Call for papers
Covid and conflict: Local impacts and global questions

Coordinating Editor
Andres F. Rengifo
Rutgers University, School of Criminal Justice, NJ, United States

The health crisis triggered by COVID-19 has upended billions of lives from the staggering ranks of those directly exposed to illness and tragedy, to others affected by record levels of unemployment and the realignment of government operations and other services. The progression of the pandemic and its associated responses in government and society have fueled old conflicts and created new ones, many of which have amplified the potential for violence, abuse and other crimes. These twin forces have also recast broader tensions involving the role of local vs. global authorities, the integration of state vs. private strategies, and the priority given to short vs. long-term policies of mitigation and reconstruction.
To study these contrasts empirically and substantively, IJCV seeks submissions documenting the impact of COVID-19 across key topics related to conflict and violence. This encompasses the tracing of local problems linked to the outbreak and their range of intended and unintended consequences, as well as the critical assessment of global questions emerging in a post COVID-19 world. Consistent with the multi-disciplinary nature of the journal, we welcome empirically grounded submissions from social sciences, human rights, law, and health/public health research and related fields.

Topics of particular interest are:

• Impact of COVID-19 on vulnerable populations (refugees, displaced persons, people incarcerated, first-responders, elderly people).
• Impact of social-distance measures on recorded levels of crime/violence (including, for example, homicide, and domestic violence), policing practices (staffing levels, deployments), and criminal sanctions (pre-trial detention, community-based sanctions).
• Disparities in the enforcement of social-distance measures across race/ethnicity/gender and in terms of health-care provision or access to state-sponsored reconstruction programs.
• Structure of responses to COVID-19 in the Global North vs. South (local vs. national/federal responses, role of security/law enforcement agencies, approaches to testing and containment, border controls, etc.), and associated conflicts over redistribution of wealth across or within countries.
• COVID-19 and crimes such as price-gouging, theft of medical supplies, counterfeited goods/smuggling, corruption) or more general forms of vigilantism, stigma, and other evolving mechanisms of "social control" targeting suspected COVID-19 victims and first-responders.

      
Submissions

Papers for this focus section must be submitted via email at ijcv@uni-bielefeld.de no later than May 31, 2021. All papers must conform with IJCV’s author guidelines and may not exceed 6,000 words excluding references and tables/figures. For more information, see https://www.ijcv.org/index.php/ijcv/about/submissions. For questions about this call for papers, please contact Andres F. Rengifo, IJCV Editor coordinating this special issue at arengifo@rutgers.edu.