In this article I consider the increasing use of the “rough sex” defence by men who kill women in trials of murder. In demonstrating the prevalence of this defence I examine the defence tactics of pleading accident and traducing the character of the dead by invoking the excuse that the deceased consented to the acts which contributed to her death. I examine the impact of this defence strategy on jury determination and return of convictions for unlawful manslaughter rather than murder. The notion that women in these situations have contributed to their own demise is a redolent oeuvre in pornography but also has roots in psychoanalysis and medicine. Stereotypes of women’s sexuality as defined by men continue to inform contemporary thinking skewing male violence against women as an outcome that women desire. Legal attempts to reform the law are examined and challenges to the representation of women in popular culture are called for.

International society has recently witnessed the emergence of two interrelated trends: on the one hand, the significant rise in transnational crimes, which constitute a serious challenge to States’ traditional security capabilities, and the noticeable increase in the number of international instruments put in place to bring that challenge to acceptable levels, on the other hand. The great emphasis the international community has put on the principle “aut dedere aut judicare” to strengthen the universal legal regime against serious crimes and to deny safe haven to their perpetrators is challenged not only by political, legislative and practical considerations pertaining to the lack of ratification and incorporation of international conventions and the wide disparity between States as to their implementation capacity, but also by the inherent differences between States’ differing legal systems. This is an area that, despite its relevance to international cooperation and human rights, has long been ignored by criminal justice comparative studies. Based on actual cases such as the Ramda and El Guerbouzi cases, this article examines and assesses the impact of the differences between civil law and common law systems on the effectiveness of international cooperation and human rights. It argues that, unless these differences are acknowledged and properly dealt with, perpetrators of serious crime will continue to constitute a serious threat to our peace and security.

In recent years, Asian criminology and Southern criminology have drawn scholarly attention to the profound divide between Western and non-Western societies, or the Global North and Global South, in criminological knowledge production. Perspectives from Asian and Southern criminology expose these divides and propose critical ways to correct the hegemony of Western over non-Western, or Northern over Southern, knowledge production. For the contemporary movement of decolonization of knowledge, a particular contribution of Asian criminology is to link Western and non-Western, or Northern and Southern, criminological science. As Sandra Walklate concluded, “Asian criminology … stands at the positive intersection of the north–south and east–west in terms of geography and culture. It is well placed to think differently, both conceptually and methodologically, about the criminological enterprise, and the debates that such different thinking might generate.” This article reviews the divide in criminology between the Global North and South. Based on the framework of the Asian criminological paradigm, Asian criminology has made major contributions to bridging the divide between the North and the South through academic institutionalization and theoretical development strategies.

This study examines the intricate relationship between religion and attitudes towards terrorist violence, with a specific focus on individual sympathy for al-Qaeda and justification for suicide bombings. While religion has the capacity to promote both harmony and social cohesion, as well as division and conflict, it is crucial to explore the complex and contradictory nature of religious beliefs in relation to individuals’ attitudes towards terrorism. To address this paradox, the study differentiates between religion as a belief and religion as an ideology. Drawing from a subset of the 2011 Pew Global Attitudes Survey, encompassing countries with substantial Muslim populations (Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey), the research investigates how religiosity and political Islam influence public attitudes towards terrorism, considering political and economic grievances in these contexts. Multivariate statistical analysis suggests that religiosity and political Islam exhibit distinct associations with the justification of suicide bombings and support for al-Qaeda, and these dynamics vary across countries. Ultimately, the study underscores the importance of perceiving religiosity not as a threat but as a potential remedy to prevent extremism by fostering an educated and deeper understanding of religious principles.

Across the globe, airports are regarded as essential infrastructure needing protection. One of the major goals of an airport, as encouraged by the regulatory bodies and evoked through public expectation, is safety. However, a public environment, such as an airport, is vulnerable to crime. The Oliver Reginald Tambo International Airport (ORTIA) is Africa’s biggest and busiest airport, servicing approximately 19 million passengers annually. Moreover, tourism is a key component of a healthy economy. Therefore, safety and security are significant for sustainable tourism in South Africa. Thus, this paper used a quantitative inquiry to determine security professionals’ perceptions of crime at ORTIA. A non-experimental and randomized cross-sectional research design was used. Through random sampling, a total of 100 participants contributed to the study and yielded a representative percentage of 36%. Data were collected through online self-administered questionnaires from security personnel employed at ORTIA and analysed through descriptive analysis. The findings revealed that the most problematic crimes taking place at ORTIA were reported to be theft, mishandled baggage, automated teller machine (ATM) crimes, burglary, robbery, illegal immigrants and smuggling of drugs. Furthermore, most participants had witnessed a crime taking place at the airport. As informed by the participants, sustainable solutions are proposed in terms of crime prevention and intervention.

In Ghana, persons below 18 years of age are presumed to be children and vulnerable, and are expected to enjoy special protection and care against all hazards, even if they go against the law. This agrees with Ghana’s legal provision and other international legal documents. This study examined the knowledge of the police and their relationship with children in conflict with the law in Ghana using the Northern Region as a case study. Primary data were generated through interviews and questionnaire administration from a combined 219 participants who were purposely and systematically selected in a convergent mixed-methods design. The study found good knowledge of the police as to who a child in conflict with the law was (76%), yet only 40% rightly knew the criminal capacity of a child. The study revealed that the rights of children in conflict with the law, such as non-torture, access to legal assistance and right to safe custody, were flouted.

The article examines how to address the report of the African Union Commission of Inquiry on South Sudan, which accuses the Government of South Sudan and the rebels of committing “crimes against humanity” and violating “international humanitarian law” in the war of December 2013. The Commission recommends “an Africa-led, Africa-owned, Africa-resourced legal mechanism, under the aegis of the African Union and with support from the United Nations, to bring those with the greatest responsibility at the highest level to accountability” in a court. Second, the Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan asked for establishing a hybrid court in South Sudan to investigate and prosecute the perpetrators of “genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes”. The Cabinet of South Sudan approved, in its resolution on 29 January 2021, the establishment of the court. On the other hand, the Government of South Sudan rejected accountability for the perpetrators of international crimes in its resolution at the Transition Justice Conference and recommended “amnesty” for those admitting the commission of international crimes in Juba, Malakal, Bor and Bentiu. The research findings show that amnesty threatens peace and security because customary law rejects amnesty. Its implementation generates systematic vengeance from the clan of those killed. The research recommends the establishment of a hybrid court that adopts the complementarity principle in compatibility with the African customary law of blood compensation. The authoritative national criminal courts in South Sudan omit capital punishment on the grounds that (a) killer(s) pay(s) blood compensation, apok or cot, to the survivors of (a) killed person(s) with 51 cattle. The payment changes the penalties of life imprisonment, which international criminal law imposes on the perpetrators of international crimes and the death penalty, which African criminal law imposes on the confirmed killer(s). Finally, the tribunal imposes 10-year terms of imprisonment on the confirmed perpetrators of international crimes.

Studies on criminal justice in Ghana have implicated the police in bribery, breach of trust, crime trade, and brutality, among others. This study departed from the approach of “perceived wrongs” cited against the police and examined the less untold challenges which militate against child-friendly policing in the country. A total of 160 police respondents were randomly selected from three police districts in the Northern Region of Ghana in a correlational study design. Administering a questionnaire was used as the primary data collection method. The study found that the police are constrained by inadequate cells for juveniles, inadequate serviceable vehicles, lack of remand homes for juveniles, lack of State-owned temporary shelters for victims of abuse and inadequate budgetary support for handling juvenile crimes. Using Kendall’s coefficient of concordance, with a 147.119 (df = 5) value for χ2, the asymptotic significance (p) was 0.000, signifying a significant agreement among police officers’ grading scores. Kendall’s coefficient of concordance (W) figure was found to be 0.751, implying that 75.1% of the ranking scores given by police officers were in consonance with these challenges which have restrained them from any practical child-friendly policing and administration of juvenile justice in the study locality.

The current paper examines the aetiology of persecution committed against the Rohingya in Myanmar from a criminological perspective. Criminological theories focusing on one level of analysis may not fully explain the incidents concerning the systematic implementation of policies of persecution against the Rohingya for decades. Thus, the author scrutinizes the factors which are involved in the aetiology of persecution at three different levels: macro (national), meso (organizational) and micro (local community and individual) within four dynamics – namely, motivation, opportunity, control and constraint. This paper employs the case study method and collects data through focus group discussions with the Rohingya in the Kutupalong refugee camp in the Cox’s Bazar region of Bangladesh. It limits its analysis to the data that covers the events of persecution against the Rohingya in Myanmar, such as revocation of their citizenship, deprivation of their fundamental rights, and different forms of atrocity crimes, from 1962 to 2019. It reveals that, despite the heterogeneity of the actions that led to atrocity crimes against the Rohingya, the military leaders in charge of Myanmar (and somewhat Myanmar’s civilian government), military personnel and other security force members, paramilitaries and vigilantes played various roles in the perpetration of such crimes.

The paper analyses the notion of anomie through various theories presented in the works of classical Greek thinkers up to today’s understanding of this notion. In this regard, the article will touch on some previous understandings of this phenomenon, and the beginnings of modern thought on anomie in the work of Jean-Marie Guyau, and the developed understandings of Robert Merton and Émil Durkheim as the two most prominent authors dealing with this topic. In addition, the attitudes of marginalized writers will be analysed, as well as neglected and underrepresented understandings in criminology and wider science. The purpose of this paper is to find common ground between all previous understandings of the theory of anomie, and to try to find a more specific meaning of the term in order to contribute to the discussion on this topic.

The current article reports the results of a systematic study of 42 intimate partner femicide–suicides with 91 fatal casualties in Eswatini, Africa, from 2009 to 2022. The study used a media-surveillance methodology to identify the 42 cases from a major local online newspaper. Information on all identified cases was subjected to careful criminological analyses. Six of the cases involved seven collateral, or corollary, homicide victims. Results indicate that assailants and victims were generally of lower socio-economic background; assailants tended to be older than their victims; stabbing with a knife, shooting with a gun and slashing with a machete were the dominant homicide methods; ingestion of weevil tablets and other poisons, hanging and shooting with a firearm were the predominant suicide means. The results further show that femicide incidents overwhelmingly involved overkill, with the assailant using inordinately high levels of aggression against the victim. Male sexual jealousy, rage over the female partner’s abrogation of the relationship, and interpersonal disputes of variable origin were the major precipitants. It is recommended that deterrent sentences should be used to teach wife assaulters and would-be assaulters that society does not tolerate assaultive behaviour within intimate relationships. More resources should be provided for women who are victims of domestic violence. This should include legal aid, financial resources and refuges for women in danger and their children. Measures should be taken to control the proliferation of firearms in society.

Globally, questions have been asked on how police utilized additional powers created to manage the spread of the COVID-19 virus without negatively impacting police legitimacy. This was particularly a concern in countries that had hitherto recorded high incidents of police misconduct prior to the emergence of the pandemic. Using a victim-centered approach, a qualitative study was conducted to examine the dimensions of unlawful use of force, human rights violations, and other police misconduct which prevailed during the enforcement of the COVID-19 lockdown in Nigeria. In all, 82 interviews with victims of police violence were conducted, and a thematic analysis of the narratives was carried out. Findings indicate negative perceptions of police legitimacy to intervene in public health crises. In building better community relations that will engender public compliance with police directives, the police authority is advised to purge itself of its militarized system, with officers undergoing procedural justice training and imbibing its principles.

The fundamental scheme of the Indian Constitution furthers absolute antagonism against the sedition provision that has its underpinnings in the archaic principles of the colonial era. Commentators on Indian law and politics have raised concerns that the country’s sedition law runs counter to India’s peculiar libertarian constitutional framework. The trepidation of the accused is intensified by ambiguous, vague and unclear wording of Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code. This article examines the judicial promotion of free speech in sedition cases as law under the aegis of Article 141 of the Constitution of India. By investigating its ancestry, the author proposes to shed light on the circumstances behind the conception and establishment of the Sedition Act in colonial India. The article further intends to comparatively analyse and examine the sedition statutes of India and other countries, including the United Kingdom and the United States of America, etc., with a comprehensive emphasis on the philosophy and rulings of the respective Supreme Courts. The article concludes by proposing that India’s arbitrary sedition statute should be repealed for being redundant and in derogation with the country’s professed legal compass, the “Rule of Law”.

Judiciary and litigation are the two most prominent types of activities within the legal profession. The judicial aspect of the profession entails the interpretation of laws and the administration of justice in a fair and impartial manner. As a concept, justice entails protecting society from offenders and evildoers who deviate from society’s norms and engage in illegal behaviour by punishing and sentencing them. Due to the predominance of the human factor in the legal profession, which has such a significant impact on the lives of all members of society, it is crucial to investigate whether there is a guiding force behind dispensing justice and, if so, how effective these guidelines or policy measures have been. As crime rates rise and societal standards fall in the contemporary era, the legal profession grapples with the complexities of modern criminal behaviour. Particularly in the realm of judicial sentencing, there is a need for guidelines that account for the diversity of crimes and their individualistic nature. In India, long pungencies in court cases and a decline in the State’s conviction rate further exacerbate these issues. This paper examines the pressing need for comprehensive, well-structured sentencing guidelines that promote transparency, fairness and efficiency in the judicial process. Through a detailed review of recent high-profile court cases and an analysis of current practices and policies, this paper highlights the urgency of reform in the sentencing process to enhance public trust in the legal system. This article provides additional information on the subject.

Two of Donald Trump administration’s most salient legacies are the high level of crime victimization and low popularity ratings among groups likely to be targeted by crime, such as females and race and ethnic minorities. To explore crime victimization and public opinion towards the president, the article tests whether gender and race determinants among crime victims were associated with trust in the president and job performance approval. Results indicated that females and female victims of crime were less likely to reward presidential performance and trust Trump. Blacks and Latinos were less likely to trust Trump and less likely to reward his job performance; however, there was no effect when moderating by whether they reported being victims of crime. Victims of crime in unsafe neighbourhoods were less likely to trust and reward presidential performance. More surprisingly, being a crime victim was a significant and positive predictor of trusting Trump and rewarding his job performance. The results tell us about the need to continue studying the public’s wishes for the authorities to respond to the problem of victimization, oftentimes rewarding populist approaches to punitive justice, incarceration and overall tougher criminal policies.

Many eldercides in African societies are motivated by witchcraft beliefs. Yet, witchcraft-related eldercide remains an understudied criminological subject. The present study explores the scale, features and socio-cultural and economic contexts of witchcraft-related elder homicide in Kenya. A total of 94 media articles reporting the witchcraft-related killings of 136 older people in Kenya between January 2012 and December 2021 were perused. Key information about the victims and perpetrators and the circumstances surrounding each event/eldercide was collected and critically analysed. The data suggest that approximately 75% of witchcraft-related homicide victims in Kenya are 60 years old and above. Most victims were females (mainly widows) of low socio-economic backgrounds. All the cases occurred in rural communities, and the perpetrators were largely young adult males. Arson, slashing with a machete and clubbing/beating were the dominant methods used to kill alleged witches. Most killings were motivated by the belief that the victims caused misfortunes/calamities by witchcraft. However, witchcraft allegations and concomitant killings were sometimes weaponized to obtain the victims’ property/land. Because witchcraft beliefs are deeply entrenched in the culture and philosophy of the Kenyan people, the use of a multifaceted approach may be the most appropriate way of curtailing the problem.

The rapid proliferation of digital technologies has ushered in a new epoch replete with unprecedented challenges about safeguarding personal privacy and the unauthorized dissemination of intimate images. This article explores the intricate legal landscape encompassing the Indian Penal Code, Information Technology Act, Digital Personal Data Protection Act and the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita Bill. This analytical pursuit casts a gaze upon the imperative task of addressing the non-consensual dissemination of intimate images within the contours of the digital milieu. This article comprehensively explores the potential repercussions of digital transgressions, laying bare the seismic impacts on individuals’ privacy, inherent dignity and psychological well-being. More than a mere exploration, this paper unfurls a roadmap for conceptualizing a holistic and productive legal framework in India – uniquely attuned to tackling the complex challenge of non-consensual dissemination of intimate images. Embedded within this endeavour are methodically derived recommendations, conceived upon the bedrock of meticulous dissection of pertinent legal provisions, nuanced analysis of case law and astute juxtapositions with international approaches to analogous predicaments. The overarching objective herein is to propel the evolution of a legal edifice that transcends the constraints of the digital epoch by forging a harmonious amalgamation of its principles with the bedrock tenets of human rights. At the heart of this scholarly endeavour lies an unswerving commitment – to secure and uphold individuals’ sanctified digital privacy inviolability. The ultimate goal is to erect formidable safeguards that staunchly shield individuals from the consequences concomitant with encroachments upon their digital sanctums. Through this concerted initiative, the pursuit of a legal landscape that is not only equitable and reasonable but also at pace with the dynamic digitalization landscape stands foregrounded. This work is thus a clarion call that echoes the need for continuous refinement in the pursuit of justice within the digital echelons of our society.