This presentation lays out the framework of CONSPACE, an Irish Research Council-funded project which takes the Northern Irish border as an organising concept. The work investigates successive phases of penal nationalism, each of which has been distinguished by the centrality of the Northern Irish border – a border which has been a locus of security, penality and crime control since its inception a century ago and which achieves an urgent timeliness post-Brexit.

Commenced in September 2022, CONSPACE takes a multi-strand approach to the research, joining historical and contemporary perspectives through focus groups, oral histories, interviews, photovoice, archival and historical press anlaysis, and contemporary media and political documentary. This presentation will address a central strand of the work exploring questions of border living, policing, and security.

The border living strand investigates the ways in which ordinary people have lived and continue to live under border security regimes, the experiences of those who have and continue to police the region, and the operation of border policing and penality in the social and legal constructions of identity. The work employs the field of border criminology and the concept of penal nationalism, turning the analytic capacity of these lenses to an under-studied region.

Drawing on my ongoing PhD research on the interlinkages of policing, nation-branding, and independence politics in Scotland, this article offers some preliminary reflections on Police Scotland’s embrace of the “human rights-based policing” concept and its branding properties. While the Scottish police organization has yet to develop a human rights framework for policing, it has not shied away in recent years from positioning itself as a global expert on human rights-based policing, and from trying to “export” the approach. Taking from both International Relations and criminological approaches, I offer a critical perspective on these developments. Specifically, I argue that the police’s efforts to export human rights-based policing fit with a wider Scottish nation-branding effort, in which historical myths interact with contemporary narratives of progressiveness in a politically productive fashion. By examining police and government communications, I show how the language of human rights interacts with the language of sustainability and “good global citizenship” to brand Scottish policing and, by extension, the Scottish nation. In doing so, I challenge some common assumptions about the development of policing strategies, highlighting the important role of cultural-political factors in these processes.

Children are the most defenseless cluster, prone to abuse, discrimination and atrocities. Children when victimized, fail to voice their cry for justice due to lack of cognizance and dependence on parents and caregivers. The abuser in most cases being known to the child makes the concern even more serious and stories most untold. Children as prospective adults deserve a safe and secure environment to bring out their best potentials and stabilize the future prospects of a nation. In India, violence against children is common, resulting in the enactment of new legislations and awareness initiatives. Social rigidities make them easy targets and lack of sensitization among parents and children alike make them voiceless/suppressed. The present study attempts to unveil a comparative analysis of the crime trends on violence against children in metropolitan cities in India. It also seeks to explore the initiatives taken by metropolitan city police in India to spread awareness and counter the peril. Further, it examines the future prospects of new age policing practices to overcome the challenges in combatting child abuse as the most impactful social evil.
Key words: child abuse, new age policing, urban metropolis,

South Africa is a particularly violent country. It has one of the highest homicide rates in the world and experiences elevated levels of various other forms of violence, including robbery, assault, and violence against women and children. Studies have demonstrated the multidimensional nature of violent criminality in South Africa and have indicated that current manifestations of violent crime are a combination of the consequences of colonial and apartheid legacies combined with various socioeconomic and cultural factors, access to firearms, substance abuse, and shortcomings with respect to the criminal justice system. The South African government has frequently acknowledged the complex nature of violence and has indicated in various policy documents that crime can only effectively be reduced and prevented through a coordinated and integrated ‘whole-of-society’ approach that includes relevant government departments, civil society, and the private sector. The most recent whole-of-society policy document is the Integrated Crime and Violence Strategy (ICVPS), which was approved by the South African Cabinet in 2022. However, despite the compilation of such policies there has been very little progress towards effectively implementing a ‘whole-of-society’ approach in South Africa over the past 30 years. This paper explores why the South African government has been unable to implement such strategies, and in so doing points to the following factors: the siloed and hierarchical nature of government; inappropriate budgetary structures and provisions; government’s misaligned performance management system; a lack of sufficient expertise within government at all levels; and the pervasiveness of militarised crime combatting ethos that prioritises forceful policing responses to crime over integrated approaches.