Christopher W. Mullins

Gender, Identity, and Accounts: How White Collar Offenders Do Gender When Making Sense of Their Crimes

When offenders are asked to explain their crimes, they typically portray themselves as decent people despite their wrongdoings. To be effective at managing the stigma of crime, motivational accounts must be believable to the social audience. Thus, variation in patterns of accounts is likely due to the social position of the actors. Here we examine whether gender constrains the way individuals describe their crimes by analyzing the motivational accounts of male and female white collar offenders. Results show that while men and women both elicit justifications when discussing their crimes, they do differ in the frequency with which they call forth specific accounts and in the rhetorical nature of these accounts. When accounting for their crime, white collar offenders draw on gendered themes to align their actions with cultural expectations of masculinity and femininity. These findings suggest that gender does constrain the accounts that are available to white collar offenders.

Cultures of Violence and Acts of Terror Applying a Legitimation–Habituation Model to Terrorism

Although uniquely positioned to provide insight into the nature and dynamics of terrorism, overall the field of criminology has seen few empirically focused analyses of this form of political violence. This article seeks to add to the understanding of terror through an exploration of how general levels of violence within a given society influence the probability of political dissidents within that society resorting to terror as a form of political action. Drawing on the legitimation–habituation thesis, the authors explore whether general levels of legitimate and illegitimate violence within a society predict terrorist violence (both internal and external in direction) within that society. To do so, the authors use zero-inflated negative binomial regression models to perform time series cross-sectional analysis on predictors of terrorist events from the Global Terrorism Database. The authors find support for their core hypothesis and provide a discussion of the implications for the findings within their data and for future criminological research on terrorism.

Gold, diamonds and blood: International state‐corporate crime in the Democratic Republic of the Congo 1

Since the beginning of the First Congolese War in 1996, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has devolved into uncontrolled genocidal warfare between ethnically based factions within an unresolved civil war due to international involvement on behalf of its neighbours (e.g., Uganda and Rwanda), transnational corporations (e.g., AngloGold Ashanti) and those corporations’ Western trading partners (Metalor Technologies and the nation of Switzerland). Central to the conflict is the control of rich mineral fields of the nation. Neighbouring nations and transnational corporations have exploited the political and military chaos of the DRC to expropriate illegally the state’s natural resources, especially the rich mineral deposits of the north and northeast. This case study examines the nature of these international crimes, theoretically explores the multiple causal factors and draws upon criminological theory to discuss solutions to the problems.

Toward a Criminology of International Criminal Law: An Integrated Theory of International Criminal Violations

Violations of international criminal law (i.e., genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes) are a common occurrence around the globe. One need only to read international news, visit intra‐governmental (e.g., United Nations or the International Committee Red Cross), or nongovernmental organizations (e.g., Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International) to be exposed to the vast numbers of crimes of states, paramilitaries, and/or militias. Nonetheless, there has been relatively little attention paid to these types of offenses by criminologists. While there have been developments in creating typologies (Smeulers, 2008) and predictive models for genocide (Harf, 2005), due to the complexities and various forms of these types of crimes, there has been little to no development of a criminological theoretical model that can aid in the analysis of such crimes. Our goal is to firmly place international crimes on the criminological agenda by creating additional awareness of and interest in the most massive, systematic, and gruesome types of crime‐genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and crimes of aggression‐and to introduce an integrated theory that can provide a frame for a systematic analysis and understanding of the etiologi‐ cal factors at play.

The Ability of the International Criminal Court to Deter Violations of International Criminal Law: A Theoretical Assessment

Many actors within the field of international criminal justice, including those who work for the Court itself, have heralded the deterrent power of the court and its ability to remove impunity for violations of international criminal law. Practitioners and scholars routinely assume a probability at best, to an assumption of sureness, of a powerful deterrent effect. Given the ongoing crimes against humanity that have occurred in the Twenty-First Century, such claims can only be seen as hopeful proclamations. This article examines the potential inhibitory effects that the Court may have on violations of international criminal law, especially international humanitarian law, grounded in criminological insights and explanatory power. To do so, we lay out the current state of thinking in deterrence theory and critically explore how it can, or fails to, generate the effects which so many international public actors, including the court itself, claim.

Darfur and the Politicization of International Law: Genocide or Crimes against Humanity?:

The humanitarian crisis in Darfur has slowly captivated international public, governmental, and media attention. With at least two million persons displaced and an estimated 400,000 killed,1 it is one of the many grave crises of failed states currently occurring within Africa. The people of the region have faced murder, displacement, rape, and banditry at the hands of the Sudanese government, the state-supported Janjaweed, and other militia groups, most notably the Sudan Liberation Army. Yet the United Nations concluded after a fact-finding mission to the region that these widespread atrocities did not constitute genocide but rather were defined as crimes against humanity. This article provides a brief overview of the background and contemporary state of the situation as well as a legal examination of the nature of genocide in international law and the United Nation Security Councils rationale for applying the label of crimes against humanity. The chief purpose of the article is to clearly differentiate the two concepts of genocide and crimes against humanity and to thoroughly examine the practical difference a definition makes.

Temporal, Situational and Interactional Features of Women's Violent Conflicts

Abstract This article examines contextual and situational influences on the processural development of womens violent conflicts. Through close analysis of 3 womens accounts of their disputes and associated violent behaviours, we provide a rich description of how such events evolved over time and how the interviewees managed this process. Drawing upon both criminological and feminist theories, our analysis highlights existing gaps in the literature, providing an exploratory discussion of the interaction of gender with situational elements and the production of assaultive events.

Awakenings: The Emergence of White Supremacist Ideologies

Scholarly treatments of white supremacy have tended to focus on groups over individuals, examining belief systems, framing mechanisms, and operational dynamics. White supremacist discourse and dialogue often include descriptions of the processes through which one “awakens” to support these ideologies. This article considers how individuals report discovering their affinity for white supremacist belief systems. Data are culled from personal accounts available on Web pages, postings to electronic discussion forums, literature published by white supremacist groups, and biographical/autobiographical works. The authors discuss the common themes emerging from accounts of personal “awakenings” to better understand how adherence to white supremacist ideologies emerges within the individual. Implications for broader understandings of white supremacy are discussed.

Torture, impunity, and open legal spaces: Abu Ghraib and international controls

Transnational and non‐conventional forms of crime, particularly state crimes, are increasingly becoming the focus of criminological work. Within this body of research, however, relatively little attention has been paid to the critical issue of international controls (see Rothe & Mullins, 2006). We believe that it is important to explore the ability of intergovernmental bodies such as the United Nations, International Court of Justice, and the International Criminal Court, to exert some measure of social control on state crimes. Our intent is to explore this issue by examining the cases of abuse and torture that occurred at Abu Ghraib prison during the American occupation of Iraq. Specifically, we examine the extant controls at the international level and their subsequent failure as such. We begin with a brief review of Abu Ghraib and the subsequent cases of abuse and torture followed by descriptive accounts of international institutions of social control as they pertain to Abu Ghraib. In conclusion, we explore why these institutions failed to control the acts that occurred and we offer several policy suggestions that could act to strengthen the existing controls.

Does Democracy Enhance or Reduce Lethal Violence? Examining the Role of the Rule of Law

This study builds on prior cross-national criminological literature by using disaggregated measures of democracy, notably rule of law, to examine the influence key components of democracy have on homicide rates. To assess this relationship, the current study uses two measures of rule of law: (a) a measurement of an independent judiciary; (b) a measurement of “Law and Order Tradition” from the International Country Risk Guide (ICRG). Findings indicate that the measures of rule of law have a significant negative effect on homicide rates.