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