Skip to main content

The Crime and Justice Research Group (CJRG) is dedicated to the exploration and critical analysis of the social phenomena of crime, and deviance, and of the formal and informal reactions to these. The CJRG aims to foster emerging strengths within the thematic area of Crime & Justice which is identified as a core thematic area for development within the School of Humanities Research Strategy 2019-2020.

CJRG Website

Researchers in the CJRG are drawn from a range of disciplines including criminology, law, psychology, sociology and social science. This diversity allows us to foster a genuinely interdisciplinary research group focusing on the following research priorities and challenges:

Punishment processes, practices and cultures

  • Understanding punishment as a cultural practice represents an overarching research theme informing the work of the CJRG. Exploring how different parties contribute to and experience decision-making processes and practices involved in contemporary punishment forms an important element of this larger theme. Research topics within this thematic area include sentencing; penal decision-making; mass supervision; Drug Court and problem solving justice; and legitimacy and procedural justice.

 

Desistance, resettlement and prison studies

  • Exploring prisoners’ experiences of punishment, particularly how they make sense of prison and their journeys towards desistance and resettlement after prison represents an important research theme. Related topics include prison education, the sociology of the prison, prison-based social capital, legitimacy of prisons from prisoners’ perspectives and legal rights of and awareness among prisoners.

 

Victimology and victimisation

  • Victimology and the study of victimisation represent a second overarching theme around which a number of CJRG members are clustered. Two key research strands currently exist: The study of victim trauma from a social psychology and social activist perspective particularly understanding and capturing the narratives and the experiences of victims of institutional abuse; and the national study of agricultural crime victimisation. The national agricultural crime victimization study examined the incidence, financial cost and the amount of crime not reported to Gardaí and why it was not reported.

 

Security, online terrorism and radicalisation

  • Understanding behaviour and phenomenon related to terrorism, extremism, crime, and criminality . Current research focuses on understanding terrorist use of the internet, in particular the content and function of discourses supportive of terrorism and the potential of alternative discourses in counter-terrorism efforts. Related themes include changes to extreme ideology through a temporal analysis and   investigating online discourses of women in right wing extremist groups

 

Alcohol, policing and public order

  • Alcohol use and misuse represents an important social challenge in contemporary Irish society. Research within the CJRG currently explores the intersections between alcohol and society in contemporary settings in two key areas: the link between alcohol and public order problems in the night-time economy and the role that formal and informal policing plays in regulating alcohol related public order offences in the nighttime economy.

2021

Atkins, D., Maguire, N. and Cleere, G. (forthcoming) (2021) ‘Experiences of Sentencing and the Pains of Punishment: Prisoners’ Perspectives’, in Special Issue: Subjective Experiences and Sentencing, International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 65(10).

 

Anderson, I, Doherty, K., & O’Mahoney, J. (forthcoming, 2021). Accounting for Rape: Psychology, Feminism and Discourse Analysis in the Study of Sexual Violence, 2nd ed. London: Routledge.

 

Maguire, N. (2021) ‘Book review: Sentencing: A Social Process Re-thinking Research and Policy’, Probation Journal, 68(2), pp. 284–286. doi: 10.1177/02645505211015744a.

 

Maguire, N. and O’Brien, J. (2021) Engendering Change: Feminist legal theory and the Northern/Irish Feminist Judgments Project with Mairead Enright. [Podcast] 14th January. Available from: https://anchor.fm/engendering-change 

 

O’Brien, John (2021) ‘The Use of Public Houses as a Collective Representation of the Covid-19 Pandemic in Ireland’, Irish Journal of Sociology, 29(2). [forthcoming] 

 

O’Brien, John (2021) ‘The Belfast Rape Trial and the Construction of a Public Problem’, in Doyle, Mark, Gornicka, Barbara & Plante, Rebecca (eds) Sex and Sexualities in Ireland: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. London: Palgrave Macmillan. [in press] 

 

O’Brien, John (2021) ‘From Abiding to Accelerating to Anomic: Generational Waves of Change in Irish Drinking Culture, 1845-Present’, in Fenton, Laura & Thurnell-Read, Thomas (eds) Alcohol, Age, Generation and the Life Course. London: Palgrave McMillan. [in press] 

 

O’Brien, John (2021) ‘Controlled Decontrolling – The Role of Culture in Regulating Intoxication’, in Geoffrey Hunt (ed.) Routledge Handbook of Intoxicants and Intoxication. London: Routledge. [forthcoming] 

 

O’Mahoney, J. (in press, 2021). “The role of born digital data in confronting a difficult and contested past through digital storytelling: The Waterford Memories Project. AI & Society. 

 

Donnelly, M., Stapleton, L. & O’Mahoney, J. (in press, 2021). Born Digital and Marginalisation: An Empirical Study of How Born Digital Data Systems Continue the Legacy of Social Violence towards LGBTQ+ Communities in Ireland. AI & Society

 

O’Mahoney, J. (forthcoming, 2021).  The Role of Digital and Public Humanities in Confronting the Past: Survivors’ of Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries Truth TellingIn T. Thomson & A. Schwan, Palgrave Handbook for the Digital and Public Humanities. London: Palgrave. 

  

O’Mahoney, J., McCarthy, K., & Culleton, J. (forthcoming, 2021). Public Performance and Reclaiming Space: Waterford’s Magdalene Laundry. In M. Haughton, E. Pine, & M. McAuliffe, Legacies of the Magdalen Laundries: Commemoration, Gender and Systems of Abuse. Manchester: MUP. 

  

O’Rourke, M., O’Mahoney, J., & O’Donnell, K. (forthcoming, 2021). Institutional abuse in Ireland: Lessons from survivors and legal professionals. In O. Lynch, J. Windle, & Y. Ahmed (Eds.), Nothing about us without us: Giving voice to diversity in Criminological Research. Bristol, UK: Bristol University Press. 

  

O’Mahoney, J. & Anderson, I. (2021). Using narrative analysis to inform about female and male sexual victimisation. In C. Squire (Ed), Stories Changing Lives. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. 

 

2020

Bowman Grieve, L. & Herron, S.  (2020). The And now: Irish Republicanism and Ulster Loyalism online. In Littler, M. & Lee, B. (Eds.), Digital Extremisms: Readings in Violence, Radicalisation and Extremism in the online space. Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. 

 

Friend, C., Bowman Grieve, L., Kavanagh, J. & Palace, M. (2020). Fighting Cybercrime: A review of the Irish experience. International Journal of Cyber Criminology, 14 (2), July-December, Open Access). 

 

Maguire, N. and O’Brien, J. (2020) Engendering Change: Episode 1 Gender and The Law with Ivana Bacik [Podcast]. 10th December. Available from: https://anchor.fm/niamh-maguire/episodes/Gender-and-The-Law-w-Ivana-Bacik-enkp6t/a-a43edq1 

 

O’Brien, J. and Maguire, N. (2020) Engendering Change: Episode 2 Male Sex Work in the Digital Age with Paul Ryan. [Podcast]. 17th December. Available from: https://anchor.fm/niamh-maguire/episodes/Male-Sex-Work-in-the-Digital-Age-w-Paul-Ryan-entv44/a-a45bdgb 

 

O’Brien, John (2020) ‘Plato’s Statesman: Protecting Phronesis from Code’, in Horvath, Agnes, Szakolczai, Arpad & Marangudakis, Manussos (eds.) Modern Leaders: In between charisma and trickery. London: Routledge. 

 

O’Brien, John & Flores, Rüben, Flores (2020) ‘Debates Editors Introduction: Sociological Responses to COVID-19 (Part 2), Irish Journal of Sociology 28(3). 

 

O’Brien, John & Flores, Rüben, Flores (2020) ‘Debates Editors Introduction: Sociological Responses to COVID-19 (Part 1), Irish Journal of Sociology 28(2). 

 

O’Brien, John (2020) ‘The Dialectic of Alienation and Sociability: A Simmelian Reading of the Pandemic’, Irish Journal of Sociology. 29(3). 

 

O’Brien, John and Laura Doyle (2020) ‘A Cacophony of Protocol: Disability Services in the Context of the Covid-19 Pandemic’, Irish Journal of Sociology, 28(3).  

 

O’Brien, John (2020) ‘A Path to the Future, or Ambivalent Payoffs: Tragic Complexity, or a Foundation for Good Order’, Journal of Political Power, 13(3). 

 

O’Brien, John (2020) The Covid-19 Pandemic: Sociological Reflections. Maynooth: Sociological Association of Ireland. 

 

Sakki, I., Hakoköngäs, E., Brescó de Luna, I., Csertó, I., Kello, K., Miguel, I., O’Mahoney, J., Pólya, T., & Valentim, J. (2020). European unification as lived memory: Shared and diverse representations in textbooks of six countries. Asian Journal of Social Psychology, https://doi.org/10.1111/ajsp.12448

 

2019

Bowman Grieve, L., Palisinski, M. & Shortland, N. (2019). Psychology perspectives on community vengeance as a terrorist motivator - a review, Safer Communities, 18, (2/4) 81-93. 

 

Maguire, N. (2019) ‘Pre-sentence reports: Constructing the subject of punishment’ in P. Ugwudike, H. Graham,  F. McNeill, F.S. Taxman, and C. Trotter (eds) The Routledge Companion to Rehabilitative Work in Criminal Justice. Abingdon, Oxford: Routledge, pp.  1216-1246 

 

Palasinski, M., Brown, W., Shortland, N., Riggs, D., Bowman-Grieve, L., & Chen, M.  (2019). Masculinity, Injury and Death –Exploring Anti-knife-carrying Messages, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 1-20. 

 

O’Mahoney, J. (2019). Sites of memory and social justice: Waterford’s Magdalene Laundry. In P. Salter & S. Mukherjee (Eds.), History and Collective Memory: Its Role in Shaping National Identities. New York: Nova. 

  

O’Mahoney, J., Bowman-Grieve, L., Torn, A. (2019). Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries and the psychological architecture of surveillance. In A. Mackay & S. Flynn (Eds.), Surveillance, Architecture and Control. London: Palgrave Macmillan. 

 

2018

Boone, M., and Maguire, N (eds.) (2018) The Enforcement of Offender Supervision in Europe: Understanding Breach Processes, London: Routledge  

 

Boone, M. and Maguire, N. (2018) ‘Introduction: comparing breach processes: Aims, concepts,
methodology and figures’ in M. Boone and N. Maguire (eds) The Enforcement of Offender Supervision in Europe: Understanding Breach Processes, Abingdon, Oxford: Routledge, pp.3-18  

 

Hucklesby, A. Maguire, N., Anagnostaki, M. and Jose Cid (2018) ‘Legitimacy, fairness and justice in breach processes:
comparative perspectives’, in M. Boone and N. Maguire (eds) The Enforcement of Offender Supervision in Europe: Understanding Breach Processes, Abingdon, Oxford: Routledge, pp.77-105  

 

Maguire, N. (2018) ‘Non-compliance and Breach Processes in Ireland: A Pilot Study, Irish Probation Journal, 15: 47-69  

 

Maguire, N. and Boone, M. (2018) ‘Conclusion: understanding breach processes: major themes, insights and questions for future research’ in M. Boone and N. Maguire (eds) The Enforcement of Offender Supervision in Europe: Understanding Breach Processes, Abingdon, Oxford: Routledge, pp. 106-116  

 

Maguire, N. (2018) ‘Non-compliance and breach processes in the context
of community service orders and early release:
The Republic of Ireland’ in M. Boone and N. Maguire (eds) The Enforcement of Offender Supervision in Europe: Understanding Breach Processes, Abingdon, Oxford: Routledge, pp.181-197  

 

Moore Walsh, K. & Walsh, L. “Setting Boundaries: What and Where is Rural Crime in Ireland?” (2018) 28(3) Irish Criminal Law Review 64-71. 

 

Kilcommins, S., Leahy, S., Moore Walsh, K., Spain, E. (2018) The Victim in the Irish Criminal Process, Manchester University Press.

 

Palasinski, M., Shortland, N., Humann, M., Bowman-Grieve, L., & Gallova, V. (2018) Anxiety about Digital Security and Terrorism and Support for Counter-terror Measures. Safer Communities, 17 (3), 156-166.  

 

O’Mahoney, J. (2018). Advocacy and the Magdalene Laundries: Towards a psychology of social change. Qualitative Research in Psychology, DOI: 10.1080/14780887.2017.1416803. 

 

2017

Alison, L., Palisinski, M., Warring S., Shortland, N., Humphrey, A., Humann, M. & Bowman Grieve, L. (2017). Between a rock and a hard place of geopolitically sensitive threats – Critical incidents and decision intertia. Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression,  10, 207-224. 

 

Carr, N. and Maguire, N. (2017) ‘Pre-sentence Reports and Individualised Justice: Consistency, Temporality and Contingency’, Irish Probation Journal, 14: 52-71  

 

Maguire, N. and Nicola, C. (2017) Individualising Justice: Pre-sentence Reports in the Irish Criminal Justice  

System, Probation Service Research Report No 6, Dublin: Probation Service  

 

Moore Walsh, K. & Walsh, L. (2017) Agricultural Crime Reporting to Gardaí and Crime Prevention Employed by Farmers in Ireland: Report 3 of the National Agricultural Crime Survey, 2016. Available at https://icsaireland.ie/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/ICSA-WIT-Agricultural-Crime-Survey-Report-3.pdf (Accessed 15 June 2021) 

 

Moore Walsh, K. & Walsh, L. (2017) Financial Costs of Agricultural Crime in Ireland: Report 2 of the National Agricultural Crime Survey, 2016. Available at https://icsaireland.ie/publications/report-2-agricultural-crime-ireland/ (Accessed 15 June 2021) 

 

Moore Walsh, K & Walsh, L. (2017) Incidence of Agricultural Crime in Ireland: Report 1 of the National Agricultural Crime Survey, 2016.  Available at https://icsaireland.ie/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/ICSA-WIT-Agriculture-Crime-Survey-Report-1.pdf (Accessed 15 June 2021).

 

O’Brien, John, Doyle, K. and Maguire, N. (2017) ‘Precarity in the Night-Time Economy’, Irish Journal of Anthropology, 19(1), 19-30. 

 

O'Brien, John (2018) 'The Subversion of Worldviews and Possibility of ‘Virtuous Drinking’ through Public Health Policy', in Horvath, A. & Roman, C (eds.) Divinisation and Technology. London: Routledge. 

 

2016

Maguire, N. (2016) ‘Sentencing’ in (Eds.) D. Healy, C., Hamilton, Y. Daly, and M. Butler, Routledge Handbook of Irish Criminology, London: Routledge  

 

O’Mahoney-Yeager, J. & Culleton, J. (2016). Gendered violence and cultural forgetting: The case of the Irish Magdalenes. Radical History Review, 126: 134-146. 

 

2015

Bowman Grieve, L. (2015). Cyber-terrorism and Moral Panics: A Reflection on the Discourse of Cyber-terrorism. In L. Jarvis, S. MacDonald & T. Chen (Eds), Terrorism Online: Politics, Law and Technology. Oxon: Routledge. 

 

Cartledge, S. Bowman Grieve, L. & Palasinski, M. (2015). The Mechanisms of Moral Disengagement in George W. Bush’s ‘War on Terrorism’ Rhetoric. The Qualitative Report, 20, 1905-1921.  

 

 Maguire, N. et al. (2015) ‘Using vignette methodology to research the process of breach comparatively’, European Journal of Probation, 7(3), pp. 241–259. doi: 10.1177/2066220315617271.

 

O’Brien, John (2015) ‘Commemoration in the Civilizing Process: Reconciliation, Melancholy and Abstraction in Contemporary Memorializing’, International Political Anthropology, 2(14), 99-116.  

 

O’Brien, John & Byrne, Lorcan (2015) Editors Introduction, International Political Anthropology, 2(14): 3-5. 

 

O’Brien, John (2015) Graceful Living: The Experience of Unemployment and the Built Environment, in Boland, Tom & Griffin, Ray (eds.) The Sociology of Unemployment. Manchester: Manchester University Press. 

 

O’Brien, John and Griffin, Ray (2015) ‘On the Statistical Composition of Unemployment’, Boland, Tom & Griffin, Ray (eds.) The Sociology of Unemployment. Manchester: Manchester University Press. 

 

Yeager, J. & Culleton, J. (2015). Living with unemployment: A thematic analysis of a youth and mature focus group. In T. Boland and R. Griffin (Eds), Doing Nothing: The Experience of Unemployment. Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press. 

People

 

Members of the group have successfully applied for national and international funding in this thematic area from a wide range of research agencies including: IRC New Foundations, IRC Employment Based Postgraduate Programme, COST Action, EU Justice Programme, SETU Waterford PhD Scholarships, Department of Justice Funding, and Environmental Protection Agency.

Our members are experienced researchers with an array of research skills including project design and implementation, ethical approval, qualitative and quantitative research methodologies, data analysis and dissemination and communication of research data. Members of the group are engaged in local, national and international collaborations and have published widely both in peer reviewed journals and with respected international book publishers including Routledge and Manchester University Press.