Global Capitalism as Blood Sacrifice: Mainstream American Comic Books and Depictions of Economic Inequality.

The past few decades have witnessed unprecedented global economic catastrophes that exacerbated pre-existing socioeconomic inequalities. Although many scholars have attributed the resulting social harms to the failures of neoliberal capitalism-and recognize it as criminogenic-the logics upholding the economic order continue to hold sway among the public. Given that these logics are commonly reinforced through media and popular culture narratives, in this paper we explore how economic inequalities are portrayed in American comic books.

"Like Fetching Water with a Bucket Full of Holes": High-Profile Cases and Perceptions of System Failure.

High-profile trials are often held up as emblematic of social justice causes, but this often obscures rather than clarifies justice issues for the public. Trial outcomes may be seen as proxies of much deeper, structural problems, though media coverage routinely focuses on singular, criminal justice outcomes. This study uses a press analysis of two high-profile cases to investigate how these dynamics restrict our cultural understandings of justice outside the context of formal criminal justice responses.

The prosecution of hate crimes: the limitations of the hate crime typology.

Since the development of bias crime legislation over the past few decades, scholars have debated the merits of the legislation and questioned its enforcement.(1) In light of such concerns, this study presents characteristics of all cases prosecuted as bias crimes in a New Jersey county between 2001 and 2004 and applies the hate crime typology originally developed in 1993. Results show that, in this jurisdiction, the typology is an inadequate tool for classifying cases prosecuted as hate crimes.