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T​his book critically explores how and to what extent artificial intelligence (AI) can infringe human rights and/or lead to socially harmful consequences and how to avoid these. The European Union has outlined how it will use big data, machine learning, and AI to tackle a number of inherently social problems, including poverty, climate change, social inequality and criminality. The contributors of this book argue that the developments in AI must take place in an appropriate legal and ethical framework and they make recommendations to ensure that harm and human rights violations are avoided. The book is split into two parts: the first addresses human rights violations and harms that may occur in relation to AI in different domains (e.g. border control, surveillance, facial recognition) and the second part offers recommendations to address these issues. It draws on interdisciplinary research and speaks to policy-makers and criminologists, sociologists, scholars in STS studies, security studies scholars and legal scholars.

Drawing on a novel blend of moral philosophy, social science, psychoanalytic theory and continental philosophy, this book offers up a diagnosis of contemporary liberal capitalist society and the increasingly febrile culture we occupy when it comes to matters of harm. On what basis can we say that something is harmful? How are we supposed to judge between competing opinions on the harmfulness of a particular behaviour, practice, or industry? Can we avoid drifting off into relativism when it comes to judgements about harm? In an age of deep cultural and political discord about what is and is not harmful, providing answers to such questions is more important than ever. Appraising the current state of the concept of social harm in academic scholarship and every-day life, Thomas Raymen finds a concept in an underdeveloped state of disorder, trapped in interminable deadlocks and shrill disagreements about what should and should not be considered harmful. To explain the genesis of this conceptual crisis and identify what we need to do to resolve it, The Enigma of Social Harm travels from Graeco-Roman antiquity to the present day, exploring trends and developments in moral and political philosophy, religion, law, political economy, and culture. Along the way, we see how such trends and developments have not only made it more difficult to establish a shared basis for evaluating harm, but that the tools which might enable us to do so are now outright prohibited by the political-economic, cultural, and ethical ideology of liberalism that dominates contemporary society. Written in a clear and accessible style, it is essential reading for all those interested in matters of social harm, justice, politics, and ethics.

Today's headlines are rife with reports of hate crimes, domestic terrorism, drug abuse, police malfeasance, and many other profound social problems. Equally, there are discussions, often contentious, about how best to respond to the issues raised. Stacy Burns and Mark Peyrot explore government efforts to address social problems in the context of the criminal justice system. Adopting an institutionalist perspective, the authors show how social control efforts have adapted and changed over time—and how some efforts have inadvertently contributed to the problems they are trying to alleviate. Their work draws on a wealth of sources, ranging from case law to popular initiatives to policy analysis, to advance both theoretical and practical understanding of criminal justice at work.

First published in 1987, Social Problems and Mental Health presents a sophisticated response to the whole question of what constitutes a social problem, with nearly fifty entries giving a range of perspectives on the main problem issues of our age. Also included are useful suggestions for further reading. Entries cover areas of concern connected with physical and mental health, poverty, crime and violence, family and social relationships, sexuality and so on. The book provides succinct descriptions of various areas of concern with historical backgrounds. Both casual readers and students of sociology and psychology will find the book useful.

This research monograph provides a comparative analysis of juvenile court outcomes, exploring the influence of contextual factors on juvenile punishment across systems and communities. In doing so, it investigates whether, how, and to what extent macro-social context influences variation in juvenile punishment. The contextual hypotheses under investigation evaluate three prominent macro-sociall theoretical approaches: the conflict-oriented perspective of community threat, the consensus-oriented perspective of social disorganization, and the organizational perspective of the political economy of the juvenile court. Using multilevel modeling techniques, the study investigates these macro-social influences on juvenile justice outcomes across nearly 500 counties in seven states—Alabama, Connecticut, Missouri, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas, and Utah. Findings suggest that the contextual indicators under investigation did not explain variation in juvenile court punishment across communities and systems, and the study proposes several implications for future research and policy. This monograph is essential reading for scholars of juvenile justice system impact and reform as well as practitioners engaged in youth policy and juvenile justice work. It is unique in taking a comparative perspective that acknowledges that there is no one juvenile justice system in the United States, but many such systems.

This book challenges the given dichotomies between crime and harm, and criminology and zemiology. The main aim of the volume is to highlight the inexorable interconnectedness between systemically induced social harm and the corrosive flows of everyday crime both perpetrated and endured by those victimised by the capitalist system and its hegemonic vicissitudes. Drawing attention not only to various structurally imbedded harms, the chapters also outline the wider consequences of such harms, as they extend beyond immediate victims and contribute towards the further perpetuation of criminogenic and zemiogenic conditions. Comprising two parts, the first explores the relationship between crime and harm and criminology and zemiology, and the second explores the intersections of crime and harm through various lenses, including those trained on probation; global mobility; sexuality and gender; war and gendered violence; fashion counterfeiting; and the harms of the service economy. An exciting and wide-reaching volume written by world-renowned scholars, this collection is a must-read for students, academics, and policy makers in the fields of law, criminology, sociology, social policy, criminal justice, and social justice.

​Mass youth unemployment is now endemic and almost ubiquitous in the global north and south alike. This book offers an original and challenging interpretation of the ways in which young people's unemployment and general non-participation is becoming marginalised and criminalised. It re-examines the causes and consequences of non-participation from an unusually wide range of disciplines, using an innovative theorisation of the fast-changing relationships between extended studentship, welfare provision, labour market restructuring and crime. This approach offers an important contribution for understanding what it means for young people to be socially re-positioned and economically excluded in increasingly unequal societies, in and beyond the UK.

While the notion of social harm has long interested critical criminologists it is now being explored as an alternative field of study, which provides more accurate analyses of the vicissitudes of life. However, important aspects of this notion remain undeveloped, in particular the definition of social harm, the question of responsibility and the methodologies for studying harm. This book, the first to theorise and define the social harm concept beyond criminology, seeks to address these omissions and questions why some capitalist societies appear to be more harmful than others. In doing so it provides a platform for future debates, in this series and beyond. It will be a valuable resource for academics and researchers across criminology, sociology, social policy, socio-legal studies and geography.

Published with the support of the Academy for Social Sciences, this volume provides an illuminating look at topics of concern to everyone at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Leading social scientists tackle complex questions such as immigration, unemployment, climate change, war, banks in trouble, and an ageing population.

The emergence of Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS) presents an object lesson in the dangers that lie at the intersection of science and criminal law. As often occurs in the context of scientific knowledge, understandings of SBS have evolved. We now know that the diagnostic triad alone does not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that an infant was abused, or that the last person with the baby was responsible for the baby's condition. Nevertheless, our legal system has failed to absorb this new consensus. As a result, innocent parents and caregivers remain incarcerated and, perhaps more perplexingly, triad-only prosecutions continue even to this day. Flawed Convictions:'Shaken Baby Syndrome'and the Inertia of Injustice is the first book to survey the scientific, cultural, and legal history of Shaken Baby Syndrome from inception to formal dissolution. It exposes extraordinary failings in the criminal justice system's treatment of what is, in essence, a medical diagnosis of murder. The story of SBS highlights fundamental inadequacies in the legal response to'science dependent prosecution.'A proposed restructuring of the law contends with the uncertainty of scientific knowledge.

يتناول هذا الكتاب أحد تلك الظواهر الاجتماعية ذات الصبغة العمومية لانتشارها الواسع في أغلب المجتمعات وهي ظاهرة (جنوح الأحداث) وما ينتج عن تلك الظاهرة من تأثيرات سلبية تجاه الأفراد والمجتمع على حد سواء.ولقد تعددت الزوايا التي حاول من خلالها المختصون دراسة تلك الظاهرة تَبَعًا لتخصصاتهم، سواء كان ذلك من خلال الجوانب السلوكية أم السايكولوجية أم الاجتماعية أو القانونية أو البايولوجية، وغيرها من الجوانب التي تحاول تفسير وفهم تلك الظاهرة، وإيجاد الحلول المناسبة للتخلص منها.

Die Konzentration von Kriminalität und Gewalt in sozial benachteiligten Wohnquartieren erfährt in Zeiten wachsender sozialer Spaltungen zunehmende Aufmerksamkeit. Mithilfe neuer statistischer Verfahren wie der Mehrebenenanalyse ist es nun möglich, eigenständige Effekte des sozialräumlichen Kontextes auf das Verhalten der Bewohner genauer zu untersuchen. Der Sammelband greift diese neue Forschungsrichtung auf und vereinigt erstmals aktuelle deutsche und internationale Studien zu Kontexteffekten auf Jugendkriminalität und Kriminalitätswahrnehmungen der Bewohner. Die Studien werden ergänzt durch ausführliche theoretische Beiträge aus stadt- und kriminalsoziologischer Perspektive sowie durch methodisch orientierte Beiträge.

This unique collection explores the different organizational forms, strategies and tactics that activists adopt. The authors examine how established trades unions struggle to reform, how non-governmental public actors negotiate various dilemmas, and the efforts of non-governmental public actors to secure justice.

This collection of articles presents a critical, issue-oriented approach to law and society, emphasizing its important relationship to contemporary social problems. By exploring the interstitial area between the sociology of law, social problems and social movements, the initial chapters trace out a theoretical trajectory which points to the need to move beyond traditional and social constructionist approaches. A variety of empirical studies together explore the contradictory dynamics of class as they relate to race and gender in both a national and global context, illustrating the dialectical interplay between the state and social movements. Employing a wide range of perspectives so as to convey the great diversity found in the contemporary sociology of law and justice studies, these authors collectively share a broad consensus concerning the need to explore how social movements and the larger political economy play a pivotal role in shaping state reactions to the challenges presented by contemporary social problems. With its integrated presentation of theoretical perspectives and empirical studies, this unique anthology will be useful in a variety of sociology, criminology, and justice studies course offerings such Law and Society, Social Problems, Crime and Social Justice, Social Movements, Law and Social Control, Social Change, Law and Public Policy, Introduction to Legal Studies, and others. Undergraduate and graduate students alike will appreciate that these articles, selected for their academic rigor, are highly readable and strongly oriented towards high profile social issues, including those of class, race, and gender inequalities as well as social movement and legal struggles in community, national and global settings.

Crime forms only a small and often insignificant amount of the harm experienced by people. While custom and tradition play an important role in the perpetuation of some types of harm, many forms of harm are rooted in the inequalities and social divisions systematically produced in - and by - contemporary states. Exploring a range of topics including violence, indifference, corporate and state harms, murder, children, asylum and immigration policies, sexuality and poverty, the contributors raise a number of theoretical and methodological issues associated with a social harm approach. Only once we have identified the origins, scale and consequences of social harms, they argue, can we begin to formulate possible responses -- and these are more likely to be located in public and social policy than in the criminal justice system. The book provides an original and challenging new perspective that goes beyond criminology - one which will be of interest to students, teachers and policy makers.

AIDS Alibis tackles the cultural landscape upon which AIDS, often accompanied by poverty, drug addiction, and crime, proliferates on a global scale. Stephanie Kane layers stories of individuals and events -- from Chicago to Belize City, to cyberspace -- to illustrate the paths of HIV infection and the effects of environment, government intervention, and social mores. Linking ordinary yet kindred lives in communities around the globe, Kane challenges the assumptions underlying the use of police and courts to solve health problems. The stories reveal the dynamics that determine how the policy decisions of white-collar health care professionals actually play out in real life. By focusing on life-changing social problems, the narratives highlight the contradictions between public health and criminal law. Look at how HIV has transformed our social consciousness, from intimate touch to institutional outreach. But, Kane argues, these changes are dwarfed by the United States's refusal to stop the war on drugs, in effect misdirecting resources and awareness. AIDS Alibis combines empirical and interpretive methods in a path-breaking attempt to recognize the extent to which coercive institutional practices are implicated in HIV transmission patterns. Kane shows how th e virus feeds on the politics of inequality and indifference, even as it exploits the human need for intimacy and release.