Critical justice consciousness: Social injustice and the criminal justice system

In this essay I examine the importance of social justice to my identity and the changing interpretation of my “justice consciousness” resulting from changes in my work life. Drawing on my academic experience as well as my experience as an attorney, I describe the meaning that social justice has for me. I also examine the connections that I see between social injustice and the operation of the critical justice system.     

Race,criminal justice professionals,and intellectual authority in fictional crime dramas

The purpose of this research is to extend the existing media and crime literature by discussing how minority criminal justice personnel are granted or not granted intellectual authority in fictional crime dramas by their representation as presenters of crime and non-crime fact-based statements. An analysis of 117 episodes from four fictional crime dramas appearing in the top 20 Nielson ratings from 2003 to 2010 indicate that Black characters are not given the same intellectual authority as White characters, and therefore are imbued with less power and status than their White counterparts. In some cases, Black characters are not even given intellectual authority within their respective intellectual fields.     

Space, time and function: intersecting principles of responsibility across the terrain of criminal justice

This paper considers the interpretive significance of the intersecting relationships between different conceptions of responsibility as they shift over space and time. The paper falls into two main sections. The first gives an account of several conceptions of responsibility: two conceptions founded in ideas of capacity; two founded in ideas of character, and one founded in the relationship between an agent and the outcome which she causes. The second main section uses this differentiated conceptual account to analyse and interpret certain aspects of the contemporary criminal law of England and Wales. In conclusion, the paper considers a number of hypotheses about what the evidence of certain shifts in the relationship between the three families of responsibility-conception can tell us about the current state and significance of criminal law among other systems of social governance.

犯罪学与刑事法制改革:以英国为例

过去30年英国的犯罪学发展具有两个明显特征:一个是"犯罪学"在多个维度的"膨胀";另一个是犯罪学"自治性"的增强。犯罪学在向自治学科转变的过程中既具有许多有益的方面,也存在诸多风险。它可能会丧失与其他学科之间的联系,也越来越容易受到外部环境的影响与制约,因而有必要对其存在的问题及其潜在的后果保持警觉。犯罪学知识的用途,在于为决策的制定提供科学依据。对犯罪学进行准确定位有两个核心要求:一是要承诺把犯罪学变成一个内涵广阔的学术概念,即将犯罪学的多元主义看作一个优势;二是要让犯罪学研究与实践保持长久的、基本的联系,将犯罪学知识渗入公众关注的犯罪和法制事件中,对"制度性环境"作出一个比现在更令人信服的解释。     

Justice as freedom,fairness, compassion,and utilitarianism: How my life experiences shaped my views of justice

This essay lays out my definition of justice and traces the origins of its conception. I identify and discuss very specific life experiences and how they have affected my understanding of justice. Specific incidents include early childhood experiences, key events in adolescence, and the most important episodes from early adulthood. I examine my own family conditions and early relationships and consider the influences of certain television shows and music in childhood and adolescence. I also discuss the effects of various educational experiences. The culmination of these life experiences was the emergence of a very strong sense of justice, reciprocity, and compassion for others, particularly for the least powerful and most vulnerable in our midst. These experiences in essence pushed me into the field of criminal justice and into the worlds of academia and social justice activism. They also allowed me finally to see my mission in life and to understand how all my life experiences have shaped my sense of justice.     

Forensic psychiatry and the birth of the criminal insane asylum in modern Italy

This paper focuses on the creation of the criminal insane asylum in Italy between unification in 1861 and World War I. The establishment of criminal insane asylums was a triumph of the positivist criminology of Cesare Lombroso, who advocated for an institution to intern insane criminals in his classic work, Criminal Man (1876). As a context for the analysis of the birth of the criminal insane asylum in Italy, this essay also outlines the history of the insanity plea in Italian criminal law and the young discipline of psychiatry during the fifty years after Italian unification.     

Force and fraud: A radically coherent criticism of corrections as industry

As radical criminology continues to gain popularity among a new generation of scholars, there are several troubling developments that ought to be met with caution. First, many emergent writings seem to take a benevolent state for granted. Second, there is a tendency to present radical ideas in a vocabulary that is so abstruse that it is difficult to decipher precisely how social change might be realized. As a remedy to these problems, this article relies on blunt language to analyze the corrections industry; by doing so, it focuses on market principles shaping key mechanisms of social control, namely force and fraud. In terms of force, the US criminal justice apparatus is too often harsh and coercive, particularly for the poor and racial minorities. Compounding matters, citizens rarely challenge such force due in large part to fraudulent governmental insistence that tough on crime initiatives are necessary to maintain public safety. Among the items discussed within this framework are public misperceptions of crime and punishment, the production of prisoners in a capitalist system, and the encouragement of excessive incarceration producing financial and ideological dividends for the state as well as the private sector.     

Popular punitivism and cultural mediation: The case of Spain

In the last decade, an increasing number of scholars have discussed and articulated embracement of popular punitivism within Spain. The discourse while vital to the study of popular punitivism has missed an important element, specific to the cultural mediators present within the nation. As the current discourse has missed this vital component, the intent of this article is to examine how a post-Franco Spain emerged to embrace elements of popular punitivism, most notably the use of prisons, while embracing a penal structure and philosophy that is reintegrative at its core. As such, it is offered that the cultural factors present within the nation have enabled it to mitigate some of the most harmful characteristics of popular punitivism     

Cross-cultural research and the role of anthropology in criminal justice

This study involves the application of traditional perspectives from anthropology to an examination of criminal justice research. The survey of several samples of published research confirms the paucity of criminal justice research in non-Western settings. Moreover, most of the reported research is not broadly representative, having been concentrated in a few non-Western countries. The implications of these findings for criminal justice education, research and theory are discussed, as are means for promoting cross-cultural research. The concepts of holistic and traditional comparative criminal justice are contrasted.     

论刑事一体化视角的危险驾驶罪

近十年来,危险驾驶罪逐步成为我国刑法体系中发案数位列第一的罪名。但是,每年将30万左右的人贴上罪犯标签并使之承担过重的犯罪附随后果,甚至沦为社会的对立面,这无论对于国家、社会还是危险驾驶者个人来说,都是巨大损失,属于司法和个人的“两败俱伤”。基于刑事一体化的理念,有必要对危险驾驶罪进行体系化治理。实务中直接适用“但书”规定得出无罪结论是一种大而化之的做法,存在说理不足、与罪刑法定原则相抵触的“硬伤”。“但书”规定只能在行为缺乏刑事不法,以及虽具备刑事不法但存在免责事由,从而缺乏处罚必要性等事实得以确认之后才能有限适用。为限定本罪的适用范围,在司法上,需要准确理解本罪的客观构成要件要素,尤其要对抽象危险进行必要的司法“印证式”判断,以确定立法者所预设的法益危险是否存在,妥当认定违法阻却事由,准确认定本罪的自首,提高缓刑适用率,将认罪认罚之后的从宽处罚落到实处;在立法政策上,有必要根据犯罪发生的实证数据进行调整,适度提高入罪门槛,将“醉驾型”危险驾驶罪限定为“不能安全驾驶”的情形,同时配套修改公职人员政务处分法,建立轻微犯罪的前科消灭制度,以有效降低犯罪的附随效果;在犯罪的情境预防方面,强制汽车制造商安装车载酒精监测装置是减少犯罪的关键手段。     

Bayesian analysis and the accumulation of evidence in crime and justice intervention studies

In recent years a great deal of attention has turned to the need for policy-relevant research in criminology. Methodologically, attention has been trained on the use of randomized experimental designs and cumulative systematic reviews of evidence to accomplish this goal. Our work here reviews and demonstrates the utility of the Bayesian analytic framework, in the context of crime prevention and justice treatment studies, as a means of furthering the goals of research synthesis and creation of policy-relevant scientific statements. Evidence from various fields is used as a foundation for the discussion, and an empirical example illustrates how this approach might be useful in practical criminological research. It is concluded that Bayesian analysis offers a useful complement to existing approaches and warrants further inclusion in the ongoing discussion about how best to assess program effectiveness, synthesize evidence, and report findings from crime and justice evaluations in a way that is relevant to policy makers and practitioners.

The repentant defendant and the potential of international criminal justice

ABSTRACT

Repentant defendants are a more common feature of the international criminal trial than commonly thought, and offer interesting opportunities to conceptualize the possibility of restorative justice within what is otherwise a conventionally retributive framework. Repentance may arise at different stages of the trial and is an inherent part of the assessment at the plea bargain and sentencing stages. It must be understood as a particular performance from the accused, one that individualizes guilt and performs the sort of moral agency on which international criminal law is otherwise premised. Its force lies potentially in its power to break down some of the constitutive dichotomies of international criminal justice, including those between perpetrator/victim, international/domestic, and retributive/restorative justice. One needs to account, however, for the potential ambiguity of repentance and the fact that it may be subtly exonerating, as well as the fact that international criminal tribunals have reasons to encourage it that have nothing to do with restorative justice. Only if the sincerity of repentance can be ascertained and if it can be addressed to victims may the restorative potential of international criminal justice be realized.     

Toward undergraduate education in the interface of mental health and criminal justice

The relationship between the mental health and criminal justice systems is a controversial one and of growing importance. Formal education in the interface of mental health and criminal justice is a prerequisite to progress in this area. While some educational opportunities are currently available on the graduate and post-graduate levels, there appears to be no reason for this restriction. The present paper describes an undergraduate course on the interface of mental health and criminal justice, and analyzes its contribution to the field in terms of priming future graduate and law students for specializing in this area.     

Envisioning the next generation of behavioral health and criminal justice interventions

The purpose of this paper is to cast a vision for the next generation of behavioral health and criminal justice interventions for persons with serious mental illnesses in the criminal justice system. The limitations of first generation interventions, including their primary focus on mental health treatment connection, are discussed. A person–place framework for understanding the complex factors that contribute to criminal justice involvement for this population is presented. We discuss practice and research recommendations for building more effective interventions to address both criminal justice and mental health outcomes.     

Italian criminal trials: Lost in transition? Differing degrees of criminal justice convergence in Italy and Australia

The Italian Code of Criminal Procedure underwent extraordinary reform in 1988, from an established inquisitorial system to incorporate key elements of adversarialism. This reform sought to create greater separation of powers and efficiency of the trial system. Two decades on, Italian criminal trials continue to be overly protracted, and struggle with maintaining independence of the judiciary (particularly a distinct separation from the prosecutorial arm). This paper primarily examines the philosophical foundations of inquisitorial and adversarial systems, and theories of the policy making process. It develops a theoretical framework for understanding the transformation of the Italian trial system, and the challenges that have resulted from combining two divergent approaches to criminal justice. Various important lessons are drawn for criminal justice community, as many jurisdictions are engaging in similar convergence of these systems as a result of global influence and change.     

Organized Crime and Trust:: On the conceptualization and empirical relevance of trust in the context of criminal networks

Organised crime networks are often characterised as being held together by bonds of trust, but the conventional wisdom regarding the relation between trust and organised crime lacks a comprehensive theoretical and empirical underpinning. The purpose of this paper is to explore where deeper research on this issue may lead and how it can potentially contribute to a better understanding of organised crime in general. Drawing on the general sociological literature, it provides a preliminary conceptualisation of trust in the context of organised crime centred around a fourfold typology along the micro-macro dimension. The authors use anecdotal evidence from their research on illegal markets for highly taxed goods in Norway and Germany to illustrate that there are different types of trust, that there are different consequences of the violation of trust, and, finally, that there are criminal relations not based on trust at all.     

精神失常抗辩及其刑事证明——以美国法为视角

心智健全推定卸除了控方对被告人心智健全的证明责任,将争点形成责任交由辩方承担。而精神失常在美国刑事法中属于积极抗辩事由,根据联邦和多数州的司法实践,由辩方承担提出初步的举证责任,并承担“清晰、信服”程度的说服责任。相较之下,我国目前刑事实体法的建构与刑事证明之间没有明确的衔接,以至于刑事证明的功能无法有效实现。司法精神病鉴定是目前查实被告人是否精神失常的主要手段,但启动权主要其中在公安司法机关手中,辩方权利受到较大限制,而对鉴定人以及鉴定证据亦缺乏体系性的证据审用规则。司法精神病鉴定应当纳入刑事证明的轨道,辩方如欲推翻心智健全推定,应提出相应证据,继而说服责任的分配要区分辨方证明主张：该鉴定意见是对控方对犯罪主观方面要素证明的反驳,还是主张责任阻却。前者由控方证明到排除合理怀疑的程度,而后者则由辩方证明到清晰、信服的程度。在此证明原理的基础上,鉴定人有义务出庭对鉴定意见进行口头陈述或展示,并接受对造的质证。鉴定意见的证据能力则由法庭依法判断,其证明力则由法庭自由评价。     

Circle sentencing in Canada: A partnership of the community and the criminal justice system

Throughout North America, there has been an increasing interest in the development of alternative forums for dispute resolution that may more effectively address the needs of victims, offenders, and the community. Concurrent with this has been an attempt to alter the adversarial framework of the criminal justice system. This has included the development and implementation of case processing strategies premised on restorative justice and attempting to secure the participation of communities as partners in the resolution of disputes. One particularly innovative initiative is circle sentencing, which has been implemented in several communities in the Yukon, Canada. The procedure by which cases are processed in circle sentencing is outlined and the involvement of the offender, the victim, the community, and the territorial court are discussed.     

The introduction of forensic advisors in Belgium and their role in the criminal justice system

Forensic advisors (FA) at the National Institute for Criminalistics and Criminology (NICC), generalists in forensic science, act as an advising body to the magistrate to improve communication between the various parties involved in the investigation: magistrate, police and crime scene investigators, and forensic experts. Their role is manifold, but their main objectives are to optimise trace processing by selecting the most pertinent traces in the context of the case and by advising magistrates on the feasibility of forensic analyses in particular circumstances in regards to the latest technical advances.Despite the absence of a legal framework governing their role and involvement in judicial cases, the demand for their services has increased over the years. Initially, forensic advisors were called for complex homicide cases. Due to the proximity with the Public Prosecutor's Office, the types of offences for which their expertise was sought have become more diverse (mainly including robbery, burglary and sexual assault cases), leading to a diversity in the types of cases handled by the forensic advisors (complex, simple and review).In many of the cases they are requested for, in addition to consulting on the best analytical strategy, forensic advisors also assume the role of case coordinator regarding the seized objects and their respective analyses. Indeed, in the majority of cases treated by the FAs, two or more types of expertise have been requested and performed, either at the internal laboratories of NICC or at external laboratories.This paper explains the role of the forensic advisors in Belgium, the path that let to their current status and problems encountered.