Indigenous movements in Bolivia have long struggled for legal recognition and autonomy, culminating in constitutional reforms that formally recognise Indigenous jurisdiction as a key dimension of self-determination. This article argues, however, that the practical operation of legal pluralism in Bolivia is shaped less by constitutional design than by the institutional weakness of the Constitutional Court. Through analysis of the Zongo case, it examines how the Court’s pluralist rulings, while doctrinally affirming Indigenous jurisdiction and advancing intercultural and decolonial reasoning, remain ineffectively enforced, producing two interrelated consequences. First, Indigenous communities are continuously criminalised for actions undertaken within constitutionally recognised Indigenous jurisdiction. Second, criminalisation compels them to engage defensively with ordinary jurisdiction, generating juridification that destabilises collective authority. Together, these dynamics show how legal pluralism, when selectively enforced, operates in practice as neocolonial governance: Indigenous autonomy is formally affirmed yet subordinated by the persistent supremacy of ordinary legal power.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought about changes to almost every aspect of life. Courts were no exception, with the pandemic dramatically increasing the use of virtual court hearings. This paper explores virtual hearings and their impact on therapeutic approaches to judging, which prioritise connection and engagement between judicial officers and participants. While particularly drawing on the experience in Australia and the United Kingdom, the paper draws on broader international research to identify the potential challenges of seeking to conduct therapeutic judging online, but also areas where the virtual environment might improve participants’ therapeutic experience. Further research on this topic is likely to be fruitful, as virtual court hearings become a more entrenched part of court practice. We therefore canvass areas for future research, to enhance the therapeutic potential of the judicial role in a virtual environment.

Citizenship fraud poses a global threat to the integrity and governance of nation-states. In Kuwait, it has long been a critical issue, prompting recent decisive measures to address fraudulent citizenship claims. These illegitimate claims undermine national identity and security. This article frames citizenship fraud as a global phenomenon and presents Kuwait as a case study, examining its historical challenges and recent anti-fraud efforts. To explain the occurrence and persistence of this issue, the study applies Cressey’s Fraud Triangle, a prominent criminological theory, while also incorporating structural factors unique to the Kuwaiti context. Furthermore, the paper advocates for a public criminology approach to address broader challenges facing the discipline in Kuwait and the Arab region. By analysing Kuwait’s current anti-fraud campaign and exploring future deterrence strategies, this study fills a gap in the literature on fraudulent nationality claims, offering a rare criminological perspective on a complex and politically sensitive issue.

This empirical study examines the potential and the obstacles of transitional justice in addressing the denial of the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar (also known as Burma). It utilizes a qualitative research approach, drawing on relevant scholarship of truth-seeking as a transitional justice mechanism, criminology and international law. Empirical data were collected through in-depth interviews with victims of the Rohingya community and key informants in two separate stages between 2022 and 2023. This study presents an interdisciplinary approach to assess the role of a truth commission – a truth-seeking tool – in confronting Myanmar’s denial of this crime. It suggests that examining amnesties, as well as disarmament, reintegration and rehabilitation programmes for the individual perpetrators within the framework of a truth commission can provide a more nuanced discourse of addressing the decades-long denial of the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar.

This article explores contemporary discourses of deviation in early twentieth-century Colombia. Through analysis of a presidential assassination attempt in 1906, known as the Crime of Barrocolorado, it discusses the social construction of notions of criminality and danger in the light of the history of emotions. The assault on the president triggered a series of commentaries and reactions that revolved around anarchism, medicine, and criminology, topics that are dissected and connected here in search of their emotional components. In this way, the study brings forth the importance of emotions in the construction of social and political ideas in the past.

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 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.

Following the premiere of Tosca in January 1900, Giacomo Puccini's progressive critics generally took issue with two main aspects of the opera: the first was the composer's supposedly unoriginal modes of expression, and the second was the work's scandalous plot. While many attributed the dark tone of Tosca to its French source, Sardou's melodrama La Tosca, I contend that there is an underlying context for both the dramatic and the musical unsavouriness of Puccini's verismo opera: the Italian fascination with criminology. Beginning in the 1870s after Italian unification, positivist criminologists, led by Cesare Lombroso, sought to locate the organic causes of criminality and believed that deviancy was objectively readable through the body. Lombroso further conceptualised the ‘born criminal’ as an exceptional individual that was predisposed to artistic expression. His theories, rooted in deeply troubling stereotypes and conventional wisdom, gained traction with a bourgeois public as well as with contemporary luminaries, including Giuseppe Giacosa, one of Puccini's librettists. Drawing on Lombroso's writings, letters and archived objects, I show how the criminologist's bourgeois version of perversity provides a valuable framework to evaluate the derivative modes of deviant expression present not only in Tosca, but within verismo opera at large.

The criminological dimension of crime generally does not arouse great enthusiasm from researchers in Arab countries, unlike Anglo-Saxon- or French-speaking countries. Admittedly, Western criminology is more advanced, but it is more interested in common crimes than in mass crimes such as crimes against humanity, genocide, human trafficking or terrorism. However, the rare existing studies reveal the emergence of a criminology of massive human rights violations and expose some particularities of this criminal phenomenon. These include the often transnational nature of the crimes, the geographical, socio-economic and political disparity of criminals, the high number of victims, and more. The relationship between criminal law, criminology and human rights should be examined to determine the complementarity of the law and the empirical criminal sciences in crime prevention.

This paper considers experiences of penal and voluntary-sector interventions in the lives of young people labelled as ‘troubled’ or ‘at risk’ of criminal behaviour. Drawing on data from a case-study conducted in the north of England, this paper focuses on the narratives of young people ‘on the margins’ of society who were involved with a range of community-based interventions, specifically youth clubs, a support group and a mandatory youth justice course. We consider how young people experience and respond to stigmatising elements prevalent in the structured interventions and everyday interactions with the institutions and agencies intended to support them. We argue that ‘promotive’ relationships between young people and the adults working with them enable young people to challenge risk-based identities and navigate the barriers they face.