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This study aims to investigate the resilience of Italian companies one year after the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreak by examining the companies' choices and opinions regarding the welfare state, criminal approaches and mergers and acquisitions (M&As) during the pandemic.

The authors proposed a conceptual framework based on a combination of private vs public protection and business resilience theory and adopted a concurrent embedded mixed-method approach, using an online survey of 219 entrepreneurs.

The authors find the respondents showing high resilience to the crisis and strongly unaffected by organised crime's (OC's) predatory role; the State seems to have quickly and effectively met the financial needs of sampled Italian companies, at least in the short term.

Whilst welfare can be highly effective for companies to combat crime, regulators should recognise that public protection may decrease with time, leaving companies open to long-term challenges.

The authors believe that our study makes a significant contribution to the entrepreneurship literature because this is the first study to explore how entrepreneurs deal with financing problems in a context characterised by a strong impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and OC pressure.

A growing body of work suggests that welfare and punishment should be understood as alternative, yet interconnected ways of governing poor and marginalized populations. While there is considerable evidence of a punitive turn in welfare and penal institutions over the past half century, recent studies show that welfare and carceral institutions increasingly comanage millions of people caught at the intersection of the welfare and penal sectors. The growth of “mass supervision” and the expansion of the social services sector help explain the blurring of welfare and punishment in the United States in daily practice. We suggest that these developments complicate the idea of an institutional trade-off and contend that welfare and punishment are best understood along a continuum of state management in which poor and socially marginalized populations are subjected to varying degrees of support, surveillance, and sanction. In presenting the punishment–welfare continuum, we pay particular attention to the “murky middle” between the two spheres: an interinstitutional space that has emerged in the context of mass supervision and a social services–centric safety net. We show that people caught in the “murky middle” receive some social supports and services, but also face pervasive surveillance and control and must adapt to the tangle of obligations and requirements in ways that both extend punishment and limit their ability to successfully participate in mainstream institutions.

While research often elaborates on outcomes of youth remand more broadly, the specific impact that remand has on indigenous young people can be overlooked, particularly in Australia. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper analyses interview data gathered from eight individual service providers from six community youth organisations in a city in Queensland, Australia.

Participants reported the specific effects of remand for indigenous young people and their families, noting especially the negative impact on the young people’s emotional, social and psychological development.

Results strongly suggest there is a blurring of the welfare and justice systems inherent within remand processes with indigenous young people, with remand employed so frequently that it has itself become a form of social support.

The purpose of the current study was two‐fold: to explore police officers' perceptions of the daily challenges involved in child abuse investigation and how those challenges affect their ability to undertake child abuse investigations, and to explore how these challenges are managed on a daily basis.

This study employed a qualitative research design. In‐depth interviews were conducted with a diverse sample of 25 police officers working in child abuse units across three Australian states.

Inductive thematic analysis revealed that heavy caseload and collaboration with other professional groups are two key sources of negative work stress frequently associated with child abuse investigation. Further, despite the provision of organisational strategies aimed at reducing work stress, the officers tended to rely predominantly on informal coping mechanisms.

This study has raised many questions for further research aimed at developing interventions to assist police organisations in managing work stress.

This paper provides an in‐depth analysis of the key challenges associated with child abuse investigation and the coping mechanisms employed for overcoming these challenges from the unique perspective of police officers authorised to investigate child abuse.

Scholars increasingly recognize the centrality of legal ideas and language to the political vision that inspires American conservatism. However, relevant studies have been limited to the discursive practices that motivate conservative activism at the grass-root level. Exploration of the legal discourses employed by prominent public officials thus carries significant scholarly potential. For example, this chapter's investigation of President Ronald Reagan reveals that his political vision was suffused with legal discourse. Reagan's legal discourse, moreover, has exerted constitutive effects both on American conservatism and on the form and substance of a great deal of contemporary American public policy.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight, challenge and explain the inequitable treatment of tax and welfare fraudsters in the criminal justice systems of Australia and New Zealand. The authors offer prejudice by way of explanation and suggest that it is also prejudice that restricts the implementation of more equitable processes. A second objective of the study is to highlight the importance of critical tax research as an instrument to agitate for social change.

A survey captures 3,000 respondents’ perceptions of the likelihood that different “types” of people will commit welfare or tax fraud. Using social dominance theory, the authors investigate the extent to which prejudice impacts on attitudes towards those engaged in these fraudulent activities.

The authors find the presence of traditional stereotypes, such as the perception that businessmen are more likely to commit tax fraud and people receiving welfare assistance are more likely to commit fraud. The authors also find strong preferences towards respondents’ own in-group, whereby businessmen, Maori and people receiving welfare assistance believed that their own group was less likely to commit either crime.

Where in-group preference exists among those who construct and enforce the rules relating to investigations, prosecutions and sentencing of tax and welfare fraud, it is perhaps unsurprising that welfare recipients attract less societal support than other groups who have support from their own in-groups that have greater power, resources and influence.

The study highlights the difficulty of social change in the presence of strong in-group preference and prejudice. Cognisance of in-group preference is relevant to the accounting profession where elements of self-regulation remain. In-group preferences may impact on services provided, as well as professional development and education.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the neglect of girls in care who come into conflict with the law, arguing that a gender-neutral approach in this area risks further marginalising an already vulnerable population.

A critical review of the literature and current policy climate is undertaken to explore what is known about the experiences of females in the justice system, as well as knowledge gaps.

Evidence on the prevalence and nature of offending by girls in care is limited. However, as looked after children, girls may be more likely to have their own behaviour unnecessarily criminalised. Whilst females and males share some prior experiences of victimisation and trauma, girls also have distinct needs and may be assessed and managed by state care and control systems in very different ways.

The paper is not based on primary research and does not present a systematic review of the literature.

The need to listen to girls and young women, and a far greater recognition of backgrounds of trauma must underpin future policy and practice. Diversion from the formal criminal justice system wherever possible is also a key goal to aspire to.

This paper focuses on the specific experiences of females. It calls for a gender-sensitive, trauma-informed approach to working with girls and women from the care system who come into conflict with the law, and questions the value of criminalising those whom the state previously deemed to be in need of welfare and support.

Neoliberalism has profoundly influenced the relationship between law and the state. Market rhetoric and ideology have fostered Janus faces of law, a double vision of law where both sides of the face adhere to one another through neoliberalism. One face relies on market values and individual liberty, seemingly favoring the reduction of state authority, actually to enhance law’s power. The other Janus face, also drawing on values of market efficiency and individual responsibility, expands criminal justice and its role in the state. Together the Janus faces of law diminish democratic values and practices of law in favor of economic growth, efficient governance, and punishment.