Michael Adorjan

Emotions Contests and Reflexivity in the News: Examining Discourse on Youth Crime in Canada

The author explores how three Canadian newspapers address appropriate reactions to youth crime during the 1990s. While recent scholarship has emphasized the ways in which moral panics have become more complexly represented within mass media, the author pays attention to how such representational tactics are played out, drawing particular attention to emotional reactions to youth crime. Comparing and contrasting regional and national, as well as tabloid versus broadsheet newspapers, the author draws attention to “emotions contests,” which are closely related to victim contests over young offender culpability and identity. Emotions contests occur where emotional reactions to social problems become, themselves, the source of contention. News reflexivity is a central feature of these articles, whereby references to “the media’s” representational strategies are often espoused through the media themselves. The author suggests areas for advancement of constructionist analyses of emotions discourses in relation to social problems debates.

Stockholm syndrome as vernacular resource

First coined in 1973 to describe a pathological response on the part of individuals involved in kidnapping or hostage-taking situations, the label “Stockholm syndrome” has since been used in a much broader range of contexts including reference to wife battering and human trafficking, and in debates about gender and race politics as well as international relations. Tracing the domain expansion of Stockholm syndrome since the 1970s, we examine how the label offers claims-makers a device for neutralizing the arguments of those with opposing points of view, and, in so doing, reinforces collective narratives and “formula stories” of victimization.

Colonial responses to youth crime in Hong Kong: Penal elitism, legitimacy and citizenship

This article examines colonial responses to youth crime in Hong Kong, focusing on the 1960s, when riots involving large numbers of youth drew concern among officials over spillover from the Cultural Revolution in Mainland China; and on the 1970s, when the Government initiated a program of state building focused on instilling citizen identification with Hong Kong, youth in particular. Elite reaction is examined through a series of Legislative Council debates, declassified official reports and governmental Annual Reports. The article argues that youth crime control in Hong Kong’s colonial context could best be understood using a penal elitist framework, one which remains influential today.

Children Raping Children: Penal Elitism and the Contested Innocence Frame in Hong Kong

Recent incidents involving rape committed by young adolescents against other youth has led Hong Kong officials to repeal the presumption that young persons under the age of 14 are incapable of sexual intercourse. Examining reports advocating legislative change as well as those which dissent, we argue that a lack of consultation with the public, the small number of cases and the speed with which the changes are set to be implemented evidence penal elitism in Hong Kong, which potentially undercuts a long standing view in Hong Kong of young offenders as victims, and ignores wider contexts of abuse and victimization.

Public assessments of the police and policing in Hong Kong

This paper presents the findings from a focus group research study on public assessments of the police and policing in Hong Kong. The main findings indicate that while people have generally positive views about police effectiveness in responding promptly to and fighting crime, they have decidedly mixed views regarding stop and search and public order policing. By drawing on the multi-dimensional framework of trust proposed by other policing scholars, we suggest that a useful way to conceptualize public assessments of the police and questions of satisfaction and trust of policing in Hong Kong is to distinguish between peoples instrumental concerns about personal safety and crime and their affective concerns about the process of policing and the symbolic role of the police in maintaining a particular way of life. The paper concludes by reaffirming the value of sociologically informed, qualitative policing research that examines questions of police-citizen relationship and legitimacy within a broader socio-political context.