Tagged: folk devils

Class & Stratification / Social Movements / Social Change / Sociology of Law, Crime and Deviance

Dangerous Dogs Revisited

Following the recent sad news of the death of 4 year old John Paul Massey, after he had been attacked by his uncle’s American bull mastiff, media attention has refocused on the ownership of ‘dangerous’ dogs. As part of the BBC ‘Pledge Watch’ series of articles, Justin Parkinson has taken the opportunity to revisit the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991. Following a spate of dog attacks on children in the early 1990s, media coverage focused on various breeds of dogs as...

Opinion

“Operation Ore”: "A huge miscarriage of justice"?

by paulabowles In 2001, the British police launched “Operation Ore”, hailed as a ground-breaking opportunity to catch individuals, who had paid for and accessed child pornography via the internet. With a possible 7,000 plus British suspects on the database, it is little wonder that the operation was perceived to have huge criminological and technological potential, not least in the fight against transnational pornography. However, over the last two years, criticisms have been raised, particularly in relation to the validity of...