By George Lee,
University of Lincoln.
Focusing on the United Kingdom, this dissertation will explore the punitive attitudes of the British population, particularly regarding Capital Punishment and Harsher Sentencing.
The gap I aim to fill is based on British society, where capital punishment has been completely abolished for 28 years, and where there has been an increased support for harsher sentencing. There is a lack of UK studies that test the correlation between support for punitive attitudes and levels of education, as well as political affiliation, whereas there is a wide range of international studies. Understanding this relationship within a UK framework will reveal how education and politics influence punitive attitudes.
There is a gap in how racial threat, particularly post-Brexit and recent political developments, influences punitive desires. We have seen many protests across the UK recently about immigration because of the fear of some individuals about economic competition and cultural protectionism. Understanding whether this fear can be directly linked to harsher punitive attitudes will reveal how much of an influence race has and if individuals who affiliate themselves with particular parties support harsher sentencing.
The dissertation will propose recommendations for further research, so that we can gain a better understanding of other factors that impact capital punishment and harsher sentencing..
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21837900
By Federica Aurora Salanitri,
London Metropolitan University.
Femicide represents one of the most severe forms of gendered violence. It exposes the limits of state protection, despite extensive legal frameworks addressing domestic abuse and lethal violence in both Italy and England and Wales. This dissertation adopts a qualitative, documentary-based comparative methodology to examine how legal definitions, institutional structures and professional cultures shape the state’s capacity to prevent escalation. Drawing on feminist criminology, institutional theory, and victimology, as well as national reports and judicial analyses (DV21 dossier; Sanders and Young 2021; HMICFRS, 2021; House of Commons Library, 2023; ISTAT, 2023; Benvenuti, 2018), it analyses the cases of Sarah Everard, Banaz Mahmod, Giulia Cecchettin and Matilde Sorrentino.
Findings indicate that gender-neutral frameworks in England and Wales often conceal structural inequalities and contribute to fragmented institutional practice, while Italy’s explicit recognition of femicide does not prevent judicial delays, uneven service provision, or procedural rigidity. Across both jurisdictions, agencies tend to intervene only after violence has escalated significantly. These patterns reflect institutional silence particularly through minimisation, together with bureaucratic delay (Walby, 2011; Hester, 2006; Bruzzone, 2020; Murgia, 2021).
The dissertation argues that femicide should be understood not only as an act committed by an individual perpetrator but also as the outcome of institutional decisions, omissions, and wider patriarchal structures that shape state responses (Renzetti, 2013; Badinter, 2011). Preventing escalation requires structural reform together with better interagency coordination and a broader change in institutional attitudes. Institutions must also respond more quickly to warning signs, and recognise coercive control before violence reaches its most serious stage.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21824907
By Ljubica Kamcheva,
London Metropolitan University.
This dissertation interrogates how the physical, architectural and curatorial organisation of Auschwitz-Birkenau actively constructs historical memory for the postmemory generation. Utilising a social-constructivist paradigm and a rigorously structured autoethnographic methodology, the research deconstructs the site not as a static repository of atrocity, but as a manufactured epistemological battleground. By synthesising Henri Lefebvre’s triad of space and Michel Foucault’s disciplinary architecture, the analysis examines the friction between forensic evidence, the curation of victimhood and the relentless pressures of global heritage tourism. The study concludes that the site’s spatial choreography manages the profound tension between historical justice and commodified remembrance, ultimately producing a curated simulacrum of the past that dictates contemporary engagement with the Holocaust.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.21790531