scholarly journals ‘Eastern Criminals’ and Moral Panic: On Lithuanian Offenders in Danish Prison Facilities

2021 ◽  
pp. 223-243
Author(s):  
Ida Harboe Knudsen

This chapter analyses an increased number of arrests made on young Lithuanian burglars in Denmark. Following the newspaper hype and political reactions to the burglaries, a distorted picture of the ‘devils’ is produced, letting the public believe that the Lithuanian lawbreakers are particularly inhumane, ruthless and violent. Despite the police reporting that they never have had any violent incidents with Lithuanians, the public image prevails. This negative image ends up affecting their treatment and their rights in Danish detention centres, as prison guards act in accordance with the image, rather than in accordance with their own experience. This makes Lithuanians a particularly vulnerable group of inmates in Denmark.

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 170-184
Author(s):  
Rus Mihaela ◽  
Sandu Mihaela Luminita

Over the years, the gypsies have been the subject of various discussions, being cataloged as "dirty gypsies, thieves, lazy and who do not want to learn" and especially those responsible for the negative image of Romania abroad, in other words they were "the apple of discord" in the Romanian society. The "valves" were also opened after the incidents in France 2010 that generated new discussions on the problems due to the Roma, the optimal solution in solving these problems being the integration of the Roma in the society. However, the vast majority of Romanians are reluctant to integrate the gypsies into society, especially on the labor market, and this is due to the public image, most often negative, which gypsies "enjoy". We chose this theme, in the idea of supporting the integration of the Roma in the labor market, considering this step an advantage in favor of the economy of the country, since the limited access of Roma people to the labor market causes Romania to lose at least 887 million euros annually, according to a report by the World Bank. Also, we consider it is necessary to integrate them in the labor market and due to the fact that the taxes and social contributions that they pay are far below the majority population, with notable effects on the Gross Domestic Product. A final argument that contributed to the choice of this theme is that the integration of the members of this population in the labor market could be a positive proof for the efficiency of the policies and projects implemented over time in their favor.


Africa ◽  
2001 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 558-586 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rijk van Dijk

AbstractThis article deals with the moral panic that emerged in the Netherlands when it became publicly known that under-age Nigerian girls were being smuggled into the country to be put to ‘work’ in the sex industry. A massive police investigation not only found hundreds of cases but also uncovered the fact that certain unknown and occult rituals played a part in how traffickers, ‘madams’ and other sex bosses appeared to keep the girls locked in this exploitative system. Soon an unspecified notion of ‘voodoo’ came to dominate the entire police operation, the public image of what was happening to these girls, and the way in which the girls were treated within the Dutch judicial system and its care. The article deconstructs the moral panic and all the images of Africa and the occult which became so crucial to the way the Dutch state tried to deal with the situation. It sets this analysis in the context of an anthropology of globalisation and a cultural exploration of how issues of morality and identity are affected by what the Comaroffs have called the occult economies of late capitalist relations. It concludes that to a great extent the scale of the moral panic can be understood by pointing at the rigidity of the identity politics of the Dutch nation state in previous years. Its policies were meant to curb some of the effects of globalisation (such as illegal immigration from Africa) in order to preserve its integrity, but it now found them seriously undermined by something the policies were not designed to cope with.


Public Voices ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lyn Holley ◽  
Rebecca K Lutte

This paper briefly summarizes evidence for the influence of popular films on public perception of government and on public policy.  Two films examined through the lens of public administration, and the lessons they teach about public administration, are exposed.  One film, Ghostbusters conveys a strongly negative image, and the other, A Thousand Heroes a strongly positive message.  Only Ghostbusters was and remains popular and profitable.  Public information efforts by government and the public administration community have been limited or reactive.  The authors argue for the increased support for public information initiatives such as those of the Public Employees Roundtable (PER) and  the American Society of Public Administration (ASPA).


Author(s):  
Samuel Llano

This chapter presents an account of the San Bernardino band as the public facade of that workhouse. The image of children who had been picked up from the streets, disciplined, and taught to play an instrument as they marched across the city in uniform helped broadcast the message that the municipal institutions of social aid were contributing to the regeneration of society. This image contrasted with the regime of discipline and punishment inside the workhouse and thus helped to legitimize the workhouse’s public image. The privatization of social aid from the 1850s meant that the San Bernardino band engaged with a growing range of institutions and social groups and carried out an equally broad range of social services. It was thus able to serve as the extension through which Madrid’s authorities could gain greater intimacy with certain population sectors, particularly with the working classes.


Author(s):  
Carol Mei Barker

“In China, what makes an image true is that it is good for people to see it.” - Susan Sontag, On Photography, 1971 The Olympic Games gave the world an opportunity to read Beijing’s powerful image-text following thirty years of rapid transformation. David Harvey argues that this transformation has turned Beijing from “a closed backwater, to an open centre of capitalist dynamism.” However, in the creation of this image-text, another subtler and altogether very different image-text has been deliberately erased from the public gaze. This more concealed image-text offers a significant counter narrative on the city’s public image and criticises the simulacrum constructed for the 2008 Olympics, both implicitly and explicitly. It is the ‘everyday’ image-text of a disappearing city still in the process of being bulldozed to make way for the neoliberal world’s next megalopolis. It exists most prominently as a filmic image text; in film documentaries about a ‘real’ hidden Beijing just below the surface of the government sponsored ‘optical artefact.’ Film has thus become a key medium through which to understand and preserve a physical city on the verge of erasure.


1962 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Winick
Keyword(s):  

BDJ ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 166 (9) ◽  
pp. 318-318
Author(s):  
J Bowden ◽  
C Scully ◽  
S Porter

Popular Music ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 333-348 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tony Mitchell

In his article ‘Rock music and politics in Italy’, Umberto Fiori deploys the example of an open-air concert by Genesis in Tirrenia in the province of Pisa, promoted in the summer of 1982 by the Italian Communist Party (PCI) as part of its annual Feste dell'Unita, as a summary example of de-politicisation of the consumption and production of rock music in Italy, and the institutionalisation of the oppositional, dissenting aspects of rock music that had previously been so potent there throughout the 1970s. To Fiori, the Genesis concert representedan unmistakeable step forward in the slow process of the ‘normalisation’ of the relationship between rock and politics in Italy. Explosive material until a few years before, rock music in the 1980s seems to have returned to being a commodity like any other, even in Italy. The songs are once again simply songs, the public is the public. The musicians are only interested in their work, and the organisers make their expected profits. If they happen to be a political party, so much the better: they can also profit in terms of public image and perhaps even votes. … Italy now learnt how to institutionalise deviation and transgression. An ‘acceptable’ gap was re-established between fiction and reality, desire and action, and music and political practice. (Fiori 1984, pp. 261–2)


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document