There has been much debate over the nature of relations between the different ethnic and racial groups in the United States. Some argue that the United States is a genuinely multi-cultural nation where the opportunity for universal socio-political and economic advancement still exists. Others, however, paint America as a nation fundamentally split down a black'/'white' middle, despite the recent arrival of vast numbers of immigrants from Asia and Latin America and maintain that racially-determined discrimination has irrevocably undermined its pluralist ambitions. It is my belief that neither position offers an entirely accurate portrait of the nature of relations between different ethnic and racial groups, because neither offers a suitably complex and flexible model for boundary or identity construction. Using Bakhtin's theory of 'dialogics' I argue that detective fiction can provide this kind of model because the novel is "heteroglot" and as such reflects all the voices present in society, and the detective acts as a kind of cultural mediator who moves between and thus draws together the different racial and ethnic groups. I also explore the formal and thematic characteristics of detective fiction produced by writers of African-American, Chicano, Cuban and Jewish descent in order to establish how their experiences have been different. Yet, it is not my aim to seal off the various groups in pure ethnic enclaves; rather, to assess whether and where the areas of commonality exist. To this extent, I theorize 'race' and 'ethnicity' as overlapping yet diverging categories. I argue that the ethnic detective novel acknowledges this situation and offers a model for identity construction which both recognizes the extent of racial divisions but which is also flexible enough to acknowledge that significant group interplay does also take place.

published_or_final_version / abstract / Criminology / Master / Master of Social Sciences

This social learning analysis of Community Safety Partnerships in Scotland will develop two sets of arguments – one empirical and one epistemological. The empirical argument is that the well-documented difficulties in partnership working (largely a result of the very different occupational cultures, structures, roles and functions of the agencies generally brought on board) are not only very much in evidence but that current ways of organising and structuring partnership working in Scotland are also very often not conducive to overcoming them. It will be argued that viewing partnership working through the lens of a relational social learning perspective (Etienne Wenger’s theory of communities of practice) provides a clear set of recommendations for resolving these problems. These empirical arguments shall form the main focus of the thesis but, given the theoretical perspective employed, a related epistemological argument also emerged and shall be developed. It is generally accepted in theoretical criminology (and elsewhere in the social sciences) that the ideas and mentalities of the discipline have been shaped by the institutional contexts in which actors were doing criminology or criminal justice work (whether as practitioners or as scholars). Therefore, it will be argued that Community Safety Partnerships are important not only as sites of criminal justice practice but also as new institutional spaces in which ways of thinking about crime and community safety have the potential to be transformed. The empirical and epistemological arguments are interrelated because it will only be where the problems of conflict and communication within partnerships can be positively resolved that their potential to become sites of thinking that transcend traditional criminal justice mentalities will be fulfilled.

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This study illustrates the changing nature of organized crime at both national and international levels. Organized crime groups have changed in that they have entered the realm of high technology. In response this change, the use of new or modified analytical tools is suggested to enhance law enforcement efforts. This study highlights the problems of, and offers particular solutions for information analysis in its use in the fight against organized crime. Ultimately, it is argued that combined crime and intelligence analysis can be an effective and efficient method for the detection and prevention of modern organized crime.

The aim of this thesis is to analyse the concept of corporate criminal liability in Britain and elsewhere when comparison is needed. The concept of holding a corporation criminally liable is not new, it has been known for a long time, but the development in the last century and especially in the last quarter of this century is the main reason to turn and focus the public's attention towards blaming corporations for a quite wide range of society's ills. As a result of decisions by corporate executives or managers, and because corporation's negligence and pursuit of profits at any cost, may cause harm and inflicted risks on workers, consumers and the general public. It can be shown that many accidents indicate willful violations of health, safety and environmental regulations. Despite the fact that violations may cause serious harm to the entire communities (eg cases of toxic chemical dumps, and radioactive water leaking from improperly maintained nuclear reactors), nonetheless prosecution of corporation is not always successful. Moreover, while corporations are accused of polluting the environment, and are blamed for destroying the economic structure of a community, at the same time they may be praised for community service projects, and be credited with providing jobs. The concept of the separate legal personality of corporations has posed many questions when dealing with corporations or their executives and managers. Even with the development of the criminal law regarding the concept of crime and the various attempts to bring corporations under the umbrella of criminal law the problem have not fully resolved. Practical problems occur when considering whether corporations are capable of acting themselves. This thesis is an attempt to follow the development of corporate criminal liability, discuss the present state of the law and ask what is the best view which should be taken to achieve the goal of criminal law to control all kinds of behaviour that are appropriate to be controlled by the criminal law whether of individuals or corporations and other forms of organizations. The views of those who argue that companies cannot be subjected to criminal punishment because they do not have the requisite mens rea to commit crimes, and because of the difficulty of imposing certain penalties such as imprisonment or the death penalty on corporations, are incorrect. Changes in public attitudes towards wrongful conduct by corporations and their increasing role in every aspect of daily life, bringing with it increasing number of accidents and disasters has led to a corpus of literature which is prepared to attribute blame to corporations for their misbehaviour.

This study provides a first attempt at building a multivariate model to explain terrorist activity by including six national factors proposed to have a relationship to the number of terrorist events occurring in a given nation and the number of terrorist incidents attributed to groups primarily identified with a given nation. These factors include rate of population growth, level of economic development, economic growth rate, level of democracy, presence of leftist regime type, and level of repression. After applying Ordinary Least Squares to these national factors in both a cross-sectional and a pooled cross-sectional time series analysis, only the level of democracy, the level of repression, and the lagged endogenous variables representing previous terrorist activity demonstrated strong and statistically significant relationships to the two dependent variables tested in both designs.

88 Summary Thesis Crime in Media describes the most important aspects of the relation between two significant social phenomena - crime and media. It does not focus only on legal point of view but it also includes knowledge of sociology, psychology and especially media studies. At first it deals with historical development of theories on media effects. These effects can not be underestimated, but on the other hand they should not be overrated. The Thesis analyzes what form these effects can have and then documents the way how Czech media law defends people from various forms of media contents and their presumable effects. Another important topic connected to the research on media effects is the theory of media representation of certain things. The representation of crime in media is usually distorted and affects public view of the criminality in the "real world". For example it makes people believe that the most common type of crime is the one connected with violence, that criminal acts usually occur between strangers etc. The Thesis also presents so-called news values of crime news. The rest of the Thesis describes chronologically legal aspects of publication of information about the commitment of the crime and criminal procedure (pre-trial proceedings and trial). It analyzes if media can persuade someone...

The purpose of my thesis is to describe and analyze the subject of the identical facts of crime. The reason for my research is the close relation of this subject to the practical decision-making by the courts in particular. The thesis is composed of three main chapters, each of them dealing with different aspects of the identical facts of crime. Chapter One focuses on the introduction to the legal regulation of the identical facts of crime in Czech legislation. By reference of several cases it presents the general principles accompanying the courts'consideration of the identical facts of crime. Chapter Two concentrates on the international context of the identical facts of crime. It is subdivided in two parts. Part One looks at the EU-regulation and the decision-making by the Court of Justice of the EU and subsequently, part Two illustrates the approach of the European Court of Human Rights to the interpretation of the Article 7 Protocol Nr. 4 to the European Convention of Human Rights. Chapter Three examines the problems resulting from the incorrect translation of the term "offence" used in Article 4 Protocol 7 to the European Convention of Human Rights into Czech language. Furthermore it focuses on the key decision of the Supreme Court in 2004, which adjusted the interpretation of the above...