The Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has taken steps to define and develop its prosecution policies. Review of these policies reveals that the OTP prefers to act on referrals of situations by states and the Security Council, rather than to employ its proprio motu investigatory powers. While the OTP has effectively defined the threshold for the gravity of the crimes that it will prosecute, a number of other discretionary criteria that inform the OTP's exercise of jurisdiction remain undefined. Additionally, the OTP's acceptance of state 'waivers of complementarity' moves in the direction of establishing a quasi-exclusive jurisdiction for the OTP. This thesis will critically evaluate these policies, and propose a recasting of the OTP's prosecution strategy towards the promotion of domestic war crimes prosecutions. It posits that the ICC OTP can act as a catalyst for domestic war crimes prosecutions, by serving in an advisory and support role. The OTP thus has the opportunity to breathe life into the complementarity regime and advance the global struggle against impunity.

There is a known link between relative deprivation and street crime among market liberal countries. Although some research has been done with cross-national data, there is none to suggest that the observed link is as valid in a country well known for its extended welfare and generous social expenditure like Sweden. The following study uses longitudinal data to see if this recognized link between relative deprivation and street crime also stands in a country with almost a century long tradition of striving for social-, economic- and cultural equality. Even though Sweden, over the last decade, has been subjected to a series of deregulations due to policy changes at national level, and with a following rise in inequality, it is still considered to be one of the most equal countries in the west. It is therefore not unlikely that the high degree of social security will reduce the negative impact of relative deprivation on social relations among its citizens, perhaps enough so that the correlation will be significantly weakened. The results indicate that the negative impact of relative deprivation on social relations still remains evident, even with a high degree of social security, suggesting that an extensive welfare does not significantly reduce the negative effect of relative deprivation on social relations.

Electronic commerce, broadly defined as doing business online, has with the advent of the Internet and more importantly of the World Wide Web, developed at an unanticipated speed. Electronic transactions have been said to be very convenient, fast and limitless. This limitless character of electronic commerce does not only have advantages but also a number of disadvantages. E-commerce has opened very wide doors to criminals who take advantage of both the advancement in technology and the cross-border nature of the Internet to deceive other people. Over the years there have been attempts to find solutions to the increasing problem of cybercrime in general, and crime in international electronic commerce (IEC) in particular. To date, even though techniques have been developed, laws have been enacted and some initiatives are still ongoing, there seems to be much more to do in order to achieve a successful fight against online crime. E-commerce has been presented as an aspect of the broad cyber universe and the solutions so far provided are meant for cybercrime in general. Thus, it appears that e-commerce and more precisely crime in IEC is an aspect that should be given consideration to in the sense that specific laws need to be passed on the issue. / LLM (Import and Export Law), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2014

Given the overwhelming financial and human costs of crime committed through the incorporated entity, this thesis explores corporate criminal liability in criminal law as a mechanism of social control for corporate crime. First, this thesis traces the fundamental claims regarding corporate criminal liability in both the jurisprudential and sociological literatures in an effort to explore how law applies liability in a criminal context to the incorporated entity. Second, the contemporary corporate criminal liability landscape in Canada is examined. In particular, an examination of Bill C-45 as codified corporate criminal liability and as criminal law in action is empirically grounded in a detailed review of both the black letter law of corporate criminal liability and the judicial case documents on prosecutions against incorporated entities for corporate crimes. Finally, this thesis analyzes the socio-legal environment of corporate criminal liability through its construction and operation within Canadian criminal law. Overall, as a result of the legal, cultural, political, and economic privileges of the incorporated entity, corporate criminal liability is a product of a socio-legal environment that inhibits the ability of criminal law to be an effective mechanism of social control for corporate crime. Only when corporate criminal liability recognizes the complexities of the social, economic, and organizational structures and practices that are shaping corporate criminal activities can it become an effective mechanism for regulating the most harmful corporate misconduct. Otherwise, as this thesis demonstrates, corporate criminal liability will continue to be all bark and no bite. / Thesis (Master, Sociology) -- Queen's University, 2014-06-17 16:56:40.627

Research on reporting crime to the police on the individual- and incident- levels has received much attention over the years. However, many studies examining neighborhood-level effects on reporting are limited in scope. The current study examines the relationship between neighborhood characteristics central to social disorganization theory and police notification. Data for this study were derived from Warner’s (2004) study entitled “Informal Social Control of Crime in High Drug Use Neighborhoods in Louisville and Lexington, Kentucky, 2000.” The analysis uses OLS regression models to isolate how different neighborhood characteristics impact reporting. Findings indicate that disadvantage and mobility have a positive effect on reporting but are mediated by social cohesion. Social cohesion has a negative effect on reporting while confidence in police had no significant effects. Suggestions for future research are also discussed.

It has been well established that fear of crime is, at least in part, influenced by the media. Past research has shown that escalation of fear in many Western societies has resulted from increased media coverage of crime. Despite the diversity of media outlets, a common discourse emergescriminal behaviour is a product of bad people, from poor neighbourhoods, preying on innocent and undeserving victims. Critical approaches to the study of media show crime reporting as a political act, involving deepening stereotypes and Othering of marginalized people based on their age, race, and gender. Missing from the literature is a detailed portrait of the nature of media representations of crime and how it may shift over time. The goal of my research is to fill this gap by analyzing how differences between offenders and victims’ race, age, and gender as described in newspaper crime reports significantly impact the probability that these articles would contain language promoting a discourse of fear and marginalization. A combination of critical theoriesincluding critical criminology, feminism, postcolonial theory, and critical discourse analysisare used to develop themes related to media representations of gender, race, and language. Because race, gender, and age in the context of crime cannot be extracted from class, discussions of class also appear throughout the thesis. Four newspapersthe Vancouver Sun, Saskatoon Star Phoenix, Winnipeg Free Press, and the Toronto Starwere examined over a span of thirty years through a mixed methods approach combining content and critical discourse analyses. A total of 480 newspapers and 1, 190 crime articles constituted the empirical sample for this research. Two themesfear and marginalizationas well as twelve subthemes emerge from the empirical and theoretical literature. The research results show that differences in language can be observed in Canadian crime reports based on mentions of race, age, and gender of both the offenders and victims. Throughout all thirty years, articles indicated that crimes against white victims used fearful language, while visible minority victims were blamed for their victimization. White offenders were disproportionately criminalized and dehumanized with depictions that frequently undermined their claim to normal membership of their racial group through extraordinary character defect. Visible minority offenders were linked to poverty. Portrayals of female offenders accurately depicted them as generally low risk; both female offenders and female victims were treated in a largely equal manner. Women offenders were dichotomized into sexualized bad girls or malicious black widows. Female victims were either depicted as bad victims (i.e. racialized victims) who were blamed for their circumstances, or good victims who garnered sympathy through negative portrayals of their offenders. Young offenders and victims were often linked to gang activity, and language regarding them contained a mix of both fear and marginalization. The dissertation concludes by providing support to the critical paradigms with which it engages, demonstrating the need to include an analysis of critical criminology, race, gender, and a deconstruction of language. The study directs our attention to the necessity for further research on the benefits of educational programs for both those disseminating the discourse of crime and those consuming it.

Fear of crime influences people’s daily habits (Lavrakas, 1982), as well as entire communities’ feelings of safety and cohesion (Gates, 1987). Gender has been identified as the strongest and most consistent predictor of fear of crime (for a review, see Hale, 1996). The literature consistently finds that women report greater fear of crime than do men. This finding is paradoxical when compared with the concurrent finding that men experience greater criminal victimization than do women. This phenomenon is referred to as the fear victimization paradox (Rennison, 2000). At first, it was accepted that women were more afraid of crime than were men and investigators offered many different theories to explain the paradox (e.g., Fisher & Sloan, 2003, Killias & Clerici, 2000, & Sacco, 1990). However, Sutton and Farrall (2005) investigated the possibility that masculinity was creating a social desirability bias in men’s reporting of fear of crime and when they accounted for this social desirability bias, they found that men actually experienced greater fear of crime than did women. The current investigation replicated and extended this research with 1009 university students and 508 Winnipeg residents. It extended Sutton and Farrall’s study by including measures of fear of crime and social desirability that have greater validity and by testing whether the findings apply differentially to fear of sexual versus non-sexual types of criminal victimization. The influence of age, location of residence within the city of Winnipeg, history of victimization, and masculinity on fear of crime was explored. This investigation was able to replicate Sutton and Farrall’s finding, but only in the community sample. The findings from this investigation suggest that there is a shift as men leave university from actually being less afraid of crime than women to being more afraid of crime. However, despite their increased fear, men in the community seem to maintain the façade of fearlessness. It was also found that women were consistently more afraid of sexual victimization than men, regardless of the influence of social desirability. Masculinity and social desirability had similar negative relationships to fear of crime and the implications of this are discussed.

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