims of crime. The thesis will demonstrate how these constructions are unsophisticated and incomplete principally because of neglect concerning the experience of crime as constructed by the victims of crime themselves. In response to this, the second half of the thesis proposes an alternative methodology for the study of the victim's experience of victimhood. This involves an application of an interactive computer programme designed for the elicitation of repertory grids. This technique is employed in relation to understanding the personal experiences of rape and housebreaking. The rationale for the examination of these experiences is grounded in agency classification of these experiences as discrete and quantitatively different in terms of seriousness. The experience of rape is classified as violent crime and inherently more serious than the experience of housebreaking which is classified as a property crime. The study seeks to show how the experiences of rape and housebreaking are qualitatively, as opposed to quantitatively, similar through the perceived 'violation' of self. The thesis concludes by proposing an approach based upon the constructivist paradigm which may be viewed as contributing to a more informed and sophisticated understanding of the experience of victimhood.

Assessing the risk of violent recidivism: An examination of the factor structure of the Psychopathy Checklist - Revised (PCL-R) and validity of its replacement in the Violence Risk Appraisal Guide (VRAG) with the Child and Adolescent Taxon Scale (CATS) to produce a non-clinician dependent more time and cost efficient risk assessment in a UK forensic psychiatric patient sample. The requirement for an accurate, time efficient and cost effective measure to predict violent recidivism in forensic hospital inpatients was highlighted by the Committee of Inquiry into the Personality Disorder Unit of Ashworth Special Hospital (Fallon et al., 1999) which identified a need for a 'consistent and standardised assessment protocol'. The VRAG is such measure but in its traditional form requires the completion of the PCL-R, an interview based assessment requiring a trained rater. Its replacement within the VRAG with the CATS, a records based assessment which is substantially faster to calculate without the requirement for either an interview or trained interviewer, in a Canadian inpatient forensic population resulted in negligible loss of reliability (Quinsey et al. 1998). The present study replicated this finding in a UK Forensic inpatient setting, the State Hospital, conducting a detailed quantitative examination of the distribution and patterns of discrepancies between the alternative versions of the scale and examining the relationship between PCL-R and CATS scale scores. Exploratory factor analysis was conducted to both determine the internal structure of the PCL-R and examine how the CATS scale items mapped into the covariance structure of the PCL-R items. It was concluded that the calculation of the VRAG replacing the PCL-R score with the CATS is a reliable and cost effective alternative.