Brittany VandeBerg – författare

Gun Present takes us inside the everyday operations of the law at a courthouse in the Deep South. Illuminating the challenges accompanying the prosecution of criminal cases involving guns, the three coauthors—an anthropologist, a geographer, and a district attorney—present a deeply human portrait of prosecutors’ work. Built on an immersive, community-based participatory partnership between researchers and criminal justice professionals, Gun Present chronicles how a justice assemblage comprising institutional structures and practices, relationships and roles, and individual moral and emotional worlds informs the day-to-day administration of justice. Weaving together in-depth interviews, quantitative analysis of more than a thousand criminal cases, analysis of trial transcripts, and over a year of ethnographic observations, Gun Present provides a model for scholar-practitioner collaborations.

Gun Present takes us inside the everyday operations of the law at a courthouse in the Deep South. Illuminating the challenges accompanying the prosecution of criminal cases involving guns, the three coauthors—an anthropologist, a geographer, and a district attorney—present a deeply human portrait of prosecutors’ work. Built on an immersive, community-based participatory partnership between researchers and criminal justice professionals, Gun Present chronicles how a justice assemblage comprising institutional structures and practices, relationships and roles, and individual moral and emotional worlds informs the day-to-day administration of justice. Weaving together in-depth interviews, quantitative analysis of more than a thousand criminal cases, analysis of trial transcripts, and over a year of ethnographic observations, Gun Present provides a model for scholar-practitioner collaborations.

Drawing from an interdisciplinary body of research and data, Women of Piracy employs a criminological lens to explore how women have been involved in, and impacted by, maritime piracy operations from the 16th century to present day piracy off the coast of Somalia.The book challenges and resists popular understandings of women as peripheral to the criminal enterprise of piracy by presenting and analyzing their roles and experiences as victims, perpetrators, and criminal justice actors, showing that women have been, and continue to be, central figures in maritime piracy. Unfolding in three parts, part one sets the context by providing readers with a history of the masculinization of the sea. Part two focuses on the gendered division of labor in piracy operations, discussing how and why the roles and responsibilities associated with this gendered labor have emerged, persisted, evolved, and/or ceased over time, as well as considering which roles and responsibilities appear to be context-specific and which seem to transgress geographical locations. Part three explores how women have (or have not) been brought to justice for their participation in crimes of piracy as well as the roles of women in efforts to combat piracy. The overarching objective is to ignite a broader discussion about the various cultural, social, historical, and economic forces that create opportunities for women to participate in maritime piracy and counter-piracy, why women continue to be invisible figures of piracy, and what implications this has for how we study, police, and bring pirates to justice.The first criminologically-grounded, global study exploring the continuity and evolution of women in maritime piracy, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of criminology, gender, feminist studies, international relations, anthropology, history, and political geography. It will also be useful to maritime and law enforcement professionals.

Drawing from an interdisciplinary body of research and data, Women of Piracy employs a criminological lens to explore how women have been involved in, and impacted by, maritime piracy operations from the 16th century to present day piracy off the coast of Somalia.The book challenges and resists popular understandings of women as peripheral to the criminal enterprise of piracy by presenting and analyzing their roles and experiences as victims, perpetrators, and criminal justice actors, showing that women have been, and continue to be, central figures in maritime piracy. Unfolding in three parts, part one sets the context by providing readers with a history of the masculinization of the sea. Part two focuses on the gendered division of labor in piracy operations, discussing how and why the roles and responsibilities associated with this gendered labor have emerged, persisted, evolved, and/or ceased over time, as well as considering which roles and responsibilities appear to be context-specific and which seem to transgress geographical locations. Part three explores how women have (or have not) been brought to justice for their participation in crimes of piracy as well as the roles of women in efforts to combat piracy. The overarching objective is to ignite a broader discussion about the various cultural, social, historical, and economic forces that create opportunities for women to participate in maritime piracy and counter-piracy, why women continue to be invisible figures of piracy, and what implications this has for how we study, police, and bring pirates to justice.The first criminologically-grounded, global study exploring the continuity and evolution of women in maritime piracy, this book will be of great interest to students and scholars of criminology, gender, feminist studies, international relations, anthropology, history, and political geography. It will also be useful to maritime and law enforcement professionals.

This unprecedentedly expansive international collection of empirical and theoretical material explores the nascent field of criminology and affect. Affect theory first arose as an analytical framework to conceptualize and understand dynamic emotional relationships between individuals and the social environment. Despite the tremendous potential utility for affect theory to assist criminologists with conceptualizing crime and justice, affect remains underutilized in criminological research. Uniting research from otherwise geographically and culturally disparate locales under affect’s analytical umbrella presents a unique opportunity to demonstrate how criminologists can utilize affect theory to understand aspects of the justice process that otherwise prove elusive.The Handbook is organized around the most pressing topics of interest to researchers, policymakers, and practitioners engaged with crime and the administration of justice. The first set of chapters explore emotion management among police officers and security workers, socio-legal approaches to police violence, and dynamic interactions between historical and security apparatuses. Section Two examines the intersection of guns and emotions, how crime concerns and perceived victimization risks affect public support for harsher criminal sanctions, the academic study of criminal decision-making, and how women in the sex trade affectively navigate criminalization and social exclusion. The key topics underpinning Section Three include incorporating affect theory into genocide studies, emotions and justice in maritime piracy trials, agricultural crime and farmer mental health, the affective risks criminal justice systems can pose to victims of intimate partner violence, and trauma and affect among justice-involved individuals. Section Four engages with the role of emotions in perceptions of photo and video evidence, judicial authority, family group therapy for juvenile offenders, and how legal decisionmakers interpret remorse. Section Five features chapters on courtroom video testimony, rape trials, and affective dimensions of death penalty cases for jurors and members of the public. Section Six tackles political dimensions of knowledge production, identity formation in prison dog training programs, carceral exclusion through family estrangement, institutional and social constructions of incarcerated women’s emotional wellbeing, and how prisoners create positive affect. Section Seven focuses on penal evaluation, public perceptions of parole worthiness, and the ethics of publicly performing work created by incarcerated women. The final section addresses emotions in sexual violence research, ethnographic interviews about organized crime, narrative criminology’s affective dimensions, and the emotional dynamics of doing team-based work on violence against women in the researcher’s home community.By focusing on emotion as a dynamic and transmissible component of human interaction, this important work illuminates how researchers and practitioners can account for the less tangible—but nonetheless extremely significant—aspects of the justice process.

This innovative work tells the story of a unique partnership between a state prison administration and a team of incarcerated women, prison administrators, researchers, artists, and students known as The WoW Collective due to their joint efforts in developing a peer mentoring program called “Women’s Words/Women’s Worlds (WoW).” Using the example of WoW, the book provides a guide to doing community-based participatory research (CBPR) with women in prison that takes a collaborative—rather than the typically adversarial—approach to working together toward the goal of transformative social change. This book provides a ground-breaking example of how incarcerated women, prison administrators, researchers, and artists successfully worked together on a community-based project that led to meaningful results in the form of a peer mentoring program designed by women in prison for women in prison. Remaining closely attuned to the ethical dimensions of doing CBPR in a highly structured prison environment, this book provides inspiration to CBPR practitioners who seek to work within the criminal justice system to create real and meaningful change for the better. Co-authored by two criminologists, a senior prison administrator, and the unique collective known as WoW, this book provides both a clear step-by-step CBPR guide and a visionary approach to working with criminal justice practitioners.