This programme of research focused on incorporating Behavioural Analysis (BA) within the digital forensics investigation process. A review of previously developed digital forensics investigation models indicated a lack of sufficient consideration of the behavioural and motivational dimensions of offending, and the way in which digital evidence can be used to address these issues during the investigation process. This programme of research aimed to build on previous work by scientific researchers and investigators by developing a digital forensics investigation model which incorporates greater consideration of the behavioural and motivational implications of case-related digital evidence based on current theoretical understandings of these aspects of offending from forensic psychology. This can aid with understanding of the crime events and reconstruction, and lead to the development of more detailed models and guidelines for examining computer-facilitated interpersonal crimes. The first study employed an abductive approach to forensically analyse individual cases (real cases obtained from the Dubai Police archives) applying BA to the online Sexually Exploitative Imagery of Children (SEIC) and cyberstalking. Its aim was to investigate what BA could contribute to the digital forensics investigation of cases within these crime categories. It identified five benefits: (1) providing focus, speed and investigative directions, (2) inferring victim/offender behaviours, (3) inferring offender motivation(s), (4) identifying potential victims, and (5) eliminating suspects. This was followed by a survey study empirically examining the perceptions of national and international digital forensics practitioners regarding the use and utility of BA during the process of investigating SEIC and cyberstalking cases. The results indicated that while the majority believed that BA has potential to contribute to many aspects of digital forensics investigations, their daily investigative activities involved a limited use of this technique. The implications of the study were outlined, and emphasised the need to design a digital forensics investigation model that provides guiding steps and illustrations on how to utilise BA in digital forensics investigations. Based on the findings from the conducted studies, a digital forensics investigation model that incorporates aspects of BA was designed. It aimed to provide a pragmatic, structured, multidisciplinary approach to performing a post mortem examination, analysis, and interpretation of the content of the digital devices associated with computer-facilitated interpersonal crimes. Two comprehensive case studies were also used to illustrate the investigative importance of the model in investigating computer-facilitated interpersonal crimes.

While studies about minority group prisoners are becoming more commonplace in prison research, knowledge about the experiences of hard of hearing (HoH) and d/Deaf prisoners remains limited. A primary aim of this thesis is to provide a more comprehensive understanding about the lives of HoH/d/Deaf people in prisons throughout England and Wales than what is already available, and to explore existing claims that d/Deaf prisoners suffer disproportionately whilst in custody. In order to do this a qualitative methodology is adopted, with semi-structured interviews being carried out with HoH, severely deaf and profoundly Deaf prisoners, and staff members across seven prisons in England, and observations being made at each establishment. This thesis shows that in an environment like prison, those who are seen as ‘different’ often become institutionally deficient. While this could apply to many different subsections of prison populations, findings presented throughout show that the difference of d/Deafness is unique because sound rules in prison, with penal regimes being reliant on sound in order to run. However, d/Deafness, it is shown, is not merely a lack of hearing, and on the contrary there are different levels and layers of d/Deafness. Consequently, how a d/Deaf person experiences prison depends strongly on the way in which they identify with their d/Deafness and the way their d/Deafness is viewed by the prison. Despite such differences, findings suggest that there is little room for either deafness or Deafness in prison, with HoH/deaf and particularly Deaf prisoners often experiencing the pains of imprisonment more severely than their hearing peers as a result the Prison Service's inability to accommodate such difference. This thesis makes an original and significant contribution to existing knowledge for a myriad of reasons. Firstly, it fuses together the fields of Deaf Studies and prison studies in a way that has not been done before, and considers d/Deafness on both an audiological and cultural level. In doing this, it notes the similarities and differences between the experiences of those who are HoH, those who are severely deaf, and those who are culturally and linguistically Deaf; giving meaningful consideration to the role of imported identity in prison. Secondly, excluding small-scale unpublished undergraduate dissertations, it is the first empirical study about d/Deaf prisoners in England and Wales to carry out face-to-face interviews with these prisoners. Finally, as the most in-depth research yet to be carried out about HoH/d/Deaf prisoners in England and Wales, this thesis provides a level of insight which has not been available previously.

Criminological theory and research has historically focused on explaining how people get into crime and much less on how and why they stop, despite the perennial finding that most of those with convictions do eventually stop offending. The very meaning of ‘desistance’ however has been much contested, yet has broadly been linked with themes such as maturity, adult social bonds, agency, identity and hope (Bottoms et al, 2004). Even more concerning, however, is the further marginalisation of already marginalised groups within the vast majority of desistance literature. The bulk of research in this area can be noted for the salience of the white, male perspective of offending trajectories. By revisiting maturational, social bonds and subjective theories of desistance through the eyes of women traveling desistance journeys, as well as considering current criminal justice approaches, this thesis gives a female voice to desistance research. The methodology which informs this work is observation research and individual narrative interviews of females with convictions. I argue for a feminist approach to desistance, which recognises that a huge proportion of women in the CJS stem from backgrounds of abuse, economic disadvantage and alcohol, drug and mental health issues. Yet we must move away from the dichotomy of narratives of victimisation and survival and recognise that women have agency. We must challenge the neo-liberal and patriarchal approach to desistance which promotes women's role as care givers and unpaid volunteer workers. Women's desistance can challenge neo-liberal, patriarchal constructs much in the same way that women's offending often does.

‘Car chase TV’ has become a staple of U.K. television schedules over the past two decades. Conveyed in a plethora of observational documentaries (ob-docs), mediated images of police vehicular pursuits (PVPs) are packaged as entertainment products. However, the rise of PVPs as a ubiquitous entertainment spectacle has taken place against a backdrop of concern around a steep rise in the human cost of PVPs emanating from police oversight bodies and widely reported in the national press. This research investigates whether car chase TV tends to legitimise the police, their work, and specifically the problematic practice of PVP. Historical analysis is used to map the developing concern around PVPs from 1900 through to 2011. The thesis then presents the findings of a thematic analysis carried out on an archive of ob-doc ‘car-chase TV’ programmes broadcast in the UK between 1993 and 2011. This analysis indicated that such programmes do tend to legitimise the police, police work and PVPs in particular. It also showed that the challenge to the legitimacy of PVPs expressed in official reports, the print media and elsewhere largely failed to permeate the mediated construction of PVPs in the ‘car-chase TV’ programmes broadcast on the commercial television networks, but did produce a limited response in the programmes broadcast on the BBC television network, a response which tended to (re)legitimise PVPs in the face of these concerns. The research found that there has been an historical decline in the visibility of PVPs presented in the television programmes contained in the archive, due to various possible factors. This research is significant in that it examines a hitherto under-developed area of criminal justice research and contributes a unique historical perspective on the issue of PVP. It makes a novel contribution to the literature on the legitimisation of the police in the mediated sphere of television.

The previous UK Coalition government (2010-2015) made significant efforts to professionalise the police service in England and Wales. One of their approaches was to require police students to study at university, before becoming police officers. It has been hypothesised that requiring police students to study at university may ensure that professionalism develops within these students/officers, with the higher education received. At the same time as developing professionalism within these officers it has been suggested some of the negative aspects of police culture may diminish. Whether or not these hopes are borne out by university training of police students was the central research question for this project. This original research examined socialisation and culture of police students, within a UK university institution. It evolved by utilising reflexive grounded theory to examine the student perception of the police service, using questionnaires, focus groups and content analysis of completed essays, by Foundation in Policing Degree students. In summary the findings of this research suggested that university training of police students may not have the desired effect on professionalism, as police culture appears to develop regardless of the setting. Further to this, minority ethnic students continue to report being less attracted to the police as a career choice. A number of reasons are suggested for these findings and future recommendations are set out. Ultimately, this research concludes that the way a police officer is trained and/or educated requires reviewing, as simply moving the process to a university setting does not automatically deliver the intended outcomes, and in fact can result in the police culture simply flourishing elsewhere.

Despite the increase in terrorism research post September 11, 2001, little is known about domestic terrorism though it occurs at overwhelmingly higher rates as compared to transnational terrorism. Although the use of criminological theory and methods to study terrorism has increased recently, there are relatively few terrorism studies within the criminological literature. Drawing upon extant criminological theories of violence among countries, this study uses the recently created Global Terrorism Database to examine the distribution and correlates of domestic terrorism among 72 developed nations between 1970 and 1997. This study examined the following questions. First, do prior established predictors of criminal violence (i.e., economy, inequality, social welfare, political orientation, ethnic fractionalization, population, and pre-existing violence) also predict domestic terrorism at the country level? Second, is the relationship between these macro-structural and cultural variables in the same direction as found in the previously published literature? Using a series of contemporaneous cross-sectional analyses and lagged cross-sectional analysis, the results from this study indicate that there is considerable similarity between the correlates of cross-national homicide and correlates of domestic terrorism. There was considerable evidence for the relationship between population size and overall levels of domestic terrorism. This relationship was robust across short time intervals (1970s), the full time span (1970-1997), as well as in the long and short term lagged analyses (1970-1990 predictors of domestic terrorism in 1991-1997 and 1991-1994 predictors on 1995-1997 domestic terrorism). On the contrary I did not find evidence that large youth populations are significantly related to higher levels of domestic terrorism. Income inequality (GINI) also emerged as a significant correlate of domestic terrorism in the long and short term contemporaneous analyses. Those countries that had higher overall levels of income inequality for the entire time span also had higher levels of domestic terrorism, compared to those countries with low levels of income inequality. Contrary to theoretical expectations yet supportive of prior criminological research, this study found that stronger democracies actually have more domestic terrorism. In particular, those countries with more restrictions placed on executive decision-making power, tend to have more domestic terrorism events, compared to those countries with less restrictive executive decision-making processes. This study concludes with a discussion of the results within the larger criminological literature as well as future avenues of research.

In the years following the 11 September 2001 attacks, research in the area of terrorism expanded exponentially. However, the changing nature of terrorism and lack of available data make it a difficult topic for criminologists to study; as academics we do not have access to the governmental data and data that is publicly available is often restricted due to the sensitive nature of national security issues. As first hand data is not available, an alternate data source, court records, may provide insight to the profile of current terrorists/terrorist supporters in the United States. Using court data from 71 cases of individuals in the United States charged with providing support to ISIS, and comparing this profile to the established profiles of other non-traditional criminal groups, this exploratory study attempts to be a first effort in examining the contributions criminology can make to the study of terrorism; from both theoretical and law enforcement perspectives.

No description available.

More than a decade has passed since Agnew (2005) introduced his General Theory of Crime and Delinquency (GTCD). Despite this interval, GTCD remains a relatively untested theory. Drawing on previous testing efforts, the current research provides a systematic assessment of Agnew's theoretical propositions. It also provides only the second empirical examination of Cochran's (2015) extension of GTCD, which incorporates religion as a sixth distinct life domain. Nested negative binomial regression modeling and Poisson regression modeling are used to assess the effects of life domains on several diverse forms of self-reported criminal behavior at two distinct stages of development: adolescence and adulthood. Data are drawn from two waves of the second generation of the Kaplan Longitudinal and Multigenerational Study. Consistent with prior empirical tests, results provide mixed support for theoretical propositions, highlighting the complexity of Agnew’s initial theory. Specifically, general support is provided for the direct effects of both theories’ variables, indicating they are important to the explanation of crime. Also, in line with Cochran's findings, initial observed effects of religious variables on criminal behavior are reduced to non-significance when all other predictors are introduced in most regression models, hinting that the incorporation of such variables may be incongruous with Agnew's chosen method of theoretical integration. However, religious variables emerge as significant predictors of general crime during adulthood, suggesting that the relationship between these variables and crime is more complex than anticipated. Additionally, strong support is found for the proposition that the effects of life domains are primarily contemporaneous. Results offer weaker support, however, for the assertion that life domain effects are largely mediated by constraints against crime and motivations towards it. Policy implications for the creation of theoretically-informed crime prevention and intervention strategies tailored to specific developmental stage are discussed.

This study aims at analyzing the content of high school textbooks in social sciences, more specifically the field of law and order, and comparing this with the current research situation in the field. Another purpose is to investigate whether the new type of serious gang crime, which in particular has grown in various immigrant suburbs, adjacent to our largest cities, as reported in the media in recent years, has also looked into the textbooks. The essay uses a constructivist theory formation. The constructivist theory considers that different actors, based on their ideological positions, create different descriptions of current social phenomena, descriptions aimed at influencing the recipient to incorporate specific perceptions of reality and values. In this context, the teaching materials become a political product that is not so much about describing a social phenomenon as complex and objective as possible a complex, but, above all, it will be understood as the attempt of the various parties to convey their specific interpretations and interests of the phenomenon. The survey shows that all analyzing textbooks directly or indirectly highlight the men and adolescents group, and to some extent also people in an exposed psychosocial position that overrepresented in a criminal context. In cases where textbooks address statements about people committing crimes, socio-economic and psychosocial vulnerabilities are mentioned, as well as explanations of the social plane in terms of control and casualty structures. In this regard, textbooks fail to report a broad and current research on the mechanisms of crime. None of the textbooks deal with the new crime that has emerged in different socially vulnerable areas to our metropolitan areas, believing that this has gained a lot of space in the media and that the syllabuses in social sciences emphasize that the subject will highlight current social phenomena. All books consistently choose to not treat people it with a foreign background's overrepresentation in a criminal context. Nor should it be noted that some people have a biological vulnerability in committing crimes, for example, that individuals with ADHD diagnosis are heavily overrepresented in crime statistics. / <p>Godkännane datum: 2018-05-31</p>