Staci Strobl

Cultural Criminology and Kryptonite: Apocalyptic and Retributive Constructions of Crime and Justice in Comic Books

The current study utilizes a cultural criminological approach to examine paradigms of justice portrayed in American comic books. Based on a review of the literature, we hypothesize that the dominant crimes depicted in comic books are violent street crimes and that the portrayed responses to these crimes are executed outside the rule of law by an avenging protagonist. According to the literature surveyed, comic book protagonists seek to restore public order as a means of returning the community to a constructed, nostalgic ideal. Moreover, the implied policy message in comic books is one of vigilantism, in which moral justice trumps legitimate criminal procedure. Based on a content analysis of 20 contemporary best-selling comic books, themes of organized crime, often involving complex transnational networks, are more prevalent than street crimes, contrary to our hypothesis. However, the response to crime remains focused on vigilante methods and on the restoration of a constructed utopic community that espouses the rule of law.

The Women's Police Directorate in Bahrain An Ethnographic Exploration of Gender Segregation and the Likelihood of Future Integration

This article explores Bahrains Womens Police Directorate, a separate unit for policewomen. Historically, the segregation of female police in separate units has characterized the development of women in policing. The most popular theory describing womens entrance into policing involves a linear, developmental model in which segregation is a step toward full gender integration. This model has never been applied to contexts involving Muslim and Arab social constructions of gender. The article suggests that gender integration of the Bahraini police is unlikely, considering internal perceptions and dominant social and cultural Islamicization trends, which contrast with the apparent state feminism operating in Bahrain. It thus suggests that a linear theory is too constricting in positing the inevitability of gender integration in all societies in which policewomen exist. Using a postcolonial theoretical framework, Bahraini trends preliminarily suggest a hybrid outcome in which some police units are gender segregated and others are integrated.

Attitudes about gender integration among Bahraini policewomen

This research explored Bahraini policewomens attitudes towards gender integration of their police force. It tests two duelling hypotheses. The first hypothesis, embracing the modernisation model of the development of women in policing, predicts that younger generations of policewomen will be more likely to show support for gender integration. The second hypothesis is that the shift in the Bahraini culture from a nationalist secular feminism in the 1970s to the present neo-conservative Islamism predicts that younger generations of policewomen are less likely to support gender integration. In 2005, a survey was distributed to all Bahraini policewomen (N=241) with 46% (N=112) returning the completed questionnaire. Results from multiple regression analysis show that neither hypotheses satisfactorily predicted variations in Bahraini policewomens attitudes towards gender integration. Suggestions for more nuanced theories were offered to frame analyses of gender and policing in cultural contexts like Bahrain.

Crime and justice: the Roma in Europe and North America

This special issue of ICJCAJ focuses on crime and justice involving Roma minority groups in the context of various European and North American democratic and democratically developing countries. Ro...

Nothing to be done about them without them: The Slovenian National Police and Roma joint-training program

This research contributes to police policy formation aiming to confront Roma social and political exclusion in Europe. Since Roma are technically protected by European national constitutions, as well as by the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and other human rights declarations, how Roma are handled by national governments, and in particular the police who may regularly encounter them in daily life, becomes an important part of whether the promises of democracy and multiculturalism can be achieved in actuality. This research outlines promises and challenges faced by a unique Slovenian joint-training program and suggests that a program which leverages relationships with the diverse communities that are Roma-identified can have benefits beyond merely educating police officers. The main methodologies used to document and asses the training program and its community effects were police focus groups and semi-structured interviews with past participants in the program, from both the Roma and non-Roma communities, as well as semi-structured interviews with other community stakeholders. The research shows that increased confidence in the police and community problem solving and dialogue may be attributed to a police focus on Roma-related joint training.

Lost in Transition: Khobar Towers and the Ambiguities of Terrorism in the 1990s

On June 25, 1996, a fuel truck packed with explosives detonated on the perimeter of Khobar Towers, a residential complex housing US Air Force personnel operating out of King Abdul Aziz Air Base in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. Nineteen American airmen were killed and over 500 other Americans, Saudis, and Bangladeshis were injured. This was the deadliest terrorist attack on the US military personnel since the 1983 bombing of the Beirut barracks which killed 241 Marines, presaging even worse mass-casualty attacks to come. The bombing as well as the official investigations in its wake prompted the military services to adopt more robust force protection measures, yet the strategic threat of Islamist terrorism remained less appreciated for several years to come. The Khobar Towers attack occurred in the middle of a decade of considerable uncertainty and drift in American security policy. From the end of the Cold War in 1991 until the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, there was no broad consensus about America’s strategic priorities in the world, notwithstanding its heightened level of global military activity. The decisive US-led victory in the first Gulf War was followed by far less decisive patrolling of Iraqi skies in order to enforce “nofly” zones and conduct occasional punitive strikes aimed at indefinitely containing Saddam Hussein. Deployments to Muslim countries added fuel to smoldering local anti-American sentiment and at the same time presented targets to terrorist actors. The Khobar Towers bombing, in particular, has been primarily attributed to Iranianbacked Hezbollah, a formidable enemy to the United States even as military efforts were focused on Iraq. All the while, the US military and civilian policy makers failed to appreciate the scope and determination of irregular, non-state Muslim extremist groups whose attacks would define military engagement and foreign policy in the next decade.