Sites of crossing and Death in Punishment: The parallel lives, trade-offs and equivalencies of the Death Penalty and Life without Parole in the US

The paper explores continuities and discontinuities between two kinds of death in punishment; of death as punishment and of death as the specified detritus of punishment (LWOP). It traces the parallel lives and equivalencies between life and death in penal policy and practice in the US, and attendant narratives of harshness/mildness, and compromises and covenants with pasts and futures. The discourse of death that has sustained the survival of the death penalty in the US has found a home in LWOP. It argues that spectacles and memorialisations of injustice, error and pain circumscribed in the judicial and popular discourse of death as different provide spaces for reflection on dignity and cruelty, spaces in which the loss of life and liberty can be grieved, a subversive politics of mourning (Butler 2004) for those that punishment had deemed dispensable. As the death penalty is exchanged for LWOP, reform strategies need to re-imagine and re-capture these spaces for grieving and understanding the death work of LWOP in US penal politics is crucial to this endeavour

Exploring gender and fear retrospectively:stories of women’s fear during the ‘Yorkshire Ripper’ murders

The murder of 13 women in the North of England between 1975 and 1979 by Peter Sutcliffe who became known as the Yorkshire Ripper can be viewed as a significant criminal event due to the level of fear generated and the impact on local communities more generally. Drawing upon oral history interviews carried out with individuals living in Leeds at the time of the murders, this article explores women’s accounts of their fears from the time. This offers the opportunity to explore the gender/fear nexus from the unique perspective of a clearly defined object of fear situated within a specific spatial and historical setting. Findings revealed a range of anticipated fear-related emotions and practices which confirm popular ‘high-fear’ motifs; however, narrative analysis of interviews also highlighted more nuanced articulations of resistance and fearlessness based upon class, place and biographies of violence, as well as the way in which women drew upon fear/fearlessness in their overall construction of self. It is argued that using narrative approaches is a valuable means of uncovering the complexity of fear of crime and more specifically provides renewed insight onto women’s fear

Policing and Sense of Place: 'Shallow' and 'Deep' Security in an English Town

Much policy discourse concentrates on the contribution police make to keeping people safe. Often, this means minimizing fear of crime. Yet, more expansive accounts stress the extent to which deeper-rooted forms of security and belonging might also be important ‘outcomes’ of police activity. Using data collected from a survey of residents of a mid-sized English town, Macclesfield in Cheshire, we consider the extent to which evaluations of policing are associated with (1) a ‘shallow’ sense of security—roughly speaking, feeling safe—and (2) a ‘deeper’ sense of security—being comfortable in, and with, one’s environment. Focussing more accurately on the forms of safety and security police can hope to ‘produce’ opens up space for consideration of the ends they seek as well as the means they use

Policing and Sense of Place: ‘Shallow’ and ‘Deep’ Security in an English Town

Much policy discourse concentrates on the contribution of police to keeping people safe. Often, this means minimising fear of crime. Yet, more expansive accounts stress the extent to which deeper-rooted forms of security and belonging might also be important ‘outcomes’ of police activity. Using data collected from a survey of residents of a mid-sized English town, we consider the extent to which evaluations of policing are associated with (a) a ‘shallow’ sense of security – roughly speaking, feeling safe – and (b) a ‘deeper’ sense of security – being comfortable in, and with, one’s environment. Focussing more accurately on the forms of safety and security police can hope to ‘produce’ opens up space for consideration of the ends they seek as well as the means they us

Revisiting sensitivity to risk in the fear of crime

This paper considers the psychology of risk perception in worry about crime. A survey-based study replicates a long-standing finding that perceptions of the likelihood of criminal victimization predict levels of fear of crime. But perceived control and perceived consequence also play two roles: (a) each predicts perceived likelihood; and (b) each moderates the relationship between perceived likelihood and worry about crime. Public perceptions of control and consequence thus drive what Mark Warr defines as ‘sensitivity to risk.’ When individuals perceive crime to be especially serious in its personal impact, and when individuals perceive that they have little personal control over the victimization event occurring, a lower level of perceived likelihood is needed to stimulate worry about crime

Unsettled crossings: Underpass journeys in an English town

What kinds of ‘sensory configurations’ (Thomas, 2010), and moral orders, are created in places that are simultaneously formed and rendered marginal by infrastructures of hegemonic automobility? In this paper, we explore this question with reference to one micro-site we have encountered in our current study of security and everyday life in an English town – Macclesfield in Cheshire. That site is the Gas Road underpass, a key pedestrian route between the town centre and the east of the town on the other side of its busiest road. Underpasses are generic urban artefacts, mundane features of necessity, of light and darkness, of entry and exit, of solitude and transient encounter. This residual place is for many users one to be passed through, often quite quickly, without particular engagement. It is, on the other hand, also a regular gathering point for the homeless and young people, and a focus for intervention by local authorities, responding to concerns about public drinking and other undesired activities. The underpass provokes concerned talk among residents about the safety of those who (have to) use it, and unsettled debate among local decision-makers over how to beautify, illuminate, regulate, or otherwise improve it. In the paper, we use film, photographs, interviews and in situ observation, to explore the contested ways in which this place is sensed. We argue for a situated understanding of how this residual space unsettles the town’s sense of place, and for acknowledgment of how history and landscape shape the local meanings of such places and journeys