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The purpose of this paper is to discuss the criminogenic nature of isomorphism and groupthink in business organisations with a view to developing a conceptual model of the criminalisation process leading to criminal behaviour within businesses.

This paper draws on institutional theory and social psychology theory to discuss how isomorphic and groupthink processes may lead to criminal behaviour in the corporate world. The paper is based on a rigorous review of the relevant literature and theoretical frameworks regarding isomorphic dynamics, processes, factors, forces and mechanisms in the business context. The review was guided by a question of how isomorphic and groupthink processes can transform business organisations and its members into offenders. The approach applied was to transfer the existing theories of isomorphism and groupthink into the field of criminology, in order to devise a new model of the process of criminalisation.

The effects of isomorphic and groupthink processes can have a criminogenic effect on businesses and individuals in organisational settings which may coerce agents to engage in criminal behaviour. In crime-facilitative circumstances, isomorphism and groupthink foster criminal activity by cultivating homogeneous behaviour, conformity, resemblance, shared values and identical ways of thinking across and within firms. This herd behaviour can be regarded as one of the explanations for the pervasiveness of criminal and unethical behaviour in the corporate world, the consequences of which could be devastating.

This is a theoretical analysis, not one based on empirical findings, though it does suggest a model for future testing.

This study explains the criminogenic nature of isomorphic and groupthink processes and contributes to the debate on the casualisation of corporate crime. This has important implications for the deterrence of illegal and unethical activities at both the organisational and institutional levels.

This study provides a conceptual model of the criminalisation process in businesses fostered by criminogenic isomorphism and groupthink.

Considerations of the legal rights of incarcerated juveniles are often concerned with the myriad ways in which due process rights are circumscribed, abridged, or undermined by the operations of the juvenile court (e.g., Berkheiser, 2016; Cleary, 2017; Feld, 1999; Rapisarda & Kaplan, 2016). Studies of youth legal consciousness have additionally sought to explore the role of media, legal status, court experiences, and even parents in the formation of youth attitudes about the justice system (e.g., Abrego, 2011; Brisman, 2010; Greene, Sprott, Madon, & Jung, 2010; Pennington, 2017). This chapter builds on this work by exploring the way rights shaped the everyday lives of incarcerated youth. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in a juvenile hall, this chapter explores three different moments outside of a formal legal context where the invocation of due process rights limited the self-expression and exploration of incarcerated youth. In each of these cases, the invocation of protecting due process rights by adults served to stifle youth efforts to remake juvenile hall as a place open and receptive to their needs. These three moments demonstrate that rights project a particular legal vision onto a world that does not neatly conform to the reality in which youth lived. For these reasons, the consideration of legal rights for youth must also consider how these rights can forestall the very transformation in circumstances that many youth seek.

Purpose – This chapter discusses the criminalization of sharing music on peer-to-peer (p2p) networks. Taking the Italian situation into consideration, it aims to introduce a socio-legal reflection about the processes of construction of this deviance.

Design methodology/approach – Adopting a constructionist approach, this chapter first explores the ways in which the social problem of music piracy was built in Italy. The choice of the legislator to place this practice within the category of criminal behaviour was analysed and examined. In the second section, the points of view of other participants involved in the practice of file sharing are taken into account.

Findings – Placing file sharing within the jurisdiction of criminal law does not seem to respond to the needs to counter the infringement of a shared social value, but it rather seems to reflect the protagonists’ involvement into the process of legislative decision about piracy conception and idea of the damage caused by this phenomenon, promoted and conveyed by the music business. The way in which piracy is conceived by Italian legislation emerges here in its partial understanding of the effects of this practice. Sharing music on digital networks appears as a highly conflicted crime, whose harmfulness is scarcely perceived by the society. Furthermore, file sharing repression policy seems to give shape to a new victimless crime, whose harmful effects do not seem to actually fall back on artists or consumers.

Originality/value – Sharing music on the net and violating copyright is little studied from the perspective of the sociology of crime. Using this approach, this chapter contributes to a better understanding of the phenomenon.

This chapter explores processes of stratification in reproductive healthcare and considers the ways in which mechanisms of inclusion/exclusion shape reproductive opportunities and experiences. First, I consider the process of “selective inclusion” among sexual minority women. This examination questions the schisms that exist within the sexual minority population in regard to their visibility and legibility in medical, scientific, and public health discourses and constructions of reproductive health. The second process I examine is that of “exclusionary inclusion” among substance using pregnant women who have been collectively deemed “bad breeders” by medical and state authorities and whose reproduction is explicitly monitored, regulated, and criminalized. The final process I discuss is “side-stepping inclusion” which describes the healthcare and consumer decisions of women who circumvent medicalized childbirth experiences by employing the services of a midwife for their pregnancy and birth care. This chapter examines how medicalization, biomedicalization, and de-medicalization dynamically work together to expand and delimit inclusionary processes, emphasizing the spectral and interconnected quality of these processes. By exploring various processes of inclusion that shape reproductive experiences of these disparate and differentially marginalized populations, this chapter provides a conceptual and critical meditation on the ways in which “respectable reproduction” is deployed in reproductive care. In considering these processes of inclusion and the ways in which they are co-produced by medical discourses and practices, scholars may more clearly grasp some fundamental mechanisms of stratification in reproductive healthcare and knowledge production.

In this paper on police officers who monitor coffee shops in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, I relate their work to Becker’s moral entrepreneur (1963). Becker describes two categories of moral entrepreneurs: rule creators, such as the crusading reformer, and rule enforcers, for example the police. According to Becker, the rule enforcer is less naïve and more pragmatic than the rule creator. The main question of this paper is: in what respect can the work of the police officers be described as moral entrepreneurship? To answer this question I conducted in-depth interviews with six police officers on the meaning they attach to their duties of monitoring coffee shops. The research shows that police officers take a pragmatic approach, which also contains layers of morality that influence their rule enforcing. For instance, the way they define the character and intentions of the coffee shop managers is decisive in how they act towards them. Another difference is observed in relation to the two interests of the rule enforcer described by Becker. The police officers interviewed did not have to justify their existence and they did not have to gain respect by coercion. This is explained by (a) the routine character of the monitoring, which has created a predictable situation and a modus operandi known to all parties and (b) the criminalization of cannabis in recent years. The effect of this process is that the position of police officers in relation to cannabis sellers is not questioned.

Incorporating DuBois's concept of a racial “double-consciousness” and extending Foucault's work on the Panopticon, I examine current day racial profiling processes and the effects of hyper-surveillance on communities of color. DuBois suggests that the citizen of color has a sense of duality based upon minority status and being an American. This duality offers insight into the way race “works” that few Whites comprehend. Foucault argues that the permanent visibility of those subjected to the Panopticon generates awareness of the power differential between individuals and the state. The current examination is a contextualization of narratives from people of color who experience governance and surveillance via racial profiling.

Brazil occupies third place in the world ranking in terms of the prison population in the National Penitentiary System, reflecting a policy of zero tolerance and mass imprisonment of citizens in conditions of vulnerability. Even though incarcerated women are a minority group in Brazil, there is an increase in the percentage of them being subjected to criminal control. According to the latest official data, the number is approximately 38,000 women, representing an increase of 675% between 2000 and 2016 – which puts Brazil in third place among those countries that most imprison women, behind the USA and Thailand. Criminal selectivity works in an explicit way, given that the majority of incarcerated women in Brazil are young, Black, poor and semi-literate. The crime of drug trafficking accounts for more than 62% of female imprisonments, which is a much higher percentage than that of men for the same crime (41%). From a feminist perspective, this chapter analyses and reflects on the specific characteristics of female criminality related to drug trafficking, highlighting how the intersection between gender, race, class and age informs the criminalisation process of women in Brazil.

The paper aims to explore the relationship between rough sleepers, welfare and policy in the city of Liverpool, taking Liverpool City Council's Homelessness Strategy 2008‐2011 as a starting point. The paper takes as its premise the notion of rough sleepers as among the most vulnerable and marginalised in society, and questions how well they are protected by policy.

The approach used is analysis and contextualisation of the strategy document in terms of welfare and criminological perspectives.

The paper posits that the city's European Capital of Culture Status for 2008 has acted as a springboard for further consumerist and regeneration‐driven aspirations, facilitated by restriction of entitlement to access city space for groups such as rough sleepers. The piece explores responses to rough sleepers and other “undesirable” city centre space users in Liverpool and contends that their behaviour and activities are criminalised. Ultimately, it is argued that the city, whilst it prioritises its goal of becoming a “world‐class city”, fails to deliver in terms of its welfare obligations.

It is argued that the failure of the strategy to adequately consider the direct needs of rough sleepers renders them subject to other approaches, namely criminalisation. The article is valuable to both academics interested in aspects of social justice and practitioners engaged in policy making, in that it highlights some of the ways in which policy can fail to meet its basic requirements.

Purpose – To examine the immigration, crime and justice nexus from the perspective of non-state theorists.

Method – Review and synthesis of the literature.

Findings – The process of criminalization and victimization of immigrants is part of a wider situation of the neo-liberal development that causes destruction of the former social structure and thus of the practices of negotiated and peaceful management of disorder, discomfort and social problems. Fears and uncertainties connected to destruction of the political organization of society are exploited to support a securitarism that fails to create security but excels in reproducing insecurity.

Value – The criminalization and victimization of immigrants is seen from a much broader perspective than normally found, one that links those issues to political economy and global social structures.