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Faculty of Law

Faculty & Staff

Dr. Janeille Zorina Matthews

Dr. Janeille Zorina Matthews

Deputy Dean (Graduate Studies and Research)

Research Coordinator (U-RAP)

Department: Law

Bio

Dr. Janeille Zorina Matthews is a multi-disciplinary criminal justice scholar who teaches courses in criminal law, criminology and legal research and writing. Dr. Matthews served as the Antigua & Barbuda country author for UNDP’s first Caribbean Human Development Report and most recently authored a journal article entitled ‘Creating the demand for better crime policy: qualitative frame analysis as a vehicle for social transformation’ published in Crime, Law and Social Change.   She is currently engaged in work around storytelling for social justice, decarceration and decriminalizing minor offences in the Anglophone Caribbean as she interrogates the persistence of colonial legacies in contemporary penal practices. Dr. Matthews is the Research Coordinator of The UWI Rights Advocacy Project, a collective of UWI public law scholars committed to human rights, and social justice in the Caribbean.
 

Qualifications

  • PhD, The London School of Economics and Political Science, 2015
  • MPhil, The London School of Economics and Political Science, 2015
  • J. D., Harvard Law School, 2005
  • M.P.A., Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government, 2005
  • B.A. in Political Science, Villanova University, 1998

Research Areas

My research aims to transform national dialogues around crime, public safety, and community justice in Antigua and Barbuda and the wider English Speaking Caribbean by better understanding the social construction of crime.

Main Research
For much of Antigua’s history, the reported rates of rape, indecent assault and unlawful sexual intercourse have remained high and have accounted for as much as 20 per cent of the country’s violent crime.  However, data on prevalence rates obscure important changes in the commission of these crimes. With the advent of the alleged masked ‘serial rapist’ in 2007 perpetrators are increasingly unknown to the victims and in concealing his identity and using a firearm the masked ‘serial rapist’ helped to entrench the increasingly anonymous and seemingly random nature of rape in Antigua and Barbuda.  As a result, the period between 2007 and 2009 left an indelible mark on the collective psyche of Antiguans, which in turn has impacted behavioural patterns as well as perceptions and representations of crime in Antigua and Barbuda.  This research focuses on the spate of rapes in Antigua between 2007 and 2009, contextualising it with a historical look at sexual violence in Antigua and discussing responses to it post 2009.
 

Teaching Areas

  • Criminal Law I

  • Criminal Law II

  • Forensic Criminology

  • Independent Research Paper

Select Publications

  1. Janeille Zorina Matthews,  ‘What’s Past is Prologue: Path Dependency and Contemporary Penal Practices in the Anglophone Caribbean,’ Theoretical Criminology (forthcoming 2023)

  2. Janeille Zorina Matthews,  “The ‘Real’ Crime Scene: An Empirical Overview of Crime in Antigua and Barbuda 1970-2020” Caribbean Journal of Criminology (forthcoming 2023)

  3. Janeille Zorina Matthews. "Creating the demand for better crime policy: qualitative frame analysis as a vehicle for social transformation." Crime, Law and Social Change pp 1-24 (2022)

  4. Janeille Zorina Matthews, ‘The Stories We Tell Ourselves: Reframing the Discourse of Sexual Violence in the Anglophone Caribbean ’ in Ramona Biholar and Dacia Leslie (eds), Gender Dimensions of Violence Prevention (Routledge 2021)

  5. Janeille Zorina Matthews, ‘Two Different Stories: A Mixed Methods Investigation of Crime in Antigua and Barbuda,’ Caribbean Journal of Mixed Methods Research, Vol. 2 issue 1 pp 270-301 (2021)

  6. Janeille Zorina Matthews and Tracy Robinson, ‘Modern Vagrancy in the Anglophone Caribbean,’ Caribbean Journal of Criminology, Special Issue on Crime, Gender and Sexuality, Vol. 1 issue 4 pp 123-154 (2019)

  7. Janeille Zorina Matthews, ‘Social Constructions of Crime in Antigua and Barbuda: Perceptions of Structural Theories of Crime In a Post-Colonial Era’ in Katharina J Joosen and Corin A Bailey (eds), Caribbean Crime & Criminal Justice: Impacts of Post-Colonialism and Gender on Crime pp 208-231 (Routledge 2017)

  8. Janeille Zorina Matthews.  ‘The Color of Sexual Harassment and the Public/Private Divide,’ The University of California Hastings Race and Poverty Law Journal, Vol. 4 Issue 1 pp 181-218 (2006)

Keywords

Criminal law, criminal justice, class, gender, law & social science, vulnerable communities, qualitative research methods, behavioral realism in criminal law