A measurement of crime control-based social exclusion

Comparative criminal justice policy has a strong inclination to confront national crime control systems in accordance to corresponding levels of punitiveness. Some author (Díez-Ripollés, 2011, 2013) has advocated for a more enriched and comprehensive comparative framework, which is founded in either the social inclusion or the social exclusion effects that different crime control systems entail on three specific groups: suspects, offenders and ex-offenders. To this end, it identifies nine topic pools (control of public spaces, legal safeguards, sentencing and sanctions systems, harshest penalties, prison rules, preventive intervention, legal and social status of offenders and ex-offenders, police and criminal records, youth criminal justice), each of them comprising a number of punitive rules or practices. Assuming this model, we are designing and validating a comparative instrument able to measure current criminal policy of Western industrialized countries in accordance to the social inclusion / social exclusion dimension. In order to achieve this goal we have chosen a methodology, which intends to establish an inter-judge agreement on the social exclusive character of a certain amount of punitive rules and practices previously included within those pools. In this presentation, we will explain how we designed the questionnaire sent to the experts, as well as the results of the first validation process. This took place with the cooperation of over 70 international experts from 18 different Western industrialized countries. The inter-judge agreement on the punitive rules and practices capable of producing significant social exclusive effects on the three studied groups was verified through inter-rater reliability (IRR) statistical tests, like the Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC) and Aiken's V Coefficient. We will also describe the pending validation process. Once available, we intend to draw attention of the criminological community to this tool for comparing national crime control systems, and to promote its application.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Evaluación de la eficacia y eficiencia del Programa O2 para el restablecimiento de mujeres víctimas de tratas y sus hijos

El programa piloto ÖDOS (O2) para el restablecimiento de mujeres víctimas de trata, enteramente financiado con capital privado, pretende atender a mujeres con hijos o en avanzado estado de gestación que acceden de forma irregular a España y no se reconocen como víctimas de trata, no entrando por tanto en los recursos existentes y desapareciendo de los centros de primera asistencia. Tanto la Memoria de la Fiscalía General del Estado de 2015, como los Informes del Defensor del Pueblo alertan de la situación de riesgo de estas mujeres y niños que desaparecen posiblemente a manos de la red que trafica con ellos. El objetivo del programa es facilitar un entorno estable y un acompañamiento personal y profesional que permita el restablecimiento de la mujer. Se pretende con ello aumentar el número de mujeres que se acogen al periodo de reflexión y reducir el número de menores a los que se les decreta desamparo. Con la pretensión última de que este proyecto sea asumido por la Administración y de que pueda ser replicado en otros países europeos, se ha encargado una evaluación externa al Observatorio criminológico del sistema penal ante la inmigración (OCSPI) del Instituto de Criminología de Málaga para comprobar la eficiencia y eficacia del programa O2. Con el estudio de la eficiencia se comprobará si se ha ejecutado conforme al plan previamente diseñado, y luego comprobar su eficacia, esto es, el impacto de dicho programa sobre las mujeres y sus hijos. El presente trabajo se centra en la metodología de evaluación de O2. El diseño metodológico que se propone combina un estudio cuantitativo sobre el número de mujeres que acceden al recurso, sus características y diversas formas de abandono del programa, junto al análisis de los protocolos de intervención, entrevistas a informantes clave y observación directa al comienzo, a los seis meses y al año de iniciado el programa.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Impactos de estrategias para la reducción de prácticas policiales discriminatorias

Diversos
 estudios
 han
 puesto
 de
 manifiesto
 que
 la
 policía
 usa
 “perfil
 étnico”
 en
 sus
 prácticas
 policiales,
 restando
 así
 eficacia
 a
 las
 intervenciones
 y
 estigmatizando
 innecesariamente
 a 
ciudadanos 
pertenecientes 
a 
colectivos 
minoritarios
(Miller
et
al.,
2007).
 La
 Open
 Society
 Justice
 Inicitive
 diseñó
 el
 proyecto
 STEPSS
 (Strategies
 for
 Effective
 Police
 Stop
 and
 Search)
 donde
 se
 resaltaba
 la
 importancia
 de
 mejorar
 las
 relaciones
 policiales
 con
 los
 colectivos
 minoritarios
 a
 través
 de
 la
 formación
 policial,
 el
 desarrollo
 de
 un
 sistema
 de
 control
 de
 la
 gestión
 policial
 y
 la
 rendición
 de
 cuentas
 en
 materia
 de
 identificaciones
 en
 la
 vía
 pública
(Schmitt
y
Pernas,
2008).
 Tiempo
 después,
 y
 a
 través
 de
 la
 Plataforma
 por
 la
 gestión
 policial
 por
 la
 diversidad
 (PGPD),
 se
 pone
 en
 marcha
 el
 Programa
 para
 la
 Identificación
 Policial
 Eficaz
 (PIPE)
 en
 dos
 localidades
 españolas
 (Castellón
 y
 Pedrezuela).
 El
 presente
 trabajo
 se
 enfoca
 en
 el
 proceso
 de
 evaluación
 de
 PIPE
 y
 en
 su
 impacto.
 La
 metodología
 empleada
 combina
 el
 análisis
 de
 los
 formularios,
 la
 realización
 de
 entrevistas
 a
 informantes
 clave
 y
 la
 observación
 directa.
 Los
 principales
 resultados
 indican
 que,
 a
 pesar
 de
 que
 la
 implementación
 de
 PIPE
 requiere
 aún
 de
 cierto
 desarrollo
 por
 parte
 de
 los
 municipios
 que
 lo
 han
 acogido
 (por
 ejemplo
 en
 el
 control
 de
 formularios,
 rendición
 de
 cuentas
 y
 contacto
 con
 la
 sociedad
 diversa),
 lo
 cierto
 es
 que
 se
 puede
 afirmar
 el
 potencial
 del
 programa
 en
 la
 práctica
 policial
 para
 reducir
 el
 número
 de

 identificaciones
y
mejorar
su
eficacia.
Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Foreign youth in prison: Invisible population in the dynamics of social exclusion

Spain has been a territory of arrival of foreign unaccompanied minors since the 1990s. A growing concern, as the number of minors arriving from Morocco continuing to grow, is their protection and social inclusion, especially after they reach the age of 18. Once they have come of age, resources for support and protection are scarce. Exploratory research in the province of Malaga (Spain) identified a considerable number of foreigners who are former foster youths in prison, but there is no record of this group in the statistics of penitentiary institutions. The aim of JEPRAN project (Former Foster Youths in Andalusian Prisons, 2021 -2023) is to visualize the challenge faced by Andalusian society in the inclusion of former foster youths and to identify the social and legal crossroads they encounter during their migration path and transition to adulthood. At the Andalusian level, the JEPRAN project will seek to identify how many of the young people in prison are foreign who have been fostered by the child protective services. Our hypothesis is that this group are overrepresented, and we aim to identify risk and protection variables in comparison with young people released from prison. Bearing in mind that this is an ongoing project, this presentation seeks to discuss from a methodological perspective the strategies and difficulties encountered during fieldwork with an invisible population, as well as presenting the preliminary results of this research.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Challenges for the protection of unaccompanied foreign minors in the streets of Ceuta

Ceuta, as a Spanish enclave in Africa face specific challenges in terms of immigration. Due the proximity of Ceuta and Morocco, the residents of Moroccan provinces adjoining are exempted from visa requirements and can be authorized to enter and exit the Spanish city, on a daily basis, but not the rest of the national territory. A number of the people that cross this border are minors, many of them come from adjoining provinces and enter legally, with their passports, accompanied by their parents or a relative who abandon them in Spanish territory, with the aim that they could get a better life and help their family economically. Others come from other provinces and undertake this trip alone, often with the same responsibility, of helping their family, and stay on the land border between Morocco and Spain for days or even months trying to sneak across the border illegally. These minors scape from the system, they are unprotected, exposed to criminal and victimological risk. Besides, their presence on the streets generate a sense of public insecurity and social alarm, although the crime rate of this group is low, negative labels are applied to them. In this context, Ceuta, specifically the Department of Health, Social Affairs, Minors and Equality, has signed an agreement with the University of Málaga, implemented by the Observatory of the Crime control system towards Immigration (OCSPI), to develop a pilot project of research and social intervention to prevent juvenile delinquency and protect these minors.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

¿Los conocimientos criminológicos modulan la actitud punitiva?

The aim is to show how punitive attitudes usually arise from ignorance of the functions and operation of the criminal justice system. We start from the assumption that knowledge of reality criminal, of offender and of criminal reaction make that punitive demands are lower than when you had a stereotyped knowledge of that reality. This has been a survey at the beginning and end of the semester to a treatment group, formed by the students of 1st Grade of Criminology, and a control group composed of students of 1st Law of the same University. The results show that students change their punitive attitude when their have deep understanding of the reality of crime, reducing their punitive attitude with respect to their attitude al the beginning of the semester.El objetivo es demostrar cómo las actitudes punitivas más rigurosas suelen tener su origen en el desconocimiento de las funciones y del funcionamiento del sistema penal. Se parte de la hipótesis de que el conocimiento de la realidad delictiva, del delincuente y de la reacción penal hacen que las exigencias punitivistas sean menores que cuando se tenía un conocimiento estereotipado de dicha realidad. Para ello se ha pasado una encuesta al inicio y finalización del semestre a un grupo de tratamiento, formado por los alumnos de 1º del Grado de Criminología, y un grupo de control compuesto por alumnos de 1º de Derecho de la misma Universidad. Los resultados muestran que los conocimientos adquiridos producen un cambio significativo en su actitud punitiva, reduciéndose ésta con respecto a su actitud al inicio del curso

Criminological analysis of the principle of judicial opportunity of the art. 57.7 of Spanish Immigration Law: Waiving of criminal proceedings and primacy of administrative expulsion

Spanish Immigration Law provides (art. 57.7) that where a foreigner, on which is pending an administrative expulsion order, is accused in a penal procedure with a misdemeanour or felony which entails a punishment less than six years of imprisonment or any alternative penal sanction, administrative authority will request to the criminal judge to renounce continuing with the penal procedure and allowed the expulsion, and judge will renounce unless some circumstances will be appreciated to justify the continuation of the process. This regulation, manifestation of the principle of judicial opportunity, has been widely analyzed from a legal perspective, but little research has been done about its effective implementation in practice and about the costs and benefits derived from this ius puniendi's renunciation from the point of view of the purposes of punishment. With the overall aim of deepening the knowledge of this topic, the research we are doing aims to: 1) determine the prevalence of its application; 2) identify the profile of foreigners and offenses for which it is applied; and 3) identify which criteria are guiding the assessment of the court decision. Our hypothesis are that: i) there are some dysfunctions that hampered the application and also the knowledge of the exact number of authorizations granted and that ii) in practice, the assessment of costs and benefits that implies authorization in each case, is omitted. To achieve the first objective we are reviewing official statistics and judiciary/prosecutors instructions and conducting interviews with key stakeholders. To achieve the second and the third objectives, we are reviewing a sample of selected case files of trial courts of Madrid and Malaga, which also allows us to make comparisons between practices of both jurisdictions. The results obtained would allow us to develop good practices that could be useful for legal actors in the assessment of approval or denial the expulsion.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Police stop and search in Spain: an overview of its use, impacts and challenges.

Política de acceso abierto tomada de: https://indret.com/criterios-de-publicacion/Even though in Spain there are no complete, public and updated national statistics on police stops with information on ethnicity, data provided by some local police forces and academic research prove that the police disproportionately stop and search minority groups. This practice affects the sense of belonging of individuals (who experience shame and humiliation), leads to institutional discrimination, and reduces the legitimacy and trust in law enforcement. This paper aims to analyze the Spanish empirical evidence about police stops practices and its effects on citizens conducting a systematic review on existing literature. The main results show that: police stops are carried out based on racial profiling; consequences of police discrimination had a more negative impact on individuals who had been or perceived to have been stopped due to racial reasons; it is necessary to develop more qualitative studies that complement the quantitative methodologies in order to gather richer information about experiences on police treatment, particularly at stops

Criminal Justice Systems in Europe. A cross-national quantitative analysis

In the last years, the Crime Observatory of the University of Malaga has analysed police records on criminal activity, has also carried out several crime victims surveys in Spain and has worked on a detailed analysis of the prison system and its connection to the prison policy. This year´s report focuses on the Criminal Justice System, one of the big official data providers, to gather, organize and interpret a great deal of quantitative data from 2000 to 2011. Such longitudinal scrutiny offers data related to public opinion about criminal courts, the quality of criminal justice, its resources, the amount of criminal cases managed on each court, a user´s profile, etc. On this presentation, we´ll concentrate on a comparison of the European countries that constitutes the first chapter of the Report and aims to offer a proper context to the rest of it. Such comparison will explain the national differences in terms of the public budget allocated to courts, legal aid, court fees, incoming criminal cases, length of procedures, clearance rate, as well as homicide, rape, serious assault and robbery convictions, etc. Our aim will be to offer an interesting cross-national analysis of such topics that will provide a reference point from which to debate the national policies related to the Criminal Justice System in the European Countries.Instituto Andaluz Interuniversitario de Criminología. Sección de Málag