Blog: Capturing CrimScapes

Policy Brief on Criminalisation Policies based on ethnographic field studies.

CrimLines, living timelines of criminalisation, help to visualise how the use of criminalisation in Europe became an unquestioned or contested tool for governing society. They also demonstrate how criminalised persons come to be seen within the broader culture as … Continue reading CrimLines

by Jérémy Geeraert This is a living timeline of major events, laws and practices marking the criminalisation of search and rescue activities in solidarity with migrants in distress.

By Agata Dziuban This is a living timeline of the criminalisation of sex work in Poland.

by CrimScapes Research Team Summary CrimScapes Key Findings  The CrimScapes research project has undertaken a comprehensive examination of the proliferating influences of criminal law, crime control measures, and the imaginations surrounding (il)legality. The ethnographic research works to analytically grasp … Continue reading CrimScapes: Brief Overview of Research Key Findings

At the beginning of February 2024, the members of the CrimScapes team gathered in Berlin for a final meeting within the NORFACE funding period, working together on tasks and ideas for the future and reviewed the last few weeks. … Continue reading Final CrimScapes Meeting – and a common future as convenors of the AnthroCrime Network!

by Tiia Sudenkaarne A bioethicist and a queer feminist philosopher for the past years working with social study of microbes, I was delighted to accept the offer to join CrimScapes for eight months 2023-2024. I was impressed by its … Continue reading On Antimicrobial Resistance, Vulnerability, and Carcerality of Care

By Agata Dziuban [During the war] sex workers go through the same hardship and deprivation [as everyone else], only their burden is multiplied by criminalisation, economic and social vulnerability, legal insecurity, stigma and lack of state support. (Legalife-Ukraine) This … Continue reading Sex Work under Conditions of War in Ukraine: Observations and Recommendations

By Juulia Kela A screenshot from the Finnish Parliamentary Archives from 1932.  In conducting archival research for the CrimScapes project’s first phase on genealogies of different figures of crime, I tried to keep in mind something I once read … Continue reading On archives and the long shadow of the ‘vagrant’ in Finnish parliamentary debate  

Hybrid Lecture, Feb 5th, 10-11:30 CET/ 11-12:30 EET, University of Helsinki and Online (Zoom) Türkiye hosts the largest number of refugees worldwide, nearly four million, including 3.6 million Syrian refugees. Since 2018, the country has experienced one of the worst economic … Continue reading “Born illegal”: criminalising LGBTQ+ refugees in Türkiye

Thursday 11th January 15.00-16.30 (EET)   Mass protest and direct action has seen a resurgence in Britain in recent years. Large numbers of people have vigorously contested police racism and misogyny, state inaction on the climate crisis, deaths at the … Continue reading  “Aggravated activists”: criminalising protest in Britain, Online Event

The conference, running from Nov 8th @ 2 pm to Nov 10th @ 5 pm, focuses on the intersections of democracy, social justice and citizenship in diverse fields of criminalisation in Europe, asking in particular about what we term … Continue reading Full Programme: Criminalization, Citizenship and Democratic Dilemmas

The “CrimScapes” Research Team is thrilled to invite you to a three-day conference in Berlin on Criminalisation, Citizenship and Democratic Dilemmas, running from Nov 8th @ 2 pm until Nov 10th @ 5 pm.  The programme will include:  Register … Continue reading Register now: Criminalisation, Citizenship and Democratic Dilemmas

By Todd Sekuler On June 14th, Cengiz was among two invited speakers at a parliamentary expert discussion held with the Bundestag Committee on Digital Affairs about the working condition of content moderators – a relatively small group of workers … Continue reading Content Moderator in Germany Talks Back and Gets Sent on Leave: A Threat to Democratic Principles

By Todd Sekuler Over the course of April, the German Ministry of Justice presented a set of guidelines for a proposed “law against digital violence” designed to enhance and expand opportunities for victims of digital violence “to enforce their … Continue reading The German Ministry of Justice’s Guidelines for a Proposed “Law against Digital Violence” and Civil Society Response

New Publication edited by Mathilde Darley, Routledge, 2022 Since the early 2000s, academic scholarship within and across borders has witnessed such a proliferation of studies on “sex for sale” that, by now, it has become difficult to claim to … Continue reading Trafficking and Sex Work: Gender, Race and Public Order

The CrimScapes project is pleased to invite interested audiences to a two-day transdisciplinary seminar, ‘Criminalisation and Citizenship,’ which will take place at the Institute of Sociology of Jagiellonian University, and online. Extending beyond narrow, legal conceptualisations of citizenship, this … Continue reading Thematic Seminar: Criminalisation and Citizenship (Krak´ów&online)

Interview by Todd Sekuler Francesca Schmidt is founding member and board member of Netzforma* e.V. – Verein für feministische Netzpolitik. She is also Programme Director for intersectional knowledge related to memory and transformation at the Federal Agency for Civic … Continue reading “Netzpolitik. A Feminist Introduction”: Discussing with author Francesca Schmidt about queer feminist perspectives on the governance of hate speech in Germany

By Justyna Struzik The CrimScapes project[i], in which I explore the experiences of opioid users in the context of drug possession criminalization in Poland, began at the peak of the restrictions imposed by the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19). The regulations … Continue reading In this country, you can die four times while waiting for detox: The pandemic, drug use and chronicity of crises in Poland

The second half of 2021 was dominated by news of Izabela, a pregnant woman who died in September in a hospital in Pszczyna, in the south of Poland. In October, the family lawyer has shared the news of her … Continue reading Izabela – fallout and some reflections

Interview and text by Juulia Kela. The use of Finnish criminal law to prosecute the transmission, exposure, or non-disclosure (not telling sexual partners about your positive HIV status) of HIV is an ongoing, understudied field of criminalization. Along with … Continue reading The persistence of HIV criminalization in Finland: an interview with two experts.

Candles reflected a warm light onto the faces of people protesting outside the Constitutional Tribunal in Warsaw last Monday (1st November). They gathered to protest the death of a pregnant woman, who died due to the recently tightened Polish … Continue reading “She also had a heartbeat” – protests after Polish abortion ban claims a victim

by Friederike Faust Why do women commit crime, and how should they be punished? This CrimLine reconstructs in excerpts how the social image of criminal women, corresponding criminological explanations as well as penal policies have changed in Germany. Delinquency … Continue reading Crimline: Crime and Punishment of Women in Germany

Von Hildegard Wahle und Friederike Faust Im Jahr 2020 befanden sich in Deutschland 589 Personen in Sicherungsverwahrung, eine davon war eine Frau. Die Sicherungsverwahrung betrifft vor allem jene Personen, die schwere Gewalt- oder Sexualstraftaten begangen haben und bei denen … Continue reading Vom unverbesserlichen Gewohnheitsverbrecher zum gefährlichen Sexualstraftäter: Sicherungsverwahrung in Zeiten von Corona.

Anyone who practices sex in public in Germany today must expect criminal consequences. Section 183a of the German Penal Code regulates the local circumstances in which sexual acts may take place. It criminalizes people who intentionally or willfully annoy … Continue reading Sex in Public: The Legal Regulation of Sex in Public in the Mirror of Time.

Wer in Deutschland heute Sex in der Öffentlichkeit hat, muss mit strafrechtlichen Konsequenzen rechnen. Der §183a des Strafgesetzbuches reguliert die örtliche Gegebenheit, an der sexuelle Handlungen stattfinden dürfen. Er kriminalisiert Personen, die mit Sex in der Öffentlichkeit andere Personen … Continue reading Sex in Public: Die rechtliche Regulierung von Sex in der Öffentlichkeit im Spiegel der Zeit

Interviewtranskript von Jérémy Geeraert. Jochen wuchs in einer gutbürgerlichen Familie im Ruhrgebiet auf. Sein BWL-Studium brach er kurz nach Beginn wieder ab, entschied sich für die Schifffahrt und machte eine Ausbildung zum Schiffskapitän. Obwohl es nach seiner Ausbildung zunächst … Continue reading “Chaos auf der Seekarte”: Interview mit dem Zweiten Offizier eines Seenotrettungsschiffes in Zeiten der Kriminalisierung

Translation of an interview conducted by Jérémy Geeraert in German. Jochen grew up in a middle-class family in the Ruhr area. He dropped out of his business studies shortly after starting, and decided to train as a ship’s captain. … Continue reading “Chaos on the sea map”: Interview with the second officer of a sea rescue ship in times of criminalization

Friederike Faust, Agata Chełstowska, Agata Dziuban, Justyna Struzik Researching criminalisation and the punitive turn, we are familiar with the scholarly work on the construction of particular social groups or behaviours as risks to social order and security. The politics … Continue reading Vulnerabilising criminalised subjects. On the Entanglements of Care and Punishment

The Polish ruling party’s leader, Jarosław Kaczyński, gave an interview to Wprost magazine titled “Even a mildly intelligent person can organize an abortion abroad” (Olczyk and Miziołek 2021a). In the interview he openly points to the possibility of going … Continue reading “Even a mildly intelligent person can organize an abortion abroad”: Kaczyński’s statement on abortion tourism and the legal fiction of criminalisation

by Juulia Kela This is a living timeline of the criminalisation of infectious deseases in Finland.

by Todd Sekuler This is a living timeline of policies regulating hate speech in Prussia/Germany. Framing this as a living timeline of the history of German policies means that it is an ongoing project that will continue to be … Continue reading CrimLine of “Hate Speech” in Germany

The Polish embassy sent a letter to Czech officials demanding, that the Czech parliament does not pass a law clarifying that Polish women can obtain abortions in Czech Republic. In the March 2021 letter a Polish diplomat warned that … Continue reading Requests, Memes and Networks: Transgressing the national boundaries in the context of criminalization of abortion in Poland

This living timeline, by Agata Chełstowska, examines the criminalization of abortion in Poland as a dynamic, evolving phenomenon, engaging ideas of citizenship, autonomy, new social movements and protests, contradictory discourses and images as well as actual bodily practices.

We kindly invite you to participate in the first online seminars hosted by the research project “CrimScapes – Navigating citizenship through European landscapes of criminalisation”. In three online sessions, the project invites attendees to discuss the trend towards criminalisation … Continue reading CrimScapes hosts its first thematic seminars (Online): “Genealogical Perspectives on Criminalisation and Figures of Crime”: May 27th, June 11th/ June 14th