Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Capitalism And Criminal Justice, Peter Kraska, John Brent

Peter Kraska

Capitalism and Criminal Justice examines how state and economic forces work together through a dialectic process in efforts to prepare social and cultural capital for economic accumulation. This unique book demonstrates the close working relationship between the state and market by focusing on two recent trends: the emergence of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (cage-fighting) and the use of performance enhancing drugs (PEDs). These trends are examined as illustrative of the state/market nexus in sanctioning and criminalizing transgressive behaviors. The books aims to both deepen criminology’s understanding of the criminalization/legalization process, and introduce a genre of theoretical work not often employed …

Law Enforcement, Community, And Military Tactics: What’S The Conflict?, Stacey Cotton, Peter Kraska, James Pikl

Peter Kraska

Local law enforcement is a critical community service, and the expense of maintaining a modern and effective police force can be substantial in relation to local resources. At the same time, military equipment, SWAT teams, and aggressive search and seizure tactics have been called into question by the recurring loss of innocent life and Fourth Amendment concerns attendant to the use of overwhelming force. This panel will consider the funding mechanisms available to police and sheriff departments for equipment and capital investments, the incentives these revenues create, and the conflicts between community trust and the atmosphere of counter-insurgency which military …

Policing Kentucky's School Children: Issues And Trends, Peter Kraska, Matthew Dimichele

Peter Kraska

The purpose of this research bulletin is to document the scope and nature of an important dimension of the school safety movement--the degree to which schools in Kentucky are being "policed" by public police agencies. A shift toward having an active police presence in our public schools, an unprecedented and significiant development, should be examined carefully.

Swat In The Commonwealth: Trends And Issues In Paramilitary Policing, Peter B. Kraska

Peter Kraska

Movies and television shows depicting a future where law enforcement officers look like military soldiers may not be wholly inaccurate. In the last ten years, SWAT teams, or "police paramilitary units" (PPC's) have become an influential force in contemporary policing. Academic research and the news media have recently taken note of this development and have highlighted several important trends and issues related to paramilitary policing. These include the rapid growth of PPU's, their movement into mainstream police functions and the potential negative consequences of such a shift. This study overviews national trends in paramilitary policing using two national surveys. It …

Fighting Is The Most Real And Honest Thing: Violence And The Civilization/Barbarism Dialectic, John Brent, Peter Kraska

Peter Kraska

Over the past two decades, the activity of ‘cage-fighting’ has attracted massive audiences and significant attention from media and political outlets. Underlying the spectacle of these mass-consumed events is a growing world of underground sport fighting. By offering more brutal and

less regulated forms of violence, this hidden variant of fighting lies at the blurry and shiftingintersection between licit and illicit forms of recreation. This paper offers a theoretical and ethno-graphic exploration of the motivations and emotive frameworks of these unsanctioned fighters. Wefind that buried within the long-term process towards greater civility rest the seeds for social unrest,

individual rebellion …

Normalising Police Militarisation, Living In Denial, Victor Kappeler, Peter Kraska

Peter Kraska

The militarisation of policing in the USA continues to be a critical area of enquiry for both the police and the society. Recent events in Boston speak to the centrality of this area of research for understanding state responses to an array of social problems, including violence, terrorism and civil unrest. The police capacity to organise and distribute state-sponsored violence as well as the ability to shape institutional appearances while doing so, impacts issues of civil rights, domestic order and the quality of political life in a democracy. The importance of the topic, coupled with the fact that we have …

Felon Disenfranchisement The Judiciary’S Role In Renegotiating Racial Divisions, Brian Schaefer, Peter Kraska

Peter Kraska

Felon disenfranchisement is deeply rooted in U.S. history as a form of punishment and as a tool to inhibit African Americans from voting. Today, there are 5.3 million U.S.

residents politically disenfranchised due to a felony conviction—about 2 million of whom are African Americans. The overrepresentation of African Americans disenfranchised, and the U.S. history of racism, brings forth the question of how these laws continue to exist. The objective of this study is to demonstrate, through a socio–legal approach, the federal court system’s role in perpetuating and maintaining the ethnoracial divisions in society through the validation and rationalization of felon …

Criminal Justice And Criminology Research Methods, Peter Kraska, W. Neuman

Peter Kraska

A rigorous yet engaging text that offers balanced coverage of contemporary research methods. Filled with criminal justice and criminology examples, it demonstrates how research is relevant to the field and what tools are needed to actually conduct that research. Streamlined in this edition, it offers distinct coverage of qualitative research and quantitative research. With its real-life examples and cutting-edge content, the text goes beyond the nuts and bolts to teach students how to competently critique as well as create research-based knowledge.

Moving Beyond Our Methodological Default: A Case For Mixed Methods, John Brent, Peter Kraska

Peter Kraska

Within criminal justice/criminology exists a host of available research methods that generally default along qualitative and quantitative lines. Studying crime and justice phenomena, then, generally involves choosing one approach or the other. Although this binary tradition of qualitative vs. quantitative has predominated, our field's methodological infrastructure has recently demonstrated a willingness to adopt more inclusive practices. The purpose of this study is to discuss the nascent yet probable transformation of re-orienting our field toward a new paradigm of inclusiveness that acknowledges the use of mixed methods research as being both legitimate and beneficial. This paper examines the role methodological exclusivism …

Trafficking In Bodily Perfection: Examining The Late‐Modern Steroid Marketplace And Its Criminalization, Peter Kraska, Charles Bussard, John Brent

Peter Kraska

Illicit steroid and human growth hormone use by professional athletes has received significant media and political attention in the last five years. The resulting political pressure has compelled federal law enforcement to prosecute serious new control initiatives. To date, no academic research inquiring into the nature of this illicit industry exists. This study fills this void through the mixed methods approach—employing both ethnographic field research and quantitative content analysis. The ethnographic data demonstrate a fascinating late‐modern trafficking scheme where the central informant established an apartment‐based manufacturing operation, converting raw steroid chemical compounds ordered off the Internet into injectable solutions. Content …

Militarization And Policing—Its Relevance To 21st Century Police, Peter Kraska

Peter Kraska

This work examines the blurring distinctions between the police and military institutions and between war and law enforcement. In this article, the author asserts that understanding this blur, and the associated organizing concepts militarization and militarism, are essential for accurately analyzing the changing nature of security, and the activity of policing, in the late-modern era of the 21st century.

doi: 10.1093/police/pam065

Criminal Justice Theory: Toward Legitimacy And An Infrastructure, Peter Kraska

Peter Kraska

Within Criminal Justice/Criminology, “theory” is generally assumed to be concerned with crime and crime rates. Studying criminal justice is tacitly, and sometimes explicitly, relegated to the narrow role of evaluative and descriptive scholarship. This article explores the reasons for our field’s failure to recognize the importance of developing an accessible and well‐recognized theoretical infrastructure not about crime, but criminal justice and crime control phenomena. It examines the complexity of our object of study when theorizing criminal justice and the efficacy of organizing criminal justice theory using multiple “theoretical orientations.” The conclusion stresses the essentiality of criminal justice theory, with particular …