Beyond crime seriousness: Fitting the punishment to the crime

This paper presents an exposition of how the factorial survey approach may enhance empirical assessments of the complex judgment principles involved in public views of just punishments for convicted offenders. Ratings of the appropriateness of sentences given across 50 typical crimes obtained from a household sample (N=774) of the Boston SMSA and several special-interest samples in 1982 are examined in three alternative ordinary least-squares (OLS) regression equations. These analyses show there is not a one-to-one direct relationship between public perceptions of the seriousness of criminal acts and desired sanctions. Crime seriousness is modified by the characteristics of the offenders and victims and by the consequences of the crimes. Preferred punishments also vary in severity by demographic, experiential, and attitudinal characteristics of the persons who make the judgments.     

From Demos to Demoi: Democracy across Borders

Abstract.  The paper discusses a needed double transformation of democracy, of its institutional form and its normative ideal, in three steps. First, the Author takes for granted that the empirical fact of the increasing scope and intensity of global interaction and interdependence are not sufficient to decide the issue between gradualists and transformationalists. Indeed, gradualists and transformationalists share an underlying conception that leads to a particular emphasis in modern theories on legal institutions. This same set of problems emerges in contemporary conceptions of cosmopolitan democracy, especially those formulated by Held and Habermas. Second, he considers the more decentered alternatives, which make contestation through global networks the central feature of democracy beyond the state. Third, he develops an alternative, plural, and decentered conception based on an account of democratization outside the nation state, not on a particular version of the democratic ideal. *     

Appeals to community and crime prevention

This paper considers the growing appeals to the idea of community in criminal justice policy and the involvement of actual communities in criminal justice initiatives. It draws on a completed two year research study of a number of community-based crime prevention initiatives in the South East of England. The paper considers the nature of community to which appeals are made in criminal justice discourse and policies, the contribution of community to the practices of social order and the nature of community representation and participation in crime prevention initiatives. It is argued that appeals to community in crime prevention, and crime control more generally, embody shifts in what constitutes the legitimate responsibilities of individuals, collectivities and the state. This has a number of implications, the first of which is a redrawing of the cost of policing and security services. Additionally, there is an associated shift in blame for failure. Finally, actual community involvement in crime control gives rise to new structures and forms of local governance that evoke key questions about the regulation of social relations, the nature of conflict resolution, citizenship, democracy and social justice.     

文学史与边界

以国家民族或语言来划分的传统文学史观与现当代文学史的发展已无法兼容。异国文学早已进入本国文学万神殿,拥有多种文化背景或以多种语言书写的作家越来越常见,离散书写现象不仅已经成为当代文学的焦点之一,而且重新将我们引向了文学和空间的链接问题。因此在多元文化和去中心化的语境下重写文学史非常具有必要性。     

Taking crime out of crime business

It is one thing to assert that conventional market analysis is critically useful in understanding criminal enterprise. It is more challenging to suggest that corrupt and compromised legal regulation interacts with other critical market variables to maximise market advantage for crime business in a similar manner to legitimate regulatory forces in their protection and enhancement of legitimate business enterprise. The central argument of this paper is that crime business mirrors other business forms when considered in terms of critical market variables, and that in particular regulatory forces when inverted from their original purposes can influence market conditions in the same ways desired from the legitimate regulatory form. The main research direction deriving from the analysis of regulatory influences over specific criminal enterprises is how do certain critical market forces essentially facilitate criminal enterprise as a market phenomenon. This paper suggests how through comparatively analysing nominated critical market forces in the context of lucrative and recurrent criminal enterprises, common business decision-making may be predicted and thereby controlled beyond a law enforcement paradigm. In fact, the paper argues that when perverted law enforcement regulation operates as an inter-connecting market characteristic then it can have a similar influence over illegitimate enterprise that law enforcement may provide legitimate business.By establishing a richer and more enterprise-oriented understanding of crucial market variables, it becomes possible to refine control strategies at critical entry and exit points in the operation of clandestine crime businesses. The paper will challenge a comparative theorising of what makes crime business a good business, and how normative distinctions between illegitimate markets are made less convincing when positioned against an analysis of the interaction of critical market variables.     

Building NESTs to combat environmental crime networks

This article begins by providing a brief overview of environmental crime in the Asia and Pacific, highlighting its complexity, varying dimensions and transnational nature. It acknowledges the difficulties in responding to organised criminal groups that operate with flexible modus operandi to commit such crimes. The paper then discusses the importance of the National Environmental Security Taskforce approach, a model developed by INTERPOL to tackle environmental crimes. Collaboration and cooperation, within and between government and non-government organisations, are conceptualised as having a possibly positive ‘panopticon effect’ that has implications for responding to both organised criminal networks and state corruption in this domain.     

复行为犯的着手问题

简要分析比较前一行为说、后一行为说、具体分析说之后 ,通过案例的分析 ,得出赞同前一行为说的结论 :复行为犯中 ,数实行行为都是构成行为的一部分 ,开始实施了前一实行行为 ,尽管未实施后一行为也等于开始实施了构成行为 ;与此同时 ,行为人的前一行为已经有导致危害结果发生的现实危险性 ,否则 ,刑法规范就没有必要给予前一行为“构成要件要素”这样高度的评价 ,而只需采取单一实行行为的规定方式 ;而且行为人主观上的直接犯罪目的业已确定无疑地在前一行为中得到充分表现。     

遏制毒品犯罪的刑法完善探讨

面对当前我国及全球反毒品斗争的实际情况和经验,在检讨我国现行毒品犯罪的立法缺陷的基础上,提出了完善我国毒品犯罪的刑事对策,具体包括:增设抢劫、抢夺、盗窃、诈骗毒品罪,介绍买卖毒品罪,扩大非法提供毒品罪的主体,提高强迫他人吸毒罪的法定刑,降低非法持有毒品罪的法定刑,提出"以日常生活中吸食毒品的通常最低含量折算"的折算办法以及完善毒品犯罪的减刑与假释程序等。     

Nations hospitable to organized crime and terrorism

This report assesses conditions that contribute to or are potentially hospitable to transnational criminal activity and terrorist activity in selected regions of the world during the period 1999–2002. Although the focus of the report is on transnational activity, domestic criminal activity is recognized as a key foundation for transnational crime, especially as the forces of globalization intensify. The report has been arranged geographically into the following major headings: Africa, the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Western Europe, and the Western Hemisphere. Within the geographical headings, the report addresses individual countries with particularly salient conditions. Cases such as the Triborder Area (TBA) of South America and East and West Africa, where conditions largely overlap national borders, have been treated as regions rather than by imposing an artificial delineation by country. The bibliography has been divided into the same geographical headings as the text. The major sources for this report are recent periodical reports from Western and regional sources, Internet sites offering credible recent information, selected recent monographs, and personal communications with regional experts. Treatment of individual countries varies according to the extent and seriousness of conditions under study. Thus some countries in a region are not discussed, and others are discussed only from the perspective of one or two pertinent activities or conditions. Because they border the United States, Canada and Mexico have received especially extensive treatment.     

When crime reporting goes high-tech: An experimental test of computerized citizen response to crime

This study investigates the importance of the reporting mode as a factor contributing to citizen crime reporting decisions in the United States. A randomized experimental design involving 140 subjects was used to compare the treatment effects of two crime reporting modes: one which was telephonic and the other computer interactive. The findings of this exploratory study of citizen crime reporting within a controlled laboratory setting revealed significant increases in reporting rates for subjects assigned to the computer reporting mode condition relative to those assigned to the telephonic reporting mode condition. This relationship persisted for reporting behavior examined at both low and moderate levels of crime seriousness. The implications of these findings for predicting future changes in the incidence and distribution of reported criminal behavior or illegal incidents are presented and discussed.     

Correction to: Intergenerational continuity of crime among children of organized crime offenders in the Netherlands

Crime, Law and Social Change -     

Re-imagining crime prevention: controlling corporate crime?

While the discourses and practices of crime prevention are of increasing salience, few criminologists have sought the inclusion of corporate illegalities on such agendas. Relatedly, within criminology, there has been a diminished tendency to think in idealistic, utopian and emancipatory terms. This paper is one small attempt to think in precisely such terms.¹ But it is not an exercise in pure imagination. In particular, the paper makes extended reference to Finland, where recent experience suggests that corporate crime prevention may be feasible, under certain conditions, albeit subject to certain limitations. Thus we consider both the desirability and the feasibility of corporate crime prevention intruding upon the generally narrowly constructed terrain of ‘crime prevention’. We begin with a critique of some of the key aspects of crime prevention discourses – at both theoretical and practical levels – with a particular emphasis upon the extent to which these are both more appropriately and usefully applied to corporate crime prevention, before going on to discuss corporate crime prevention ‘in action’, through a focus upon recent developments in Finland. In a concluding section, we consider various aspects of both the desirability and feasibility of corporate crime prevention.