Since the 1920s, scholars have studied gangs in America as a large-city phenomenon. The current study seeks to address a significant gap in the field of gang studies by focusing on gangs and gang activity in rural areas. Based on in-depth interviews with active youth gang members and gang associates in the three rural counties of California’s Central Valley, the study examines connections between gang affiliation and property-related crimes. While the study employs the qualitative method to guide sampling, data collection, and analytical processes, quantitative data collected from local criminal justice agencies provide valuable background information about the study samples. Research findings suggest that youth gang involvement significantly contributes to gang-related property crimes. Some youths developed sophisticated skills in committing these crimes. Well-established local networks for receiving and cashing stolen items greatly facilitated these crimes.

Quoting the then Home Secretary, the Right Honourable Priti Patel "Slavery has not gone away", will make the majority of us think of the transatlantic slave trade abolished in teh19th Century. She is however, referring to the modern day slave trade which is a multifaceted crime which encompasses all forms of slavery, human trafficking and exploitation. Trafficking, which is defined as transporting, recruiting or harbouring a person in order for them to be exploited includes a wide range of abuses and other criminal offences, such as assault, rape, child sexual abuse may occur alongside modern slavery crimes (Office of National Statistics 2020).
The general public are rightly shocked and horrified by sensationalised newspaper headlines but the introduction of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 (England and Wales) and the Human Trafficking and Exploitation Act (Scotland) 2015 (SPICe, 2015) goes some way to salve our collective consciousness. But in actuality the legislation just deals with the end result it doesn't address the perpetual cycle of relentless exploitation and does little to address the underlying issue.

However, do we actually recognise contemporary slavery and do we by out consumer practices and choices collude and perpetuate this continued chain of servitude ?

Scandals like the Pitcairn child sex abuse trial stand in stark contrast to the stereotype of an island idyll. However, crime does not occur in a vacuum and it would be simplistic to suggest that islands are either crime free (as is often maintained by residents) or deeply problematic. Rather (and as with mainland communities) there is a spectrum of criminality in island locations, particularly relating to interpersonal and sexual crimes. Of particular interest to this author is the potential for islands to become criminogenic environments for young people when older teenagers leave for tertiary education and training opportunities. There is a propensity in a number of island locations for older teenagers to leave, and often these leavers (particularly young women) are reluctant to return. This causes a skewed demographic, where there maybe more older teenage / young adult boys/men, and fewer similarly aged girls/women. A result of this is the normalisation of relationships between older teenage boys and younger teenage girls. Based on interviews with island police and social workers in a number of contexts, this paper investigates ways in which problematic sexual relationships become normalised in communities which otherwise consider themselves to be low in crime per se.

This paper will add to understandings of islands as newer locations for criminological enquiry. Over 10% of the world’s population live on islands, yet they have tended to be isolated and excluded from mainstream / mainland developments in criminology. The tide, as it were, however, is turning, and this paper will stand amongst a developing scholarship of island criminology which has sought to understand islands as marginal spaces, with unique and different challenges.

Abstract

This study investigates the suitability of the social bonding theory in explaining instances of assault among senior high school students in Turkey. The study involved a sample of 450 students, and OLS regression models were utilized to examine the correlation between different social bonding characteristics and assault. The results unveiled substantial correlations between several social bonding factors and juvenile assault. The study used two models to analyze the data. Model 1 revealed a negative correlation between attachment to conventional friends, parental supervision, commitment to education, and belief in traditional norms with assault. This suggests that higher levels of these factors are linked to a reduced probability of engaging in assault. However, attachment to parents, attachment to teachers, and involvement in school activities were found to be nonsignificant to assault. In Model 2, when control variables (age and gender) were introduced into the analysis, no significant impact on the social bonding variables was observed. However, the results indicated that attachment to conventional friends, family supervision, commitment to education, and belief in traditional norms retained their statistical significance. Furthermore, a correlation was observed between being male and engaging in assault. The inclusion of control variables resulted in a decrease in the beta coefficient of the social bonding variables. Among these variables, the influence of having conventional friends had the most significant effect on assault, followed by gender and family supervision.

Criminologists generally treat school shootings as an American phenomenon and, in doing so, project its typical features and aetiologies to the larger context of school safety around the world. This assumption of universality deprives researchers and practitioners alike of meaningful approaches to understand and prevent youth violence in local contexts. A recent spate of youth perpetrated school shootings in Brazil is an example of this. With over a dozen youth perpetrated school shootings in 2023, Brazil has experienced a rapid and unprecedented growth in school attacks that cannot be appropriately understood through the Northern criminological lens. Given the unique experiences of youth in the Global South, where young people’s daily experiences with violence is qualitatively different, the knowledge gap between how to prevent and respond to school shooting incidents can be especially frustrating. While recent research suggests that there may be some similarities in perpetrator motivations between US and Brazilian attacks (Schildkraut, Connell, Barbieri, & de Azeredo, 2023), more in-depth analysis is needed. Using an open-source data collection protocol, all school shooting incidents in a primary or secondary school since 2010 with at least one injury were identified. Shooting incidents were identified through local Brazilian news sources. The current study is a descriptive inquiry into the known characteristics of Brazilian school shooting incidents, including trends in motivation and attack details. Implications for public policy and the theoretical understanding of youth violence are discussed, with a particular emphasis on the importance of understanding school shootings from a regionally sensitive and globally mindful perspective to better inform meaningful policies.