Claire Hamilton

A risky business: An examination of Irish probation officers’ attitudes towards risk assessment

This article examines recent research on risk assessment and probation practice in Ireland and relates the findings to the ongoing debate regarding risk management practices in probation. The piece discusses current theoretical arguments on the influence of risk in criminal justice and outlines the impact of risk discourse on probation practice in Ireland and England and Wales. Using a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods, Irish probation officers’ attitudes are examined in order to highlight key issues facing probation officers when making risk decisions. These findings are compared and contrasted to other research results from England and Wales. All the conclusions identify both positive and negative consequences of adopting risk tools and point to the continued salience of clinical judgment over actuarial methods of risk assessment. It is argued that the research highlights the role of ‘resistance’ by criminal justice professionals in mediating the effects of the ‘new penology’ at the level of implementation. The idea of resistance holds particular relevance for probation practice in Ireland where professional discretion is maintained within the National Standards framework. Despite this, to date there has been an uncritical approach taken to risk assessment which may ignore the dangers of risk inflation/deflation and the need to take into account local factors in assessing risk of reoffending.

Punitiveness and political culture: Notes from some small countries

Green’s (2007, 2008, 2009) recent comparative work on child-on-child homicides in England and Norway has drawn attention to political and cultural explanations to account for differences in levels of state punitiveness. His work finds support for the distinction made by Arend Lijphart (1999) between consensus and majoritarian democracy, through his argument that English majoritarian political culture created powerful incentives to exploit the homicide of James Bulger in ways that were not present in Norway. Drawing on comparative research in Ireland, Scotland and New Zealand, this article joins with Green in enlisting political culture as an important explanatory variable yet challenges the usefulness of Lijphart’s typology in explaining penal difference.

Punishment, Youth Justice and Cultural Contingency: Towards a Balanced Approach

Reflecting developments in the broader penological realm, accounts have been advanced over the last number of decades about a ‘punitive turn’ in the youth justice systems of Western democracies. Against the background of this work, this project seeks to identify convergent and divergent trends in the youth justice systems of England, the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland as well as the rationalities and discourses animating these. The results lend support to research emphasising the continued salience of national, regional and local factors on penal outcomes but also suggest the need to steer an analytical path somewhere between nomothetic (convergent) and idiographic (divergent) accounts.

The European Union: Sword or shield? Comparing counterterrorism law in the EU and the USA after 9/11:

Drawing on the developing literature on a ‘European penology’ this article seeks to use counterterrorism as a lens through which to re-examine arguments concerning penal moderation in Europe. Counterterrorism measures adopted in the EU and the USA in the post-9/11 period are therefore scrutinized for the lessons they hold about the role of European values and institutions as a ‘shield’ against punitiveness or indeed their ability to, swordlike, cut deep into citizens’ freedoms. The resulting analysis raises questions about the need for a more refined approach to the question of ‘European’ penal values as well as pointing up the continued existence of a culture of rights in the USA.

Contagion, counterterrorism and criminology: The Case of France

In the burgeoning criminological literature on security, risk and preventive justice which has followed the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers, ‘contagion’ or the deleterious effect of counterterrorist policies on the ordinary criminal law has been the subject of some discussion, mostly in the context of the threat which such ‘exceptional’ policies pose to mainstream procedural values. This article seeks to build on this literature through an examination of the impact of post 9/11 counterterrorism law and policy on the ordinary criminal justice system in France. Given the extent to which counterterrorist law now encroaches on various aspects of French criminal law, the argument is made for greater criminological attention to be paid to the ‘trickle-down’ effect of extraordinary law on the ordinary business of the criminal justice system.

Europe in Irish Prisons: Not Quite the ‘Good European’

While historically the incorporation of the ECHR in Ireland has met with some complacency, the influence of European human rights norms and standards has been palpable in some areas of penal policy, namely, prisoner voting and (to a lesser degree) the investigation of prisoner deaths. In this regard, Ireland may be regarded as more willing than its closest neighbour, the UK, to engage in a process of ‘controlled liberalisation’ or tactical concession to forestall potential criticisms. On the other hand, several areas of penal policy such as the law and policy on parole continue to highlight the jurisdiction’s resistance to European human rights norms. This chapter discusses these and other developments from the perspective of a small jurisdiction which, perhaps counterintuitively (given suggestions in the research that smaller jurisdictions may be more likely to adopt criminal justice changes from elsewhere), has not always taken its cue in matters of penal policy from the European model.

Towards a Pedagogy of Public Criminology

Abstract In light of recent debates on ‘public criminology’, this article chooses to focus on teaching as a way of reaching more publics. The various characteristics of a more public and engaged discipline are discussed and applied specifically to the teaching of criminology, including the relative merits and demerits of reorienting teaching in this way. Following on from this discussion, the article outlines some practical ways in which this vision can be realised. Given the many affinities between the Burawoyan concept of public ‘-ologies’ and the scholarship of learning and teaching, an argument is advanced for teaching as one of the first steps towards the practice of a more public criminology.

Threats to the Presumption of Innocence in Irish Criminal Law: An Assessment

The existence of four contemporary threats to the presumption of innocence in England and Wales has been posited by Ashworth. The aim of this article is to take stock of the law in the Republic of Ireland impacting upon this cornerstone principle of Irish criminal law. The article explores Ashworths arguments in more detail and examines the justifications for the presumption of innocence generally and in an Irish context. The precise meaning and ambit of the presumption in Irish law is examined before proceeding to consider the case law and legislation which may have impacted on its scope and practical import for the accused. Several, albeit mixed, conclusions are drawn about the relative health of the presumption in Ireland.

Booklet of Selected Theses from the MA in Criminology, MA in Law, and MA in Child, Family and Community Studies 2007- 2009.

Reductionistic definitions characterise many of the representations of women in our society. From superficial depictions of women as sex objects to the elevation of motherhood as a paragon of womanhood, women navigate myriad roles available to them exclusively because of their gender. Female offenders are potentially more vulnerable to such limitations of representation due to their relative invisibility. Society is largely unacquainted with the realities of circumstance for such women, who are therefore reliant upon media outlets to inform the public. The operation of this process in Ireland has not been the subject of extensive research, and the current study attempts to address this. Through a content analysis of the output of four newspapers over a one-month period, the representation of female offenders in Irish newspapers was found to be similarly reliant on familiar narratives. Female offenders were consistently represented in terms of their gender; the themes which emerged were broadly compatible with the various aspects of femininity as it is socially constructed and understood. Full thesis text at: http://arrow.dit.ie/aaschssldis/1/