Public opinion and penal reform in Britain

The author argues that it is very difficult to seek legitimation and support in public opinion attitudes both for reformers and counter-reformers of the penal system. He disputes the very existence of public opinion itself, and stresses that definitions of crime are often based on an emotional conspiracy whereby the parties involved ignore one another's perception: institutions, offenders, victims, the public, and last but not least, criminologists.     

Compatible victims? Prison overcrowding and penal reform in Belgium

The Belgian criminal justice system has recently gone through a period of unprecedented legislative reform. One of the major innovations has been the establishment of a new type of tribunal which is responsible for decision-making and follow-up related to the execution of penal sanctions (tribunal de l’application des peines/strafuitvoeringsrechtbank). This new institution is created and regulated by two pieces of legislation, formally approved in May 2006. The paper discusses the Parliamentary trajectory of this reform and pays special attention to how a victim's perspective (that is, the enactment of certain types of information and hearing rights for certain categories of victims of crime) came to be included in the new regulation. It is argued that one of the most important implications of the whole reform (that is, the future loss of Ministerial control with respect to managing the prison population) has contributed to the legal construction of the victim in the legal proposal as submitted by the Government to the Senate. The provisions in this legal proposal which related to victims of crime needed to be ‘compatible’ with an age-old problem of serious prison overcrowding. The legal proposal, therefore, was oriented towards defining victims in such a way that giving them a role in the post-sentencing phase would not hamper the smooth release of inmates out of the Belgian prison system.     

The origins of penal populism

Five years ago after 46 years of daily deadlines – the last 38 on The Guardian – I retired to explore, with the help of Joseph Rowntree Foundation and Nuffield College Oxford fellowships, just how much influence was played by the media in the policy making process. The exercise was prompted by rising public concern over the ever widening power of the media. Onora O'Neill, the philosopher, in her Reith lectures in 2002 on trust in public institutions, noted with irony that the main champion of transparency and accountability – the media – were themselves the least transparent and accountable group in democracy. Anthony Sampson, a distinguished journalist, in his fourth edition of Anatomy of Britain in 2004, documented just how entrenched this perception was.     

Crafting public security: demilitarisation,penal state reform and security policy-making in post-authoritarian Chile

ABSTRACT

Here I dissect the institutionalisation of ‘citizen security’ as a category and sector of public policy in post-authoritarian Chile. Deploying a Bourdieusian field theory approach and questioning narratives of security policies as responses to criminality or adaptations to democratic values, I argue that the construction of a new security policy sector – with a new consensus (distinct from that of National Security), with reformed police and courts in its core, leaving aside the military and extending beyond traditional agencies – derives from (i) struggles over policing and criminal justice reforms, (ii) tensions between the military and democratic authorities in democracy and (iii) performative integrations of the new policy components. These mechanisms explain the evolution of the security problem and the progressive aggregation of bureaucratic agencies and methods to the ‘public security policy’ – policing, judiciary, urban design, prisons and prevention plans. I close discussing alternative accounts of institutional variations in security governance in the region.     

Confronting penal excess

Each year, in the United Kingdom more than two million of our fellow citizens are subject to some form of penal sanction, including imprisonment, house arrest, community punishment, fines, cautions and penalty notices. This will strike many as excessive.     

On penal metrics

This paper presents the results of a public survey on the perceived severity of different kinds and levels of penalties gathered using magnitude estimation techniques. Three topics are dealt with. Individual scales of sentence severity are shown to be internally consistent. Then the structural properties of the severity scales of fine, imprisonment, community work, and probation are analyzed. Finally, what a given penalty is worth in relation to other types of punishment from the public's point of view is established and compared to existing exchange rates prescribed in legal statutues or practiced by criminal courts.     

The development of the penal bond with conditional defeasance

The development of the penal bond with endorsed conditional defeasance presents a problem because the earliest monetary penalties in English contracts took the form of straight-forward penalty clauses. It is hard to see how the convoluted penal bond developed from such penalty clauses. This article traces the development of the penal bond from debt recognizances defeasible by the performance of conditions stated in a separate document. The logic of the defeasible recognizance was carried over to other arrangements including the penal bond with endorsed conditional defeasance.     

The rise of the penal state in Latin America

The recent work of Loïc Wacquant identified the emergence of the penal state as a core feature of the global expansion of neoliberalism and the neoliberal government urban marginality. Drawing on Wacquant’s theoretical and conceptual reflections, this article analyses the emergence of a Latin American form of penal statecraft. By taking an in-depth look at the increasing criminalization of urban marginality in contemporary Latin America as well as the related developments in the local prison system, the single most important institutional expression of the Latin American penal state, important commonalities and differences between the penal statecraft experiments throughout Latin America and the countries of the ‘developed world’ are highlighted.     

Resistance as reform: direct action through prisoner movements,legal activism and the radical penal lobby

While considering the recent 'I would give up’ call from the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies, I was inspired by the contributions of others to pull together my thoughts on an issue which increasingly challenges researchers and providers in criminal justice – chasing the rainbow of reductions in ‘reoffending’. The significance of this measure is currently being reinforced through its status as the pot of gold in criminal justice payment by results’(PbR) contracting.     

德日刑法中的可罚性理论

在德日刑法中,作为犯罪成立要件的可罚性是在构成要件符合性、违法性和责任之外,对行为进行的"值得处罚"这种实质的评价.可罚性的要素包括客观的处罚条件和一身的处罚阻却事由.     

Human rights dynamics of abortion law reform

The legal approach to abortion is evolving from criminal prohibition towards accommodation as a life-preserving and health-preserving option, particularly in light of data on maternal mortality and morbidity. Modern momentum for liberalization comes from international adoption of the concept of reproductive health, and wider recognition that the resort to safe and dignified healthcare is a major human right. Respect for women's reproductive self-determination legitimizes abortion as a choice when family planning services have failed, been inaccessible, or been denied by rape. Recognition of women's rights of equal citizenship with men requires that their choices for self-determination be legally respected, not criminalized.     

Finland's penal colonies: The forbearant model and community-based corrections

Community-based corrections is widely heralded as the proper basis for future penal administration. Penal colonies of Finland are employed in this paper to relate changes in society at large to innovation in corrections. The penal colonies were the indirect result of the postwar crisis in Finland and changes brought by industrialization and urbanization. Unprecedented opportunities for solving problems of conventional administration motivated officials to introduce penal colonies as a means of accomodating prisons to the new expectations being imposed on correctional work. The forbearant model is proposed as a hesitant and primitive reaction to pressures to bring corrections into conformity with the trends shaping society at large. This model is useful in analyses of the American movement toward community-based corrections.     

Community care as a penal sanction

Conclusion The community participation model, which rests on the philosophy of reintegration, is an important trend in recent penal policy. The sentence of community care in New Zealand is an illustration of that trend. However, there are lessons to be learned from the past four years. Clearly, the model has its practical limits. The extent to which the community wishes to participate in the provision of penal services is undoubtedly overstated by its proponents; as a result, community involvement is unlikely to be forthcoming unless the government provides adequate funding to groups and individuals providing such services to offenders. Even then, a gap is likely to remain between the rhetoric and the reality of community participation. The majority of the community care programs are bureaucratically organized, professionally staffed, and undertaken within the context of structured thera peutic regimes. They thus fall well short of the ideal of spontaneous, neighborly concern, which is such a strong part of the Western ideology of community. While some programs, particularly cultural programs offered by ethnic minority groups, have involved comparatively noninstitutional and informal relationships between sponsor and offender, these are few in number and have made little impact so far on the way in which the criminal justice system deals with offenders from ethnic minority groups. In sum, there is little to distinguish the majority of programs from conventional attempts at rehabilitation. Although higher levels of funding and more vigorous community development efforts by probation officers may stimulate community involvement, the New Zealand experience suggests that, at least in cultures without established processes of informal care and control, the community participation model will not be the new panacea in penal policy.This is a revised and expanded version of a paper given at the second conference of the Society for the Reform of Criminal Law, Parliament Buildings, Ottawa, Canada, August 1–4, 1988.B.A., University of Auckland 1971; LL.B. (hons.) University of Auckland 1973; Ph.D., Cambridge University 1978.     

Bringing the penal voluntary sector to market

Despite widespread recognition of the importance of sport in diverting people from criminal behaviour in community settings (Nichols, 2007) the potential benefits of sport in prison settings have only recently become the focus of academic attention (see Lewis and Meek, 2012). In the UK, current policy stipulates a statutory requirement that all prisoners across the secure estate have the opportunity to participate in a minimum of one hour (or two hours on average for those under 21) of physical education per week. The Prison Service's Physical Education Instruction advocates sporting activities that also fulfil wider resettlement policy agendas, incorporating education, training and employment and attitudes, thinking and behaviour. In spite of such ambitious objectives and the routine delivery of physical education in prisons, there has been no exploration to date of whether participation is equitable across diverse offender populations, or the extent to which current practices are congruent with existing policy.