With the expansion of the use of private prisons and detention centres worldwide and the increasing involvement of private actors in the provision of custodial services, this doctoral thesis considers life inside two private prisons in England. Using theoretically informed ethnography it evaluates the effect of responsibility on men imprisoned in two private prisons in England. Firstly, it briefly reviews the background and development of prison privatisation in England and Wales and considers the role and place of private prisons as part of a wider neo-liberal shift. Secondly, using qualitative data gathered inside two private prisons, it evaluates if these prisons, through their regimes, are trying to create responsible self-governing prisoners. The thesis reviews both, how regimes and practices in place in these two prisons attempt to forge responsible prisoners, and how individual men and groups of prisoners experience, feel about, cope with and assimilate penal messages of self-governance and responsibility. Finally, it questions both the impact of responsible prisoners for prisons and the impact of responsibility on prisoners and argues that, whilst there is a benefit to fostering environments in which prisoners are enabled to become responsible and self-governing, a careful balance must be maintained, as for some men the responsibility itself becomes characteristic of the "pain of imprisonment".

Paragraphs 138 to 140 of the Outcome Document of the 2005 UN World Summit not only elevated the element of prevention to a prominent place within the principle of “responsibility to protect” (R2P), but also restricted the scope of R2P to four specific crimes under international law: genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. This thesis explores the conceptual and practical consequences of linking R2P to the concept of international crimes, with a particular focus on the preventive dimension of R2P, the socalled “responsibility to prevent”. To date, much of what has been written about the “responsibility to prevent” borrows primarily from conflict prevention theory and practice. Such conflict prevention inspired accounts of the “responsibility to prevent” tend to depict the principle as a long-term agenda that seeks to build societies resilient to atrocity crimes; that rests primarily on pillars one (state responsibility) and two (international assistance and capacity-building); that is supportive rather than undermining of state sovereignty; and that can largely adhere to the traditional conflict prevention principles of impartiality, consent, and minimal coercion should more direct prevention efforts become necessary. Drawing on literature from criminology, this thesis develops an international crimes framework for operationalizing the preventive dimension of R2P. The framework, combined with three case studies of international crime prevention (Bosnia 1991-1995; Kenya 2007-08; and Libya 2011), challenges key assumptions of the conflict prevention accounts, arguing that linking R2P to the concept of international crimes turns the “responsibility to prevent” into a principle that is more focused on the short-term, rather than on so-called root causes of atrocity crimes; more focused on individuals, rather than on state structures and capacity; more partial regarding perpetrators and victims; and more coercive, intrusive, and controversial than is commonly acknowledged in academic writing and policy debates on the subject. More broadly, the thesis concludes that taking R2P’s focus on the prevention of international crimes seriously requires re-rethinking the “responsibility to prevent” in important respects.

This thesis explores how burglars and burglary in London were understood in cultural, criminological, legal, political, and economic discourse during the period 1860-1939, demonstrating how the ideas about crime and the criminal circulating in these domains were mutually constitutive. Specifically, it identifies how characterisations of burglary in visual and written forms of media — encompassing legal and criminological documents, as well as those produced by the press and commercial advertising, and in fiction, theatre, and film — cultivated a range of attitudes towards the crime to a greater or lesser extent. Encompassing not only fear-mongering and sympathetic representations, but also those designed to be exciting, to challenge preconceptions, and to entertain, I argue that these conflicting attitudes towards burglary and burglars emerged in response to specific changes in the cultural landscape: the advent of mass literacy and corresponding interest in narratives of crime that reflected the social, cultural, and political concerns of an audience diverse of class, age, and gender; the commercial imperatives of the insurance and entertainment industries as the middle classes expanded, including the development of household insurance and the popularity of the ‘true crime’ genre; debates surrounding women’s increasing social and sexual agency and their alignment with particular crimes; and the evolution of new modes of policing and regulation. The thesis thereby uses the topic of burglary to illuminate a broader range of contemporary preoccupations and experiences with gender relations, class structures and stereotypes, and the moral authority of state and society. By approaching burglary as a focus of interactions not only between police, criminal, and victim, but also between the market, consumers, and the state, this thesis uncovers new terrain upon which crime intersected with everyday lives historically.

This thesis examines the treatment and experiences of foreign national prisoners in England and Wales. It contains two main arguments. First, I contend that dominant prison theories rely on an outmoded understanding of the nation-state, and as a result, tend to ignore the effects of globalisation. Second, I argue that current prison practices reaffirm the boundaries of the British nation-state and promote an exclusionary notion of British citizenship. I conclude that research attuned to the affective, embodied dimensions of incarceration can help criminologists to develop a more ‘global’ perspective on state power. This argument begins and builds from ethnographic research. As a whole, the thesis is based on more than 200 interviews conducted over the course of a year in and around five men’s prisons in the north, southwest, and center of England. Structurally, it proceeds from a theoretical critique of prison studies, to an ethnographic account of prison life, to a conclusion about the purpose of prison scholarship. Thematically, it focuses on the relationship between identity and imprisonment, and in particular, on the ways in which normative beliefs about race, gender, sexuality, and class get infused in incarceration practices.

Although both Canada and the United Kingdom had experienced terrorism prior to the attacks that occurred in the United States on September 11, 2001, Roach has argued that the events of that day ‘produced a horrible natural experiment that allows us to compare how international institutions and different countries responded’. Arguably, the most significant international response post-9/11 was the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1373, which set a 90-day deadline for states to implement measures in accordance with the Resolution. Despite the fact that both Canada and the United Kingdom already had in place extensive provisions to deal with terrorism, both countries responded swiftly and their legislative responses reflect the histories and legal, political and social cultures of each country. This thesis tests the hypothesis that national security remains a bastion of national sovereignty, despite the force of international legal instruments like UN Security Council Resolution 1373 and, as such, the evolution of counter-terrorism policies in different jurisdictions is best analyzed and understood as a product of local institutional structures and cultures. To test this hypothesis, this thesis engages in comparative analyses of legal and political structures and cultures within Canada and the United Kingdom. It analyses variations in the evolution of counter-terrorism policies in the two jurisdictions and explores the domestic reasons for them. In its analysis of security certificates and bail with recognizance/investigative hearings in Canada, and detention without trial, control orders and TPIMs in the UK, this thesis reveals how domestic structures and cultures, including the legal system, the relative stability of government, local human rights culture, and geopolitical relationships all influence how counter-terrorism measures evolve.

This thesis considers the extent to which the International Criminal Court's Office of the Prosecutor ('OTP') has been successful in realising its self-defined mandate of ending impunity in Kenya. In particular, it focuses on the OTP's attempts to encourage domestic investigations and prosecutions as part of its strategy of positive complementarity. This strategy has been hailed as being the best and perhaps the only way that the OTP may use its finite resources to make a significant contribution to ending impunity. Despite this, no empirical study has been published that evaluates the effectiveness of this strategy and the impact that it has on ending impunity in the targeted situation country. This thesis seeks to address this gap in the literature by conducting a case study on the OTP's implementation of its strategy of positive complementarity in Kenya following that country's post-election violence in 2007/08. In doing so, I also hope to make a modest contribution to existing debates over the effectiveness of the ICC as an institution as well as international criminal justice and transitional justice more generally.