International Journal of Criminology and Sociology

The Emergence of Urbanization and Urbanism in Phenomenological Structural Sociology

Paul C. Mocombe — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Within Mocombe’s theories of phenomenological structuralism and consciousness field theory, this article outlines the emergence of the process of urbanization and urbanism as a way of life in the capitalist world-system. The paper connects, causally, the emergence of the latter with the formation of the former two, i.e., urbanization and urbanism, in the West.

Teratocracy and Contemporary Political Power

Fernando Gil Villa — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This article introduces the concept of teratocracy to analyze contemporary forms of political power marked by the erosion of symbolic limits and the normalization of excess. Epistemologically, it aligns with the tradition of the criminological imagination articulated by Jock Young, reconnecting criminology and sociology through C. Wright Mills’ critique of abstracted empiricism. From a criminological perspective, it also draws on recent developments in zemiology and social harm approaches, shifting the analytical focus from crime to the production, normalization, and denial of harm. From an interdisciplinary perspective, the analysis examines processes of symbolic collapse and their implications for authority, responsibility, legitimacy, and social harm. Teratocracy is conceptualized not as governance without law, but as a mode of power organized around unbounded enjoyment, which reshapes moral boundaries and weakens mechanisms of accountability.

Bureaucratic Residence Regimes and the Integration of Syrian Refugee Women in Spain: A Sociological Analysis with Reference to Germany

Fernando Gil Villa, Salma Lamsaouri — Thu, 07 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This article examines how bureaucratic residence regimes shape the integration experiences of Syrian refugee women in Spain, with Germany used as a contextual reference rather than as a fully matched empirical case. Moving beyond dominant integration indicators such as employment, education, and language acquisition, the study argues that legal status and administrative accessibility are constitutive dimensions of integration. The article draws on twenty-six semi-structured interviews with Syrian women residing in Spain and combines these data with an interpretive comparison of the policy and administrative frameworks that structure refugee reception and integration in Spain and Germany. The findings show that residence status is not merely a formal legal category but a lived condition that affects planning, mobility, access to institutions, and emotional security. Interviewees associated bureaucratic complexity with uncertainty, delay, and unequal treatment, and a large majority linked perceived discrimination to bureaucratic settings in Germany. At the same time, interviewees described Spain as relatively more facilitating in terms of residence stability, especially because many had obtained five-year asylum residence permits or had progressed to permanent residence or nationality. The article also highlights the gendered and cultural dimensions of integration, showing how administrative procedures intersect with caregiving responsibilities, language barriers, and differing understandings of family, emotion, and social relations. The study contributes to sociology by conceptualizing bureaucracy as a central mechanism in the production of integration, inequality, and institutional trust. It concludes that integration policy must be understood not only as a matter of social inclusion programming but also as a question of legal architecture and bureaucratic design.

The History of Violence on Pain vs. Pleasure: A Functionalistic and Dramatisation Concept of Social Phenomenon

Shahanshah Gulpham, Pravesh Shekhar — Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Theorising the law of confidence in a heuristic method clearly indicates that the violence is based on immediate pleasure for misdemeanour and results in severe pain for the victim. Historically speaking, pain and pleasure are the two sides of a single coin. Design of criminality, as proved in the writing of Jeremy Bentham, a philosopher of legal history, that morality plays a tremendous role, in which detachment of morality from the individual encourages harm to others, and vice versa, attachment of morality moulds the individual to encourage pleasure. The functionalistic approach of crime is argued for societal necessity. According to E. Durkheim, crime or violence is the social fact by which a society is functional and also proves its existence. Other socio-legal processing institutions, such as the court, police, prison, and prosecution, have historically interlinked and co-exist as a functional unit of the whole society. Enemies of social coherence represent themselves in a dramatised way and try to improve their existence by inflicting pain on others through their violent modus operandi. The present research paper provides multiple theoretical explanations with regard to the historical writing about violence. The paper also talks about the guilty mind of offenders and justice delivery services in the past. The future perspective of violence and how to practice the penalty for changing the pace of violence.

Adolescent Risk-Taking and Future Roles: The Relationship between Delinquency, Substance Use, and Self-Efficacy

Sha Luo, Sampson Lee Blair — Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Adolescents often engage in a variety of risk-taking behaviors, such as substance use and delinquency, and these behaviors can result in a multitude of possible consequences. In particular, adolescents’ perception of their capacity to function in specific adult roles, self-efficacy, is developed during the adolescent years. This study uses a nationally representative sample of high school seniors to examine how risk-taking behaviors may influence various forms of self-efficacy, and also how the social contexts of adolescents may impact self-efficacy, as well. Adolescents are shown to maintain relatively high levels of self-efficacy, indicating confidence in their ability to perform in adult roles. Alcohol use and delinquent behaviors are both shown to be salient predictors of self-efficacy, and peer factors are also revealed to have meaningful associations with self-efficacy. The findings and implications of this study are discussed within the framework of ecological systems theory.