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Theorizing media and crime -- The construction of crime news -- Media and moral panics -- Media constructions of children : 'evil monsters' and 'tragic victims' -- Media misogyny : monstrous women -- Police, offenders and victims in the media -- Crime films and prison films -- Crime and the surveillance culture -- The role of the Internet in crime and deviance -- (Re)conceptualizing the relationship between media and crime

This book crosses the boundaries of sociological, criminological and cultural discourse in order to explore the implications of recent massive transformations in information and communication technologies for the growth of criminal and deviant identities and behaviour on the Internet.

Cover -- Crime Online -- Copyright -- Contents -- Notes on contributors -- 1 'Killed by the Internet': cyber homicides, cyber suicides and cyber sex crimes -- 2 Cybercrime: re-thinking crime control strategies -- 3 The problem of stolen identity and the Internet -- 4 Biometric solutions to identity-related cybercrime -- 5 Internet child pornography: international responses -- 6 The role of computer forensics in criminal investigations -- 7 Teenage kicks or virtual villainy? Internet piracy, moral entrepreneurship and the social construction of a crime problem

Over the past years, the development of penitentiary Internet services has coincided with an equally widely discussed campaign for the general improvement of government services (so-called e-government). The use of Internet technologies in the penitentiary as an aspect of "modernizing" government services has opened up a field of potential synchronic and diachronic comparisons into the relationship between punishment and the media. By posing the following questions to the two experts, the conversation Laboratorium would like to initiate aims to investigate in comparative perspective how new technologies and services affect the relationship between state and society in the sphere of criminal punishment.

This article, which is part of a wider ethnographic study of constructions of self in the mediated world of men's prisons, explores "manliness" as the prison coping strategy par excellence. That masculinity is likely to become more extreme in men's prisons is unsurprising, but the origins and nature of the "hypermasculine" culture and the precise means by which hierarchies of domination are created and maintained have yet to be thoroughly explored. Indeed, although men constitute the vast majority of prisoners worldwide, most studies treat the gender of their subjects as incidental and assume that in men's prisons, the normal rules of patriarchy do not apply. However, as this article demonstrates, the notion of patriarchy, although in need of refinement, is not irrelevant to the predominantly male environment, and it is now widely accepted that men can be its victims as well as its perpetrators.

This article explores the importance of media forms and content within a unique context: the prison. Although — in common with other studies of media use among prisoners — it is inspired by the uses and gratifications tradition, this study refines and develops the approach, synthesizing it with Giddens's theory of structuration and Bourdieu's notion of habitus in order to understand not only patterns of media consumption in prisons, but also to gain insight into the relationship between media, identity and power. Structuration theory is viewed as an important counter to the prison deprivation literature, the central tenet of which is that imprisonment is an inherently painful and dehumanizing experience during which the prisoner suffers a series of deprivations that fundamentally weaken his or her sense of identity. While this study supports the view that prisons are essentially mortifying environments, it nevertheless endorses Giddens's belief that subordinates are never entirely powerless even in the most bounded of locales. Indeed, this article presents evidence to show that the mass media provide a key source of empowerment for the confined, offering a range of material from which they can create new identities or maintain pre-existing identities, explore their inner selves, form subgroups based on collective fanship, and find autonomy and self-respect in otherwise humiliating and disidentifying circumstances.

Der Beitrag befasst sich mit der Bedeutung der Medien und ihrer Inhalte innerhalb eines einzigartigen Kontextes: dem Gefängnis. Wie die meisten Untersuchungen über die Mediennutzung unter Gefängnisinsassen, beruht auch die vorliegende Untersuchung auf traditionellen Annahmen des Uses-and-Gratifications Ansatzes, verfeinert diesen jedoch und entwickelt ihn weiter, indem sie ihn mit Giddens Strukturierungstheorie und Bourdieus Begriff des "Habitus" verschmelzt, mit dem Ziel, nicht nur die Strukturen der Mediennutzung in Gefängnissen zu verstehen, sondern auch Einsichten über die Beziehung zwischen Medien, Identität und Macht zu gewinnen. Die Strukturierungstheorie wird als wichtiges Gegenstück zu der Literatur verstanden, die Gefängnis als Ort der Entbehrung beschreibt und von dem zentralen Dogma ausgeht, dass dem Zustand des Gefangenseins eine schmerzhafte und entmenschlichende Erfahrung innewohnt, während dessen der Gefangene eine Reihe von Entbehrungen erleidet, die seinen oder ihren Sinn für Identität entscheidend schwächen. Zwar betrachtet auch die vorliegende Studie Gefängnisse als demütigende Orte, gleichzeitig bekräftigt sie aber auch Giddens Überzeugung, dass Unterordnung niemals mit totaler Machtlosigkeit verbunden ist, auch nicht in der eingeschränktesten Örtlichkeit. In der Tat präsentiert der Artikel Indizien dafür, dass die Massenmedien eine Schlüsselrolle dabei spielen, die Gefangenen innerlich zu stärken. Sie bieten ihnen ein breites Spektrum von Anschauungsmaterialien, mit deren Hilfe sie neue Identitäten erschaffen oder ihre alten erhalten können. Sie helfen den Gefangenen auch, ihr inneres Selbst zu erforschen, Gruppen auf der Basis gemeinsamer Vorlieben zu bilden und Autonomie und Selbstachtung unter normalerweise erniedrigenden und identitätsraubenden Umständen zu gewinnen. (UNübers.)

Contemporary prison practices are becoming increasingly professionalized and facing many new challenges. As well as bringing an increased emphasis on skills and qualifications, this development has also introduced new ideas and concepts into the established prisons and penal lexicon. With over 300 entries explaining these terms, this Dictionary will be an essential source of reference for people studying the subject, working in prisons, and working with prisoners.