Fiona Brookman

The ‘code of the street’ and the generation of street violence in the UK:

Just over 10 years ago, Anderson (1999) published Code of the Street, which described a behavioural code that both generated and regulated street violence in the inner-city suburbs of Philadelphia. Since then, there has been some research conducted in the United States that has tested further the concept of a street code, but little similar work in Europe exists. In this paper, we explore narratives of incidents of street violence provided by convicted violent offenders. Examples are given of violence that appears to have the characteristics of code-following of the kind described by Anderson (1999). The paper notes the potential importance of the existence of a ‘code of the street’ in the United Kingdom in understanding and responding to street violence.

The Dark Figure of Infanticide in England and Wales Complexities of Diagnosis

Infants aged younger than 12 months have the highest homicide victimization rate of any single age group in England and Wales. In addition, there are good grounds for believing that the official homicide statistics for this particular age group are an underestimate and subject to distortion. At the same time there is evidence mounting in the United Kingdom that some parents have been incorrectly convicted of infanticide. This article first explores all recorded cases of infanticide in England and Wales for the period 1995-2002 (298 cases in total). Characteristics of the offenders, victims, offense, and court outcomes are examined. The second part of the article takes a critical gaze at the complexities involved in distinguishing infanticide from sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) and other sudden unexplained deaths in infancy (SUDI). The article ends by considering in what ways infant deaths might be more effectively investigated.

Street Codes as Formula Stories: How Inmates Recount Violence:

Recent developments in the study of narratives suggest that people can construct identity by referencing acculturated stories (i.e., formula stories) and often do so when explaining untoward behavior. Formula stories connect one’s personal identity with generally accepted subcultural identities and the narratives associated with them. In light of this, it becomes clear that cultural codes (e.g., the code of the streets) provide structured storylines. Using data from semistructured interviews with 118 violent inmates incarcerated in the United Kingdom, this study examines how they use the code of the street when describing specific violent events. The authors find that violent inmates portray themselves as respectable by situating their past violence within the prescripts of the code; however, the inmates’ narratives are not always consistent or drawn from singular formula stories. In fact, many participants offered various storylines and interpretations when describing violent events. We conclude that future theoretical development should aim to integrate perspectives focused on street codes, individual identity, and other acculturated factors and that understanding codes as narrative forms is essential.

Language laterality in English/Welsh bilinguals: language-acquisitional and language-specific factors in the development of lateralisation.

In order to test the hypothesis that monolinguals differ from bilinguals in their pattern of language lateralisation and to examine the relative merits of language-acquisitional versus language-specific factors, two experiments involving divided screen presentation of two languages were conducted using Welsh/English speaking participants. In the first experiment 80 monolingual teenagers were compared to 80 bilingual teenagers on a tachistoscopic visual half-field test of Welsh and English nouns and verbs. ANOVA revealed a greater left hemisphere advantage for Welsh-English bilinguals as compared to English monolinguals. Thus, in contrast to previous studies, in our bilinguals there was evidence of greater left hemisphere involvement in the processing of language. In the second experiment, four separate groups of 40 teenagers, varying in the age and manner of acquisition of their languages, were compared on the same test of Welsh and English words. These groups can be viewed as graded from the early to late bilinguals. ANOVA revealed a greater left hemisphere advantage when processing Welsh as compared to English words for all four groups. However no significant difference was observed between the four groups in respect of laterality for Welsh and English, indicating an equally greater left hemisphere bias for all four groups when processing Welsh words. We discuss these results in terms of a language-specific effect and suggest the specific orthography of the Welsh language (for individually presented nouns and verbs) promotes a left hemisphere advantage over and above language-acquisitional factors.

Accounting for Violations of the Convict Code

Research over the past several decades shows that those who act in ways inconsistent with desired identities often account for (i.e., excuse or justify) their actions to save face and maintain social identities. While the bulk of research on the use of accounts examines how people make sense of behaviors that go against conventional values, recent research suggests that those who do not adhere to subcultural norms engage in similar talk. The current study builds on the sociology of accounts by exploring whether inmates articulate a convict code; whether they provide accounts for code violations that are comparable to those given by active offenders; and whether incarceration shapes inmates’ use of these accounts. Interviews with 40 inmates residing in a maximum security prison suggest that they rely on linguistic devices to align their actions with subcultural beliefs and that the prison environment structures the pattern of these accounts.

The Role of Violence in Street Crime A Qualitative Study of Violent Offenders

Studies on the motivation for violent street crime, such as robbery and assault, have tended to draw on either the rational choice or the subcultural perspective. This study explores the extent to which violence on the street can be explained by rational factors associated with the successful commission of the offence or social factors related to street culture. The study is based on qualitative interviews with 55 violent street offenders who were serving sentences for street robbery and assault in six prisons in the United Kingdom. The findings, based on accounts of 101 incidents of street violence, identified four main explanations for street violence: (a) successful offence enactment, (b) buzz and excitement, (c) status and honor, and (d) informal justice. The article concludes that there might be benefits in combining the insights of both perspectives by generating an integrated theory that would properly explain both the rational and the seemingly irrational components of street violence.

The problem of success: What is a ‘good’ homicide investigation?

Police detectives traditionally defined a successful homicide investigation as involving a suspect being identified, charged and ultimately convicted – preferably for murder. However, it is increasingly being recognised, not least by police officers themselves, that definitions of success can be more complex. Informed by empirical data drawn from field studies of police murder investigations in the UK, this article identifies four alternate definitions of investigative success: (i) outcome success, (ii) procedural success, (iii) community impact reduction success and (iv) preventative success. These ways of socially constructing the ‘success’ or otherwise of homicide investigation work are framed by the different perspectives and pressures that attend to different roles within the police organisation. The article concludes by considering the wider implications of these issues for thinking about police performance and contemporary understandings of ‘good’ policing.

Violent street crime: Making sense of seemingly senseless acts

This paper explores the extent to which street crime can be explained by rational factors associated with the successful commission of the offence or social factors related to street culture. The study is based on qualitative interviews with 55 violent street offenders who were serving sentences for street robbery and assault in six prisons in the UK. The findings identified five main motives for street violence: (1) instrumental motives relating to the specific objectives of the offence (for example, obtaining cash or goods in the case of robbery or inflicting harm in the case of assault), (2) for the buzz and excitement, (3) to express anger, (4) to achieve status and honour, and (5) to inflict informal justice. The implications of the findings are discussed in relation to research and crime prevention.

Helping police with their enquiries: international perspectives on homicide investigation

It remains one of the key paradoxes of policing studies that homicide investigation is one of the most publicly visible and concomitantly least understood aspects of the police function. When mass media discuss policing, it routinely occurs in relation to a story pivoting around an unexplained violent ‘murder’. And yet, this level of popular attention serves to obscure our overall understandings of how police respond to a sudden death, define it as being caused by some form of criminal act, identify and locate suspects and secure convictions. This is a point made elegantly by Brodeur (2010). He argues that empirical research on policing has tended to be dominated by studies of uniformed officers and the patrol function. It is a focus that has subtly configured and moulded some of the key ways in which policing has been conceptualised and theorised. Of course it would be inaccurate to say that there have not been any studies of the other aspects of policing. Indeed, this journal has very often taken the lead in publishing new empirical studies that have broadened our understandings of what it is that policing involves and how it is conducted across a range of social situations and settings. Relatedly, there have been a limited number of notable contributions of crime investigation generally, and the investigation of fatal violence more specifically. However, at an aggregate level both numerically and in terms of their influence upon the field of policing studies, these are overshadowed by the tendency to focus upon the work of uniformed patrol. As an alternative to this tendency, Brodeur (2010) advocates understanding ‘the policing web’ in as broad a manner as possible, including public and private policing, high and low policing and military policing and extra-legal policing. Approached in this manner, the work of crime investigation and the role of detectives is important because of how it forces us to re-think some of our key definitions of what policing is and how it is accomplished. Brodeur (2010) accents the point that detectives are not, following Bittner’s (1974) frequently invoked notion, engaged in the ‘emergency maintenance of social order’. This neglect of crime investigation, detectives and homicide investigation in the research literature, is attributable to a complex array of causes. Recently, a lot of scholarly attention has focused upon developments in community policing, counterterrorism and private policing. Certainly in respect of the former and latter, these are areas that are perhaps more easily accessible to researchers in terms of being able to conduct empirical research. The difficulties and sensitivities involved in trying to research murder investigations have been compounded by the fact that, from the point of view of police as an institution, homicide investigations are not necessarily the most pressing issues in terms of overall demand (except when things go publicly wrong). In the USA, for Policing & Society, 2013 Vol. 23, No. 3, 285–291, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10439463.2013.771542

Explaining prescription drug misuse among students from a widening access university: The role of techniques of neutralization

Aims: The aim of the paper is to investigate the extent to which university students misuse prescription drugs, using techniques of neutralization to understand and explain their behaviour. Methods: The study was based on an email survey of students currently registered at a university in north Wales which supports widening access and has one of the highest proportion of mature students in the UK. Just over 11% of students contacted completed the survey (69% were female and 53% were aged 28 or over; nu2009=u2009558). They were asked about their prescription drug misuse and whether they thought that it was wrong. They were then invited to explain their answers. The responses were analyzed to identify and code the use of techniques of neutralization. Findings: The most common prescription drugs misused were pain relievers (66%), tranquillizers (18%), sedatives (14%), stimulants (6%) and anti-depressants (5%). The most frequently occurring neutralizations were ‘claims of biological need’, ‘claims of legitimacy in view of own prior experience’, and ‘denial of choice’. Conclusion: The paper concludes by considering the potential role of techniques of neutralization in preventing prescription drug misuse among students.