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THE INTERNET JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY^©

PhD and Masters Theses

The Internet Journal of Criminology presents PhD and Masters theses considered by the Editorial Board to be worthy of publication. The IJC will only publish theses that meet this criteria.
To download any of these criminology PhD or theses, please click on the links below.

Understanding and Contextualising Racial Hatred on the Internet: A Study of Newsgroups and Websites
By Edward Thomas Pollock; this doctoral thesis was submitted in 2006, to Nottingham Trent University. Dr Pollock is currently a lecturer in criminology at Sheffield Hallam University.

This thesis builds upon the growing body of criminological literature in the field of racially motivated offending by embracing two key aims. Firstly, it aims to investigate the way in which Internet newsgroups create an enabling environment for the expression and development of on-line racial hatred and therefore endeavours to understand how newsgroups may be used to facilitate criminal and other harmful activity. Secondly, the study examines three newsgroups in depth and a number of Websites with an aim to understand their structure, organisation and dynamics as well as aspects of recruitment, dissemination of hate literature and the command and control of members. This thesis also places online bias, prejudice and hate speech within a social and historical context by arguing that the foundations for online hate speech did not merely arise with the development of the Internet in the 1970s but is bound up within an historical and social context that began some three and a half centuries ago during the Atlantic slave trade and hardly curtailing in the US and the UK until the 1960s.
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Challenging privacy: Using the National DNA Database to support victims of sexed violence
By Sarah Lipscombe; submitted in partial fulfilment for the requirements of the degree of MA (by Research) at the University of Central Lancashire, June 2009

The National DNA Database raises controversial issues over privacy, consent, human rights, crime prevention and control. Taking these themes as guides, I will develop a critical discussion on the issue of sexed violence to exemplify how the law has failed to provide sanction for victims of this crime due to hegemonic masculinity. Campaigning groups for Violence Against Women call for more robust case-building in cases of sexed violence where DNA forensic evidence is crucial. The HM Inspectorate of Constabulary’s recent report ‘Without Consent’ highlights the low conviction rate for rape suggesting that this section of the criminal justice system is in a state of crisis. I will argue that it is necessary to utilise and develop the database as a tool for improved conviction rates and a possible reduction in incidence, through the power of detection and deterrence. However various human rights groups object to the existence and development of the database on grounds of privacy. I will challenge this notion of privacy and suggest that civil rights are founded through perceived threats and fear. Furthermore I will problematise whether there is a modern concept of privacy as masculinist that is employed by some human rights discourse. This concept of privacy operates a patriarchal hegemonic discourse to oppose women’s justice by keeping active criminals protected from investigation, therefore objections to the database on this basis should be contested in order to allow and accept DNA databasing as a crime control method against sexed violence. A compromise is necessary between operation and regulation. I will ask whether the database is only a small infringement on the rights of citizens for the assurance of improved detection, crime reduction and justice within today’s society.
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