Addressing the harms of state crime: Harms, reparations and victims’ needs in two Kosovo towns

This paper examines three interrelated topics: 1) the harms to individuals and communities resulting from the state crimes that occurred in Kosovo between 1998 and 1999, 2) the reparations implemented so far and 3) the victims’ appreciation of such reparations and their current needs. Specifically the paper focuses on, and compares, harms, reparations and victims’ needs in two Kosovo towns: Prishtina, the capital, and Gjakova, one of the towns most affected by the 1998-99 war, which suffered great physical destruction and large-scale human losses and human rights abuses. The paper relies on in-depth interviews conducted in Prishtina and Gjakova, and a comprehensive analysis of court files, reports of national and international state and non-state organizations and other documents. We proceed in three steps. First, we identify and assess the harms resulting from state crimes, drawing on Greenfield and Paoli’s (2013) Harm Assessment Framework. Second, we consider the reparations that have been implemented so far and, third, we discuss victims’ appreciation of such reparations and their current needs.status: accepte

Qualitative data analysis with the QUAGOL: a practical and critical review of three criminological cases

It is not an ostentatious generalization to state that criminological studies have predominantly been quantitative in nature, particularly in certain regions such as the United States. Although in the last decade, many criminologists have employed qualitative methods, quantitative approaches still continue to be densely described in handbooks and journals. This claim can well be demonstrated through the fact that the first volume of the Journal of Quantitative Criminology was published in 1985, whereas it took almost another 30 years for the Journal of Qualitative Criminal Justice and Criminology to publish its first volume in 2013. In an attempt to contribute to this growing interest in qualitative methodology in criminological sciences, we would like to reflect on a very valuable and practical, though hardly known, method referred to as the Qualitative Analysis Guide of Leuven (QUAGOL). As researchers of criminology, for our PhD projects we opted to employ a qualitative methodology. We each have conducted fieldwork in a different country (Afghanistan, Honduras and Kosovo), mainly engaging with the local population in an attempt to gauge their perceptions in the context of their day-to-day lives. Despite having full proficiency in the language and an in-depth knowledge of the respective countries in which we conducted our fieldworks, a common concern we all faced is related to the loss of the meaning of some aspect of our data during the analysis phase. Although originally designed in the field of nursing, we found out that the QUAGOL as a data analysis method could respond to our quests. With a strong emphasis on carrying out the analysis on paper (at least during its first stage), as opposed to an overemphasis on softwares such as Nvivo, we argue, and demonstrate this through our respective case studies, that the QUAGOL is the method that allows the researcher to stay very close to the data, without losing much of its essence. We will furthermore demonstrate the QUAGOL’s main advantages as regards to its application in criminological research as well as point out a few of its limitations.edition: https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/7e0f63_f6924002a5c44b25bd44480e809f98d5.pdfstatus: publishe

Did nonviolent resistance fail in Kosovo?

Violent crimes by ethnic Albanians in the Balkans have been linked to an Albanian ‘culture of violence’ (Arsovska 2006; Arsovska and Craig 2006). We can trace the roots of certain violent practices in Albanian customary laws, such as the Code of Lekë Dukagjini (Kanun), which institutionalizes blood feuds. Criminological studies of ‘cultures of violence’—explaining violent assaultive crimes by viewing them through the lens of their historical, social and cultural context from which they spring—have been present in the literature since the 1960s. These studies suggest that violence can be culturally viewed as acceptable, appropriate and even obligatory reaction to certain challenges or transgressions (Wolfgang and Ferracuti 1967; Gastil 1971; Luckenbill and Doyle 1989; Cohen and Nisbett 1994; Anderson 1999; Rich and Grey 2005; Stewart and Simons 2010). Such studies are mainly focused on the cultural causes of violence, while they devote less attention to the cultural instruments against violence. A reciprocal approach to criminology integrates the analysis of both violent and nonviolent responses to crime through dialectical concepts of adversarialism and mutualism (Barak 2005). Every ‘culture of violence’ contains elements of a ‘culture of nonviolence’, and vice versa. We can find violent and nonviolent cultural patterns in all societies, but the level of violence depends on their proportionsThis research was funded by the Australian Research Counci

Qualitative data analysis with the QUAGOL: a practical and critical review of three criminological cases

It is not an ostentatious generalization to state that criminological studies have predominantly been quantitative in nature, particularly in certain regions such as the United States. Although in the last decade, many criminologists have employed qualitative methods, quantitative approaches still continue to be densely described in handbooks and journals. This claim can well be demonstrated through the fact that the first volume of the Journal of Quantitative Criminology was published in 1985, whereas it took almost another 30 years for the Journal of Qualitative Criminal Justice and Criminology to publish its first volume in 2013. In an attempt to contribute to this growing interest in qualitative methodology in criminological sciences, we would like to reflect on a very valuable and practical, though hardly known, method referred to as the Qualitative Analysis Guide of Leuven (QUAGOL). As researchers of criminology, for our PhD projects we opted to employ a qualitative methodology. We each have conducted fieldwork in a different country (Afghanistan, Honduras and Kosovo), mainly engaging with the local population in an attempt to gauge their perceptions in the context of their day-to-day lives. Despite having full proficiency in the language and an in-depth knowledge of the respective countries in which we conducted our fieldworks, a common concern we all faced is related to the loss of the meaning of some aspect of our data during the analysis phase. Although originally designed in the field of nursing, we found out that the QUAGOL as a data analysis method could respond to our quests. With a strong emphasis on carrying out the analysis on paper (at least during its first stage), as opposed to an overemphasis on softwares such as Nvivo, we argue, and demonstrate this through our respective case studies, that the QUAGOL is the method that allows the researcher to stay very close to the data, without losing much of its essence. We will furthermore demonstrate the QUAGOL’s main advantages as regards to its application in criminological research as well as point out a few of its limitations.status: Published onlin