Search

For decades, developing countries have faced international pressure to adopt the techniques and tactics consistent with the drug war. These have had profound and adverse consequences. While cannabis prohibition and drug control generally are topics that lend themselves to established comparative studies, engaging cannabis as a substantive topic engages numerous aspects of criminal justice systems. In this paper, we link cannabis to concepts related to recent formulations of international criminology. Next, we outline how the history of cannabis prohibition requires adopting a more critical global lens and consider the role of legal technical assistance to support countries renegotiating cannabis control in the twenty-first century. Beyond the formal tools and informal techniques commonly used within legal technical assistance, we argue expanding tolerance can disrupt the tendency for reform to expand social control. While embracing tolerance may serve as an antidote to some penal modalities, this must be combined with policies that regulate the aversion many feel toward cannabis and people who use it. Harm reduction provides a useful frame to combine these concepts and orient critical models of international criminology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cannabis liberalization is a fascinating case study in moral-legal re-negotiation. From broad international examples of decriminalization to specific local legalization models, numerous criminological questions are emerging. This paper describes three significant challenges for cannabis liberalization. These include persistent inequalities associated with policing cannabis, the invisibility of coercive care and control within diversion, and the hazards associated with illusory policy reform. We present Cannabis Criminology as a multidisciplinary effort to understand the prohibition, decriminalization, legalization, and nascent regulation of cannabis in ways that acknowledge but transcend law-based paradigms. Consistent with criminology's multiple and sometimes contradictory dimensions, we outline five thematic areas that can inform the study of cannabis. These include law, society, and social control, police and policing cannabis, race, ethnicity and intrusion, the economics of cannabis use, and cannabis and criminal behavior. Finally, we conclude that privileging the views of people who use cannabis can provoke more inclusive, participatory, and otherwise imaginative efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While efforts to restrict the use of cannabis are more than a century old, policy liberalization is more recent. History suggests that the growing tolerance for cannabis will continue to be met with opposition. Cannabis policy has been trapped in a recurrent rotation from acceptance and increased use to hostility and expansive efforts to control those who consume it. This paper considers how historical criminology can uncover criminological artifacts to conceive, frame, and clarify cannabis criminalization, decriminalization, and liberalization. As a subject, cannabis was shaped by forces that had little to do with the plant itself, which led it to be socially constructed as evil, dangerous, or otherwise risky. We consider the history of cannabis through the lenses of race, addiction, and research and explore reports from five different countries on cannabis and criminal justice policy. • Outlines unique historical approach to the field of criminology. • Examines primary sources for key themes: race; addiction; research. • Links older reports with more recent history of cannabis policy. • Considers international dimension of cannabis prohibition as historical case study. • Outlines how this method might inform other historical examinations in criminology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is increasing interest in the use of visual tools and techniques in criminology. Many efforts are based on cultural and critical assumptions and focus on the spectacle of images. However, visual criminology may offer a wider variety of options to produce, frame and disseminate large amounts of information in more accessible ways. Of specific interest in this article is the potential for visual criminology to better present complex research findings. To this end, we discuss visual criminological efforts that have been used to engage audiences through social media. We replicate and consider key info-graphics on issues such as mass incarceration, 'stop and frisk', and police killings. Finally, we consider some potential problems for those interested in expanding visual approaches in criminology, and present six general propositions to be tested and further explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Restorative justice presents important opportunities for those who work in the criminal justice system and those interested in community building through informal mechanisms of social control. Yet fears exist that as a result of the 'paradoxical identity' (Pavlich, 2005) of restorative justice, greater integration within the traditional justice system will lead to its co-optation. This article argues that any identity challenge can be addressed by re-situating restorative justice principles within existent criminological theories such as social disorganization, social learning and moral development. In this way, the values and characteristics central to restorative processes can be seen as complimentary and consistent and common theoretical ground can serve as the basis for greater cooperative ventures between individuals, communities and the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]