Toward Peace in the World of Business through International Criminal Justice

In response to the concerns of the world community over the interlockings between the abuse of economic and political power and its potential negative effect on national socio-economic development efforts, the United Nations has undertaken several major strategic programs. The recent Sixth United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders focused on this topic, with a global strategy beginning to emerge. Yet that strategy could be on a collision course with the policies of the new American administration. The author reasons that support for an international control strategy is in the best interests of the United States and other Western nations, that it need not collide with a laissez-faire domestic policy, and that it provides an alternative to violent acts of aggression and other non-negotiated mechanisms for achieving world economic justice.     

Impact of Information About Sentencing Decisions on Public Attitudes Toward the Criminal Justice System

Research reveals public dissatisfaction with perceived leniency of the criminal justice system. However, when asked to sentence hypothetical offenders, members of the public tend to choose dispositions similar to what current court practices prescribe. In two studies reported here, subjects completed a mock sentencing exercise and a general attitude survey. In an initial pilot study, they expressed general dissatisfaction with the criminal justice system but the relative punitiveness of their sentences (in terms of their perceptions of how severe various sentencing options are) was only slightly elevated above a set of reference sentences. Providing a typical judge's sentencing decisions did not decrease dissatisfaction but was associated with an anchoring effect. This effect was explored in the main study by manipulating the provided reference sentences to be either lenient, moderate, or punitive. Again, participants expressed general dissatisfaction with the criminal justice system but prescribed generally moderate sentences, anchoring their sentences to the information provided. However, only those exposed to moderate typical sentences subsequently reported reduced dissatisfaction with the criminal justice system.     

联合国刑事司法准则与我国刑事法律改革若干问题

1998年10月5日,我国签署了《公民权利和政治权利公约》。该公约最为明确、集中、具体地规定了联合国刑班司法准则．我们有必要将我国的刑事立法与联合国刑事司法准则相对照．寻找差距．并提出改革、完善的具体措施。从而推动我国刑事法律向前发展。试就涉及刑法、刑事诉讼法方面的问题作了一些探讨。     

Technology and Criminal Justice

The extent and use of technology in the British criminal justice system is uneven. Two areas are examined; first where technology is used in prisons or by the police, and secondly when it is used to develop new sanctions, as with electronic monitoring, or as attachments to existing sanctions such as drug testing. Technology in prisons is mainly in the form of perimeter security, and in the police through CCTV cameras or databases. In the second the emphasis is on tracker systems which gives the supervisor greater control. Technological development in criminal justice is not without its critics. Some regard existing technological developments with suspicion, seeing them as a means of enhancing control, or as an attack on traditional liberal values, or more importantly as an extension of a form of behaviourism which is concerned only with the observable act. Others note the expensive failures of technology where systems fail to work or are delivered late. It is suggested a Government study is required to examine existing technologies and its likely future impact whether on the criminal justice system generally or on those working within it or as inmates.     

American Criminal Justice Exposed

In The Ethics of Capital Punishment: A Philosophical Investigation of Evil and Its Consequences, Matthew Kramer argues that none of the standard rationales used to justify capital punishment successfully vindicates it and that a new justification, the purgative rationale, justifies capital punishment for defilingly evil offenders. In this article, it is argued, first, that a version of retributivism that adheres to the lex talionis as Kramer understands it does seem to call exclusively for the death penalty. Second, it is submitted that the purgative rationale is over-inclusive inasmuch as Kramer considers it applicable to certain offenders with abusive or deprived backgrounds, some offenders indoctrinated to adhere to pernicious ideologies that have impelled their crimes, and wrongdoers who have sincerely repented. Third, doubts are expressed about whether the purgative rationale justifies the execution of any offenders. Even if it is true that the continued existence of an extravagantly evil offender represents an affront to humanity, as Kramer suggests, a moral obligation to execute him does not follow. Since repentance is intrinsically valuable and since repentance would extinguish the affront to humanity, the community in which an unrepentant evil offender abides is duty-bound to foster repentance on the part of the offender by imposing banishment or life imprisonment, sanctions that afford the offender the most extensive opportunity for repentance. The community is therefore obligated to impose one of these sanctions instead of capital punishment.     

全球化和刑事司法

刑事司法的全球化正在逐步成为现实。而且全球化的进程旨在在世界范围内采取联合行动预防和惩治某些特定的犯罪。然而,刑事司法全球化的构建需要建立在统一的刑事司法文化基础上,与修正的报应模式和法律与秩序模式不同的是,刑事司法全球化必须有整合一致的人权文化。提高个体、政治、社会和经济人权的整体文化,是保障建立刑事司法全球化的最佳途径,它服务于国际公共价值和秩序,同时还致力于社会公正,确保相关人员,特别是被害人和被告人的权利保障。     

Assessing Criminal Justice Practice Using Social Justice Theory

In this article, I introduce two of the leading theories of social justice put forth by John Rawls and David Miller. Then, I assess criminal justice practice, from law-making to corrections, in terms of ways in which it is consistent and inconsistent with these theories of social justice. Throughout the article, I also identify ways in which criminal justice practice is inconsistent with social justice. Finally, I make recommendations for reforming criminal justice to make it more consistent with social justice.     

论刑事法的历史分析

历史分析，作为法学重要的研究方法之一，对于刑事法研究具有积极意义。对中国当代刑事法进行历史分析，并非去发现所谓的“民族精神”，而是寻找刑事法律制度得以形成的脉络，以及在法制演进中的政治、经济和文化因素。在刑事法学研究中运用这种分析方法，具体表现为历史比较研究、历史的社会研究以及历史的价值研究。对中国刑事法发展作历史研究，应区分不同时代，并有目的性地进行研究，进而挖掘其中可为当代刑事法发展利用的有益因素。     

Participatory Democracy and Criminal Justice

This essay asks if there is a role for an active public in ratcheting down the harsh politics of crime control in the United States and the United Kingdom that has led to increased use of the criminal law and greater severity in punishment. It considers two opposing answers offered by political and legal theorists and then begins to develop a participatory democratic framework for institutional reform.     

协商性刑事司法原理

协商性刑事司法是对对抗式刑事司法的革命性变革,它强调诉讼主体作为诉讼和司法的参与者,承担着合作和追求共同体"共同的善"的责任,通过理性协商、对话,以"更好的理由的力量"追求公正和正义,避免法律诉讼蜕变为民间私斗的替代物,以实现社会和谐和持续合作.     

Reflections on International Criminal Justice

Judge Cassese presents arguments in favour of the use of international courts in order to punish war crimes. He argues that the application of justice through a court is better in certain circumstances than amnesties. He examines the merits of international courts rather than national courts, but acknowledges that at present there are several major stumbling blocks to an effective international criminal justice system.     

Criminal Justice in Soviet Russia

Compared to American criminal justice, the fabric of Russia's system is a tightly woven structure operating under centralized co-ordination. During recent history, the goals of Russia's criminal justice system have shifted from repression by terrorism to crime prevention through education and an emphasis on individual duty in peace-keeping matters.

The militia (police), created in 1917, has been mandated to prevent crime through intelligence activities, direct intervention, and citizen education. In 1966, it was given the responsibility for the supervision of offenders newly released from correctional institutions. Peoples Volunteer Brigades and the DRUZHINNIKS aid the militia in crime prevention.

The courts also make use of non-professionals in the persons of lay assessors to insure that the accused is judged by his “peers.” The court system itself is inquisitorial in nature as opposed to the American accusational model. As the accused person moves through pre-trial and trial procedures, one can see how his “rights” may be legally abridged at every step.

Russian courts have a variety of sentences from which to choose, ranging in harshness from public censure to death by shooting. Deprivation of liberty may be applied by degree from “education” to compulsory labor to strict incarceration. The Soviets are attempting an organized plan of diversionary sentencing, in order to reduce prison populations to all but the most dangerous offenders.

Correctional facilities depend on inmate commissions to keep order and motivate good behavior through group influence and peer pressure. Inmates as well as civilians have “a national duty to mind other people's business.”

In the United States, justice is fragmented into a variety of jurisdictions: municipal, county, state, and federal, each with its own law enforcement agencies, courts, and correctional agencies. Further, there is only limited coordination among the various segments of the system. There is little argument to the proposition that the American “system” of criminal justice is inefficient.

Unlike America's disjointed system, the Russian Criminal justice system is unified; militia (police), procurators (prosecutors), courts, and correctional facilities operate under a centralized coordinating body. This body is characterized by a unity of purpose and a high degree of systemic integration (Juviler, 1979, p. 1).     

The Salvadoran Criminal Justice System

This research analyzes comparative data on offenders, offenses, sentences, and dispositions for El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and the United States. This paper is based upon a larger research project examining political death and homicide in El Salvador through 1984. The analysis examines the effectiveness of the Salvadoran criminal justice system before and after initiation of Its civil war.

The statistics showed that El Salvador's capacity to investigate homicides and detect murder suspects had improved over the last 10 years or so, whereas its ability and length of time to prosecute, try, sentence, and commit offenders had deteriorated over this same period. Substantial numbers of Salvadoran criminals were apprehended, arrested, tried, sentenced, and incarcerated for routine crimes of violence and property. On the other hand virtually none of the perpetrators of thousands of political murders were apprehended by the Salvadoran Government despite the increase in arrest and sentencing for routine homicides. This may be indicative of a lack of commitment by the Salvadoran Government to deal with political killings by death squads.     

Attitudes Toward Electronic Monitoring: An Exploratory Analysis Among Criminal Justice Students in Bosnia and Herzegovina

The purpose of this research study is to examine attitudes associated with the use of electronic monitoring as a criminal justice sanction in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Utilizing self-reported survey data from 57 graduate students enrolled in a criminal justice policy based course at the University of Sarajevo, students’ attitudes toward electronic monitoring are assessed. Specifically, students’ personal views about whether electronic monitoring meets the sentencing goals of deterrence, incapacitation, retribution, rehabilitation and reintegration are evaluated. Perceptions of the cost-effectiveness of electronic monitoring and the appropriateness of electronic monitoring as a sentence for specific offender types are also examined. Finally, the influence of student socio-demographic characteristics on opinions are also assessed. As a whole, students surveyed appear to support the use of electronic monitoring for juvenile offenders and offenders awaiting trial. Additionally, respondents do not view the conditions associated with electronic monitoring as all that negative or obtrusive. Implications from these findings, as well as limitations and suggestions for further research are discussed.