An abolitionist theory on crime: ending the abusive relationship with Racist-Imperialist-Patriarchy [R.I.P.]

In this article I re-assess the parameters of what we seek to abolish as we pursue penal abolition. I apply Black Feminist Hauntology to exorcize the barriers of traditional and ineffective deconstructions of crime and criminalization. To illustrate these weaknesses I discuss police killings and related vigilante white supremacist violence. I present the aftermath of the deaths and trials (when there were trials) to bring to light the large disconnects that exist between abolitionism and the world in which crime lives. To begin to address this disconnect I present an abolitionist theory on crime founded upon five pillars of assessment: abolition’s perceived minimization of violence; the abusive R.I.P. relationship between crime and justice; a cultural phenomenon of achieving significance through proximity or by association; abusive naturalizations of violence that have been unaddressed in penal abolition; locating the struggles to exit abusive relationships within the core of our studies of criminal justice and penal abolition. I conclude that when penal abolitionists conceive of crime as a social construction tied to criminal justice institutions alone, as opposed to part of a structurally Racist-Imperialist-Patriarchal [R-I-P] abusive relationship, they stunt the possibilities of abolition in manners akin to pushing against a 500 year old tree from its trunk and expecting it to topple over without any account for the roots that hold it firmly in the ground.     

Disaggregating LWOP: Life Without Parole,Capital Punishment,and Mass Incarceration in Florida, 1972–1995

Over the past 40 years, life imprisonment without the possibility of parole (LWOP) has been transformed from a rare sanction and marginal practice of last resort into a routine punishment in the United States. Two general theses—one depicting LWOP as a direct outgrowth of death penalty abolition; another collapsing LWOP into the tough‐on‐crime sentencing policy of the mass incarceration era—serve as working explanations for this phenomenon. In the absence of in‐depth studies, however, there has been little evidence for carefully evaluating these narratives. This article provides a state‐level historical analytic account of LWOP's rise by looking to Florida—the state that uses LWOP more than any other—to explicate LWOP's specific processes and forms. Recounting LWOP's history in a series of critical junctures, the article identifies a different stimulus, showing how LWOP precipitated as Florida translated major structural upheavals that broke open traditional ways of doing and thinking about punishment. In doing so, the article reveals LWOP to be a multilayered product of incremental change, of many, sometimes disjointed and indirectly conversant, pieces. Presenting LWOP as the product of a variety of penal logics, including those prioritizing fairness and efficiency, the article more generally illustrates how very severe punishments can arise from reforms without primarily punitive purposes and in ways that were not necessarily planned.     

The moving targets of penal abolitionism: ICOPA,past, present and future

The history of the International Conference on Penal Abolition (ICOPA) is explored, assessing major trends shaping the current growth of carceral practices and offering suggestions for the future of the conference movement. The goal here is to facilitate the expansion of abolitionism by describing the changing nature of what is to be abolished. A discussion of the emergence of prison abolitionism and of the ICOPA is presented, describing the shift in focus from prison to penal abolition. Taking these developments and character into account, an abolitionist gaze must be expanded to reflect a carceral abolition project, encompassing contemporary penal abolitionism while acknowledging the proliferation of carceral practices and spaces outside the traditional penal system.     

Punishment's Legal Templates: A Theory of Formal Penal Change

The well‐known gap between law on the books and law in action often casts doubt on the significance of changes to law on the books. For example, the rise and fall of penal technologies have long been considered significant indicators of penal change in socio‐historical analyses of punishment. Recent research, however, has challenged the significance of apparently large‐scale penal change of this kind. This article clarifies the significance of penal technologies' rise and fall by offering an alternative account of formal penal change, introducing the analytical concept of “legal templates,” structural models of legal activity (e.g., punishment) available for authorization and replication across multiple jurisdictions. Analyzing punishment's templates explains how new penal technologies can be important harbingers of change, even when they fail to revolutionize penal practice and are not caused by a widespread ideological shift. This article locates the significance of punishment's legal templates in their constitutive power—their ability, over the long term, to shape cognitive‐cultural expectations about what punishment is or should be. This power appears only when the template is widely adopted by a plurality of jurisdictions, thereby becoming institutionalized. Ultimately, these institutionalized templates define the scope of future punishment.     

Transportation versus Imprisonment in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Britain: Penal Power, Liberty, and the State

Existing explanations for historical changes in punishment in Britain have tended to examine the replacement of disorderly prisons and public executions with national penitentiaries from the late eighteenth to the mid‐nineteenth century. Despite their significant contributions to our understanding of how punishments operate in a broader social, political, and economic context, these scholarly accounts have narrowed debate on the mechanisms of penal change to the intentions of penal reformers. This analysis extends this time frame and uses historical data to compare the development of the penitentiary in Britain to its primary, yet less studied, penal substitute, the transportation of felons to America and Australia. In doing so, it provides an alternative explanation for the ascendancy of national penitentiaries. I argue that the development of these penal institutions in Britain was historically made possible by two interdependent sets of changes: (1) changes in the structure and administration of the state's penal apparatus (from decentralized to centralized and patrimonial to bureaucratic); and (2) transformations in popular understandings of the state's power to punish in correspondence with the expansion of a broader and more equal definition of citizenship (democratization). In conclusion, I argue for the value of perspectives on punishment that identify the explicit relationships between state organization and social relations in order to clarify how culture inheres in material conditions to influence specific penal outcomes.     

Sacred Deviance and AIDS in a North American Buddhist Community*

This essay presents a community AIDS narrative concerning an alleged case of intentional HIV transmission between spiritual teacher and student. Analysis focuses on the relation between legal and popular representation of criminal intent, the denial of AIDS risk, and the neighborhood of belief. In this framework, alternative application of traditional criminal law and HIV-specific penal statutes are considered as both prosecution strategies and opportunities for public spectacle.     

Technology transfer with an intellectual-properties focus

At universities, especially technological ones, technology transfer takes many forms and involves many groups and individuals-faculty, staff, students, research institutes, and others. A number of mechanisms are at work with several foci. This paper describes a case at Michigan Technological University in which the concept of intellectual property is the focus for technology transfer. This focus seems to better facilitate some desirable and beneficial results, particularly those of a long-term nature, including faculty, staff, and student development. Dr. Erbisch has served as the university's director of Research Services and holds a professorship in the department of Biological Sciences.     

Beyond Punishment: The Penal State's Interventionist,Covert, and Negligent Modalities of Control

This article investigates the involvement of the penal state in the lives of criminalized people as a controlling force that takes multiple forms. We offer the concept of modalities of penal control and identify three such modalities in addition to expressive punishment: interventionist penal control is accomplished in extralegal ways; covert penal control is hidden from public view; and negligent penal control is characterized by the absence of action by state actors. This article illustrates empirical cases of each modality, using data from three distinct projects based in Chicago, southern Wisconsin, and nationwide. The data include observations of post‐prison groups and homes, interviews with criminalized people and nongovernmental organizational (NGO) staff, statutes, and regulations. This expanded understanding of penal state involvement extends beyond the understanding that characterizes discussions of mass incarceration and highlights the need for comprehensive reform.     

Government and education news

Abstract

The issue of feedback to students on assessment has been identified by many law schools as an area of high priority. Feedback to students is a key component of quality assessment, student progression and the academic experience of students. However, provision of high quality feedback is also a workload factor for lecturers.

Kingston University and Nottingham Trent University both have identified assessment feedback as an action area in their respective Learning and Teaching Strategies. The learning and teaching co‐ordinators within the Law Schools of these two universities decided to collaborate on a survey of the feedback techniques and practices used.

This study was undertaken to explore strategies to sustain and strengthen the quality of feedback in the context of larger classes, increased student numbers and pressure on resources. The aim was to establish the range of feedback and practices used and to identify student and staff perceptions of existing assessment feedback practices. Using semi‐structured questionnaires, data was collected and analysed in terms of the extent to which assessment feedback was perceived as effective, the extent to which these findings were consistent with the literature and to make recommendations on how assessment feedback could be enhanced.

Findings showed that students clearly distinguished between different features of assessment feedback and evaluated these differently, that there was little consistency in the perceived experience of assessment feedback, and that feedback given often did not meet students’ expectations. Staff perceived that giving good feedback was important but that students seldom acted on feedback. Staff also reported that giving individual written feedback was their preferred method although this is one of the most time‐consuming methods. The conclusions of the study offered practical ways of improving the quality and effectiveness of assessment feedback by revisiting established assumptions about feedback and raising students’ awareness of the various sources, forms and functions of assessment feedback.

For staff, larger classes, increased student diversity and diminishing resources mean that staff will need to work smarter, with regard to providing effective assessment feedback, if there is to be a consistently better student experience of assessment feedback.     

Engendering Imprisonment: The State and Incarcerated Female Subjects in Taiwan

In International feminist perspectives in criminology, Rafter and Heidensohn in International feminist perspectives in criminology: Engendering a discipline. Open University Press, Buckingham, (1995: 4) contended that current mainstream criminology was the most masculine of all social sciences. A look at arguments about penal development confronts us with the fact that most historical studies are not gender-specific. Whether female offenders were victimized or acted as their own agents in the penal institutions can be determined with reference to two considerations: first, women prisoners have persistently been treated differently from their male contemporaries; second, female offenders have typically been burdened with formal penalties and informal gender disciplines as punishments for their wrongdoings. The relationship between women and the state provides some clues regarding how penal institutions, which are authorized to act for the state in imposing penalties, treat female offenders and why women’s imprisonment has taken the forms that are evident historically. This study traces the unique political and social conditions of Taiwan’s history to determine what reformations penal institutions have sought to enforce upon female prisoners and which body-types of female inmates have been ‘docile’, ‘obedient’, and ‘useful’ to the state. From the establishment of women’s care homes and the practice of separating the genders in penal institutions, to the implementation of independent women’s prisons, the state in Taiwan has played a dominant role in penal reforms in various historical contexts. This investigation aims to provide a critical and unique perspective of the penalization of women.     

秦汉官吏犯罪的处罚研究——以“废”官为中心

“废”官作为对官吏“撤职永不叙用”的专用处罚,一直被学界所公认。然而,从现有公布的秦汉出土文献以及传世文献来看,秦统一之后,由于领土的急剧扩大以及爵位在刑罚体系中功能的增强,“废”作为秦特有的处罚方式,其“永不叙用”的处罚功能被分解出来。“免官削爵”“废锢”等词汇开始承担“废”官的原有功能,“废”逐渐从律令法制术语中消失。     

缓刑执行的技术分析

缓刑是附条件不执行原判刑罚的一种刑罚制度，就其自身的制度设计而言已经比较完善。但其存在于刑罚制度的综合体系中，不可避免地要与其他刑罚制度发生关系，其中也出现了一些衔接不畅的情况。如缓刑考验期内如何适用减刑和自首、被宣告缓刑的犯罪分子同时剥夺政治权利的刑期计算问题等等。研究和解决这些问题有助于刑罚制度的整体完善。     

中国刑法语境中的“共谋罪”考辨

共谋罪是英美刑法特有的概念。共谋罪的本质是二人以上就犯罪、不法行为或其他行为的实施达成协议。惩罚共谋罪本质是惩罚不法协议。围绕“共谋罪独立于目标犯罪而具有可罚性”的基础性观念,英美刑法创设了相应的实体法和程序法规则。我国刑法中的阴谋犯、预备犯等与英美刑法共谋罪从根本上说是不同的范畴。我国刑法并不惩罚共谋罪。     

MODELING THE EFFECTS OF RACIAL THREAT ON PUNITIVE AND RESTORATIVE SCHOOL DISCIPLINE PRACTICES*

It is clear that schools are mirroring the criminal justice system by becoming harsher toward student misbehavior despite decreases in delinquency. Moreover, Black students consistently are disciplined more frequently and more severely than others for the same behaviors, much in the same way that Black criminals are subjected to harsher criminal punishments than other offenders. Research has found that the racial composition of schools is partially responsible for harsher school discipline just as the racial composition of areas has been associated with punitive criminal justice measures. Yet, no research has explored comprehensively the dynamics involved in how racial threat and other factors influence discipline policies that ultimately punish Black students disproportionately. In this study (N = 294 public schools), structural equation models assess how school racial composition affects school disciplinary policies in light of other influences on discipline and gauge how other possible predictors of school disciplinary policies relate to racial composition of schools, to various school disciplinary policies, and to one another. Findings indicate that schools responding to student misbehavior with one type of discipline tend to use other types of responses as well and that many factors predict the type of disciplinary response used by schools. However, disadvantaged, urban schools with a greater Black, poor, and Hispanic student population are more likely to respond to misbehavior in a punitive manner and less likely to respond in a restorative manner.     

论我国前科消灭制度的构建

界定前科消灭制度的概念,介绍国外关于前科消灭制度的规定,阐明我国现行法律体系中关于 “前科”的体现,提出构建我国前科消灭制度的建议。     

Crime and Reactions to Crime in Scandinavia

This short overview of available statistical data on crime and penal systems in Scandinavia indicates that the level of traditional forms of crime in Scandinavia is on a par with or lower than that found in many other European countries. As elsewhere in western Europe, Scandinavia experienced a substantial increase in crime rates during the post‐war period—indicating that these recorded increases may have common structural roots. The 1990s witnessed a stabilization of theft rates, albeit at a high level. Increasing equality between women and men may have contributed to an increase in the reporting of violent and sexual offences against women (and children), making these offences more visible. The system of formal control in the Scandinavian countries is characterized by relatively low police density; a clear‐up rate that has declined; above‐average conviction rates; the imposition of fines in a high proportion of criminal cases; and relatively low prison populations. The implications for crime policies are discussed.     

Journal Publishing, Journal Reputation, and the United Kingdom's Research Assessment Exercise

Many academic lawyers believe that the Research Assessment Exercise has encouraged writing for academic journals, often at the expense of other forms of scholarly discourse. Moreover, it is widely perceived that the reputation of the journal in which research is published affects how that research is assessed in connection with the RAE. In this article, the authors report data gathered from a large-scale study measuring the perceptions of academic lawyers concerning the journal publishing process, how the RAE has affected journal quality generally, and how specific journals rank in terms of academic quality and their perceived importance to the RAE process.     

Psychological Injury and Law: Editorial on the Young and the Tested

In this editorial about our dynamic new journal and association, I describe how young professionals and students in both the mental health field and the legal profession can play a role in the association and how they can benefit from it and the journal. The association and journal are meant to serve the education and career aspirations of young people and, at the same time, we look forward to their contributions.     

The Path of the Law Review: How Interfield Ties Contribute to Institutional Emergence and Buffer against Change

Early neoinstitutional theory tended to assume institutional reproduction, while recent accounts privilege situations in which alternative models from outside an organizational environment or delegitimizing criticism from within precipitate institutional change. We know little about institutions that persist despite such change conditions. Recent advances in sociological field theory suggest that interfield ties contribute to institutional change but under‐theorize how such ties may reinforce institutions. Extending both approaches, I incorporate self‐reinforcing mechanisms from path‐dependence scholarship. I elucidate my framework by analyzing the student‐edited, student‐reviewed law review. Despite its anomalous position relative to the dominant peer‐reviewed journal model of other disciplines, and despite sustained criticisms from those who publish in them, the law review remains a bedrock institution of law schools and legal scholarship. I combine qualitative historical analyses of legal scholarship and law schools with quantitative analyses of law‐review structures and field contestation. The analysis covers law review's entire historical trajectory—its emergence, its institutionalization and coherence of a field around it, and its current state as a contested but persistent institution. I argue that self‐reinforcing mechanisms evident in law review's ties to related fields‐legal practice, law schools, the university, and legal periodicals—both enabled its emergence and have buffered it against change.