Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The unemployment, underemployment and economic crisis plaguing the Nigerian society are some of the issues influencing the choices women make when engaging in victimless crimes such as prostitution as an alternative means of livelihood. In a patriarchal society like Nigeria, gender influences the choices women make in taking up diverse income-earning activities including engaging in criminal activities such as prostitution, when they are unemployed or have no other means of livelihood. Some scholars have argued that although women appear as offenders in all categories of offences from the most serious to the least serious, an examination of offending behaviour reveals that some types of crime are dominated more by males than by females. Prostitution in Nigeria is dominated by the females and as such the gendered nature of crime implores us to see gender as a major factor affecting the types of crime committed by offenders.
This paper attempts to explain why females commit certain crimes using Agnew and Broidy’s General Strain Theory. This paper contends that if there is a change for the better in equal opportunity in the society, females are less likely to engage in prostitution.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Crime and vigilantism in South Africa is generally seen as an antidote to the breakdown of formal law. Both are constituted outside the state and emerge when the new social contract has been broken i.e. when the state can no longer provide security. This paper argues that there is often an intimate relationship between vigilante formations and state structures. It explores this apparent paradox through public discourses on crime and the emergence of vigilante groups. It suggests that vigilantism has to be analysed as attempts to promulgate a new legal-political order and although vigilantism is constructed outside the formal legal-political order of the state any easy separation is difficult to maintain in practice. This is explored in the context of the Amadlozi, a vigilante group operating in the townships of Port Elizabeth, South Africa. The paper also proffers some ideas on sovereignty and its relationship to vigilante formations.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper, based on ethnographic research, analyzes how inhabitants of Port Sa’id, Egypt resolve common civil disputes by making the most of spaces in the law and on the margins of law. I demonstrate some of the ways in which lawyers in Port Sa’id draw upon customary law as a distinct source of knowledge and tradition in order to respond pragmatically to the problems their clients face. In particular, I look at the use of muharrar ‘urfi (customary documents), such as wasuulaat amana (honesty receipts, or promissory notes), and the participation of lawyers in magaalis ‘urfi (customary sessions) in the resolution of disputes. Customary justice, variously imagined and enacted, falls outside the framework of the kind of legal knowledge attained in law schools. Yet the cases analyzed suggest that the divide between customary law and the positive law is permeable, and that lawyers play a critical role in making the most of the interplay between these traditions. In the process, I posit, these lawyers are redefining what ‘urf, or custom, means and how it can be used in contemporary urban disputes.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: New York City’s Port Authority Bus Terminal was a dismal place in the late 1980s. Crime, homelessness, and drug use were rampant. The Port Authority Police Department began Operation Alternative in December 1991. Unlike other stories of New York City crime reduction, this successful program in crime prevention remains largely unknown to the outside world. This paper tells how the intractable problems of Port Authority were solved and how a Broken Windows approach to policing resulted in a quantitative reduction in crime. Qualitative data are gathered from police officers and management working at Port Authority in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The suicide attack in September 11, 2001 has dramatically switched the international attitude towards aviation security. Racial Profiling has been used in several airports around the world and become the core of a national controversial debate. This research analyzes all the published civil aviation terrorism against Israeli airliners and airports from 1968 to 2006. The database was taken from archive of two Israeli leading newspapers and was compared and verified with database of several research institutions and organizations, which systematically collect data about global terrorism. Furthermore, we conducted face-to-face interviews with former chiefs of the Security Department in Israeli Airport Authority as well as former security officers in the airport. We also use databases of general terrorism events against non-aviation Israeli targets (buses, restaurant, etc) for evaluation the features and risks of terror in general and for calculating the deterrence effect of the airport security procedures.
The findings provide several reliable results: the most visible is the effectiveness of the system as a whole – from its foundation and in spite of ongoing threats, terrorists or any other aggressors have not succeed to hijack an Israeli airplane; none of the attacks had begun in Israeli airport; and the number of casualties is extremely low in any scale. However, the effectiveness of the racial profiling component per se is relatively very low. In addition, the demographic features of the aggressor are evident – the typical aggressor is a terrorist, member in a terror organization, man, young, Muslim-Arab and in most cases Palestinian. However, the findings do not indicate that the Israeli Arabs citizens were at any rate involved in air terrorism, albeit they are usually considered as a high-risk group in the airport procedures.
Although the issue of racial profiling is so important in aviation counter terrorism, it is hard to find comprehensive empirical research addressing the efficiency of this method. The current research is quite original and addresses this gap in the literature. Furthermore, Israel isn't the only state who uses racial profiling as aviation counter terrorism; hence, we argue that our research is applicable for many countries that use similar security procedure.